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| Yours truly with my lovely wife Deborah and Jenna at the Churches Making Movies Festival |
I am excited to announce Jennifer Healy Gloeb and I have completed a new spec script called Romy.
Normally, I don't devote blogs to recently completed work. I like to wait until there is a development along the road to production. However, since I recently wrote a tip about collaborating, Writer Tip #27: The Ampersand and The And, I thought I should show you how the process works in practice.
First, here's the log line for the script: Romy, a young woman on the verge of divorce, comes to grips with her troubled past on an impulsive trip to visit her family's ancestral home in Italy in this tale of family and female empowerment.
The script was co-written by Jennifer Healy Gloeb, former journalist and a winner of the Edward R. Murrow award. I met Jennifer a little over a year ago. A budding faith-based screenwriter, she found my blog and reached out to me. She asked if I would read one of her screenplays. I said no. I was simply too busy. So Jennifer also reached out to my wife Deborah. She was a softer touch. She said she would read it.
Deborah loved Jennifer's script, Resurrection Road, and told me I should read it too. I still resisted. However, when Jenna sent my wife her new script entitled Seven Slides, I finally took the leap. I loved the script and suggested only minimal changes. I felt it was essentially production-worthy as written. Then I decided to take a look at Resurrection Road, especially after I heard that the head of development of a faith based production company advised her to dump it.
Said head of development was dead wrong. While the script had some easily repaired structural problems, the characters were vivid and well-drawn. The script had a plaintive sense of honesty and realism sorely missing from the faith-based genre.
Jennifer came to Baltimore for an intensive screenwriting workshop. We worked our way through the first act of her new screenplay. The workshop revealed we had the ability to work together. Deborah was constantly kicking me under the table throughout Jennifer's visit for me invite her to collaborate on a script. I was tempted, but the timing didn't seem right. However, I was contemplating what project would best suit our respective talents.
I have a lot of scripts in the back catalog. Some of them had been optioned. Some of them had been represented by agents. Some of them had received great reviews from Hollywood notables. Many of them would be viable, with a little updating. I call it "adding the cellphones."
A few months ago, the three of us found ourselves all headed to New Jersey to attend the Churches Making Movies Film Festival. I was giving a screenwriting workshop. Jennifer flew in from Minnesota because two of her scripts were finalists in their screenplay competition.* Over breakfast at the hotel, I presented an unfinished screenplay to her called Arnara.
Arnara is a beautiful hilltop town in the Frosinone province of Italy. It is also the ancestral home of my Italian family. A screenplay was inspired in part by my visit to the town with my wife-to-be and two of my cousins and the wonderful reception we received. Here's a little film I made about the visit:
The script was also partially inspired by the genealogical journey I was undergoing while I worked on my family tree. That was all fine. The problems arose with my protagonist.
I based my protagonist, now named Romy, on an old flame of mine who experienced difficulties in relationships as a result of traumatic childhood sexual assault and abandonment issues. She found it difficult to trust, and, as a result, commit to relationships. Unfortunately, I was a little to close to her to write the character accurately, and hence never finished the script. (See Writer Tip #28: The Curse of Being Nice,) After reading Jennifer's scripts, and noticing her keen eye for characterizations, I felt she had the necessary skill and distance to help make the character work.
However, the process involved more than just sprucing up the protagonist. Jennifer walked into our breakfast meeting with a desire to make major changes. Romy starts the story off married but not truly committed to the relationship. Since her previous relationships with men had always resulted in abuse or abandonment, she always keeps her eye on the door to avoid any possible hurt. In my original story, Romy and her husband had a child. I felt the presence of the child was necessary to keep Romy in the relationship. Jennifer strongly disagreed. She felt Romy would never have a child.
Jennifer felt that Romy's husband should really want a child, but that Romy, while outwardly agreeing, should be secretly taking the pill. Her husband's discovery of the birth control pills would be the perfect catalyst to crack the marriage and send Romy on her journey which would ultimately take her to Italy.
I loved her ideas. We began working the following week. The resulting script stayed reasonably close to the original for about the first fifteen pages, but quickly took on a new life of its own. I worked in Baltimore. Jennifer worked in Minnesota. Being the structure guy, I always kept the next five or six scenes outlined while we worked. Sometimes she would write the first draft of a scene and I would rewrite it. Sometimes I would write the first draft and she would rewrite it. We finished the first draft in less than three weeks, and spent a month honing it.
We are both very happy with the script.
Now all we have to do is sell it during all of the turmoil in Hollywood due to the WGA/ATA dispute.
Should be fun.
I will keep you informed of the process.
While you're waiting to see Romy in the theaters, feel free to check out my memoir published by the good folks at TouchPoint Press. It is my true story of first faith and first love and how the two became almost fatally intertwined. Click below for a free sample.
Follow me on Twitter: SeanPaulMurphy
*Oh, by the way, Resurrection Road, the script the head of the development suggested that Jennifer dump, won the screenplay competition. It even beat out my favorite, Seven Slides, which was also a finalist.