I had written a few screenplays several years ago.  They were all incredibly difficult ordeals.  They took forever to write.  I was doubtful if I could do it again.

When the idea hit me to write WORMWOOD, however, I looked forward to it, even though I was worried that I lacked the discipline to sit down and complete a screenplay.

We had an old, slow computer and I used a primitive screenplay software.  I would type a few lines and then wait about 3 to 5 minutes for what I had wrote to come up.

 

As I waited, I would pace the floor, thinking about what I would write next.  I would also say the dialogue out loud.  If anyone had been watching, I would have appeared totally insane.

 

As the days wore on, I began to get into a rhythm.  I would get up and force myself to write for a few hours, and then I would have lunch and relax for a while, then continue writing some more.

 

The most important ‘discipline’ I developed was to force myself to continue to write and not look back.  In other words, I would not go back and fix things or change dialogue even if I knew what I had written was bad or wrong.  Many writers, including myself, will stop and go back and re-write and change things constantly, thereby never finishing!  I was determined to finish as quickly as possible, then I would go back and re-do things.

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, I plowed forward at a high rate of speed.  I finished the first draft in about four weeks.  I don’t think I have ever felt so satisfied as I did when I realized that I had done it, I had finished a screenplay and very quickly.  Then, quite uneventfully, I began to re-write most scenes.

 

After the second draft, I made several copies and had friends and ex-students read it.  Some of the feedback was useful.  I actually never heard back from several people.  Some thought I had gone crazy.  Others thought I would never get it off the ground.  All were somewhat shocked.  Most never returned the script.  I guess they thought it was a gift.

 

The most crucial test came when I had Lourdes, my wife, read it.  She didn’t know what to think about it.  She thought, like most people, that it was disgusting and sick.  Before I could plan on making this movie, I had to have her support.  She knew next to nothing about how films are made.  She had never read a screenplay before.

 

I made a deal with her.  I was going to show her a film made by a professor at the University of Arizona.  It was a full-length film made with equipment and student help supplied by the university.  It was, without exaggeration, one of the most boring and shitty movies ever made.  The man who made it should never be allowed anywhere within a hundred miles of any classroom.  However, the film eventually made its money back and he got tenure as a result of it (that is a great argument for the elimination of tenure).

 

Anyway, I made a deal with my wife.  If she watched this piece of shit and thought it was any good, if she thought it was anywhere near as good as the screenplay I had written, then I would throw my script away and forget the whole damn thing.  I would give up any hope of making movies and go out and find a ‘real’ job. 

 

She watched about 20 minutes of the film and started moaning.  She couldn’t believe how boring it was.  She had never seen anything so endless.  She yelled, “And this shit made money?!”

 

Well, she couldn’t watch all of it.  After about 40 minutes she shut the VCR off and said that any 2 sentences of the WORMWOOD screenplay was more interesting than 40 minutes of that crap.  She said, “Let’s do it.”