Thoughts on "Cul-de-Sac" - A Screenplay in Progress

It was with such elation that I completed the first draft of my new screenplay for "Cul-de-Sac" two days ago, that I momentarily forgot that it was my birthday. With the passage of each year, I find myself looking forward to birthdays with less and less enthusiasm. While, obviously, having a birthday does beat the alternative, it has become something of an occasion more to be tolerated than celebrated. Although, I must confess that I still do enjoy receiving the gifts and cards, and being taken to dinner at expensive restaurants.

My gift to myself this year was the completion of my screenplay. The script had been roiling around in my brain for several weeks before I began writing it, but, once started, it quickly grew into a sprawling, labyrinthine mess that I can only compare to a prolific garden overrun with crabgrass. It's going to require a great deal of trimming and cutting before it's ready to harvest but, even then, it may be unfilmmable. The problem is the sex--graphic, shocking, hardcore sex. And while there's not a whole lot of it, suffice it to say, there's enough to give even the most liberal producer pause.

True, there's also a good deal of violence, although film producers, studios, and audiences, alike, seem to have fewer qualms about depicting, say, a woman being strangled to death with her own intestines than with showing two men engaging in anal sex. And while you won't see that extreme level of violence in my script, should it ever be filmed, you will most definitely see men participating (more than once) in the aforementioned sexual pasttime, along with a few others. Like last year's sex comedy "Shortbus", "Cul-de-Sac", has hardcore sex scenes, but isn't technically pornography. And while I'm quite certain that both "Hostel" films, as well as all the entries in the "Saw" franchise have played throughout my old home state of Oklahoma, I imagine that "Shortbus", two years after its initial release, has yet to make its debut there. That's because of the draconian mindset of Oklahoma's backward-thinking, hypocritical state legislators. I mean, think about it. Would you really rather have scenes of unspeakable violence regularly displayed at your local metroplex and DVD rental outlets, readily available to anyone with the cash to make the purchase? Rather than strictly enforced age-restricted, sexually explicit films screened for the discerning adult audiences for which they are intended? Come on! Understand, that I'm not in favor of censorship in any form, but I'm just saying that that kind of selective reasoning enacted by state and city governments (in Oklahoma and other states) is just plain idiotic. Let's show little Bobby the movie where the guy has his brains pulled out through his nose, but two guys buttfucking, uh-uh, no way. Keep that shit out of my movie theater, bro! Yeah, Bubba Baptist, no prob.

Okay, back to my script. While it isn't porn, "Cul-de-Sac" is also far from a comedy. It's a modern film noir about a rich gay American who is kidnapped and held for ransom while on a business trip to London. Of course, things end up going spectacularly awry for both the kidnappers and their victim, with double-crosses aplenty, shootouts, slashings, kinky sex, diabolical mommies, and fatales, both femme and hommes. I do have a dream cast (which is helpful when writing the characters, but, otherwise, totally unrealistic). Still, I couldn't help envisioning the roles being brought to life by Helen Mirren, Sting (or maybe Anderson Cooper), Saffron Burrows, Hugh Dancy, Stephen Rea, Aiden Shaw (an actor/gay porn star/namesake for "Sex & the City" character), and Francois Sagat (another gay porn star/Frenchman with a tattooed head and enough sexual charisma to melt sheet metal).

By and large, my screenplay is about 40 pages too long. At 167 pages, it is overstuffed with bric-a-brac and red herrings, unnecessary exposition and unneeded characters; it is a-jumble with a riotous clutter that could only find a home if I were writing a miniseries. All this has to be pruned and what remains, shaped into something concise, tight, and solid. While my work often cries out for a judicious editor, I admit that I'm something of a control freak when it comes to conceding to actual changes.

The day after tomorrow, I start editing and working on an initial re-write. And next week, the comments from my friends/readers should start coming in, so I can adjust scenes accordingly. Or not. While compromise is probably inevitable, if nothing else but for my own good and the good of the project, the one thing I am not doing is cutting the sex scenes. I already know they're going to be an issue, but this is one area where I'm standing firm. It's a film for adults and, with the current, rather drab state of the film industry, I'm hoping that it generates a little controversy and shakes things up a little. And, who knows, maybe it won't see the light of day, but "Cul-de-Sac" is my demon-child, an insistent presence with a life of its own. With that in mind, anything can happen.