September 16, 2004
The best thing I've read lately is pages 138 to 161 of Suttree, which is the first novel by (you guessed it) Cormac McCarthy. The whole book is good, but those 23 pages are so profound and moving that I keep going back to them, both in the book and in my head.
My vision cleared these past few nights and I finally finished Rocketman; it's been well over a year since I finished the first draft, so I guess this is the longest I've ever worked on a script. You wouldn't know it from reading it. It's down to a clean, simple 99 pages. I don't know how clear the story will be to other people, but I think I made it fairly straightfoward.
This name of the file in my screenwriting folder is Rocketman6, and I went back just now and looked at the previous five versions (I wouldn't call them drafts, per se), most of which have only marginal differences from each other (the removal of all the sci-fi sequences that inspired the title, for example), and while most of the general plot points have remained the same, there are only about 15 pages in this draft that could be found in the others. The story I finished tonight is quite different from the one I originally wanted to tell. Or actually: I finally figured out what story I wanted to tell.
It could be my next film, but I should probably try to come up with something more commercial first. And by more commercial, I mean as artsy and serious as I want to be, but with nudity.
And...
RIP, Johnny Ramone.
Posted by David Lowery at September 16, 2004 12:41 AM