ALLIGATORS IN A HELICOPTER

a pro script reader ponders movies, reading, writing and the occasional personal flashback

Monday, January 14, 2008

Maybe On Page 81 the Ropes Would Have Broken -- Into Song

One of my clients is a TV network that caters to kids. You can probably narrow it down.

On Friday, they gave me the manuscript of a book to read, to look at as a possible series aimed at young boys.

So I curl up with the book, and on the first page the dead body of a boy is found on the bottom of a pool.

Okay, yikes, but this might be workable. Maybe the main character is the ghost of the dead boy.

The body passes through the hands of two characters, both in their late 20s or so. The girl works in the morgue; the guy works in his family's funeral home.

They go out together to a club. They smoke some pot. They have sex.

She has a troubled past. Scars on her wrist. They are obsessed with each other. Soon they get into some hardcore bondage and other sexual activity.

No ghost of the dead boy. No kids at all. In context, probably a good thing.

It's become pretty clear that some awful mistake has been made, but I read the first 80 pages (about a third of the book) anyway, because one never knows. But when the girl starts to dig getting tied up with ropes, I finally pull the plug and send off an e-mail, just to let them know that this probably wasn't the "tale of a boy overcoming obstacles" that they were looking for.

It's sort of the reader equivalent of sitting down to watch The Little Mermaid, and finding some Cinemax-tame porn taped over it.

I'm still waiting to hear back about what someone, somewhere, was thinking...

7 Comments:

At 9:24 AM, Blogger Emily Blake said...

Somebody opened to page one and saw the word "boy" and decided to let the reader do the rest of the work because his job was done.

See? Now he didn't actually have to read the book.

 
At 10:15 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Close, Emily. Close.

They thought it was Casper, the friendly Ghost.

Good day.

 
At 10:32 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Oh, the possibilities. It would have hilarious, though no doubt career ending, if you'd heartily endorsed the story so we could see just how far this network would go... commissioning a script? shooting a pilot? actually broadcasting the pilot?

 
At 5:42 PM, Blogger NailaJ said...

Hahaha... That is absolutely hilarious!

 
At 7:30 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Someone once phoned up Evan Dorkin to buy the rights to make his Milk and Cheese comic into a kids cartoon. Dorkin asked if they had ever noticed that his characters were violent alcoholic misanthropes, and they admitted they had never read it.

Some people are too into the schmoozing to take a close look at what they are schmoozing about.

 
At 6:39 AM, Blogger Tom said...

What would the series be called, "How I F$#%ed Your Mother"?

 
At 10:39 PM, Blogger LHOOQtius ov Borg said...

Dammit. If not for people like Scott and Evan Dorkin and their whole professionalism kick, there might finally be some good kids cartoons on TV.

Ever since Nickelodeon they canceled Invader Zim, I've been utterly without my violent-misanthropes- masquerading-as-children's-fare television.

 

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