Printed out all 302 pages this morning — which nearly depleted my printer — and now about to start tackling the edit process.
I’m kinda in love with Final Draft Pro — this is the first script I’ve written using it — in that it has made this entirely formatting challenge one billion times easier.
And it will make the editing down even more so, since major slashing requires total and constant repagination, something the program just does for you. [I remember with earlier scripts in Word, you’d reformat something and then you had a stray single line on a page because of automatic page-breaks, so you’d have to go back to the error point and start again — really tedious and entirely unavoidable.]
Translating the novel to script I only made the most obvious and major edits. Turning 2 pages of novelistic description into “INT. SPECTACULAR APARTMENT” for example.
However, there were a few minor choices that I realized I was going to have to attend to such as locations for phone calls. In the novel you can just say, “When Mr. X calls me later that night” and write the conversation. You don’t necessarily need to have the reader know where it’s taking place. Not so with filming. Sooner or later, someone’s going to have to tell the actors and crew exactly where to show up.
In fact, I made literally only one such change/addition/specification beyond the novel in that in the script I fancied that one place-less phone conversation might just as easily take place in person at a bowling alley. [Don’t ask me why.]
But then I started thinking like a producer, wondering if it was worth it to rent out the alley for the day, etc.
I slapped myself, and realized, THAT is not my problem — at least not yet.
Forging ahead, there’s a moment where the hero — at his low point — goes to see a nameless vampire movie in Union Square. I wrote the novelistic blip mostly because there were specific morning events and then evening events leading to a late night climax, and I felt I had to put something appropriate in to fill the time.
I kept it in the screenplay, even though I thought, “Are they really going to rent out the theater to film this 5 second scene?” and “will they use a real vampire movie or shoot a few scenes for one?” or “will just the sound effects be enough to sell the scene?”
Again — not my problem — at least not yet.
Back in the day, I had a friend who was writing a movie for Joel Silver, and Joel would call him at all hours of the day or night and say, “We need a new funny line for Bruce Willis to say when the villain is ______.” (you fill in the blank)
I love my Producer and believe I will be involved with this project from start to finish.
It is, however, quite possible, that some other future writer will be getting a call in the middle of the night saying, “Where the hell else can this conversation take place — and please anywhere EXCEPT in a bowling alley!”
And — given that I need to cut 2/3 of these pages — within the next few hours/days, said conversation might find itself the victim of DELETE.
I wanted to mention this yesterday, but back when I was producing theater there was a rogue genius performer named Kevin Draine who did an act called “The Bitter Poet” that I loved [at least I did 10 years ago.]
But even a decade later, I remember one of The Bitter Poet’s short poems in its entirely (and you have to imagine this done in his self-proclaimed style of Lou Reed meets Will Shatner, with lots of PAUSE.)
SCISSORS …
They ain’t happy unless they’s cuttin’.
[And SCENE.]
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