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Tripping the Plight Fantastic!Cynthia's Column January 2004 I read somewhere that my children's generation, by the time they reach retirement age, will have an average of five careers apiece. Careers. Not jobs. This estimate was based on how fast the world is changing and with it, the job markets. Which means they are going to have to do a lot of retooling and retraining as they go. My reaction was "Wow. I hope these kids are open to change."My second thought was "I'm glad I'm a writer, because that's a career that will never become extinct."I never thought about possibly having to do some retooling and retraining myself. Lucky for me, I like change. I say "lucky" because my own career is branching out into new areas. I have whined to you all enough about how "Reality TV" has eaten up much of the programming hours that used to be filled by programs that were actually written (not to mention acted and directed. )I am still working in television, and some good news here, my TV movie about the single mom P. I. starring Lauren Holly finally got a green light with an actual shooting date, which means they will actually shoot it (knock on wood) in January. Hallelujah! This is great for many reasons. At this moment (writing on Dec. 1) we are still trying to figure out where it will be shot. It turns out it is cheaper to film in Australia than either L. A. or Nashville and guess what else? In January, it is actually summer Down Under. And if you have a beautiful actress playing an Erin Brockovich type gal, the producers want bare midriff as opposed to bundled up fog breathing, so it's kind of a no-brainer (or in Australian a "now-briner"). So it is possible that as you read this, I will actually be tripping down the yellow dirt road in Oz. I will update you next month on this. But my point is, that even though I am still working as a TV movie writer, it's not what it was. In fact it's less than half what it was in terms of jobs and income. So guess what? That's right. Time to retool and retrain. I have written in an earlier Column about the fun I had writing a country western song, hopefully for this project, called "How Stupid Do You Think I Am?" which, keep your fingers crossed, maybe will now get a chance to be used. And I've also written about the stage musical I've been working on which has, in the last couple of weeks, taken a sudden, unexpected turn which looked like a disaster and turned out to be fantastic. My collaborators and I had optioned the book by Harry Warner's granddaughter Cass, as the basis for the musical about the Warner Brothers. It's called Hollywood Be Thy Name as is our show as well. We had a year to deliver a play for the musical and at least ten songs in order to have the right to renew the option for another 2 years to get up a production. Fine. The play was nearly finished. And the songs were the boys' job. (David and Henry). But an emergency email had one of them begging off, the lyricist, who shall remain nameless except to say that it was not Henry, who ended up directing and choreographing several shows back to back and couldn't write the lyrics in time. So I was the designated pinch hit-maker and my first reaction was a resounding "Yikes!" followed by a grumbled "Are you out of your freaking mind?" (Only I didn't say "freaking.")And then I realized, hey. This is an opportunity here. If God is throwing up brick walls right and left and then pushing me down a path under a neon "LYRICIST" sign, I'd be smart to step up, right? So Henry and I counted backwards. If Cass had to receive a Fed Ex package of play and CD by Dec. 1, and that's a Monday, then it has to be Fed Exed by Friday 11/28. And the CD has to get to me by Friday morning and Thursday is Thanksgiving and it takes two days from a farm in the countryside near Bath where Henry lives and records in his renovated barn, whenever they're not running the pig castrating machinery over in the next field, well then what the hell does this mean? Hen has to ship it out by Tuesday the 25th. And to do a quality CD takes time. It can't be junk. He has to make a demo. A record. Arranged. Sung. That means singers. And a hell of a lot of hours of work and when is this crazy clock beginning to tick the countdown? I have to refer to the S. O. S. email here, because I can't believe it myself. Here it is. I got the word that you-know-who was bailing on Nov. 11. It took me two days to go through the stages from anger to acceptance and I started work on Nov. 13. Giving Hen a couple of days to finish recording basically an album, I had ten days to come up with ten songs' lyrics for a musical. Yikes squared! Henry and I formed the Song A Day club. Luckily, as it turned out, we had a few freebies. Since our show climaxes with the first talkie The Jazz Singer, we could use two songs from that, "Mammy" and "Toot Toot Tootsie" both in the public domain now and they fit into the story as well. Eight to go. Then there was the scene where the film breaks in their first Nickelodeon and ten-year-old Jack jumps up and sings while Sam glues the pieces together. An old chestnut for that, "Banks of the Wabash" and that's a freebie, too. Seven more to go. One of the big numbers has a reprise later so that's two for the price of one. Six to go. Thank God, Henry had written most of the music. And I had written song fodder for David (okay, I let it slip. It's David!) You know the hay from which it was his job to spin gold. And now it's my job. But at least I don't have to make hay, right? The fodder would be my memo to him written into the body of the play, something like this: MEMO FROM ME TO D:We need a visionary song where the other three brothers sing about what the movies could be and Sam keeps saying, "Yes, but it could be more than that." Abe sings about how it's a way to make more money. Shoot the movies and show them, too. Harry sings about building the business, starting their own studio. Jack, the kid, sings about how someday he's going to be the boss. And between their verses, Sam keeps saying it can be something more. By the end they should all be singing Sam's song, get infected the way Donald Duck kept playing "Turkey in the Straw" on the piccolo in the old cartoon until Mickey's whole band switches from "The William Tell Overture" and at the end they're all playing "Turkey."Like that. Now my Memo is to Me. And I have to fit those ideas into Henry's fantastic music. If I had the space I'd paste the lyrics here. But suffice it to say we wrote a song a day. Every day I'd get up around 4:30 (as is my habit) and work a song, singing it over and over to the music, until I had a singable draft. Then I'd email the lyrics to Henry. Then around 1:time Hour="9" Minute="0" w:st="on">9:00 I'd call him and it'd be 5:00 in the evening for him and he'd sing me yesterday's lyrics and we'd make little revisions over the phone. (One tip if any of you kids is thinking of trying this at home, dial 10-10-987 and then the 011-44 for England. What had been $60 calls became a tiny fraction of that. )And on we went. And I became addicted to the thrill of working like this. It's like falling in love, only instead of sex, it's a middle-aged English rocker singing to me over the phone every day, and instead of longing to hear him say, "I love you," the word I crave is "Brilliant."It may not seem hot to you, but we were making babies! The day after Thanksgiving the Fed Ex package arrived and I was crazed. I felt nothing like this thrill when my first book arrived in a carton from the publisher. This was more like the first glimpse of the tree Christmas morning when I was five. Completely euphoric. We ended up with thirteen songs on the CD. And Henry, who cares about it sounding like a real record, had hired a couple of professional singers from London's West End for the demo. (Simon, a high tenor and Andy, an incredible belting baritone. )Henry filled in on harmonies and did the Jolson numbers and I'm in love with the whole thing! Unbelievably what looked and sounded like a complete disaster a couple of weeks ago, has turned out to be one of the most thrilling creative experiences of my life. And the most profoundly moving part of all this? In blindly following the arrows blinking in the darkest part of the woods, the unseen path that I'm on has led me back to the theatre. Without seeing where it was leading, my path has led me home. Cynthia Whitcomb is president of Willamette Writers, and has had 29 of her screenplays produced. She is author of The Writers' Guide to Writing Your Screenplay and The Writers' Guide to Selling Your Screenplay. She teaches screenwriting classes at Portland State University.and through Willamette Writers. |