Writing Teenage Bodyguard - A Screenplay

Realization of a Product - Part 1

First off let me say something. I don't know everything. I haven't had a screenplay produced... yet. But I will. I've been at this off and on since my first screenwriting class started in 1983 at a university. What I want to do here is share my view and my vision, and what I am going through. If you learn something, great. I think you will. If I learn something, even better (for me). If someone corrects me about something presented here, even better still. Also, this isn't meant to be a well tuned, peer reviewed literate series, just my experiences while I'm writing this screenplay. That being said, I'll at least try to be understandable. 

Shortened URL for this page: http://w.tt/1JtF2iK

NOTE: I changed the title to "Slipping The Enterprise" mid January 2015 as a title that far better fits and is much more poetic and less Disney teen movie sounding. Cuz this ain't no teen movie my friends. Far from it.

The whole point here is to share and help out. If you are writing screenplays or want to, I truly wish you the best. I've not received a lot of help. I tell someone, especially in the industry and mostly get rolled eyes, or disbelief. Partly because so many people see it as a romantic notion, like being an author. My niece is an actress and doing well and her brother is a grip on TV reality shows, both in New York City. They know how hard it is.  

People want the romance, the benefits but not the thousands of hours of hard work it takes to "get there". I've done that. I've tried to learn every kind of writing I can. I was a Sr. Technical Writer. When I was in college, I took it as an investment in my future. I worked every night till late, I crammed my mind with information and seldom partied. But by then I had been through the military, a professional partying institution. I researched endlessly. My psychology professor said I was in the top 1% of the top 1% of psychology students at universities. High praise and I earned it, and tried to. 

Film and TV production is a tough industry. But if someone knew me, they wouldn't laugh. I'm tenacious and professional and pretty much have achieved everything I've wanted in life and now I've turned my attention to writing. If you want to know more about me, check out my web page at JZMurdock.com or my author page on Amazon.com. 

So all the best to you, and to me....

Back in 1974 Gordie was 18. He had an interesting year. Things happened. Over the years he never gave it much thought. Gordie had an interesting childhood up to that point. So it is really no surprise that he just lived through this experience... and moved on. 

A little background. 

Gordie was born in Tacoma, WA in 1955. In 1958 his family moved to Francoist Spain. Things went south and his dad, through his mom's dad, moved out of the country. He could do that. Eventually, they moved back to the east coast to live with family where his mother met and married a bandleader. She then made him give up music and they moved back to Tacoma with a new husband, and new baby boy, Kim. Things didn't go so well from that point on for Gordie. 

Gordie was born with ADHD and has grown into ADD and learned to survive quite well through it. So his mother figured out pretty quickly to keep him busy day and night, to burn him out during the day so he'd sleep at night. Something he has learned with his own son. 

Gordie was put into a lot of after school things. The obvious, Cub Scouts, Y-Indian Guides for a while with his step-father who never liked him much and the feeling was mutual. Guitar lessons in second grade. Tap dancing, acrobatic lessons in fourth grade. Karate starting in fifth grade. On and on into bigger and more sophisticated things. He learned discipline and a variety of odd things. He was hard on his bicycle and put a lot of effort into play. 

His mother said he should have his own room with my name on it at the emergency room at St. Joseph's hospital. She once caught him jumping off the roof of the house once and forbid him to do it again. When she asked why he did it, Gordie said that he liked the falling feeling. When she said what about the landing, he agreed saying that he didn't like that party so much but it was worth it. She just shook her head and walked away.

After Gordie graduated high school and moved out of his parents' home he got an apartment and a job at seventeen. It was during that time that he got a call from a "friend". That led to his meeting, let's call her, "Sara", as that is what she is being called in the screenplay. 

That meeting led to an interesting week in his young but fairly well-used life up to that point. Decades passed until 2013. By then he had a university degree in Psychology and a minor in creative writing for fiction. He'd been in the military. he'd working as a tech writer and server administrator. He has been at the same company for nineteen years in IT. (update, he retired after over 20 years in 2016).

I've published a couple of horror books, a few ebooks and I've narrated and self-produced several audiobooks. I've been published in other's horror anthologies and magazines. But my orientation has been trying to learn and become successful in screenwriting and film production. I was a public access cable producer for a while. 

So in 2013 when I was thinking over my life wondering if there wasn't a biography in it, I came to realize that I'd need several books to cover it all as at different times in my life, it appears in hindsight that I was completely different people with different stories to tell. So was Gordie whom I'd known all my life.

Eventually, I came to realize I might have a screenplay or two in our stories and decided to choose one to write. I settled on what I could only think to called, Teenage Bodyguard. So at the end of 2013 I spent a few months crossing over into 2014, researching this incident that from 1974. I went to libraries, I searched online, read online court documents, interviewing people, saving screenshots, pdf downloads, notes of all this as I went along. I'm really quite a good researcher and loved doing that in college.

The story just seemed to scream, "write me". I figured that even if no one wanted a screenplay I produced, this story was worth someone buying it to write and produce themselves. I don't see it not getting done, really. Easy, lots of interesting stuff is involved, the major kinds of things producers look for. So I finally put away the research, planning to get around to writing it in the next year or two. 

Roll forward to the end of 2014. 

A producer from a production company contacted me about a screenplay adaption I did one of author Kelly Abell's novels, a spy romance, "Sealed in Lies". So I sent him a copy of that screenplay. He asked if I had anything else. So I sent him an email listing my screenplays I've written and a few ideas I was going to write. Two were martial arts movies about the beginning of two styles of martial arts. One was the story that happened in 1974. He liked that concept. He loved the title.

So I told him I would write something up and over the next week, I wrote a treatment of the screenplay, something I'd been reticent to do because it was a massive effort. There were court documents to go through, a long list of names and dates, and then, trying to clearly consider what was relevant,  from things I'd been told, all that kind of stuff.  There was too much information.

But I finished the treatment. After months of research, having tried to remember the year previous what actually happened to me and taking notes on that, and a year of gestation, I popped it out. I told him I'd write it if he liked it and he said he's interested, to go ahead with it.

He said it reminded him of a Ryan Gosling film like, "Drive" or "Place Beyond The Pines". Worked for me. So on Saturday, January 10th, 2015 I started writing it. Today is January 12th and I'm on page twenty-seven of the screenplay. It's going along fitfully but rather smoothly too. It pays to do your research. 

On Sunday I started to realize that this was a perfect screenplay and story for Quentin Tarantino. I'd been contacted by an agent from a big L.A. agency about a screenplay (Colorado Lobsters) a couple of years ago and have kept in touch.

 I haven't found anything yet to really pique his interest, but I thought this might. So knowing I can't get in touch with Quentin I emailed to ask if this agent would and gave him a rundown of things as they are now, attaching the treatment. I have a production company interested, I'm writing the screenplay, it's true, I have the rights, etc., etc.

That, is what I planned to write about here. The writing process. But first I'll have to give you a general rundown of the storyline. Not too much detail. For that, see the film, or read the book if it gets to that point (but I doubt it). Then I'll go through my writing-related issues and processes.

So, here we go....