Let me start at the beginning. Back in February of 2009 I pitched an idea to a friend about a sci-fi, comedy web series set in space. It was a great idea. A funny idea. A very doable idea… Except for the problem regarding the set. A spaceship, to be exact. It was one thing to write a buddy comedy that takes place in my friend’s apartment. That would be too easy, and practically everyone who has a handy-cam is already doing a buddy comedy set in someone’s apartment. I wanted to be different. I needed to be different. And I just happen to have the propensity for dreaming up difficult, outlandish ideas that are fiendishly clever, yet stupidly intricate. As my wife put it: “You have never taken the easy route.” Â
It was another thing to film everything in front of a green screen and spend countless hours trying to make everything look realistic, believable and not overtly CG. I didn’t want to go this route, either. I’ve seen too many web series that are all CG, look really sharp, but the story sucks. Or the story was mildly good, but the CG really sucked. I wanted a solid set to play in… I’m good at physical comedy. And physical comedy requires, um, something to be physical against. And to build a physical object, like the interior of a small spacecraft with blinky lights and switches and knobs, means spending money. Potentially a lot of money. And who knows if it would really look good at the end of the day.
It was, in short, stupid of me to invest my own money into a set before I had even written a single joke.
Oh yeah, I’ve never written a script before.
Did that stop me? Yes. Both the idea of having to build a set and write a script stopped me cold. I shelved the idea and wished for wings that worked…
April came along and two things happened. Well, it was actually one thing, just two people started doing this same thing: They Taunted Me. “Build the Ship!” One would repeatedly say. “It’s a great idea, and no one is crazy enough to do it, so do it.” Says the other. They were both insistent and completely forgot it wasn’t their money they were asking me to invest. It was mine. All mine.
Oh yeah, there was a second thing that happened. My wife asked me why I wasn’t going to create this show. I grumbled something about not wanting to spend the money, cause it might not work. And I pissed and moaned about not having a place to build the set, other than our garage. She kissed me and put a check in my lap for the cost of building the ship. I sputtered something about not having a place to put it, except the garage. She kissed me again and forced me to shut up.
I could be embellishing about all the kissing. But the check was real.
By the end of May I had finished my designs, rented a U-Haul truck and shanghaied two friends to help me purchase over $800 in lumber and haul it into my garage. I was insane.
During my lunches at work, I wrote the scripts. And I rewrote the scripts. On the weekends I worked on the ship in the stifling heat in my garage. I rarely had anyone helping me. I felt very much like the little red hen. “Who will help me build the ship?” I would chirp. “Not I,” said the dog… etc. I did have a little help here and there. It was sporadic, but indeed welcomed. And to save you a lot more reading, near the middle of August I finally finished the set. Just a few little props and odds and ends needed to be finished.
Throughout those long, tedious, frustrating months I shared the idea with a few, trusted creative people. And within the last month I started to see my production team take shape. All the aches, despair, frustration and angst from the last four months started to melt away… Only to be replaced by a sense of dread. A new fear emerged: “Holy shit. I’m actually going to have to film this damn thing now.”
I threatened to quit several times. I even bitched about hiring a couple of day laborers to tear down the set. Everyone, including my loving wife who still loves me after all these months, came to my rescue and filled me, repeatedly, with a renewed enthusiasm. Talented producers, directors and actors have proven they’ve got my back. Damnation! We’re going to make this sucker after all.
Oh, the actual “creation” bit… That’s all, just scribbling and bibbling. Bibbling and scribbling. There were – and continue to be – a lot of nights without sleep, because my brain wouldn’t shut down cause it was dreaming up some crazy idea or another. Being able to translate the images playing around in my head onto a digital page was a challenge, but a terribly fun one. And it concerned me that the story, and the process of writing, came to me easier than I feared. I’m not trying to make light of the writing process. This was completely new to me. And it scared the crap out of me.
Sure, I’ve written poorly formed short stories, elaborate game scenarios (I used to play AD&D) and several years of poetry (some of it quite good, actually) but I’ve never written a screenplay of any sort. I pestered a writer friend or two, and their answers were the same: Dump it out of your head and onto the page. Doesn’t matter what it is, get it out of your head. Then go back later and fix something, remove something or everything and write something new. One writer/director told me that the act of writing was a muscle that needs to be exercised. This muscle needs to be developed. Start small. Force yourself to write for 30 minutes a day. Even if you just sit there drooling on the keyboard, staring at the screen. It is the exercise that counts. No matter what you write, do it for at least 30 minutes a day. Then increase the time gradually. I could do that.
Soon I was writing easily for an hour or two a day and not wanting to stop. I would write something and forget about it for a while. Then I would pick up the script and rewrite some things, change other things around, read the story to myself out loud. The lunch crowd around me must have thought I was a deranged maniac, gesticulating with my hands, shaking my head and muttering to myself under my breath. But this was my act of creation. While building the set my mind would run the stories over and over again. And at the same time I would wonder if I was completely fooling myself. Maybe everything I was writing was pure crap.
And it may very well be crap. But it’s my crap. And I think it is funny crap. And considering all the crap that passes for “funny” or “brilliant” on TV or on the web these days… The odds that my crap is actually a tad less crappy than the rest, and therefore watchable, shareable and potentially marketable, are pretty damn good. So I’ll take my chances. What else have I got to lose?
Oh yeah. The budget to film even just one episode… Right now that is coming out of my pocket, too. So, I guess I do have something more to lose.
