Let me tell you a story.
By the Grace of God, I'll be making my first spec sale in a few weeks (having already done some work-for-hire). Of all the infinitely more marketable things I've written, this is the screenplay that finally commands the right kind of attention. If I'm loathe to mention the name of the script, it's because I don't want to injure the deal... but guess why I wrote it?!?
At the time, I was sleeping with an actress. I desperately wanted to make a movie with her.
This screenplay is all mysteries and cagey power relationships crackling between good looking young people and dangerous looking older folks, and the sexual tension boils over in every direction. Every actor in the film gets their chance to chew scenery and turn the tables, and it's loads of fun for everyone involved - and there she is at the center of it all, the puppet master and the victim, at once powerful and vulnerable...
Speaking frankly, it's WICKED HOT! Just thinking about making this movie with her turns me on, and I wrote it over two years ago. Sitting down in a theater and watching her up on the screen, nailing this part... it's very much a sexual fantasy of mine.
Long after we broke up I kept pushing the film with her in the lead. I believed in her, and still do. At the same time, making a movie without name talent takes a lot of commitment and entrepreneurism and she wasn't pitching in.
When she turned out to be less than reliable, I pushed the script in front of producers as part of my spring cleaning, and it's getting more traction than projects that are much more broad in their appeal, and that are just as cheap to make.
Something in that script connects with people. What could it be?
There is nothing - NOTHING - wrong with art as sex. What do you think was on Shakespeare's mind? Whether or not you like Woody Allen, you've gotta admit that he makes a hell of a movie! Is there any doubt why he does it?
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