I know what I'm going to do!
With all this bid'ness with the crappy scripts and everything, Adem and I have both ended up in similar places. After he read all the scripts in the original email I forwarded, he decided to write his own one-act and did so in the space of about two hours. In that time, he wrote something funnier than any of the other scripts I had read this semester. The kid's got talent. More than most of the other people writing at Moorpark, anyways. The first script he wrote is entitled "A Visit to Grant Harbor Bay" and is a comedy about a young couple having dinner with the woman's mother. The mother brings a male prostitute to dinner as her escort, doses up her son-in-law with GHB, and hilarity ensues. There's a running gag where the husband keeps trying to take his pants off and his wife has to keep fighting for him to stay clothed (which is somewhat remeniscent of times spent with a drunk or very stoned Adem). A day later, I forwarded him another script that, while not as bad as the rest, was still heavily flawed. It was a human rights kind of piece, but had a lot of monologuing and a staple of these shows: the pointless narrator. One of segments involved a lesbian coming over for dinner to a straight co-worker's family's for dinner. So Adem wrote his own 20 page story of homosexuality that nearly had me in tears by the end, in a good way. It focuses more on the parents of a gay son than on the son himself, with the mother being supportive of her son's happines and the father just meek and uncomfortable with it all. I thought it was very well written.
I came up with two ideas as well, but haven't actually started writing yet. The first idea is a bit simplistic and would based on the Del Taco gatherings that happen after the directors' meetings and rehearsals in the theater department. Six or seven characters drawing from the people I hang out with there. There would be one character loosely based on me, who would be the new guy to the group. He wouldn't exactly be the main character, but the show would start with his enterance and end with his initiation and acceptance into the group. That makes it sound a little cheesy, but there would be more going on and it would all be about the character interaction. The gimicky kind of thing I would use to keep the pace going would be crossfading the lights anytime a character moves from one side of the stage to the other, representing the inside and outside of the restaurant, and each time they shifted we would jump into the middle of a conversation (again based on actual things I've heard) such as "Dude you cannot have a succesful rock band without a bassist!" or "Oh, and that shot of the sun, when she's on the tower about to jump..." It would be mainly comedic, but with heart. My challenge with that would be breaking the actual story of it all, as well as developing the characters into something more than just copying my friends. I'd also want it to be entertaining to people who aren't in our group, so it isn't just a 20 minute in-joke.
The other idea I hade woke me up in the middle of the night...well okay, my cat woke me up in the middle of the night but this idea kept me awake. I started thinking that every show I've seen in the black box is some kind of drama, some kind of comedy, or some kind of mix of the two, and that there are so many other genres out there that are not being utilized on stage. First thing that came to mind was horror, so I started thinking: A slasher show or parody could be fun, but so much of those stories are based on gore and the actual killings, plus editing and music. Werewolves wouldn't work on stage, not the way I want them. Vampires are overdone in every medium (and there was a vampire comedy last semester). And zombes...zombies are fucking perfect! So I started going over a story in my head:
First off, we wouldn't actually see any zombies until the very VERY end, and even then it would only be their silhouettes. Mostly we would just hear them, so I'll get some people together and prerecord some zombie moaning and groaning and maybe some violent eating sounds. The story would focus on a couple (and possibly one more character, if I find it necessary) just getting into this house after losing the rest of their group to the undead horde. Anything off stage would just be other rooms in the house but the entire story would take place in what would be the living room of a one story house. After a few minutes for these characters to give us some backstory and create tension, another character comes to the door begging to be let in and he thinks that our two main characters are actually the previous residents whom the new guy had known. I've decided the former residents will be named Shaun and Anna to reference Shaun of the Dead and Dawn of the Dead (2004) respectively. There would be times where we dim the lights as the characters would try to sleep, and as the lights dim, the sound of the zombies moaning and shuffling would fade up. Eventually all the characters will have to die, but the final "shot" (I know it's not being filmed, but my mind works in movie-terms) will be the main female character sitting center stage with a hand gun. The lights fade down almost to black so that we can just barely make out her shape, then the front door flies open as a mass of undead come rushing in. We hear two or three gunshots, then the woman screaming over the zombies' growling and such, and then nothing. I think if I get the story broken out really well, start writing it in the next month or two, then I'll have plenty of time to polish and rewrite before we submit them in July or August. If I can pull this off and get what's in my head on stage I think it could be really fun, and hopefully at least a little scary. Plus since the only time we ever actually see any zombies they are in darkness, we don't have to worry about makeup or special effects. The only budget would really be having to get some good looking fake weapons, since I think any plastic toy guy with a red tip on it would take away a lot of the tension of the story. So probably some airsoft guns or something like that would work.
I kinda wish I could just write this all now and make it happen, but that's me. I like the instant gratification. I'm worried that because there's so much time, I won't write it or if I write it I won't finish it or if I finish it I'll forget about it. However it only needs to be about 20 pages so it'll be hard to get bored. Adem gave me his copy of Final Draft, so I may just start writing in the next couple days. Earlier the better.
I came up with two ideas as well, but haven't actually started writing yet. The first idea is a bit simplistic and would based on the Del Taco gatherings that happen after the directors' meetings and rehearsals in the theater department. Six or seven characters drawing from the people I hang out with there. There would be one character loosely based on me, who would be the new guy to the group. He wouldn't exactly be the main character, but the show would start with his enterance and end with his initiation and acceptance into the group. That makes it sound a little cheesy, but there would be more going on and it would all be about the character interaction. The gimicky kind of thing I would use to keep the pace going would be crossfading the lights anytime a character moves from one side of the stage to the other, representing the inside and outside of the restaurant, and each time they shifted we would jump into the middle of a conversation (again based on actual things I've heard) such as "Dude you cannot have a succesful rock band without a bassist!" or "Oh, and that shot of the sun, when she's on the tower about to jump..." It would be mainly comedic, but with heart. My challenge with that would be breaking the actual story of it all, as well as developing the characters into something more than just copying my friends. I'd also want it to be entertaining to people who aren't in our group, so it isn't just a 20 minute in-joke.
The other idea I hade woke me up in the middle of the night...well okay, my cat woke me up in the middle of the night but this idea kept me awake. I started thinking that every show I've seen in the black box is some kind of drama, some kind of comedy, or some kind of mix of the two, and that there are so many other genres out there that are not being utilized on stage. First thing that came to mind was horror, so I started thinking: A slasher show or parody could be fun, but so much of those stories are based on gore and the actual killings, plus editing and music. Werewolves wouldn't work on stage, not the way I want them. Vampires are overdone in every medium (and there was a vampire comedy last semester). And zombes...zombies are fucking perfect! So I started going over a story in my head:
First off, we wouldn't actually see any zombies until the very VERY end, and even then it would only be their silhouettes. Mostly we would just hear them, so I'll get some people together and prerecord some zombie moaning and groaning and maybe some violent eating sounds. The story would focus on a couple (and possibly one more character, if I find it necessary) just getting into this house after losing the rest of their group to the undead horde. Anything off stage would just be other rooms in the house but the entire story would take place in what would be the living room of a one story house. After a few minutes for these characters to give us some backstory and create tension, another character comes to the door begging to be let in and he thinks that our two main characters are actually the previous residents whom the new guy had known. I've decided the former residents will be named Shaun and Anna to reference Shaun of the Dead and Dawn of the Dead (2004) respectively. There would be times where we dim the lights as the characters would try to sleep, and as the lights dim, the sound of the zombies moaning and shuffling would fade up. Eventually all the characters will have to die, but the final "shot" (I know it's not being filmed, but my mind works in movie-terms) will be the main female character sitting center stage with a hand gun. The lights fade down almost to black so that we can just barely make out her shape, then the front door flies open as a mass of undead come rushing in. We hear two or three gunshots, then the woman screaming over the zombies' growling and such, and then nothing. I think if I get the story broken out really well, start writing it in the next month or two, then I'll have plenty of time to polish and rewrite before we submit them in July or August. If I can pull this off and get what's in my head on stage I think it could be really fun, and hopefully at least a little scary. Plus since the only time we ever actually see any zombies they are in darkness, we don't have to worry about makeup or special effects. The only budget would really be having to get some good looking fake weapons, since I think any plastic toy guy with a red tip on it would take away a lot of the tension of the story. So probably some airsoft guns or something like that would work.
I kinda wish I could just write this all now and make it happen, but that's me. I like the instant gratification. I'm worried that because there's so much time, I won't write it or if I write it I won't finish it or if I finish it I'll forget about it. However it only needs to be about 20 pages so it'll be hard to get bored. Adem gave me his copy of Final Draft, so I may just start writing in the next couple days. Earlier the better.