I just entered the Imagine/Impact script comp. Ron Howard has teamed up with Netflix to find a feature script from an unknown writer to be produced! (https://application.imagine-impact.com/questionnaires) How cool would that be!
I dusted off an old script called "The Race", co-written with my old writing partner, Thomas Kennedy. I've written about it here many times. It's about Mike McGregor, an aging cycling champion, who, having promised his wife he'd never compete again after a near fatal crash, secretly trains his two sons to ride Ireland's toughest race - The Ras.
We wrote the script 13 years ago, so it was really fun rediscovering it and writing about it again. It was a well loved script by people who read it. We went down the road a bit with Screen Ireland at the time, but they determined we were too inexperienced (we wanted to direct!) I think they were probably right.
We got into the top 20% of the Nichol Fellowship that year (for those who don't know, that's part to the Academy Awards, it's kind of like an Oscar for unproduced screenplays by unknown writers!)
Going back over it got the cogs wiring again. Something I haven't really felt in a while, even with stuff I've been trying to get off the ground and that am actively working on at the moment. But that sense of excitement hasn't been there, not for a long time. It's mostly a chore these days, and it should never be a chore. A challenge, sure, but not a chore.
I guess this reminded me of how much fun I used to have writing, and dreaming! I mean, I was still in my 20s when I wrote this script. It was all ahead of me, I was winning awards with my first short film, of course I was going to make it. Now I'm in my 40s and that didn't happen. So, it's different now. I step more tentatively, if I step at all.
But it helped me remember that feeling... Jesus, as I write this I've just realized, I'm become the main character of that script. An ex-champ who crashed out of a race and lost his career, only to find his passion again 20 years later, I'm even blogging again... do people still blog?! I think they just "Thread", showing my age for sure! Like Mike, I'm riding a steel frame, not carbon fibre!
After I finished the application I popped out to a cafe and even came up with an idea while sitting there, then came straight home and wrote an 8 page short script. I haven't done that in years.
Recently I was asked for some advice on a short script, happily gave it. I was also invited to help someone on a TV show idea, really as a guide. But even sitting down with them and talking about what the story could be, how to structure it etc. It reignited something in me, reminded of that back and forth I miss when creating something new, collaborating and remembering how much a part of writing and filmmaking collaboration is, needs to be! Not to mention the hope of a new project, seeing the possibilities of everything it could become.
It's been an unexpected and interesting few days for this tired old hasbeen of a neverwas writer! We'll see what comes I guess. I don't pin my hopes on hope anymore! To quote old Red: "Hope is a dangerous thing, Hope can drive a man insane," but then, as his friend Andy said "Get busy living, or get busy dying" - you either let a dream die, or you do the work, and make it live. And I think for any dream to survive it's as simple as that, you do the work.
So, to work...
