The Incredible Shrinking Screenplay

elieve it or not, Any Color You Want has lost 47 pages since the last post without exercise, exorcise, diet or extreme surgical procedure. At 98 pages (approximately 1 hour 40 minutes of screen time), it's ready for the beach. Once I focused on some basic questions (is this scene/character/storyline really important to the major dramatic question? REALLY?) it became clear what could stay and what had to go.

Often I didn't cut characters; I just reassigned bits of dialogue between minor characters to major characters. By keeping my cast small I simultaneously kept conflict up whereas with a large cast conflict dissipated making for a longer and slower read. Now it's a quicker and edgier.

I'll Tell You Why

aking criticism isn't easy, especially after you've worked through several drafts and are simply told to change scenes because. Fortunately, thanks to some solid feedback, I've found it easier to make big changes to ACYW because I was told why to make certain changes.

If I'm a novice and someone with more experience than me tells me to do something, odds on I'm going to listen to them. But if it's a field I think I know a thing or two about, I'm less likely to blindly adhere to their recommendations unless they give me the why. Once I understand their reasoning, I'm more apt to listen and make a change.

In this case I thought I could write Ulysses without ever writing Dubliners or Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man first. Now I see that there's just as much beauty (and challenge) in writing The Dead as there is in Finnegan's Wake. Not only that, but the criticism (and the whys) have steered ACYW closer to where it needs to be; to it's original story, trimmed down to the basics, riding a big idea from beginning to end.

Big Ups

f Any Color You Want ever makes it to the big screen, there will be a lot of folks to thank. Right now I want to thank Ryan Callahan, Michael Eldridge, George Northy and Elizabeth Ventura for their insightful feedback and encouragement. Thanks to them the screenplay is much tighter, focused and professional. Special thanks to Callahan who has already volunteered to read the next draft.