Saved Again

So a couple of months ago, my wife comes home from work with a screenplay that a co-worker wrote, that he wants me to read. Now this isn't the worst thing in the world; unlike my friend the doctor (who changes the conversation whenever I try to ask him about my aches and pains) I don't mind doing a free read now and then.

And best case scenario, the script is great. Because it's a perfect Hollywood story -- some guy toiling in an anonymous job writes the next great American screenplay, and gets it to powerless me, who is so blown away that I am able to use my Hollywood power (which is somewhere just under that of Spielberg's gardener's sister's florist's half-brother's girlfriend's dog) to get this great script into someone's hands who can get it into someone's hands who can get it to someone.

So there's hope. Until I open the cover.

Without having to write it here, suffice it to say that the first word of the two-word title is the N-Word. The 5-letter version, ending in the letter A.

The second word in the title is Jesus.

Dread is already racing down my spine.

It's only 58 pages long, which could be a break, except riffling through it reveals that the guy has the dialogue stretching from one side of the page to the other, and the scene description is in the middle, sort of like if it was a play, except it isn't.

It's amateur city.

I read the first couple of pages, already knowing what it is destined to be. Sure enough, it's a modern-day ghetto story in which a drunk Joe is angry that his wife Maria is pregnant, because even though they have been married for three years he has never had sex with her. As the (apparently not so bright) Joe puts it:

JOE
I got blue balls baby because we have
been married 3 years now and haven't
"constipated" it yet.

Quotation marks his.

I flip through, reading snatches of dialogue here and there. Yikes. My brain cells are already getting petitions together or hiding under their beds.

There's no way I can deal with this. I have a pile of scripts and books to read, plus at that time we were getting ready for the big move to Woodland Hills.

So the script disappears, into the big morass of packing boxes, and I forget all about it.

We make the move, and though I still can't find a lot of stuff, the script turns up. Sitting on a shelf, like something out of a Stephen King story, haunting me. My wife doesn't nag me about it -- she's done her job -- but every time I see it I remember what it is.

I sympathize with the readers who have to read slush pile stuff for a living. But I still don't read it. No time. No desire. But it sits there.

Waiting.

Waiting.

Waiting.

Then it happens.

Last night, my wife comes home, and says "Remember that guy who gave me the script for you to read?"

Oh no. Busted. I'm going to have to read it.

My brain cells are already drawing lots, preparing to be the ones who sacrifice themselves to read it. Little, infant brain cells are crying as daddy brain cell trudges off to do his duty.

But then she says it.

"The guy's a jerk. Don't read his script."

My brains cells are high-fiving each other, and hugging their families.

Saved again.