The musings of Sean Paul Murphy: Editor, Producer, Screenwriter, Author. Or, Hollywood -- and beyond -- as seen from an odd little corner of northeast Baltimore, Maryland.
Here's another COVID free ZOOM edition of the Yippee-Ki-Yay Mother Podcast, a lively discussion of the movies that sometimes devolves into a group therapy session.
In this fun episode, the Mother Podcasters bring their favorite Nicolas Cage films to the table. Nicolas Cage has become famous for his over the top acting and odd choice of projects -- but is that necessarily a bad thing? We don't think so. Listen to our choices, and where they fall on the 1-to-10 Cagey scale.
My novel Chapel Street is now available! You can currently buy the Kindle and paperback at Amazon and the Nook, paperback and hardcover at Barnes & Noble.
I recently completed my latest book Life Like - a high tech ghost story.
Here's the log line: Much to the consternation of his career-minded girlfriend, Andy Watson has drifted from one lowly job to another since college only to find himself working in a futuristic mausoleum where a new embalming technique combined with holograms and artificial intelligence make its permanent guests seem incredibly life-like. Andy's life turns upside down when he comes to suspect that one of its inhabitants, the beautiful Claudia Elser, was murdered by her husband. Life Like is an engaging rite of passage romp loaded with laughs and heart.
You often hear writers say their work was inspired by dreams. Life Like is the only story I wrote inspired by a dream. I had a near death experience while finishing up my award-winning documentary Sacred Ground: The Battle For Mount Auburn Cemetery. In the dream, I was walking through the ruined, decrepit grounds of Mount Auburn. Then I soon found myself walking through a new section of the cemetery where the bodies were preserved in glass chambers, like in the 1934 Boris Karloff/Bela Lugosi film The Black Cat.
The Black Cat
Unlike in The Black Cat, I could also push a button on the side of the burial chambers to talk to the dead in my dream. When I woke up, I knew I had a story I wanted to tell. It was just a matter of finding a compelling human story to attach to the concept. Of course, I pulled from my own life experiences for the characters and conflicts. In Life Like, I deal with my familiar themes of lost love, death and possible suicide -- but in a lighter manner.
Life Like started out as a screenplay. Here's a taste of the responses I got when I sent the script around Hollywood: "What the script has going for it most is its genuinely unique, high-concept premise -- as opposed to most other comedies, the material does not seem the least bit derivative." "A wonderful premise and unique to boot." "The material should be applauded for its quality characterizations." "Realistic and sharp dialogue." "The dialogue is endearing." "Strong character development." "It's entire third act stands out as the most invigorating part of the script." "A pretty funny and surprisingly emotional story about closure." "It's a fun and exciting read with a captivating plot and a happy ending!" "This project's prospects are rather bright." "Sure to get industry attention."
I was thankful for the kind words, but I got no real bites. Why? Because the stakes weren't high enough in the original draft. The script was a character study which would have sold in a heartbeat during the 1990s, but the market had changed. Little human stories are no longer in vogue. While I figured out a way to increase the stakes, Jim Proimos, a well-known illustrator and the author of children and young adult books, offered to develop the script as a graphic novel. Before we got beyond some initial artwork, Jim was invited to pitch animation ideas to some LA production companies. He asked me if he could pitch Life Like as an adult swim style animated series. I said yes. He began pitching before COVID-19 shut down Hollywood.
I also figured out how to increase the stakes. Instead of restricting myself to Andy's perspective only as I originally had, I started with the death of Claudia Elser and followed her story parallel to Andy's story until the two finally met. However, instead of revising the script, I decided to write it as a novel. Jim didn't feel a novel would interfere with either the potential graphic novel or an animated series. And now it is done.
Below you will find the first short chapter. Please keep in mind that I have only begun my editorial process. I still have a long way to go before the manuscript is ready for actual submission. Expect mistakes. Still, I am very excited about the book and I wanted to share it. Below the written text, you will find a video of me reading the chapter in my pronounced Baltimore accent. You certainly wouldn't want to miss that!
I hope you enjoy it.
Chapter 1
Claudia
Claudia Elser died in the early morning hours of Monday, July 18th.
The coroner placed her time of death sometime between two and four. Her body was found in a tub of cold bathwater, which prevented a more accurate determination. She was thirty-five-years-old.
Her maid, or housekeeper, or whatever the politically correct term is now, arrived at her gated Brentwood manor precisely at nine as usual. Gabriel Elser, Claudia’s husband, was already gone. The police later learned he left the house around seven. He went to his club and played a few vigorous sets of racquetball before heading to the office. He reported making no attempt to see his wife that morning. The two had ceased sharing a conjugal bed months earlier.
The maid found the house silent. That wasn’t unusual. Gabriel was a workaholic who only came home to sleep. Claudia, on the other hand, often fell prey to depressive slumps where she would remain in her bedroom suite for days at a time. The maid reported this was one of those periods.
After putting on a pot of coffee, the maid went upstairs and gently tapped on Claudia’s door. She got no response. She tried the door handle. It wasn’t locked, so she looked inside. The bed had been slept in, but Claudia was nowhere to be seen. The maid entered the room. She saw the door to the bathroom was partially open. She went over to see her long time employer lying motionless in the tub. With a scream, the maid raced inside. While trying in vain to revive her, she thoroughly disturbed the crime scene. Fortunately, she didn’t corrupt the glass on the floor beside the tub. Police later found traces of bourbon and barbiturates in it.
Claudia’s death made the news. She wasn’t a well-known public figure, but she was the primary owner of the privately held Montclair Media, a broadcast empire of over fifty television and radio stations and a patchwork of cable systems throughout the South and Midwest plus a stake in over twenty cable networks.
I spent the night Claudia died playing WarQuest, a massive, multi-player online fantasy game. In my defense, it was business, not pleasure. My roommate Clay played the game for a living. WarQuest had over twenty million subscribers and there was a hefty real world black market for rare and exotic items found in the game. That night, the two of us, and a team of online allies killed Askow, a dragon on the third elemental plane. Askow’s eyes were magical items highly valued by fantasy sorcerers and enchanters. Clay had a buyer in Japan willing to purchase them for six-hundred-dollars in real money. Our share of the rest of Askow’s loot brought us another two-hundred-dollars.
I found four hundred dollars waiting for me in my PayPal account when I awoke at ten the next morning. I needed them because I was supposed to be at work at Starbucks at eight-thirty. That was it for my boss. He was a pretty cool guy, really, but he took the whole tardiness thing way too seriously.
Oh well.
That was a pity. I liked working at Starbucks. Making coffee was cool, and I loved the smell. It was a thousand times better than waiting tables. There was no way I could go back to restaurant work. It wasn’t pride. I didn’t mind serving people. I simply lacked the coordination or balance necessary to carry the trays. Every one of my attempts at waiting tables ended with an embarrassing spill. Mexican food, I discovered the hard way, looked the most disgusting all mixed up on the floor.
My car wasn’t good enough for Uber or Lyft. I made better tips delivering pizzas the old fashioned way than I could with Grubhub or DoorDash, but it was too dangerous. I was never robbed myself, but every driver gets a gun shoved in his face eventually. You just had to knock on enough doors. Plus, it was pretty embarrassing to deliver a pie to a party you should have been invited to as a guest. That, I had experienced.
I could actually make more money playing WarQuest with Clay than I could at any of those jobs, but my girlfriend Holly nixed that idea. She said I’d never be able to get a real job if the only thing listed on my resume was playing a videogame. Technically speaking, WarQuest wasn’t a videogame. It was an online game. But her point was well taken.
She was right.
She usually was. Or so I thought. Claudia would disagree, but I’ll get to that later.
Here I am reading the chapter:
While you're waiting for Life Like to hit the market, please check out my other books.
My novel Chapel Street is the story of a young man, Rick Bakos, battling a demonic entity that has driven members of his family to suicide for generations. It was inspired by an actual haunting my family experienced.
I recently made two appearances on Cue It Up With The Q Brothers. The YouTube show is a side project of my two fellow Mother Podcasters Ralph and John Quattrucci. I was honored to be invited onto their more family oriented program.
In the first episode, the brothers asked me to bring a film to discuss. I brought one of my favorite spaghetti western comedies My Name Is Nobody. I picked the film because I knew John had been watching the Man With No Name trilogy by Sergio Leone. I thought this picture, starring Terence Hill and Henry Fonda, was a natural progression from those films. It turns out that neither of the brothers had seen the film so they dove in with great freshness. It was a fascinating discussion.
Here's the trailer of the film:
Here's our discussion:
A week later, the Quattrucci Brothers called me back in. They had both watched the first episode of the new Disney+ documentary The Beatles: Get Back. They knew I was a Beatles fanatic, so they invited me on to discuss it. I was more than happy to comply.
My novel Chapel Street is now available! You can currently buy the Kindle and paperback at Amazon and the Nook, paperback and hardcover at Barnes & Noble.
