A Nine-Year-Old Can Do it
As an aspiring screenwriter, I follow a variety of blogs, twitter feeds and websites all related to the film industry. Today I watched the trailer for Jon Faverau’s “Cowboys and Aliens.” I found out that George Clooney is in talks to play the “Man from U.N.C.L.E.” for director Steven Soderberg. And I learned that Robert Downey Jr. and his wife have signed on to produce a project called “How to Talk to Girls.” Downey will also star in the family comedy, which is based on a book by Alec Greven. Greven, the author of three other books, is nine years old. That’s right, a nine-year old. After reading that, I immediately went out to my yard, dug a large hole, and climbed in.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with screenwriting, allow me to shed some light on the process. It seems simple enough. One has an idea. One turns that idea into approximately 110 pages of pure genius. One rewrites those pages about five hundred times. One does anything he can (including but not limited to bribery, thievery and general skullduggery) to get an agent to read the afore mentioned five hundred times rewritten 110 page of genius. Said agent ultimately sells the script and eventually a movie gets made. Unfortunately, the odds of this happening are similar to but not quite as good as being struck by lightning. Twice. While trapped in a Chilean mine.
The point is it is a very hard, nearly impossible thing to do. So to suddenly hear that a nine year old has pulled it off is somewhat disheartening. It leads me to wonder if perhaps Geico will ditch the caveman and instead go with “It’s so easy a nine year old can do it.”
In 1969, when I was nine, the Vietnam War in was in full swing, the Mets won the World Series, and I most certainly was not writing a book. Instead I was daydreaming in Mr. Rooney’s 4th grade class. Mr. Rooney was the old school substitute who filled in for most of the year when our regular teacher Mrs. Matson had some kind of surgery. He wore a bow tie and had a unique system for maintaining discipline in the classroom. Whenever the class got out of control (which was almost all of the time because, well, I mean, the guy wore a bow tie!), Mr. Rooney would yell “Responsibility One, Freeze!” And we would freeze no matter where we were or what we were doing. You can imagine a bunch of nine year olds trying to freeze in mid task without giggling. It was nearly impossible and only made things worse in Mr. Rooney’s eyes which led to more yelling of “Responsibility One” and so on. Consequently, instead of writing a book, I spent most of my 4th grade year frozen. On a side note, during the following year, which I spent perfecting my spot on impression of Mrs. Collins’ Boston accent when I also could have been writing, there was an unconfirmed rumor that poor Mr. Rooney had suffered some sort of nervous breakdown. There was no word on the fate of his bow tie.
More recently, when my own children were nine, I don’t recall either of them penning any great works of literature. They each by then seemed to be majoring in baseball. If only I’d pushed them to write instead, perhaps I could be meeting with Robert Downey Jr. right now.
Of course I could choose to look at this as a glass half full type of thing. In other words, if a nine-year-old can do it, there is still hope for the rest of us. After all, I have just recently finished a rewrite of my comedy script, which means I have only another 482 rewrites left to finish it. In the meantime, if you can’t find me, try the hole in the back yard.
