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Awriter's catharsis
By Stephen Shupe, Jayplay writer
How my first screenplay summoned childhood wounds, Robin Williams and the devil
Ext. Suburban Home - Day. A suburban housewife opens the front door. Two little blond girls, both cute as a button, hold out a cookie apiece on the porch. The housewife smiles and takes one of the cookies. The girls giggle as she chews. The woman's smile fades and her head explodes in a wave of strawberry jam, splattering the little girls as they continue to giggle.
So begins the macabre little story of The Realm, a 15-page screenplay I wrote in the fall of 2000. I was attending a small fine arts college in Miami. My screenwriting professor had written a film produced by Quentin Tarantino. He seemed intrigued by my idea.
In film school, you're taught to boil your movie idea down to a single sentence. Here was mine: It's like Dead Poets Society, except Robin Williams is the Devil. Neat, huh? My professor thought so.
The hero of The Realm, Byron Beauchamp, attends a private school for boys. Byron is unpopular. He writes freakish stories and draws freakish pictures, so the school counselor decides to put him in a class for troubled kids. All the boys in the class have an interest in horror writing. So does their instructor, the Robin Williams/Devil character.
Turns out Williams uses his class to spread evil in the world..The boys' horror stories come true, so the unfortunate happenings in the stories happen to real people. Ultimately Byron rebels and writes a piece to trap Williams in his own game. In the thrilling finale, a train mows down Williams mere moments after Byron leaps off the track to safety.
While sculpting this convoluted story down to a filmable form, I noticed how closely parts of Byron's story resembled my own. Who was this Byron Beauchamp character I had created?
In elementary school, I hung out with a close-knit group of friends. Except we weren't really friends, what we were was extremely cruel to one another - the kind
Was I Byron? Was he me?
of cruelty kids are capable of when they sense weakness. Bullies bullying each other - that was the group. On birthdays, the birthday boy would endure a series of taunts until finally he ran weeping into his house for the comfort of his mother's arms. Nothing was ever simply fun; a layer of meanness saturated everything. I became withdrawn from the group, even feigning sickness. Finally one afternoon I found myself confiding in one of them, two boys sitting in a living room talking like adults. Of course he ratted me out to the rest of the group, and I became something of an outcast.
The next few school years were difficult ones. My former "friends" spread vicious rumors about me; people smiled and pointed a lot. I inevitably I developed revenge fantasies in which I whipped the tar out of them in front of the whole school, and these fed my interests in writing. I recently opened a shoebox and reread some of the stories I wrote. Freakish stuff.
In the final draft of The Realm, I added a
new character, a little boy who follows Byron wherever he goes - an imaginary friend. The presence of this boy disturbs Byron; whenever he appears, Byron begins bleeding from his nose.
In film school, you're taught that the main character of your movie needs an arc, some sort of goal to achieve. Byron's goal is to get rid of this little boy. His writing exorcizes the demons that haunt him, ridding him of the experiences the little boy represents.
Now I think I'm Byron, and he's me, and we're both that little boy.
Ext. Train Tracks - Night. The shadow of the train passes over Byron as he begins to lift himself off the gravel. A little hand reaches down to help him up. Byron takes it, then reaches into his pocket and pulls out a handkerchief. He puts it to his nose but sees there is no blood. The boy smiles at him and walks away. The handkerchief falls to the gravel, and, without looking back, the little boy disappears.