Psychopaths

DRAMA! This is a venting session, right here, this entry. This is an extension of an email I sent to my friends who have been fairly up-to-date with the script writing process I've been going through.

From the beginning, I had a bad feeling about the guy who became my partner, so when I was paired with him, I was frustrated. I knew he was stubborn and suspected he would be difficult to work with. I immediately talked to the head of the AU-FAMU program, Amy, as well as the International FAMU program head, Pavel. They told me that group changes could be made if I really did not want to work with him. I told them I would give it a shot, it wouldn't be FAIR to the other people in the program to force them to change the groups they CHOSE.

I went forward with working with my partner, let's just call him DIFFICULT. For a while, it seemed like things might work out. We tried to develop a story, we ended up creating characters we liked, but not a decent situation. We originally discussed two backpackers (no gender specified) that had opposing personalities and were in Prague for some reason (see, no situation). DIFFICULT is Jewish and wanted one of the characters to be Jewish, I said, what the hell, it's a distinctive characteristic. Anyway, when we pitched this to one of the screen writing teachers, he pictured the characters as boys and said something along the lines of this "So get this, they meet this Jewish girl, and one of the guys fucks her." I laughed, I had expected him to say that, sex is his usual band-aid for films that have no conflict. DIFFICULT then turns to me and exclaims "That's a GREAT idea!" I couldn't believe it. Anyway, I couldn't get him to drop the story for close to 2 weeks! 2 WEEKS! The story didn't really develop much from there, and if it did, it was due to this one teachers input.

Anyway, DIFFICULT refused to drop his story idea and wouldn't compromise it either. I felt that it was an issue and discussed it with Amy and Pavel (Pavel had been gone during most of the 2 weeks my partner wouldn't drop the idea). I continued to express negativity toward the idea and DIFFICULT continued to disregard it. He said I was being difficult. Whenever I would provide him with alternative stories, he would claim they were underdeveloped and a waste of time. Basically, it mattered when he thought something was pointless or unoriginal, but not when I said that about his idea. It felt like I was banging my head against the wall. I actually came close to strangling him.

At one point, I wrote him an email expressing my frustration and feelings of being ignored. He dropped his story and we worked on another idea. After about, 3 days, he picked a fight with me and we went back to his "original" idea. I was exhausted from fighting with him. He was practically gleeful when I caved, it made me want to defenestrate his ass. Anyhow, I asked him to write out his idea so we could send in a treatment and a rough draft. If you're curious to see his rough draft and my re-write, just click and read. I'm sorry for the brain cells you will kill while reading this awful piece of "writing." I basically stopped being "nice" to him after he forced me back into this terrible idea. There was another brief exchange of emails in which I told him off because I was so pissed, to which he responded just as strongly that I was the problem. Oi!

Anyway, this past Friday, I wrote about 5 scripts, all approx 5 pages, just to explore other stories and another angle on his stupid idea. On Saturday morning, we had a meeting with Pavel. He expressed disappointment that I was the only one doing re-writes. I also suggested we read my favorite of the 5 scripts I had written. After we did this, Pavel asked DIFFICULT to tell me what he felt were the negatives and positives. The negatives he mentioned were reactions to my typos, easily fixable considering it was a first draft. He also made some strange negative comments that had no bearing to the story at all. He had nothing positive to say. Pavel didn't tell me how much he liked it until DIFFICULT went to the bathroom because he couldn't appear partial. Pavel also said how impressed he was that I had written 5 separate scripts in one day, he said it was good that I could work fast. He also said that the script I favored was extremely close to a good final draft and could be completed in a week and half of working on it. Anyway, Pavel suggested to my partner that we re-write this stupid ass idea again, together. He also suggested DIFFICULT re-write my script. This is what my partner said, "Why? To have an exercise in futility?" I think that was the moment Pavel realized EXACTLY what I had been dealing with. It certainly was hard not to jump across the table and kill DIFFICULT, especially because he had a sneer the entire time we discussed MY idea. As if my writing was beneath him! This continues to make me laugh, because all the teachers told him how poor his first draft was (if you read it, you'll see what I mean), while I got compliments for my first draft.

After DIFFICULT's stunning opinion of my script, I brought up the fact that Amy had been asking if I felt DIFFICULT and I could complete a film together. I also said it was important that DIFFICULT and Pavel were aware that she had suggested I even go home, basically dropping out of the program. I didn't say why, but the why is because Amy was concerned about my health. I had been under an extreme amount of stress from working with DIFFICULT and she knew the stress wouldn't go away because DIFFICULT would not become easier to work with. She also knew I had been sick several times since arriving in Prague, most of the time I had been sick were due to stress.

After I brought up these points, it was DIFFICULT who suggested we join other groups. He ended up joining Jason, Cristian, and Drew's group. I think partly due to the amount of resources they would get from having a four person group. I talked to the other two groups, one actually listened to me before saying no, the other group said no without paying me the courtesy of speaking to them first. Frankly, I'm fine with that. I didn't want to work with the group that said "No" without talking to me first.

The result, I get to do my own film. Basically, I get one roll of 16mm, 11 minutes long, one 12 hour shoot day, a crew, actors from an agency, and $200 extra budget money. I also think I get 2 days to edit...it's enough to make a decent 3 minute film. The scripts I have since written are all 2 pages. I limit myself to two because of the fact I'm avoiding any dialogue at all. Here's hoping it works out well.

The most frustrating part about this whole process with DIFFICULT is that he doesn't get reprimanded at all. He basically sees me as the problem. My Mom asked if he's the least bit ashamed that it's come to this, and of course he feels no shame whatsoever, because he thinks I'm the problem. It's just that I've worked with so many film students, some of them did not like the idea of compromising either, but the project got completed. I just hope karma comes back to DIFFICULT because DIFFICULT is such an asshole and he wasted so much of my time. If I had known it was going to turn out this way, I would have asked for Amy and Pavel to facilitate group changes in the first place. Oh well. I guess it's funny that I saw this potential problem in the first place, isn't life HILARIOUS?