In order to fully wax poetic on the movie That Will Be, I feel that it's only fair-nay-necessary for me to (briefly) expand upon the movie...That Almost Was.
*ahem* The story of "She's in the Details" starts in 2002 when a much purer (naive) version of me existed. A bumbling boob who was convinced that an unrequited crush (from High School, for God's sake) was "The Real Thing", this idiot (dolt), this moron (fool), this handsome fellow (deluded), after a series of (post-High School) misadventures decided that his burning secret had to come out! It had to be said! I had to come clean! I'm breaking the rules of tense! Mistake. Rejection has always been a form of motivation for me. And this time was no different. I endeavored, as always, to turn my pain into prose, and my weapon of choice (at the time and forever onward) was screenwriting. I split my personality into four less-than-equal parts and sent them on a road trip toward Peace of Mind...only it didn't work, of course. Not because of the story, but because once I had the four characters-all guys-in the car and got them talking, I realized I had a problem: They all sounded like a bunch of chicks. What does that say about me? However, rather than being discouraged, I was delighted, as the challenge of changing the main characters to women offered much more than simple cathartic prose. A variety of ideas were brainstormed, rejected, then executed and in 2003 I completed my first draft of a script that was "Documentary of a Car Ride" (What can I say? I was young). This script, completed in 9 days (true story) and running just over 100 pages (a respectable length) featured some of the worst dialogue ever written for women (seriously) inside of a convoluted, melodramatic plot scheme: 4 women go on a road trip to rediscover their friendship, only to be conned and robbed by a hitch hiker (who's on a journey to be an actress? what?!) -she blows up their car and leaves them alive, but reunited, on the side of the road. And what's crazier? People liked it. Bad plotting, dialogue n' all, folks took the story and the project grew wings. Locations were set up, Actors made plans (to come down from as far north as Canada, for free) and the project fell through, mercifully (in retrospect), and the script was sent to the shelf...where it sat (more or less) until 2007. A friend of mine, intrigued by the roots of the story, campaigned for a re-write. I fell in love with The Girls again and a re-write was done. As a test, I offered the new draft to my wife (then girlfriend) who read it, handed it back, smiled at me and said, "Not yet, hon." And so then, another rewrite, from page one, something more dramatic this time began. I subtracted, added, maintained until a new story took shape. And amidst this new beginning came an investor, let's call him, for anonymity's sake, 'Dad', who offered me $20,000 dollars to fund the project! Unfortunately, our 'investor' ultimately decided that he'd rather fund the opening of a beach front bicycle shop (you simply cannot make things like this up, they have to happen naturally)...and the project fell through, painfully (in retrospect), causing a breakdown at the script stage. I stalled 15 pages into the second act and the script was sent to the shelf...where it sat (more or less) until... 2009. Last year, when the implosion of another project (whose very existence was inspired by the implosion of SITD script) prompted me to go back to where it all started. Time and distance gave me the clarity to finish the story that I think I wanted to tell since those first nine days in '03. And when my wife (then my fiancée) handed me back the newly (finally) completed draft in August of last year, she smiled, then looked at me thoughtfully and said, "I think you've got something here." Robert Hagans Writer/Producer/Director "She's in the Details"
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Robert Hagans
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