Art... from out of the Blue.

When writing, you constantly have to walk a fine line between interesting and believable.

I’m constantly reminded, when watching the world go by, that just because it could happen in real life, doesn’t mean it would work in a movie. For example, in the last 24 hours, I’ve been contacted – out of the blue – by 3 people I knew in Italy in the early ‘90s, and hadn’t conversed with in 15 or so years.

Now… if I put something like that in a movie, it would seem TOO coincidental. TOO contrived. Way TOO fictional.

And yet, an old buddy, a former Sergeant I worked with, and the daughter of my next door neighbors all dropped a line this weekend. One’s in NJ, one’s in the Netherlands, and one’s in Rhode Island. All unrelated, and all unheard of for more than a decade – converging in a 24 hour period.

Weird, huh?

Well… I thought so. Blog-worthy, at least.

Anyhow, point is, as I work on rewrites for this comedy, a number of key things jump out as needing work. Some overly cartooney characters, some pretty major clichés, and a few too many coincidences.

And yet… reality is full of all of those things.

They say life imitates art. Yet… sometimes that’s not true. Sometime’s life’s more fictional than art’s allowed to be.

Charlie

Keywords: b movie, Siege, screenwriting, screenplay, scriptwriter