Thursday, July 12, 2007

And They Lived Happily Ever After ... NOT

The short version of Defying Gravity ended when Jorge helped Cass and Shore escape from the police at the cemetery. Instead of leaving in the gardener's truck, they left in the limousine. Jorge turns around and asks them, "Where to?" And Cass says her first and only line: "Yermo". The meeting with Lola is promised, but not delivered. The End.

There was no Lubitch in the original. Cemetery Director Menendez was the only threat.

Shore had no background. He was, quite simply, just a talkative guy who lived in a minibus. His biggest issue was that instead of befriending strangers, which is all he wanted, he turned everyone off. The mute girl in the cemetery was his biggest challenge.

The short version of the script was written in 2001 in less than a week, with no planning. It was the easiest thing I'd ever written. Michael encouraged me to expand it into feature length. I then had what was probably the world's longest writer's block - six years. I had absolutely no idea what could possibly happen to my four lead characters in a second and third act.

My patience (or procrastination) paid off. The ending of the script came to me all at once, at the beginning of 2007. And I was filming it three months later.

The short ended with a resolution. I had to turn that into a conflict, or turning point. Solution: Separate Cass from Shore. A feature-length script also needs more complications, more outside forces working against the protagonist(s). Enter Lubitch, the abusive step-father who wants to find Cass as much as Shore does. He also provided a stronger reason for her deciding to run away and seek refuge in a cemetery.

Shore needed a back story. There was time to develop why he was living in a minibus and spewing about religious dichotomies. Recent developments in my personal life acquainted me with what happens when mentally ill people stop taking their medication. Thus Shore was given personal demons of his own - and a concerned father trying to find him.

I put the first draft of the full length script on triggerstreet.com for peer review. Most of the reviewers mentioned that the beginning was too slow, so I tightened it up. They also wanted to see more Lola, so I wrote an extra scene for him, to shed some additional light on his fish-out-of-water existence in Yermo.

The triggerstreet reviewers were almost unanimous in their biggest complaint about the script - they hated it that Shore died at the end.

Yeah, in the first draft, Shore was killed by the highway patrol because he pulled out a fake gun. Before writing that ending, I had read a story about a mentally ill man who pulled a fake gun on police, and they killed him. I'm not blaming the police- they have to make split second, life or death decisions. The tragedy is that schizophrenic people have terrifying delusions which are very real to them. And when they arm themselves, those delusions become self-fulfilling prophecies. I wanted to dramatize this. Perhaps I chose the wrong vehicle to make such a strong statement. The triggerstreet reviewers were mortified. They did not want Shore to die. (Does anyone ever want a protagonist to die?) They said it smacked of Thelma and Louise. (So there can never be another movie where the protagonist dies at the end?) But, I finally reasoned that this movie had the potential to affect and educate people without banging them over the head. Let the audience have their uplifting ending.

As long as they realize that in real life, not everybody gets a happy ending.

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