“JASMINE” – The First Draft

To those of you checking in from around the world, I apologize for the delay of the second installment.  However, fortunately, I’ve got a slew of good excuses.  First, I’ve been writing the second draft of “Jasmine,” which is always a good excuse.  (I’m on page 23, in case anybody’s counting.)  Second, I’ve been developing a new action/drama with an actor/producer, who stars on a hit TV show here in the U.S. and is now looking to make his crossover into features.  (It’s a great idea and we’ve really been taking our time, “method writing” and letting it evolve.)  Third, I’ve been riffing with one of my former writing partners, who’s now a producer in his own right, regarding the potential rewrite of a project we dropped the ball on a few years ago.  And, fourth, I had to take a couple of days off, in order to polish up an idea for a new TV sitcom, which I’m working on for some producers over in Britain.  (More on that later.)  It’s strange… When I write down all the things that I’m working on, it looks like I’m actually quite prolific.  So, why do I always feel like nothing is happening?  God, I’m a mess.  Anyway, back to “Jasmine.”  Let’s see… Where did I leave off?  OK, so I sent Jase the first scene, hoping, in a way, that he wouldn’t like it, so I could forget about the project and maintain my focus on the assignment at hand.  Son of a bitch liked it, though, and now I had real problems.  You see, I’ve never been one of those writers who can write multiple projects simultaneously.  Some people can – James Cameron, for instance.  If I’m remembering correctly, I read somewhere that he wrote the screenplays for “The Terminator,” “Rambo: First Blood, Part II,” and “Aliens” – simultaneously – within the span of just three months.  He simply added up how many hours there are in three months, subtracted the number of hours he would need to sleep, and then divided whatever time was left evenly among those three projects.  Apparently, he even had three desks in his apartment and moved from one to the next several times per day.  Regardless of what you think of the finished products, it’s an impressive feat.  Alas, I am not James Cameron.  Don’t get me wrong, I can develop multiple projects simultaneously and, generally speaking, have five or six projects gestating at any given time.  But, I’ve always had some deep-rooted fear that, if I were to actually write multiple projects simultaneously, then all would suffer from my divided attention, quality-wise.  In any event, I was now several pages into “Jasmine” and had a serious dilemma on my hands.  I couldn’t figure out if I should finish the current assignment, which I was making only intermittent progress on at best, but which was paying the rent, or if I should take a big flying leap into “Jasmine,” which no one was paying me for, but for which I felt… strangely inspired.  It’s common for amateur writers to be given to impulse.  Oftentimes, they will find themselves half way through one project when, suddenly, a new idea for a completely different project will leap to mind.  They then abandon one project for another.  The cycle repeats itself.  And they never actually finish anything.  Was I being an amateur?  Was I really serious about this “Jasmine” thing?  Was it really the right film to try and make as my directorial debut?  For years, I’ve wanted to return to directing.  But, I was always always always worried about finding or writing material that would be sufficiently “Hollywood.”  I thought that, by entertaining people and making money with my first picture, it would ensure a second picture.  Essentially, I was operating out of fear.  I was thinking with my head, not my heart.  Coincidentally, or perhaps fatefully, I had asked for Ray Carney’s book, “Cassavetes on Cassavetes,” for Christmas.  I cracked it open by chance, as I was in the midst of my dilemma… and I inhaled it.  For those of you who aren’t familiar with Cassavetes, he has been described as “the spiritual father of American independent filmmaking.”  For all of you trivia buffs out there, Cassavetes was the guy who, after seeing Martin Scorsese’s first feature film, “Boxcar Bertha,” told the young director, “Marty, you just spent a year of your life making a piece of shit.  Now, go and make something personal.”  And so, thanks to Cassavetes, “Mean Streets” came to be and a new voice in cinema was born.  During the course of reading Carney’s book, I was reminded of something for the first time in many years… Not every film needs to “entertain.”  Now, please don’t misunderstand me, I like to be entertained as much as anyone.  At the same time, though, whatever happened to the small, personal films that were made, not necessarily for the purposes of entertaining, but rather for the purposes of exploring ideas, themes, and situations that were of interest to the filmmakers?  Obviously, indie films have been doing this all along.  But, I, Dax Phelan, had stopped.  Back in college, every scrīpt I wrote and every film I shot was personal.  They may not have always been entertaining, but they were real.  They were full of ideas that I had had, feelings that I had felt, and demons that I had exorcised.  They were my passion.  They were my expression.  And, somewhere along my journey through the Hollywood maze, I had lost my fucking balls.  Now, it was time to take them back.  It was time to be myself again and not to apologize for it.  It was time to exorcise some fucking demons.  To risk again.  “Jasmine” would be my medium.  I began to write… In doing so, I often found myself harking back to an exercise that Gil Dennis, one of my teachers at the American Film Institute and the writer of the Johnny Cash biopic, “Walk The Line,” swore by.  Basically, Gil instructed us to choose a few key moments from our own lives, to write them out as scenes, and to do so honestly.  Specifically, I think he had us write about the time when we were most heartbroken, most angry, and, perhaps, most happy.  I can’t remember exactly, but you get the idea.  And so, we did.  At the time, I missed the point completely.  In fact, knowing in advance that the rest of the class would be reading these very personal moments, I made sure to glamorize myself as much as possible.  As I said, I missed the point.  Completely.  Now, eight years later, I finally realized the importance.  I’m embarrassed to say so, but it’s true.  With each new scene, I was careful to identify the exact emotion (or emotions) that the character was feeling, draw upon an experience from my own life wherein I experienced that emotion, and write it honestly.  It should be noted that, prior to this, I have always managed to bring something personal to every project that I’ve worked on.  But never had I exposed myself.  Not like this.  Never like this.  It was raw, it was embarrassing, it was unflinching.  And it was scary.  It’s still scary.  But, son of a bitch… It was me.  I had found myself again.  I kept writing.  Within a few weeks, I estimated that I was approximately halfway through.  I was closing in on page 40 and, because it was the screenplay was an “actor’s piece,” so to speak, in the vein of, say, Sean Penn’s writing, I estimated that the scrīpt would weigh in somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 pages total.  This is considered short for a feature-length screenplay.  Typically, they weigh in anywhere from 90 to 130.  But I knew that, like in Steven Soderbergh’s screenplay for “Solaris,” which was 80 pages, and Sofia Coppola’s scrīpt for “Lost In Translation,” which was in the 70s, certain sequences, which were a short paragraph in the scrīpt, would no doubt be expanded during the process of shooting them.  I worked on the screenplay intermittently for the next few months.  Normally, when I’m really in a groove, I can jam out a first draft within six weeks.  However, life has a way of intervening and, in my case, it intervened in the form of a court date.  The Spring of ’07 was a nightmare for me personally, thanks to an ongoing legal dispute that, for personal reasons, I won’t go into here.  All I will say is that, when it was over, I was shattered.  I needed to get the fuck out of Dodge.  I had to go somewhere, anywhere, and clear my head.  I needed a change.  So, I returned to “Jasmine,” which was still only halfway finished, give or take a few scenes.  I spent some time re-outlining and rewrote a few scenes.  I e-mailed Jase in Hong Kong whenever I needed specific insights into the character or had technical questions about certain locations in Hong Kong.  Progress was being made, albeit slowly.  Something just didn’t feel right.  I couldn’t put my finger on it.  Or maybe I just didn’t want to.  Eventually, I realized that, for all my honesty in regard to the character, I wasn’t being honest in regard to the setting.  I was relying on half-remembered locations from prior trips to Hong Kong and whatever details Jason would share with me via e-mail.  I wasn’t doing the setting justice.  Even worse, I felt like I was faking it.  What I needed was a real change.  I needed to go back to Hong Kong.  I called Jason and told him that I was thinking about coming to Hong Kong, but that I wasn’t sure how long I should stay there.  A week seemed way too short to get anything of significance accomplished.  Two weeks seemed better, but I knew it would take a couple of days for me to get settled in, which would mean that Jase and I would still be rushed.  Plus, he was going to need a few days to edit a new short film that he’d just finished directing.  Three weeks seemed ideal, especially if we were taking meetings with potential cast and financiers.  And, once you’ve committed to three weeks, why not just stay a month?  Since I knew that I’d be crashing at Jason’s place, I decided to give him a call and float the possibility of staying there for a month.  I think I said, “Would it be cool if I stayed at your place for a month or so?”  And he said, “Dude, honestly, I wouldn’t care if you stayed for three.  You’re not allergic to cats, are you?”  I bought a ticket on Cathay, leaving LA on May 14th and arriving in Hong Kong on May 15th.  The 14th couldn’t come fast enough.  I promised myself that I would finish the very rough, first draft before I left, so that Jase and I could hit the ground running.  Sure, we had a month.  But I wanted to take full advantage of it.  However, as hard as I worked in those weeks leading up to my departure, I couldn’t seem to stop rewriting the first 25 pages or so.  Looking back, I think I was operating out of fear and insecurity.  Yep, that old chestnut.  See, Jason hadn’t read anything yet, aside from the very first scene, and I was worried about whether or not he’d like what came after.  I mean, what if I flew half way around the world, showed him my progress, and he was lukewarm about it?  It would be a long month.  So, I thought that, instead, I’d write the first act or so, outline the rest, show it to him, and, if he liked it, I would finish the first draft during the first half of my trip.  Then, in theory, this would leave us another two weeks to discuss any changes that needed to be made, to outline the second draft, and to meet with potential financiers and talent.  This became the new plan.  Before I left LA, I stopped by the Paramount lot to meet with Stratton Leopold, a veteran Hollywood producer and, honestly, one of the nicest, if not the nicest, guys you could ever meet.  Stratton and I go back a while.  I first met him back when I was a development intern for Mace Neufeld and, in the years since, we’ve collaborated on our dream project, “Charlie Two Shoes.”  I hadn’t told Stratton about “Jasmine” yet.  I knew he was busy prepping the new “Star Trek” movie for J.J. Abrams.  But I wanted to hear his advice on how to proceed.  Stratton had recently produced Abrams' last movie, “Mission: Impossible III,” part of which was shot in Shanghai, and he has contacts all over the world.  When the time came to get a budget done for “Jasmine,” I was more than certain that Stratton could put me in touch with the right people.  So, I told him and his co-producer, Dana Cavaliero, the basic story.  I think I said something to the effect of, “It’s essentially the story of a man who’s struggling to come to terms with the unsolved murder of his wife.  It’s set in Hong Kong.  It will be in English, with some Cantonese.  Jason Tobin from ‘Better Luck Tomorrow’ and I came up with the story together.  He’s playing the lead.  I’m writing and directing.  It’ll probably be a month-long shoot, with handheld cameras, on real locations.  And we hope to make it for around $500K (USD).  In the tradition of, say, John Cassavetes.  Is that something you’d be interested in?”  I think Stratton said, “Absolutely.”  Or maybe it was, “Let’s make a movie.”  Whatever it was, it was music to my ears.  When I finally touched down in Hong Kong, it was a huge relief.  I love the place and, strangely, feel more at home there than I do anywhere.  Jase picked me up at the airport and we went out for a few beers.  Yeah, we’d been e-mailing back and forth, in addition to calling, but it was important for us to catch up in person.  Later, over vodka tonics, I told him about the progress that had been made on the scrīpt thus far – and, particularly, about how some of the scenes were very personal and, in many ways, didn’t paint me in a very positive light.  The film wasn’t about me by any stretch of the imagination, but many of the character traits and situations had been real to me.  It was difficult for me to include them, I mentioned, because I didn’t like reminding myself of the place I was in when they happened.  I also didn’t like reliving the emotions I felt.  I was exposed and it was unsettling to me.  And I’ll never forget what Jason said.  He said, “Honestly, I wouldn’t be interested in doing the film, if those scenes weren’t in there.  It’s because of those scenes that I’m doing this film.”  Jason didn’t give me permission.  He gave me confirmation that I was doing the right thing and carte blanche to go even further.  Unfortunately, a friend of Jason’s had recently been divorced.  Fortunately, this same friend was also preparing to rent out the apartment he had shared with his ex-wife in a luxury highrise in Wah Fu.  Jason and I checked into the place for two weeks.  We spent the first couple of days acquiring the bulletin boards, 3x5” cards, and other writing tools I felt we needed.  Now, it was time for Jason to read the first 25 pages.  It was the longest 20 minutes of my life.  Finally, he revealed that he was pleased with the overall direction and felt that, rather than go back to the beginning and start rewriting, I should instead push through until the end.  He had a few notes here and there.  Like most writers, I had to fight the knee-jerk reaction to beat him to a bloody pulp and remind myself that he was on my side, after all.  He told me his notes.  I was resistant.  However, when he articulated his argument – something very few people are good at, including most writers themselves – I found it hard to disagree with him and set out to make the changes straightaway.  I was reminded as to why I like working with actors so much.  Although most lack formal training when it comes to screenwriting, they, too, are storytellers and their approach to story usually comes from a very pure place – their gut.  For the most part, they don’t concern themselves with act breaks, reversals, set-ups, pay-offs, and other screenwriting devices; rather, they concern themselves with what simply feels right.  From my experience, the lion’s share of their ideas are usually right on the money and Jason’s are better than most.  Although my laptop was working perfectly, the chair I was using at the Wah Fu apartment wasn’t designed with comfort in mind.  I was forced to sit on the couch where my laptop would quickly overheat.  As a result, I found that the easiest way to continue working was to ditch my laptop and begin writing by hand, which was something I hadn’t done in years.  It’s a very interesting thing, writing by hand.  Some people swear by it.  Others hate it.  Personally, I’ve only ever resorted to it in extreme situations.  Like many proponents, I’ve definitely found that the process of writing by hand causes the writer to think about every word he puts to paper.  The mind is less rushed and, in my opinion, has more time to explore possibilities.  To put it another way, when you know you have to write something out by hand, you tend to spend more time thinking about what you’re going to say and how exactly you’re going to word it.  And so, for the first two and a half weeks, I wrote by hand everyday.  Whenever I had questions about what the character might do in a scene, Jason and I would workshop it, usually with a tape recorder running.  Then, later, by myself, I would transcribe our sessions and organize them into scenes.  Slowly, I filled approximately 40 double-sided pages of a spiral notebook.  Half way through the month, Jason and I relocated to his new apartment in Mongkok and it was there, on June 2nd, 2007, that the first draft was finally completed.  To be continued in the next installment: "Jasmine – The Notes Process.”