Earlier this year I thought, "If Matt Damon and Ben Affleck can do it--if Sylvester Freaking Stallone can do it--why can't I?" (side note: did you know that Stallone's real middle name is Gardenzio?)
So, I started writing a script about a river trip in Moab that takes a turn for the worst. Which creeped out a lot of my friends. But then I realized that filming on the river might be a little expensive, and something that could be done locally, with a lot less money, would be much easier to produce.
That's when I remembered a conversation I had with Irene while in Paris. This conversation either took place in my apartment or while riding in the metro, either way I'm sure there were pastries involved, but the point was that I told her I wanted to adapt Les Caprices de Marianne by Alfred de Musset into a screenplay. Sure, Jean Renoir had done it back in 1939, but that was a very loose adaptation and the resulting movie was only recently considered to be the third greatest achievement in cinematic history.
Third? Come on Renoir, get in the game.
Prior to my teacher recommending the play to me for my end of term project, I had never heard of it. I had never even heard of Musset, and I even mispronounced his name in front of my whole class (Hey BYU French Program, you really dropped the ball on that one, didn't ya?). My embarrassment drove me to FNAC where I waited in a really long line to buy a copy of the play. The more I read it and the more I worked on it, the more I loved it and the more I wanted to know about the guy who wrote it.
Long story short, I have been working on the screenplay now for several months. My first draft was finished in three weeks, spurred partially by a then-recent-break-up. This second draft, thanks to the help of awesome friends, is taking longer but getting better everyday. I love the story. The screenplay incorporates a lot of commentary about art, relationships, and love.
The goal is to get the film rolling this coming spring. While I had initially planned on doing an ultra-low budget film, I've realized that the story deserves a higher quality production. I also wrote it with the hope of playing one of the main characters, Damon-Stallone style.
Even Renoir played a leading role in his little movie, and he looked like this:
