You've never seen this one...
I've had time to think about my trip to Windsor, the little city across the river from Detroit. And of course that means, "what stories can I use for something new."
Now that I'm waiting for Hallmark to decide if they want to use one of my three ideas for one of their Hallmark movies, of which I've explained in the past. My producer sent the 2 page stories a few weeks ago so from now on, it's out of my hands.
In the interim, a director friend of mine is trying to sell a screenplay I wrote some years ago, a weird story that he suggested. Quickly, it's about a hitman who is sent to a city to kill a union agitator but the hitman has to save him from a gang and thus is now his unlikely friend who turns out to be gay. But the real story is about the hitman and conjoined twin women and he falls for one of them.
What?
Yeah, I said it was weird. Here's what they said on Kevin Spacey's website:
"The main characters are well-defined, the story moves along at a good pace, tension mounts appropriately."
"I really liked it from the first page, it got a little weird with the intro of the twins but after awhile I began to appreciate the inventiveness of it all. Very clever, Bravo"
"Reminded me of Chinatown, best part is the Sally/Sophie characters that compliment each other"
"This script is great. This story is great. I read this story with the girl upstairs, we started reading yesterday and she came home and demanded we finish - the story had so captivated her imagination."
"This was certainly a strange tale, but it grew on me."
"You've created the perfect film noir world, your penchant for character, mood and atmosphere, the progress of the story became a very enjoyable experience."
"The fact that you have both a plot and character is a commendable quality in and of itself."
So what do you think?
Some of my writer and director friends think it's the best thing I wrote.
And I didn't want to write it. But the director pushed me on, even though I know little of gay life except for that time in Detroit when my car was broken and I walked into a bar where there were a lot of friendly women. Only friendly women. I had a couple of beers waiting for the auto club and actually had some conversation with them.
And I had very little knowledge about co-joined twins. I didn't even know the word "conjoined". And the word "Siamese" seemed dated. And why was that word used so long?
So how does a small-town farmboy who moves to the big city write a story of a world he doesn't know?
I treated them like everyone else. In other words, as I wrote their world (with suggestions from my director friend who has a thing for weirdness) as they saw it, just like everyone else. To them, nothing was unusual, the twins worked in a fish packing place, the gay union guy is married to a woman and life goes on.
If you read it, you see that in the writing. Nobody really thinks they're weird, no more than the old lady who lives beside me, who clips leaves off the trees at 6am. Nor the girl with orange hair, or the woman who steals magazines at the Ventura/Van Nuys magazine rack.
I guess we all have odd things about us, at least to some people.
But by making every "odd person" in the story very normal, it worked out a lot better than if I was trying to write how a co-joined couple live or laugh, or in this instance, love.
Yes, the hitman and one-half of the conjoined pair make love.
Like I said, I've never written a story like that. In fact I've only written a love scene which was inspired by that same director. I gotta find new friends.
But what was strange to me, was how people reacted. The thought of watching love-making with a cojoined twin would be interesting.
So I just said "they made love." Let the director figure it out.
Besides, my mom, if she was still alive, would probably go with it. If she discovered that Ellen was a "lizbee-an" and still liked her, she'd like the two sisters.
Thinking about it, I might posts the entire screenplay if I can figure out how to do it. Then you can read it and see what you think.
Meanwhile, I wait for Hallmark.
