WordRanch

Part One: Smooch in the rearview mirror...

2011-01-17T14:42:00.000-08:00

Making a movie is like having a baby.

A dream (idea) takes root. Hope is added. Effort to conceive follows. And then, if the saints are with you, you’re finally pregnant. Gestation can be long or short, labor, hard or painful, and finally, like the birth of any child, there it is – though likely not exactly what you “imagined” it would be from the start. But by God, you can’t help but love it and pray that others will, too.

Smooch, conceived in the early 1990’s, was a dream long in the making. It started with the idea that Terry Spencer – a writer who lived in Chicago with a wicked-sharp voice whose stories in Chicago Magazine won my heart – and I should try and write a script together for fun and hopefully profit. But we would have to do this long distance – with me in LA, and Terry in Chicago.

No Skype. No Go To Meeting. No shared desktop applications. Just talk through the story on the phone, then write, shoot pages back and forth via email (yes, there was email back then), and hammer out the scenes we did independently over the phone and finally polished during a brief period of time when Terry was in LA when her daughter Kira working as a child actor.

And this was the impetus – Terry and I wanted to write something for our daughters. Something with a leading role that Kira, a talented and funny actress, could play, this part with the “voice” and intelligence of my imaginative, book-loving, old-soul daughter, Rachel.

Hence Zoe was born. Our 11-year-old dreamer. The muse behind it all.

In the original draft, titled “Once In A Blue Moon,” Zoe, as she does now, rescued a frog from Biology class. A frog whose “boo-boo” she innocently kissed to release an actual prince who had been turned into a frog. But not because he crossed paths with a mean witch, but because he crossed paths with a mean sorceress whose daughter he was caught deflowering. You see our frog prince, Flynn of Stewart, was a cad of the first order, and well deserving of his fate. And when he was first “set free” by Zoe – whom he assumed must be a witch, too, to have such powers as to transform him – and realized what year it was, and how long he had been a frog, lamented...

FROG/MAN

Twentieth century?! Zounds! I am robbed! — Ribbit — ROBBED! My brain made feeble from a diet of flies! Be this sport? — Ribbit — a game you witches play when you change us into others? Methinks it is!
ZOE
Turn you into a frog?! I didn't even turn you into a man – ‘least not on purpose.
FROG/MAN
Hark! Can you not hear? My heart is beating — Ribbit — in iambic pentameter — in fear of the return of my curse — Ribbit — condemned to a protracted state of amphibianhood for a trifling character flaw!
ZOE
What kinda flaw?
FROG/MAN

Oh, chastity, chivalry, true love…

(beat)

Prince Flynn Stewart, illegitimate grandson of the unpopular and sadly unattractive James the First. In sixteen and ninety-six, I made the acquaintance of a vestal virgin soon to wed the King of Normandy.

(beat)

How was I to know she was daughter to the cursed Hag Hannah of Cheshire. Needless to say, a virgin she was no longer when Witch Hannah came upon us. Next thing I knew I was naked, I was croaking, I was green.

(sighs)

Now, at long last, I am free to break the Hag’s curse — if only I can best the test of knightly honor with acts of chivalry, chastity, and, quite impossibly, love.

ZOE

Love? You have to fall in love?

FLYNN

Verily — ‘tis a feeling I have never felt, nor been the recipient of, nor cared to know.

(beat)

And unless I change my ways and willingly love and in return win a fair maiden’s heart, to the dreaded bog I shall return upon the next Blue Moon — Ribbit — there to croak for all eternity.

And that was the set up...

Flynn had until the next “Blue Moon” to demonstrate acts of chivalry, chastity, and to fall in love, or back to froggy-hood he would go.

It was set in Chicago and took place over Zoe’s Christmas vacation from school. It was bawdy, funny and sweet, and had many of the elements in Smooch (Zoe was hard on nannies, Flynn became her new one, Gwen needed to move on and find love again, etc.), but more edge and bite to the characters.

Terry and I sure loved our little screenplay. But it never got made.

It was well liked, proved to be a strong “writing sample” that led to meetings for me (I can’t speak for Terry), and some work on other projects.

But, and Terry will be the first to tell you this, I never take no for an answer, and I kept trying to sell our script because I believed its message of “happy ever after... well mostly happy ever after...” was one that we need and want in our stories and movies.

And lucky for me, my longtime producing partner, Brenda Friend, shared my enthusiasm and commitment to the property. Together, throughout the late 1990’s and 2000’s, we worked toward this goal. With Brenda’s excellent story sense and spot on notes, I continued to rewrite the script, tweaking it for our next potential buyer(s) and us, but keeping it basically the same overall.

During this process, “Blue Moon” became “The Kiss” and finally, “Smooch” – with an addendum attached to the script submission suggesting we could have the “real frog prince” concept in the story give way to the idea of a “prince with amnesia” and the little girl who thinks she turned a frog into a man convincing him of this fact until his memory returned.

This is the take on the movie and the title that attracted the interest of the brilliant and wonderful Barbara Fisher at the Hallmark Channel. She promised Brenda and me back in 2009 that she would be buying the script and making our movie in 2010 – and bless her heart, Barbara was good to her word.

So finally, years later, I had the joy of calling Terry and telling her that we had found a home for our little screenplay. All I had to do was rewrite it (very quickly), pretty much from page one, and as I did the rewrite, I would send Terry the drafts so she could add her voice. With wonderful story notes and guidance from Barbara and Liz Yost at Hallmark, and with Brenda with us every step of the way, we pounded out a new draft in weeks - the movie now set at Valentines Day in San Francisco , with a delivery date of January 2011.

Meanwhile, Brenda and I set out to find a director and we were lucky enough to secure the talents of the one and only Ron Oliver. Ron, a man with a wit not seen since the round table at the Algonquin, Alfred Hitchcock meets Noel Coward, all style in his signiture ties and cufflinks, not only loved the script, but got that it was a comedy with romance, rather than a romance with comedy. Moreover, he understood that Flynn had “movie amnesia” and that we did not have to make ourselves crazy over this device; that it was there to serve the story, and then get the heck out of the way of the fun.

Next, we were blessed to have the talented and highly respected John Jackson offer to cast our little movie – a double-bonus for me as John and I went to college together and this was a chance for us to work with one another.

And John’s contribution cannot be overstated – he assembled an exceptional cast for Smooch – from the stars cast in LA, to the large cast of supporting players he needed to find in Michigan (more on this in the next post).

John got the fantastic Kellie Martin to play Zoe’s mother, Gwen, Kelly the final puzzle piece in getting the movie made right and right away – as no movie gets produced without a star - and Kellie is a star!

For the dual part of Percy (the Prince) and Flynn (the Frog Prince), who had to be a Brit to the core, John discovered the handsome, funny, talented, did I mention funny, Simon Kassianides.

For the loyal butler/father figure for Percy, Wilkins, he found the real deal in Nicholas Ullett, who brought warmth, deadpan humor, and charm to the role.

And last but not least, John signed Kiernan Shipka, a young actress so talented, so intelligent, so real and genuine and warm and funny and – well – Zoe.

And it is Kiernan bringing Zoe to life that makes me truly believe in happy ever after – because if our movie had been made years ago, or anytime in between, she would not have been there to play Zoe.

And so, with Ron at the helm and the stars set, Brenda and I embarked on phase two of Smooch...

Smooch - Video | Hallmark Channel

2011-01-16T15:13:00.000-08:00

Smooch - Video | Hallmark Channel

manyana

2009-08-08T20:21:00.000-07:00

crazy. we all live with the idea that we can and will do whatever it is manyana. no problemo. will we tell someone we love them manyana. kiss them manyana. hold them manyana. even just call and say hello manyana. forget about the big things like taking that trip, moving to that dream spot we've been talking about for years. even just hitting the beach for a nice long walk with the warm sun on our back. or taking the time to get together with old friends, share a glass of wine and see each other face to face, rather than settling, much as this is better than nothing, for the passing glance friendship found here in cyberspace. because when a week like this happens, we all stop and go whoa. we tell ourselves that manyana won't do. that manyana means it may never happen. and then manyana comes and goes, and we don't do anything even though we just saw and felt the impact of putting life on hold. witnessed the steep price paid for living with manyana. and before we know it, we're back to telling ourselves, hey, don't worry, be happy, we can do it manyana...

My Partner Blake

2009-08-06T08:00:00.001-07:00

I set up this site during the WGA Strike, then emptied out all the comments and let it go when the strike ended, determined to move on with my work and life. Ironically, I bring it back today to pay tribute to a man I love who died this week, a man the world is now far emptier without, a man who represents the best of this crazy business, my first writing partner, Blake Snyder - a partnership neither of us had the strength to sustain during the lengthy and painful WGA Strike of ‘88.

Blake - screenwriter, storyteller, novelist (his novel, "Crazy 8's” still resonates with me), teacher and amazing human being - was a sweet, sweet man with the heart of a lion, and cruelly, that heart gave out.

We met in the wee small hours of our careers, back before we could barely shave, put together by our co-agents, Paul Escoll and Tanya Lopez at WMA because, as they told us at the time, I had a bunch of great ideas, and Blake could actually write. They only had it half right. Blake not only could write, but he had a goldmine of great ideas, too. Damn was he funny, and heartfelt, and dark, and deep. Comedy, drama, film noir, kids - he could do it all, so to keep up, I had to learn how, too, and I still have a career these many years later from the things he taught me, I taught him, and mostly, lovingly, we taught each other.

We worked crazy hard, barely made a dime, loved most every minute of it, got into the WGA, even lived together for a while (Blake moving in with my wife and kids), and started the long Hollywood journey together, creating a body of work that I cherish and am as proud of today, as the moment we first wrote "fade out."

This town is as hard on writing partnerships as it is on a marriage (thankfully, my marriage to DB has only grown stronger and more vital), and eventually lack of overnight success can bring out the worst in any writing team, but Blake was never bitter when our pitches did not sell, or our scripts got close to "go," but no cigar. Blake never blamed anyone, not me, not himself, not the buyers who passed, it just was the way things were, so we rolled up our sleeves and moved on to the next great idea and wrote and wrote and wrote. His attitude, which I embraced and shared in, united us in the fight - but then the WGA strike of '88 happened, and Blake’s father passed away on top of that, and he was gone home to Santa Barbara to care for his mom, the good son, and I was alone.

As far as break-ups go, it wasn’t that bad, as we had too much residual love for acrimony to overtake the genuine respect we had for each other. But it felt like a divorce. And since Blake passed away, it's felt more and more like I lost my first "wife," my first "love" - odd and unexplainable, or maybe very explainable considering who Blake was, his giving nature, and the seminal time we spent - often 10 hours a day - for much of the 1980's.

But as it happens, the years flew by, Blake going his way, me mine, and I am most happy to say that we never completely lost touch and rekindled our friendship several years ago, and I was blessed to partner again with Blake on some new and old ideas, and especially to have him back in my life.

The pizza we split a month ago, laughing and reminiscing while beating out the tweaks we wanted to make to "Planet Ranch," the screenplay we wrote a zillion years ago that defined my writing career as it was based on the untimely death of my childhood best friend, will be with me forever. Blake looked like a million bucks. Never have I seen him happier. He was on top of the world! And of course, he insisted on picking up the bill.

But the best thing of all was seeing Blake grow into a marvelous teacher and mentor to a new generation of writers. This was a role he took to heart, loved and embraced with all his being, and shined at as bright as the stars. Watching him teach was like taking an E-Ticket Ride at Disneyland, and all I kept thinking was of course he was born to do this, this is just how Blake taught me years ago, only I got private lessons, and now the world was his classroom! This is the loss that makes me the angriest, the loss of Blake the teacher, and it makes me want to curse a God that lets the bad live too long, and the best die too damn young. But Blake would tell me to just let it go. To accept what I can't change, accept what is, and to embrace the best in life.

Blake was the best. I will never forget him. DB will never forget him. And our children will never forget their Uncle Blake.

Happy trails, mi amigo. HB