I worked on the script intermittently over the next few years, trimmed the decorating talk and finally showed it to a friend, a screenwriter. She told me that it was good, but needed to be rewritten. Three rewrites later, I have an agent. Not your average slick, Hollywood sort. He smokes rolled cigarettes, has a voice to match, sports long, unkempt hair that doesn't belie the fact that he got married at a Grateful Dead show. He too likes the script, but tells me that it needs to be rewritten.

Four rewrites later, there's some interest from independent producers and it is beginning to look like "Plan B" might have a future beyond my computer screen. I sign a one-year option for $1 (though I never saw the $1) with a deferred payment, and complete some more rewrites. Finally, I'm recognizing that rewrites aren't some cosmic punishment for childhood wrongs, but the nature of the business. Within the year, the producers secure a development deal with a small studio and I am instructed to quit my job and subsequently quit school. I fly myself from San Francisco to Los Angeles because I'm too damn impatient and stupid to wait for that first-class ticket I'm supposed to get. I buy a cellphone and camp out at my parents' house, spending my days cycling through meetings, my nights looking for something decent to eat in the fridge. I wrote my first screenplay on a lark, because it was a storytelling format that felt like a familiar shorthand -- we all watch movies, don't we? But even though I grew up in Los Angeles, my family was entirely unconnected with the movie industry and I never truly believed that it would one day be my fate. Simply, getting to this point was unexpected and when it finally happened, my naiveti was as obvious as my jokes.

Six years after I wrote the first draft of "Plan B," I received my first paycheck as a writer. It included both the $3,000 in deferred option money as well as half the fee for performing the initial rewrite. The amount was scale according to the Writer's Guild guidelines, but a lot, according to me. I had never made more than $18,000 a year to that point, so to be paid a figure in the low 20s for a single rewrite, in my mind was not unlike winning the lottery. I made the decision early on that I was going to be a sellout. I actually used those words to describe it to myself. Of course, when you write this kind of fluff, hanging on to artistic integrity would feel like foolish posturing. I figured monetary compensation was incentive enough to turn me into a yes man. This was going to be my M.O. I would be the cooperative screenwriter. Jump, you say? How high?

It was decided that James, Fran's brother, should have dogs. Lots and lots of dogs. I'm still not sure why, but when I questioned this point, it was suggested that he had dogs because he was in the pet supply business. I said OK, wanting to ask, once again, Why does he have dogs? Instead, I made James the inventor of the Pet-Stay Collar. What is the Pet-Stay Collar, you ask? It is an electronic device that shocks animals if they leave their invisible cages and tracks them down should they escape. James also invented the invisible cage. The Pet-Stay Collar was a plot device to keep Raymond, the most escape-prone prisoner, in line. To punctuate the absurdity of this development, I have a scene where Donnie notices the Pet-Stay Collar on James' prized Great Dane, is apparently familiar with this device and gushes with admiration for the invention. As you might notice, I was cleverly providing both necessary exposition and a bonding moment for my characters.

At no point did anyone ask me if I was feeling all right. But how could anyone be concerned with my mental health when there were more pressing matters at stake: The script needed a prostitute because Raymond had to have sex.

How many times? was my first question. Three times, was the answer. I'd like to point out that generating three separate sex scenes for a character who doesn't appear until halfway through the script and for the most part is kept prisoner in a dog cage, wearing a high-end dog collar, is stultifying. But I played along. And since James resided in an exclusive residential neighborhood somewhere in sunny Florida, the best hope that Raymond had for getting laid was with a rich neighbor. I invented a bitter debutante (garbed in ball gown for all scenes) desperate to disappoint her parents as Raymond's love interest. She catches Raymond as he's trying to escape through the fence that divides the two estates and invites him home with her where the butler serves him (who still can't get that collar off) drinks and finger sandwiches. Raymond has sex once (well, maybe twice), but then Fran and Donnie succeed in tracking him down through his dog collar.

Recent Stories