Much like Joe Janes, Jay Steigmann is a writing instructor and director for the Second City training center. She’s also written and directed several one act plays around Chicago. I met up with her on Monday to discuss the script. Here are a few notes from that meeting:

The first 10 pages are a good hook. Definitely brought her in. Jeff, the main character has good heart. Marcus the agent is really good. Pops off the page.

- The character of Kate is introduced in the first scene and comes off like a main character, but then we never see her again. What gives? He has a crush on her but it goes unresolved. He later moves onto Laura, the main love interest of the story. Jay doesn’t buy his feeling for her. Is he the type of guy who always falls for girls all the time? If so, then he would get over her pretty easily, right? They seem like the same girl. Feelings need to be better defined.

- The more serious scenes, at the end of the second act, could be shorter. The pace slows. Not much humor in them either. What’s a way to make them funnier without affecting the seriousness of the scenes?

- The character of Tim: Jay started off loving him, but towards the end she disliked him greatly. He’s inconsistent. At his party, what’s up with him? Same with outside the movie theater. His playfulness is lost.

- Question arises again: Where’s his money? Needs to be a good reason why he’s not rich. Charity? Divorce? We know the company is screwing him over, but he should then be more vocal about where his money is.

Over all she enjoyed it, which is great. I’ve sent the script out to some other readers and friends who will be involved. I’m at the beginning stages of casting and rehearsing. Oh man, I’m getting really excited!

After a week of letting my mind clear, I went through the script and now have about 5 pages of notes. The notes are a healthy combo of scene specific and script-as-a-whole notes.

Act 1 Scene 5:
Do more of the embarrassing photos framed in office.
Running gag in the scene.
Maybe cut to the frame store? Frame store owner: I’m rich!

Act 2 Scene 8:
News report and action in the bar needs to balance each other better.
Reporter banter goes on too long.

Script as a whole:
Strengthen the relationship between inventor and his love interest.
Too much arguing. Needs to be replaced by “real action”.
Introduce the singing GPS earlier!
Infomercials need to be in the movie more
Too many holocaust references

Now it’s a matter of organizing my notes, deciding what to work in and what to eliminate. It’s very exciting at this point because I can really see it coming together. I hope to have the next rewrite done in 2 weeks.

I’m putting a tight deadline on myself so I don’t get into a pattern of endlessly sweating the details. Rewriting is a process of deconstruction and reassembly which can go on forever if you’re not careful.

2 weeks from now is the 4th of July. I plan on spending that day celebrating our nation’s independence and the completion of the second draft. USA! USA! USA!

Writing a full length script is incredibly daunting. A rule of thumb: 1 script page roughly equals 1 minute of the film. A 110 page script? I’ve never written anything that long. Sounds gigantic.

I need to make this easier, less scary, and manageable. To start, I wrote out a list of all the beats to the film. Start to finish. Then I narrowed it down, combining and deleting most of them, to about 17 parts, and divided them into 3 acts.

Each moment or scene gets its own card. I laid them out in a sequential row, acts stacked on top of each other to create a grid where I can see my move completely. Looking at this set up has made this script seem real, which is nice.

I don’t think the cards themselves are very inspiring. Some have titles like: “Product fails, inventor embarrassed”, but at least it gives me an idea of what that moment in the film will be. Every night I grab 2 cards and flesh out their basics. Some are clearer than others, for sure, but the idea now is to get something down on paper. I’m not concerning myself with continuity or pace at this point. I free write, for the most part, about the scene and let stuff pop up out of nowhere. While writing I’ll go back through my note books to see if there are any jokes or story elements I can plug into the scene. 30-45 minutes later I got a first draft of those 2 scenes. I’m not revising or editing just yet, that will come later. I check off the card and move onto the next ones.

Since I’m strapped of any grand ideas, I took a tip from Robert Rodriquez to make this story longer. Take a shorter idea and repeat it 3 times. Comedy comes in 3’s anyway, right? I created one story with 6 main beats, and will repeat those story beats 2 more times. In the second act the beats will be different and the stakes will be raised. In the third act, each beat will have its own little twist so it doesn’t seem repetitive.

For example, each series of beats will start with a scene that shows the audience the industry or business.

Act 1 will be an infomercial for the crappy product.
Act 2 will be the inner working of the HQ. Daily operations, etc.
Act 3 will be the real seedy underbelly of the business. Behind closed doors type shit.

Each act starts with the same idea of a scene (showing you the industry), but takes you deeper and exposes more. Get it? Little tricks or organization moves like this make the screenplay go a lot smoother and not stress me out as much.

At this pace, 2 scenes a day, I’ll have a first draft done in 5 days. I’m gong to LA this weekend, and Florida the next, so finding time to write will be tough. I’m really hoping to have a solid revised draft by June 12^th aka my birthday.

Joe