Crash and burn

Had a bit of a meltdown today. I pulled more boxes of paperwork and books and two boxes of my writing awards from storage...and it triggered some unpleasant memories.

I was hired to write a family script, Bugzters, for a producer I'd met. She loved my Irish horror script, Darian's Point, and asked me to work up a story from an idea she had. A boy has to help some aliens escape being caught. Sort of a riff on ET. But I had fun with it. I worked up a story about Alex, a boy who inadvertently traps some neon vapor aliens in his MacBook and has to help them get back into space before they're found by not only government agents but other aliens who want to use them as a power source. He gets his best friend, Taylor, who's a genius, to help him.

It was fun. Quirky. I set the bad aliens up as 4 dorks who'd molded themselves after a fisherman named Chester, who was something of a dim bulb. All 4 look like and and jaunt off like the 4 stooges to follow their homing signal to the vapor aliens. Taylor's into inventing toys, and her latest is insects that can fly like real ones. There's a toymaker and a crossing guard and a harried mom. Of course chaos ensues, because they still have school and adults watching and on and on.

I won a couple of awards for it. One even had a monetary prize. But...it didn't go anywhere. For a number of reasons...the main one being, the people I did it for didn't believe in the script enough to push it. Then in 2008, a friend who worked in one of the animation studios suggested offering it to his boss, as an animated feature. Said they were willing to give us notes on what needed to be done. I said fine, so long as no characters are changed.

They read it. They gave notes. I did a rewrite. They read it. They gave more notes. I did another rewrite. I wound up doing four rewrites, on spec, not paid for one of them. And to be honest, some of their notes were right and made the story better. But then they wanted to merge Taylor's character into Alex, and I said no. Won't.

The producer and my friend and I argued. Hard. Then the producer took the script away from me, along with another I'd written based on an idea of hers, but on spec. Both were given to another writer. I was brutally depressed. A few months later, I left LA. Completely. My excuse was, my mother needed someone to help manage her...and I was closing in on going broke...but reality is, I'd lost any belief that I could do anything in film. The last job I got in LA was storyboards for a movie that never got made. Seemed appropriate.

Seeing the awards I'd won for my screenplays cut into me. Two dozen of them. So I did my crash and burn, and wandered over the web, and self-indulged myself with too much crap to eat. I did manage to read some more of Eamonn McCann's work, dealing with Northern Ireland, at least. And posted a few things for Ukraine. And avoided more of the post-shop chatter on the Depp-Heard bullshit. And got angry and paid off the last of my back taxes owed the IRS. I was all over the place.

Oh...and I made some notes for APoS. Brendan's father told a story to a university student, before he died. A legend about the Dagda and Grianan an Aileach that led to harpies living in the caves of the Cliffs of Moher. The student recorded it on tape, and Brendan learns about it when he returns to Derry so goes to listen to it. And is shredded. It connects with other information he's pulled together and he finally sees the man was damaged, just like him. Only he's spent his life hating the man and now has no idea what to think or do.

I'm still not back to 100%, not by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm at the point where I'm irritated with myself for being so fucking whiny.