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sunshine jen: An Ensemble of Misfits
Last week, after a very trying day, I went to the bar. Over the last few years, I’ve been trying to depend less on the bar in times of grief and trouble, but this day, I made an exception.
Fortunately, I arrived at the bar during happy hour, and there was a seat for me. Pints were three dollars. Three! My spirits were up even before the first sip.
As I was drinking the second pint and eating some dinner, two guys lumbered up to the bar next to me. They were deep in conversation and ordered pints of Boddingtons. While pretending to drunk text, I overheard their whole deep and philosophical conversation.
They turned out to be screenwriters. The younger guy was working on his first beard and the older guy had his back to me. The younger guy had put his plastic down as the tab, and the older guy was putting cash on the bar.
Here is my memory of what they said. Yes, this is why movies are so bad.
Younger: I have this ensemble of misfits, and I had to introduce each misfit in a special way, but it turns out that I didn’t want to write the misfits. I wanted to write the plot which is more an adventure story.
Older: About the ensemble of misfits.
Younger: Sorta. I’m working on the first act, but my pages are long, but I’m not worried. I always go back and cut and cut and then as I’m going, I find there’s stuff that I want to write that’s not in the pitch.
Older: So you rewrite the pitch.
Younger: Yeah. It’s a comedy. Like the Coens. I totally am into the Coens. I thought Burn Before Reading was highly underrated.
Older: Yeah, I like the Coen Brothers.
Younger: They never do research. If they want to write an FBI scene, they just write an FBI scene. They just use their imaginations.
Older: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I soon became distracted from their conversation by a text. I didn’t stay much longer at the bar. I had to be somewhere at seven.
As I walked out of the bar, I thought about the ensemble of misfits. I hoped those misfits would be okay. I hoped they would survive countless rewrites in all their quirky misfit glory. Maybe we are all just an ensemble of misfits crashing into each other on this planet.
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