I sat one hot, muggy afternoon working laboriously on a film script. I felt old, tired, run down, a kind of shabby, sweaty failure with a love life on hold. I tried to lift myself out of the gloom by imagining: What if the door bell rang and some fabulously beautiful woman stood there who would somehow be mysteriously attracted to me? Her adoration would transform me into the person I’d always wanted to be - dashing, glamorous, witty and dazzlingly successful.
But my first what-if thoughts quickly turned darker – writers rarely exist in Disney-Bambi fairy-tale land – and I started to plunge off the beaten track into a different and altogether darker scenario. Perhaps the visitor had a more sinister and significant mission. The story began to form in my brain, and I immediately saved the script I’d been working on in Final Draft, opened Word and began - ‘The Visitor’.
“He
padded downstairs and became acutely aware that his armpits were wet.
Damn it! What the hell was under-arm deodorant for if not to prevent
that? Scraggy old shirt, jogging pants, scuffed and dirty sneakers.
Let’s hope it wasn’t someone important, he thought, and then
instantly: what important? Who important? Important what? Who? Who
was important that he knew, and who important did he know who would
call on him? There was – he realized with a stab of bitter
self-knowledge – nothing remotely important in his life. Except the
novel.
He opened the door without checking through the spy-hole. A
woman stood there. Enormous understatement; he was a writer after
all, let that be rephrased. A goddess stood there. A drop-dead
gorgeous, stunning, more-than-beautiful-exquisite woman standing
there on his doorstep……for a second he couldn’t catch his
breath.”
No comments:
Post a Comment