WARLAND

My new script, WARLAND, probably creates a lot more problems for me than it solves. It's a childhood/coming-of-age story about the loss of innocense. It's a period film set during the decline of the small town that mixes folky midwestern values with aspects of a thriller. Sure, coming-of-age films about childhood were cool and worked in the late seventies/early eighties. But can you honestly remember the last serious American film you saw that focused solely on kids and the coming-of-age experience? Films that weren't adapted from a famous (or moderately well-known) novel? The Outsiders? S.E. Hinton. Stand By Me? Stephen King. October Sky? Homer H. Hickham, Jr. The Kite Runner (even though it's not an American film)? Khaled Hosseini.

Most industry people will tell you that they won't develop serious movies about kids, because you lose your whole target audience right off the bat. Kids don't want to go see dramas about kids their own age. They get enough of that at home when their moms slap their bare asses for spilling globs of Campbell's tomato soup on her new white carpet. Kids want to see Indiana Jones. Batman. Iron Man. Transformers. So who's left to see your potential movie? Adults? If adults ages 25-49 are your only target audience, that automatically qualifies your movie for art-house status. Your movie won't be seen by very many people, unless it's really fucking good. So knowing this, how do I get someone to buy my script?

Beats the hell out of me. I have no clue. That's the next step. My problem once I put the final polish on the project. A few months ago, an acquaintance of mine who produced some of Robert Altman's final films, asked me what I was working on. I told her: a coming-of-age drama about kids. Nobody farts. Nobody pukes after smoking for the first time or eating too much cherry pie before hopping on the ferris wheel at their favorite amusement park. No whitty punchlines or catch phrases spat from the mouths of pudgy adolescents. Her immediate response? "It's about kids?? Are you're insane?!" Maybe. I wrote it because I wanted to tell a story about childhood. A story about kids. A serious one. One where a ten year old boy wouldn't give second thought to pressing a Winchester rifle to the temple of another boy two years his junior. One that doesn't rely on dick-and-fart jokes to create a kind of false friendship. We'll see where this all goes, and how it turns out. I could submit the final script to various screenwriting competitions, film festivals and fellowships. There's one route. I could also seek independent financing. I really hope I'm not insane because this script took a long time to write, and I put a lot of myself into it. Maybe that part makes me insane. If the story clicks, and resonates with people, maybe I'll prove that it was all time worth spending. And that I'm sane.