Cooperative Screenwriting

My friend Michael and I are finishing up the first draft of our screenplay, The Secret Unbelievable.

My history with screenwriting (and cooperation itself) is tumultuous. I swore off screenwriting about four years ago. Screenwriting is horrible and pointless. It is not even writing. It is something other than writing. It is making up dialogue and wacky scenes. It is following a formula. And, in the end, your script means nothing unless it gets produced. It cannot stand on its own. It is a non-work. It is a "blueprint," as they like to say. And it requires little mastery of English or Engish grammar, which is probably why there are so many people working on scripts whenever I go to the Insomnia Cafe or the 101 Cafe. Screenwriting is unsatisfying. I have written ten scripts and they are all bad. I wish they were dead.

Cooperation is also kind of a problem, especially on the writing front. I learned by age 20 that writing partnerships never ever work and that one should forge ahead on his own (in writing and in life). Writing partnerships are like fucked-up marriages: In the end nobody gets what they want and everybody is frustrated and resentful and passive aggressive and withdrawn. People expect things from other people when they enter these partnerships. One cannot not expect things. But people by their very nature are flaky. People will let you down in the end. It is written. And so we become victims of our own expectation. Buddha would say that pain is caused by the frustration of desire (or your writing partner flaking out on you). And so on, and so on.

That is why I am startled to report that the current writing project is going like gangbusters. We are producing incredible work at incredible speed. We are geniuses. The script is hilarious and moving and smart and kind of sad too. It is everything. It is Total Script. This sounds completely farfetched, but I have no doubt that Michael and I will be shooting and directing this film in China in the next couple of years.

This is how good it is. And it is so effortless and easy, how strange!

And I hope everyone here understands how much I hate everything I work on so when I say something is actually good, well...

So there you go. Is it this particular writing partnership? Is it the particular story? What is fueling this unexpected productivity? I am still waiting for the meltdown to occur--but so far it hasn't...

Part of me thinks this script could only be written at this particular point in time under these particular circumstances. I am only able to succeed at this project because of the ten awful scripts that came before it. I am only able to enter into a partnership because of the long time off in between. This project could never have happened before now and the window might close soon.

But for now all of the ingredients are in place.

I realize I am tempting fate with all of this gloating. Must hit "publish post" before I have second thoughts...