Welcome to the third installment of “Excerpts from Lost Branches,” a weekly(?) post where I highlight the threads that likely won’t make the cut of the various threads explored in Farewell, Hello: A Blood & Corn Podcast.
Each week, I’ll post an excerpt from something that I wrote or created in the past. Some pieces have a tangible relationship to the comic. Others will seem to have zero connections. Who knows what threads will emerge from following these severed threads?
Latimer (2015)
(Alright, I’m breaking the rules already. Latimer will be frequently mentioned in the podcast. BUT it’s been on my mind lately and I’m going to write about it some more before I start to obsess over something else and forget this train of thought.)
“Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within himself.
But mankind wasn’t always so lucky. Less than a century ago men did not have easy access to the puzzle boxes within them.”
- Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan (1959)
I had the unfortunate realization the other day that all of my stories are the same:
Man desperately seeks fulfillment through purpose.
Man thinks he’s found purpose.
Man makes foolish decisions in order to achieve purpose.
Man is punished for foolish decisions.
Latimer was the prototype for that structure - a seed I planted eight years ago that never flourished but had enough healthy branches to propagate other stories down the line (most of which also died out, by the way).
I previously wrote about Latimer in the first Lost Branches post. The screenplay (which dates back to 2015) followed the final case of a failed private investigator named Hal Latimer. His objective: track down and deliver a letter to the estranged teenage son of a former flame in Burcliffe, IN. However, his plans deviate when he stumbles upon a gruesome murder scene as soon as he arrives. When he tries to find the teenager AND solve the murder, things go south. Hal makes foolish decisions. Hal is punished.
I suppose this unintentional thematic overlap suggests there’s something I’ve been trying to work through in my writing. Let’s try to unpack that a little bit…
Caleb Haydock and I spent a good three years trying to get this film made. There were drafts upon drafts upon drafts. No matter how ready we thought we were to pull the trigger, things never quite panned out the way we thought they would. With every submission or inquiry, the script was met with the same kind of criticism. Here’s an example of some feedback from a film festival:
“This was definitely a very well-written script and interesting story. It keeps a great pace and maintains interest, throughout. Overall, it lacks conflict, which is a major element. Without the conflict or high stakes for the main character, it misses the big beats and primary sequences. We fully expect that a character like Pete will likely suspect Hal to be up to no good or will somehow make life harder for Hal. Instead, he makes Hal’s life easy – maybe too easy. It would have been nice to follow the story of Hal’s daughters and family, more. The script begins with this story, but then fizzles out. It would be nice to allow this to be a part of Hal’s journey and perhaps to be what amps up the stakes, overall. Hal should want something more than to merely find Nick. And it seems that a stronger connection to Sara would really propel the story, as well. Also, most of the “clues” that Hal comes across seem to tie up too nicely and conveniently. Push everything to the limits.”
When I sent the script to a producer, she responded -
“I liked it. But what does Hal want?”
Some feedback from festivals was slightly more positive:
“The pacing in this script feels more like a novel than a screenplay. The bursts of action and violence are meted out between long, placid runs of scene work, either devoted to investigation or introspection. The ending comes together in a rush. The last 25 pages are crowded and contrast with the pacing established in the first two acts. The action descriptions could be considerably condensed in the quieter sections of the script to allow more room for the conclusion of the story. There are some great moments in this script. Catherine’s story about kids playing 9/11 and the running thread about the dog Athena were wonderful. These are flavorful and unique. The more of these you can pump into the quiet passages of the story, the more this script will stand out. There’s a line towards the end comparing Latimer to “Sam Spade minus the femme fatales.” I thought that was interesting, as Dashiell Hammett’s greatest strength was writing about femme fatales. Latimer needs a signature element in that vein, a unique quality that lends itself to the writer’s greatest strengths in observation. This writer’s greatest strength stands out to me in that Catherine story and the dog. Mysterious, odd, yet warm and memorable. A bit like Twin Peaks, really.”
The script was always just almost there. I just couldn’t figure out the missing piece to tie everything together. I knew what it was supposed to look and sound like, but not how to communicate that effectively.
I gotta tell you - the root of all the film’s flaws can be boiled down to one simple truth: I don’t think I actually had anything to say at the time.
Years removed from this project, the meta-narrative between Hal’s journey and my own is pretty on-the-nose -
Hal was trying his damndest to do his best imitation of a P.I. and failing. I was doing my best imitation of a screenwriter and failing. We also both had crippling imposter syndrome and desperately sought purpose in our “art.” I wish I could tell you this was intentional, but these parallels were not apparent to me at the time. I suppose my subconscious was trying to tell me to get over myself.
It’s been eight years since the first draft of Latimer. Maybe it’s time to take another swing.
In the meantime, here’s an excerpt from the screenplay…
Huzzah!
Songs I listened to while writing this post: