Oops.

by PJ McIlvaine

Oops, I did it again. No, I didn’t flash my Britney in public. I pitched a script that I have yet to write.

I know, I know. I do it to myself every time. I let my excitement and enthusiasm overrule my common sense. Often enough, indeed, most of the time, it’s not a problem. I may pitch an idea to a producer and never hear back. Or they write back weeks, months, years later, with no thanks, not interested, not for us or never darken my e-mail address again or I will sic a top secret government agent on you (or some permutation thereof).

I’ll pitch ideas to my pals, the cats, and the cashier at the supermarket. If they jump and down for joy, I know I have a winner. If their eyes glaze over and they nod off into suspended animation, I know it’s a dog.

This time, even as I wrote the e-mail, I was hesitant. I’d carried this idea around in my head for centuries. Then I thought what have I got to lose? I’m sure you can surmise what happened next. Within seconds I got a positive response. Seconds! I slunk away to beat myself silly with a baseball bat.

I related my sad tale of woe to some of my other writing pals. They laughed. They know me all too well. Me, the woman who wrote a 120 page script in nine days. All I had to do was sit down…and write, right? This should be like Rachel Ray and 30 Minute Meals. I already had a producer interested. I mean, what more could I possibly want (besides Sean Connery a silver platter)?

I wanted a script. Like last week.

Once again I put aside my contemporary family in crisis drama, the one I’ve been struggling with for weeks, and I dive into the new script. I start out like a machine gun during the Valentine Day Massacre. However, there’s one slight problem. It’s in a genre I’m not really familiar with and I haven’t seen the movie that the producer mentioned as a template.

No problem, I tell myself. I’ll just get a copy of the movie script and study it like a college student cramming for mid-terms. A great plan, except that getting a copy of this particular script turns out to be a royal pain in the tush. I might as well have decided to break into Fort Knox.

In the meantime, as I continue searching for this impossible script, I get the idea for another script. Oh yeah. As hard as I try to get this second idea out of my mind, I can’t. I finally give in. I can handle it. I’ll work on two projects at the same time. No big deal. I’ve done it before.

Finally, on E-Bay of all places, I find a draft of the movie script in question. I also rent the DVD so I can get a better idea of what made this movie a cultural phenom. I alternate between writing the first idea and the second idea.

Unfortunately, the writing on the second idea is going a hell of a lot better than the writing on the first. I’m flying on the second idea; I can’t spit the pages out fast enough. On the first idea, I’m crawling like a baby. Then it hit me: with the second idea, inspiration had taken over and I was writing it on auto pilot. I was the zone. With the first idea, I’d already written it in my mind and knew it so well that the actual, physical act of writing it was an afterthought. It was like telling a joke one too many times. How do they keep it fresh and exciting? Now the joke was on me.
To make matters worse, I made the mistake of actually seeing the movie the producer mentioned. My husband and I looked at each other in horror. “Surely, “he muttered as he shook his head, “your idea has got to be better than this.”

Meanwhile, I get a first draft of the second idea down in record time. I return to the first idea and exhort myself to tap into that huge well of dedication, affection and exhilaration that I had for the second idea. At this point, my knee pads need knee pads.

All is not lost, however. Another producer responds to one of my queries. She wants to read one of my rom-com’s (thank God this one is already written). I do some research. As it turns out, I have an idea that would fit this producer like a Chanel original. I just have to write it.

I think I’m going to need a bigger baseball bat.

PJ McIlvaine is the writer of the highly entertaining, critically acclaimed, Emmy nominated Showtime original movie MY HORRIBLE YEAR with Eric Stoltz, Mimi Rogers and Karen Allen. She is available through The Script Department

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