Come Get to This
Marvin Gaye
I’ve written so many screenplays over the years and some feel like lost dreams — stories gradually fading from memory.
Sometimes strories just don’t quite develop — like dough that doesn’t rise. They had a promising character or strong beginning — a theme perhaps — but the world-building took on a life of it’s own and fell into an unwieldy direction. A messy place where mad outlining and structuring sessions couldn’t right the ship. And I found myself in a place where starting over felt like the only option.
In just about every unproduced script I’ve managed to finish, there are moments, sequences, characters I still love. They still exist in my mind. And for me, it’s hard to transplant them into another story. They feel stuck in the unfinished one — in a movie we’ll never see, but still vivid in my mind.
Before the pandemic in 2019, I began writing a series called FAIRWAYS that was taking up all my creative time. I wrote six one hour episodes for this sprawling dramedy centered around Disc Golf. In my master plan, PHOENIX, OREGON would make a big enough splash to get this series off the ground here in Southern Oregon. But 2020 had other plans and it didn’t take long for me to shelve it and go back to the drawing board.
FAIRWAYS was about healing and recovery — how a silly sport like Disc Golf could actually save someone. I loved the idea and still do. In one sequence, two friends hang out one night listening to music and begin talking about the homeless problem in America — not just in the big cities but right here in small town Oregon. How mental illness, addiction and homelessness feel like a triumvirate of tragedy in this country. A force that no one is committed to solving.
These two friends drive by all the churches on a Saturday night — almost too many to count and all of them closed for business. One of them is a condemned building on land that is for sale and the seed is born to figure out how to buy it and help solve the homeless problem in their little town of 25,000.
This was a long drawn out way to talk about this Marvin Gaye tune — one of my favorites. There’s something about his music — how it makes me feel. So many of his songs make me feel like love, joy and personal happiness are actually possible.
One of the characters in FAIRWAYS has a mix going in his truck and this song pops on. I can still see and feel this sequence. Most likely, we’ll never make it, but I love the fact that it exists on paper and in my mind. Whenever I hear this song now, I think of this story I wrote in a series we’ll never see.
