Ridiculous Opinions #309
Sorry for the late newsletter…
This evening, I finished writing the script for my next big project, entitled Booth. I’ve mentioned it before, but in case you didn’t read that edition, it’s a film set entirely inside of a single booth at a restaurant. There are eight different stories that take place at this particular booth.
My goal with all of this was to actually write a movie that I could film. This has been a task that has haunted me for years. I’m good at writing movies that require a budget. I have written epic action and sci-fi. I’ve written horror films that take place in exotic locations. I’ve written movies with big casts. All of these goofy things that I’ve written were good from a conceptual standpoint, but very difficult to do on a low/minuscule budget. And all the time in my journals, I would keep coming back to the same idea: How can I write a movie that I can actually make?
I grew up in the era of the Kevin Smith mindset. Smith made Clerks for something in the ballpark of $13,000. That was in the early 90s. Plus, it was shot on film. The tools have gotten cheaper over the years and the quality of independent film has gotten higher. But my mind was always focused on super-cheap. What could I make in the same vein as Smith or Robert Rodriguez’s El Mariachi?
Try as I might in my journals, I could not think of a low-budget film that worked for me; one that I actually thought I could make. I’ve had many failed attempts. My script for The Mysterious Mr. Johnson would still work very well for a low-budget film, but the cast is a bit too large and the locations are a bit too varied. It would be too much work for me. There are a couple of other scripts lurking about in there, but my heart just hasn’t been in those either.
But Booth has always lived in my brain. I think I first came up with the concept around 2017. It’s been there in my journals all this time, and I’ve occasionally revisited the concept since then. But since making the decision to make a movie over the summer, Booth has been coming easier to me, so much so that I started finishing my outlines for the movie in October. In November, I said I was going to finish writing it, with a goal of finishing by December. Now, here it is, six days prior to December, and I am done. I am shocked at my ability to meet my self-imposed deadline, and even more shocked at the notion that I’ve finished early.
So now, storyboarding will commence through the month of December. And after that, we will start pre-production on this thing. I am going to be playing a role in the film and will work to produce my first proof-of-concept segment in January.
Booth has no budget. It has no actors. It has no locations. But those things will come. This whole thing will happen. And I’m very, very excited to make it happen.
Let’s see where all of this leads…
Start the conversation: