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TRAVIS RINK ON SCREENWRITING |
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(The movie business has always
been a struggle between creative integrity and commerce. The
money side of the industry may get pooh-poohed by screenwriters,
directors and actors, but the unpleasant fact is that money is
the oxygen that allows movies to be made, and careers to
flourish. If the financial resources of a studio get drained dry
to support some auteur's creative vision, and the film fails at
the box office, whatever creative satisfaction the involved
parties may feel is guaranteed to be tempered by the fact of
people put out of work, a shuttered studio, and that there is
now one less place in the world of filmmakers to make movies. |
The film industry is,
therefore, one governed by fear; fear of failure produces fear
of risk. Fear of risk means safe projects using proven talent.
That kind of fail-safe thinking means both predictable and often
unsatisfying movies, and a terrific uphill fight for any new
talent trying to break into the business, particularly if what
they offer is a little bit different.
Travis Rink managed to break
through the iron circle. He managed to prove himself; in two
low-budget thrillers he demonstrated his ability to make money
for his producers, entertain his audience, and get something
more normal than the norm onto the screen. Why, after that, Rink
continues to have difficulty in placing his material is a
testament to the depth of fear in the business.
Says one industry veteran:
"They look for reasons to say no. The minute they say yes,
they're on the hook. They'll only say yes when you have them in
a corner where they can't say no anymore." So Rink writes, and
he re-writes. He tries to make his work more salable, he tries
to make it better, he tries to make it something one can't say
no to.)
The first original screenplay
I wrote was a fast-moving, 90-page thriller entitled, Unfaithful.
It was good enough to get me a well known agent who sent the
piece out to a lot of producers, which lead to several meetings
with a number of them who had enjoyed the script except for
one slight problem... the protagonist in the story dies at the
beginning of the third act.
It was a critical plot point that helped make
the story, in my opinion, as good as it was. Unfortunately, as
much as it was a key element, it was also something that wasn't
done in films, and into the first ten minutes of any meeting
with any producer, they were quick to point out that since this
didn't fit the standard thriller format, we had to figure out a
way to "fix it" in order to sell it. Confusing, right? The very
thing that had helped attract the producer to the material was
the same thing they felt needed to be changed in order to raise
financing and get a "green light" for the project.
I knew that sometime, somewhere, a producer
and/or financier would eventually "get" the idea and make the
film the way it was written, so I put Unfaithful aside
and started on a new screenplay. That screenplay turned into a
more standard, but still edgy, crime drama called
Caroline At Midnight, which actually turned out to be
a fairly easy sell. With a talented, yet unproven, director
named Scott McGinnis attached, the screenplay ended up on the
desk of Mike Elliott, who was head of production at Roger
Corman's Concorde Pictures.
A deal was struck after our first meeting, and
the only changes I needed to make in a few minor rewrites were
for budgetary reasons. Even better, the script was full of some
great supporting roles. Consequently, when it was sent out to
actors, word got around that it was going to be a pretty cool
little project, so we ended up with a good cast of people,
including Virginia Madsen and numerous others who signed on even
just to work a day or two. By the time filming was close to
wrapping, we even had Mark Snow, composer for The X-Files,
on board to do a great film noir soundtrack.
The end result was a pleasant one. Concorde
made money, the film developed a nice cult following, and, most
of all, it pretty much turned out to be the movie I'd envisioned
from the day I started writing it.
Shortly after the release and success of
Caroline At Midnight, I got another call from Mike Elliott.
He'd read another script of mine that Lance Robbins, then head
of production at Saban Entertainment, and co-producer for the
foreign rights to Caroline At Midnight, had passed along
to him. The script was Unfaithful, which Lance had tried
to get off the ground way back when. Mike liked, and got the
idea of the script too, and we struck a deal over the phone.
Unfaithful went into production within a matter of weeks...
dead protagonist intact and as written.
Although not as successful as Caroline At
Midnight, Unfaithful did well enough, and proved to me that
non-cookie cutter movies could get made and find an audience.
With that in mind, I started working on a screenplay version of
a piece of magazine fiction I'd previously had published, and
took on a collaborator, Bill, who I had worked with on a couple
of small things before.
The collaboration itself was a little odd to
begin with. Since we were only working from a 12-page story, we
decided to proceed without a real "road map" of what direction
the script would move in, so there was a lot of improvisation
involved. I'd bring in new characters, do a couple of scenes
with them, then toss the story back to Bill, who would do the
same thing before sending it back to me. It took a few drafts,
but by the the time we were done, the script, called The
Criminal Kind, turned out to be a story of intertwining
chance encounters that meshed so nicely that both of us forgot
who'd written what.
We had enough contacts between us that we were
able to get The Criminal Kind out to some good production
companies right away. The majority of initial responses went
something like this:
Producer: "The writing is great! But the
two protagonists meet at the beginning of the story, and not
again?"
Us: "That's right. They come this close
to meeting again throughout the entire script, and their actions
affect each others lives, but they just don't meet again. That's
the way life actually is sometimes."
Producer: "I see."
Actually, they didn't see. Once again, I'd
written something different... something they didn't get.
Some time later we found a producer/writer
team who really loved the script, as well as a production
company that hung a flashing "green light" in front of all of
us. All we needed to do were to make "a few changes". Bill and I
made concessions at first. The two protagonists did meet once
more, but it was too late in the story for the producers. Since
I was our connection on the west coast, I was the one directly
meeting several times a week with the producers. I kept
tightening, editing, rethinking and revising. But the more
changes made to the script, the more I knew the piece was
gravitating away from what we had set out to do.
However, with each revision, that tantalizing
"green light" to go into production got closer... but the script
was becoming more and more diluted. Meetings continued, and I
worked through the entire Thanksgiving holiday doing a draft,
then spent the entire Christmas holiday doing another draft...
yet still the "minor changes" kept coming.
Finally, enough was enough... there would be
no further changes on our part. In fact, we almost hated what
the script had turned into, and would have truly despised it had
we given into what they wanted. As Yogi Berra said, "it was like
de'ja' vu all over again". Like Unfaithful, the very
things the production company had liked in the script to begin
with became the very same things they wanted us to change.
The upside is that throughout this entire
period, there is one producer who continues to champion
the script. His name is Richard Finney, and he has burned up
hours of time and gone through his entire contact list to get
100 Kisses, 1000 Bullets, as the screenplay is now called,
set up.
I have no doubt that 100 Kisses,
1000 Bullets will eventually get made. When will that be?
Well, let's just say that at this point neither my collaborator
or I are holding our breath.
Right now I'm working on a more
straightforward crime drama, the same type of project that might
open the door for 100 Kisses, 1000 Bullets the same way
that Caroline At Midnight helped to usher Unfaithful
though the door. Because I know that somewhere, someplace,
there's going to be someone who is going to "get" this one, too. |
