Well, I'm taking a break from my big Sailor Moon screenplay. Mostly because the first draft sucks really bad and I'm going to do a huge haul and re-write.

In the interim while I plan it out, I'm going to write a fantasy satire. I've been meaning to do it for a while. I let the ideas stew for the last two weeks and I finally mapped it all out last night. It's in response to the influx of fantasy books-turned-movies from over the last 10 years or so.

It involves a school project, a war (of course), a prophecy so vague that even Nostradamus would go "What?", a handsome young king, the handsome young evil brother of the handsome young king, a huge battle scene, and continual griping about "if this was a movie..." and the various fantasy flicks that have come out.

I'm going to have fun with this one, provided I don't give up on it.

As soon as finals are over, I'm re-writing the entire thing. I thought of another way to do things. It works better than what I have and it's a bit more subtle.

There goes 78 pages of my blood, sweat and tears.

Oh well. Such is life.

I've broken 60 pages!! That, in terms of film, translates to roughly an hour.

One page = One minute, usually. It's probably more than 60 minutes, though, with all of the stuff that isn't dialog.

At this point, I'm estimating that it'll be another 60 or so pages until I'm done with the first draft. Then comes the editing and the re-writes.

But who cares? As of right now, I've gone farther than I'd ever thought I would with this.

::celebrates::

I've been continuing to write my Sailor Moon screenplay, which I'd thought for sure I'd abandon. Surprisingly enough, I stayed with it. Or maybe it's not so surprising. After all, adapting a story into a screenplay is a lot like writing fanfiction, which I'm so good at.

I think it's because the characters and the story line are already there, waiting for me to use, even though I've made the characters my own and have twisted and darkened the original plot. But the guidelines are there. It's easier than coming up with anything original, I guess. But I hate that. I mean, writing this is hard, but it's easier than what else I've attempted.

Although I'm finding that I'm enjoying the changes I've made. Mainly the disguises and showing how being a superhero affects one's normality. Sure, you can see it in Batman, but it's more devastating (I think) when dealing with teenagers. All those hormones and killing people...

I'm planning for the final battle to go down the night of their prom. I've always wanted to crash a prom in an over-the-top way. This seems like the only route. I love it. The things I have planned...

I will finish it. And at the rate I'm going, the first draft will be complete by the end of March.

Well, I knew it would happen sooner or later. I didn't realize it would happen this soon.

I've put all my previous attempts to the side and have finally begun my Sailor Moon screenplay. I'm actually having a BLAST writing it, and I'm happy with the way the characters are turning out, how the scenes are flowing together.

Sailor Moon was the cartoon of my childhood. I'd always wanted to be a Sailor Scout when I was younger (Mercury was my favorite), so writing this is like bringing back those carefree days. Except, of course, this adaptation of the fluffy anime show is much darker, with realistic teenagers -- and by realistic, I mean that they aren't supposed to look like Megan Fox (Transformers... she sucked) or Mischa Barton (she sucks, too). They are realistic: they're average girls with genuine dialog.

The character Serena Kynton (Kynton translates to Moon) is someone I want teenage girls to relate to. She's "painfully average", a direct quote from the script, with plain brown hair and kind of on the short side. She sucks at math and is a bit boy crazy, just trying to make it to college without dying or worrying about what she's going to major in.

This was what I had fun with: merging Naoko Takeuchi's original character design with the norm. The Serena in the comic and the show looked exactly like Sailor Moon: hair color, style, everything. This annoyed the shit out of me, especially when everyone else was putting 1+1 together and getting "chair". In my version, she becomes how she was originally supposed to look: silver hair in the signature odango style. NO ONE COULD BELIEVABLY KNOW IT WAS HER. IT MAKES SO MUCH MORE SENSE.

Anyway. Yes. Hopefully I'll get this done before some other writer beats me to the punch. They've already made a Dragonball movie, slated for release this year, and Thundercats are next in 2010.

I'm excited.

So, I began another screenplay, still based on the same idea. Except this is less of a blockbuster and more of a sleeper.

Still dealing with 17-year old Gabrielle Osborne, who's in a relationship with her 34-year old teacher Nate, but her sanity and her relationships with those around her begin to unravel as she starts having odd dreams that culminate with a vision of something too horrible for words: a future that will definitely come to pass if the world doesn't end.

Here is an excerpt I wrote last night which takes place about 3/4 of the way into the film:


( READ IT HERE! EXCLUSIVE! EXCLUSIVE! )

Now wasn't that kinda sad?

I'm actually hopeful about this one. I like it a lot more than the other three. This one is about the characters and less about the impending End.

This shouldn't be that hard. I have three stories for this one theme, and now I'm going to start on the second one.

ARGH! WHY CAN'T I JUST CHOOSE?!

Nate Fowler was created specifically to be played by Nathan Fillion. He's one of the best yet underappreciated actors out there, which is a real shame, because the man has more talent in his pinkie nail than 3/4 of Hollywood combined. I can only hope Nate does his abilities justice.

**Note: When I say that X Celebrity will play a character of mine when the movie's made, I'm just speaking hopefully, hypothetically, and very much out of my ass.


Anyway, Nate was made to be a foil to the idea that mortals are the lowest of low, lower than those in Hell, which is an idea that all angels subscribe to. Gabrielle has been learning this ever since she met Nate, which was when she was a freshman and stepping into his history class for the first time.

Nate is a 34-year old man, a history teacher at the high school Gabrielle attends. She first caught his eye when she argued about the Treaty of Trianon, and he fell steadily after that. They entered a sexual relationship toward the end of her freshman year, when she was sixteen and still below the age of consent. They have carried on the relationship for two years without anyone knowing.

Nate has no idea what Gabrielle really is, or how she continually gets out of her house with excuses of sleeping at friends' houses (*She keeps these pretenses for his and the school's benefit through illusions. Her mother really doesn't exist.). He isn't a creepy man looking for sex with young girls, but is simply a man who found his match in a girl half his age. I mean, of course he went through the phase of "Oh my God, I'm a predator", but they got past it and are now happy as Larry... however happy he is, which Gabrielle touches upon during her chat with the Marquis de Sade.

It's not just the religious aspect of the story, but the romantic one. It's probably the most important to me because it carries with it a sort of message. Differences in age is such a big topic when it comes to relationships these days (ie: Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher, Joan Collins and her boyfriend/husband/boytoy, Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, etc.), but I want to show that age is relative. There are mature teens and young adults who are able to maintain a stable relationship with an older person, male or female. In this, it's not pederasty. It's not a relationship where the younger is taught the ways of the world and the elder gets sex. My grandparents were 21 -- almost 22 -- years apart and they married for love, were still in love until the end, and even with my papa dead, my yiayia is still in love with him. There are, in fact, loves that can withstand and outlast time.

Gabrielle finds that it's love, as frail and volatile as it is, that's holding the world together. If you look past the hatred and the bigotry and the violence and the prejudice, there's love. Nate is the one who teaches her this.

I have 18 pages currently of the screenplay that I was going to give up in order to write the one I'd described in the previous post, but I feel so ingrained in this one that I'm going to continue it, tighten things up in the beginning to make it more cohesive.

It's called "The Eleventh Hour", and it begins with the death of Jesus Christ, supposedly killed at the hands of Lucifer, the angel whom had been taken into custody for the murder of Michael but escaped and hadn't been heard from in eons. Now with Christ dead and God absent for centuries, the chain of command says that Metatron, the voice of God, will become the new ruler of Heaven. His first act as God is to announce the coming end of the world on the first of the new year.

Gabriel, now living as Gabrielle on earth, is a seventeen-year old trying to balance pretending to be mortal while carrying on a relationship with her teacher, as well as the knowledge that the world is ending -- taking with it everything she's come to care about.

Of course, when the angels begin dying one by one, it seems Lucifer is killing them off in order to get to the top: Metatron. However, Gabrielle has her doubts of the perpetrator and sets off in order to find the real murderer before the clock runs out for the world.

I'd sent the first 18 pages to dreamcatcher, who is a complete and utter DOLL. She read it for me and gave me helpful comments and suggestions, all of which I took to heart. DC told me to continue it, and I'm going to. No one gets a screenplay right on the first try, or even the 20th.

I'm sure I'll be changing my mind time and time again, so expect more posts like this. Otherwise, here we go.

Again.

Well, I figured that I shouldn't just write the damn thing, but I should keep track of my thoughts as well. A lot of actors do that. I know that Philip Seymour Hoffman keeps a notebook with him that asks and answers questions about the characters he plays, which is a great idea. Probably very helpful, too.

So, here's the run-down:

I started to get an idea for a story in the 9th grade about the end of the world. I was attending a Catholic school that year, and my theology teacher and I would often sit in his office and talk religion. I, myself, am not religious and am not even sure there is a God. But the idea fascinates me, as does all the Christian lore. Religion is such a people connector: no matter who reads the screenplay or sees the movie, they will take something from it.

That is, of course, if the movie is even made.

The story centers around the angels. I've always wondered at the dichotomy between the angels, God's first creations, and mortal Man, God's second. I'd asked my theology teacher about it, and he said that the angels loved everyone. I couldn't believe that. I told him, realistically, that the angels would have to feel some kind of hatred or envy toward Man for getting the one thing that they didn't have: Free Will. To be created solely for the purpose of serving God, to never have a choice and have that be called "Love" while an imperfect group of beings are given the right to choose... I didn't believe for a second that the angels, were they real, loved us.

Which led me to the question: what would happen at the End? What would the angels do?

The screenplay plot is as thus: Gabriel, reborn as Gabrielle, has been put on earth to do one thing: catalog every possible thing on earth by a certain time, and if there is one thing worth saving, Heaven will not end the world. But if there isn't anything, the End is coming. So far, Gabrielle has cataloged thousands of things, but nothing merits the saving of a depraved world. With the time just about up and Gabrielle thrown into a mental institution, things are looking dismal until she finds something worth saving... past the deadline.

And that, in turn, led me to creating personas and stories for the original four angels that stood before God.


1. Lucifer

Lucifer was always my favorite angel. I've done extensive research into him and what I've found is nothing but conflicting stories: is he the Devil, or was that a mistranslation? But for all intents and purposes, he's the fallen angel who led Hell's armies against God in a war, which was written in excruciating detail in John Milton's Paradise Lost.

I've created a Lucifer who is not the enemy, but the wronged. The victim. The Heaven he left -- not fell from -- was a corrupt place, and he could see for himself the machinations of God and His loyal. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and to me that is no different in Heaven, especially for a ruler who truly has absolute dominion.

Lucifer, in every story I've written, has always been connected to Michael. I've written them as past lovers, which was one of the reasons Lucifer was forced out of the Kingdom, as Lucifer placed Michael above God. The final battle in the Biblical stories always ends the same: Michael kills Lucifer. That fight was so cataclysmic and devastating, so full of rage and hatred, it could only have been so because of love.

The Lucifer I've written (reincarnated) is jaded and rough, who will stop at nothing to find Michael again, as well as somehow reveal Heaven's corruption to the world before the End.


2. Gabriel

Even before I saw the movie Constantine, Gabriel was always female in my mind. Perhaps because Gabriel was the Messenger, and no one ever trusts a message to a guy. Or perhaps it's because that if Gabriel was to be reincarnated, as he often is in my stories, he's reborn as Gabrielle.

Gabriel was the Speaker, the one who was good with words. In Heaven, before the reincarnation, Gabriel was very close to Lucifer and left when he did, which led to the rebirth of both. Gabriel never doubted Lucifer's innocence and tried to appeal to the Council in Heaven on his behalf, but was rejected. Gabriel dealt with all the higher-ups in Hell, gaining contacts as well as speaking out against the repression of the Fallen. This came into be because I was told that God was all-loving, and to condemn others to a horrible underground goes against that principle. That's a contradiction, and God only deals in absolutes.

Gabrielle, the reborn, is a girl, usually a teenager on the verge of 18 or so, if only because I hope to play her, but also because teenagers are so volatile emotion-wise. The conflict between Gabriel and Gabrielle plays out interestingly in my stories. But in my screenplay, she's lived 17 years as a "mortal", which is more than enough to decide if there's anything redeeming about the world.


3. Michael

Michael's story ties into Lucifer's. He and Lucifer begin an affair in Heaven, but when Lucifer's loyalty is called into question and eventually brought before a jury, Michael is too afraid to place his life anywhere else but with God, so he renounces Lucifer. In one story, after Lucifer leaves his innocence is revealed and Michael, heartbroken and guilty, becomes a recluse and eventually kills himself, leading to his rebirth. In another story, Lucifer comes to trial but escapes, and his innocence is never revealed. He kidnaps Michael, leading everyone to believe he killed him, and they are living happily together, hiding on earth.

Michael's character still isn't quite fleshed out as far as the screenplay goes, but his and Lucifer's story will follow the plot of the second one. Hopefully, as times goes on, he'll become multi-dimensional.


4. Raphael

Raphael has always been a doctor in my mind. In my stories, he was really only a plot-device, save for one where he was the main character, but that one was never finished. In the screenplay, however, he is a snarky chain-smoker who eventually busts Gabrielle out of the mental institution so she can get off the earth before the End. He winds up being dragged into the mess when he agrees to buy her time so she can appeal to the Council.

Raphael, like most angels, hates humankind, but is willing to spare it for the sake of Gabriel(le)'s happiness.

I like Raphael's character, and in my head he's from the UK. If I could have anyone play him, it would be Sean Biggerstaff and no one else. And not because I'm a big fan, but because Sean is a fantastic actor and he would do the character justice.