On Conceiving New Projects or Every Action Has an Equal and Opposite Reaction

Making a decision as to what a next project should be is indeed a difficult one. The Script Sages have never started a writing project that took LESS time than what we intended. Everyday responsibilities crowd in on straight writing time, etc. Creatively, every situation is different and, often, the next project is a reaction creatively to the previous one.

Any writer worth his salt must weigh commercial considerations as well. It's true that 'epics', by definition almost, are splashier and more expensive and therefore harder to sell. On the other hand, all the movies that have ever really moved me - really moved me in a deep way - were 'epics' in that splashy, historically spot-on sense... I think of REDS or CHARIOTS OF FIRE or GANDHI (in my high school mystic days, I think I may have watched the movie GANDHI thirty times!).

"My dear fellow," Watson was reminded by Sherlock Holmes in one memorable exchange, "life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent." Holmes had it right in that exchange... When the 'truth' of an real-life historical epic shines through and we feel for the characters in their time and place...wow, that's a cathartic experience because we suddenly have a deeper sense of our our history and sense of responsibility. We are truly 'transported' to another time and place and subsequently learn how to take responsibility for our own times.

All that said, there is another reason to write something that is as 'weighty' and 'substantive' as an epic. In our case, the seed of our current project had been germinating for five years. It was somewhat haphazardly 'pitched' to us as novice screenwriters. It died on the vine at the time. Then, after writing a 'contained action thriller' on spec, that old epic project that was still knocking around in our heads suddenly seemed like a welcome change of pace.

The previous six months we had been 'living' in the little world of our contained action thriller. It was not the kind of project that we would have chosen on our own, however, it was 'pitched' to us as a commercially viable spec piece by a producer type we met in Los Angeles. Fair enough. We rolled up our sleeves, labored on the rewrites, and voila: after six months writing and as many shopping it around with our producer contact, we basically had a project that was dead in the water....what's worse it was not very original and certainly hadn't been fun to labor on.

I think the decision to take on a historical project felt like a reaction to the fact that artistically the previous project had been a stretch (It wasn't the kind of writing for which you go to an 'auteur' film school such as BU or NYU). So, what next? Write a screenplay about bats? That wasn't our thing either. Then, Randy remembered the epic project we'd been pitched on those many moons ago. We both relish the research. We both are avid students of history. The thought of a 'contained action thriller' turned my stomach at the time. Neither one of us at the time had an idea for the next SHREK.

So, voila, we resurrected the historical project!

-Joe