WHEN IT GOES BAD?

By David Beilstein

Writing is hard.

But if one loves it - appreciating its beauty and sweep - one will make time to for it. Part of the point of Dominium was to periscope at movie aesthetics - and part of it was to sightsee some of the writing projects I am working on while I slip and parry through film school.

What is key to remember: never make writing harder than it is and enjoy yourself.

Sometimes you throw an oft-timed punch. And sometimes what you thought was a good punch isn’t. I must conclude my screenplay entitled Interloper, is one of those. Good title, but the story is so implausible it becomes painful to think of it. There is some great stuff in Interloper - but its wedded to a plot that I cannot justify in any sense, whatsoever.

Interloper was dedicated to a friend who passed away in 2012. Someone not so close at the moment he passed - but close in other ways. I will miss his conversations and his taste in movies and cinema. We had some wonderful, appreciative moments of pop culture, which included tons and tons of stuff about movies.

Nevertheless, Interloper is damn awful. Too many things don’t work.

The story concerns a former NYPD first grade detective who relocates to New Smyrna Beach to mend fences and take care of his rich father’s estate. His father was a womaniser but generous in death. He has left his former detective son a multi-million dollar estate. The main character is a former NYPD detective because of a bad shooting he was involved with. No fault of his own, but the higher-ups at One Police Plaza in Manhattan did not see it that way.

Then a land dispute erupts. Squatters are living in the old man’s estate. The former NYPD detective wants them out. And he is tough enough to move them out. But the squatters are a mean batch of Florida red necks involved in a shady enterprises. One that is worth a fortune. And the head of that shady enterprise is worse than the NYPD detective and the squatters put together. 

Or is he?

Interloper involved a classic Charles Bronson land dispute theme. I was riffing on several movies and books using that texture. Elmore Leonard’s Mr Majestyk comes to mind. Charles Bronson could not be better than in that movie. Another such story (one Bruce Willis supposedly bought the rights too) was Mr Leonard’s 2002 novella, Tenkiller.

But Mr Leonard’s story somehow achieves what Interloper misses: plausibility and simplicity. Mr Leonard has been honing his craft longer than me. As I have said, there are excuses and than reasons. They are not the same. Mr Leonard is north of 85 years old. I’m 36. Be it said, Mr Leonard is much better than I and somehow he is able to make something implausible, plausible. Mr Leonard’s stories get human nature and action so right the implausible becomes naturally plausible. The stories, thus, never raise eyebrows.

But it rose like hell in Interloper - so much so I could not bare to read it anymore.
So there it is.

Another screenplay aborted. It’s frustrating as hell. It always is when it goes bad and the work has felt for not. But I have a plan to rework the material into something better, something fun, and something with more plausibility.

If God permits, light at the end of the tunnel.