I, a good old-fashioned agnostic, was very close to becoming a latter-day L. Ron Hubbard, author of pulp science fiction and billion-selling cult mind-control -- uh, self help -- manuals.
I had written a religious epic for the screen. And nobody had told me.
A few years ago, I began a descent into movie hell that few could understand. You know how you have some friends that you learn to trust, and others you have to keep watching, wary that they'll do something to screw you over if you're not careful?
Here's a tip for you: if one of your friends wants to work as a director, toss 'em in the second category. Better yet, toss them in the deep end with a 50-pound bag of Cat Chow tied to their ankles.
One of my friends wants to be a director. And that fact, mixed with my occasional delusions that I'm a writer, pulled me down into a level of hell usually reserved only for child molesters and the management of the Cincinnati Reds.
Five years ago, a story I wrote won my high school's annual short story contest. It was a decent story, I suppose, about miserable people living miserable lives after a nuclear holocaust. (The high school students of the '90s, of course, write short stories about miserable people living miserable lives who end up on Donahue.)
A year later, a friend of mine -- you guessed it, the director -- said he wanted to make my story, "Into Gray," into a movie.
And, sap that I am, I went along with it. I was fascinated with the idea of seeing my words translated on the screen, and told Director-Boy I'd be glad to write a screenplay, even though I'd never really written one before. Before my freshman year in college had ended, I had mailed off a screenplay. Heck, I figured, I can't write a script worse than "Howard the Duck," can I?
The problem was that my friend Director-Boy was a Christian. On second thought, that wasn't the problem. The problem was that Director-Boy was a weird Christian, a member of the Church Of Nipsey Russell, Scientist or some similar faith, and he had evidently decided to devote his film career to God, Family, and the Green Bay Packers.
I wrote one draft of the screenplay, and gave it to Director-Boy. When I got it back, it looked quite different. My cynical science fiction story had turned into a Christian epic, rife with crosses and rainbows and praise to God. All that was missing from it were Charlton Heston, Sherman Hemsley, and a rousing halftime number from Up With People.
My favorite scene from this screenplay? A woman -- dead and rotting in my story -- smiles and shows a little girl a glittering cross around her neck. "This is important, too," she says, pushing the cross even closer to the camera.
Cursing Director-Boy, who had evidently decided that he was also Better-Screenwriter-Than-Writer-Boy-Boy, I used the first Christian epic and re-wrote from there. I send the crosses to Gehenna. I banished the rainbows to a pit of hellfire, where the savagely tormented soul of the Lucky Charms Elf awaited them. I de-emphasized Director-Boy's reliance on mime to reveal the plot.
The next time I got the script back, things had really changed. My original story, which had looked a bit like a mediocre "Twilight Zone" episode, had turned into something out of a bad "Star Trek" episode. I could only hope we could find an actor whose toupee was half as talented as William Shatner's.
All of the references to God were still in there. And like the first version, these references weren't even subtle. Characters would begin addressing the camera about how lucky they were to have accepted Jesus as their own personal savior, and if they hadn't, they'd better right after the movie was over or they'd be sorry.
I figured that at the rate religious language was appearing in the screenplay, pretty soon the Gideons would be placing it in hotel room drawers. I changed all of the Christian references back.
Well, almost all of them.
I did, however, swallow hard and allow one reference to God in the dialogue, right at the end. I bowed to the pressure of Director-Boy, the same guy who kept sending me books about how Jesus would save my soul and my life. The guy who mailed me pamphlets that explained how George Bush and the Rockefellers (except Jay, that Democrat bastard) were part of the Trilateral Commission, a secret yet well-known group that was planning to form a world socialist government.
I caved, like the spineless weasel I am. I decided to put in the God references, and let the world socialist government put Director-Boy to death when they finally come to power.
I took every scene I felt was a mistake to add and tried to at least make it as good as I possibly could, only to find it changed by the next version I saw. I continued to fight against overt preaching in the film as much as I could, but that was about it. My story had essentially been taken from me.
I had read a lot of stories about writers in Hollywood, and how their works were changed when they got into the hands of producers and directors, but I never thought it would happen to me with one of my friends from home. But the story of Alan Brennert, an award-winning TV writer who had worked for shows like "L.A. Law" and the new "Twilight Zone" rang true for me. Brennert recalled having a story with plot elements X and Y. When a fellow from the network saw it, he asked him to change Y to Z, since Y wasn't really important anyway. So Brennert, agreeing that Y wasn't that vital, dutifully changed it to Z. Then the network guy came back and said: "Great! Now just get rid of X and we'll be fine."
That's how I felt. Slowly, the entire thing was slipping away. Most of all I remember one chilling summertime conversation I had with Director-Boy, in which he suggested that if I didn't like what was being done with the script, he and would simply "not make `Into Gray'" and instead make another film, presumably the exact one we were working on. The message was clear: I had nothing to do with this film. It wasn't really mine anymore. If I didn't want to be involved, he'd take the work that he'd done -- the work predicated on something that I had created, not him -- and run with it himself.
I said nothing. I turned in the newer version of the screenplay, shorter, serviceable, and secular. Because I said nothing, the film remained "Into Gray."
But just as 007's mentor M did after Bond misused his gun in one of those movies starring the cross-eyed Timothy Dalton as Bond, Director-Boy revoked my License to Write after my second re-write. He and a friend of his, some guy named Ray -- why is it that there's always somebody named Ray involved in these things? -- re-wrote the whole thing again.
I never saw what they had done until the final cut of the film was completed. I don't remember much of my first screening, sitting alone in my room in front of the TV set. But I do remember that women pulling the cross up and holding it in front of the camera, a motion you'd expect to see from Michael Jackson with a can of Pepsi or June Allyson with a box of Depends.
This Film, the motion said, Is Brought To You By the Church Of Bad Screenwriting.
Now it's 1993. Director-Boy wants me to write a new screenplay for him, based on two of my stories ("Gnomes in the Garden of the Damned," which appeared in Quanta date date, and "Mister Wilt," which appeared in InterText Vol. 1 No. 1). And I did it. I wrote it, all fifty pages of it, on the last weekend in June, a hot and sunny weekend that I spent inside, typing on my PowerBook.
Why put myself through the torment? First of all, Director-Boy has left the Church of Nipsey. For all I know, he might have joined the Trilateral Commission and even now is planting secret mental radio antennae in the minds of unsuspecting Americans. Or perhaps he's taken up golf.
But more than that, I'm just intrigued about how the film might turn out. "Gnomes in the Garden of the Damned" is about a pagan ritual involving Slurpees and lawn gnomes. "Mister Wilt" is about a crazy old man who believes everyone's in on a satanic conspiracy. I can't wait to see how he can convert that into a Christian message.
If he manages to do it, however, I may have to kill him. No great loss -- after all, once the world socialist government comes to power, murdering directors will no longer be a crime.
In fact, I'm expecting a reward.