My filmmaking saga vol.1
This is how I started Life Space.
Recently a colleague of mine told me: It pains me to see you working here. This acquaintance had just read a novella of mine, thought I had some talent. When my contract with Amazon ended, he came to me and said: I hope I see you again but the truth is I’ll pray for your side projects to succeed, this is how reality should be.
It was nice of him. What he didn’t get is I spend 7 years trying to make it into filmmaking. Seven years as a gaffer, a location manager, a grip, you name a position there’s a fair chance I’ve done it at least once on a movie set. Seven years I was dirt poor, too poor to go have a drink with people and make them like me enough to hire me again.
At least through all of this I had a partner who supported me no matter what. She had a breakdown. I stopped movies. I decided to try and put money on the side by being the clue collar I know I always will be. A production company called me to move their stuff in new offices, I told them I wrote. I am now a janitor for them. If everything goes to plan, I’ll make my first movie, and they’ll produce the second one. This is how everything’ll be remembered if it goes smooth. Basile had some sort of talent a producer saw his first short and produced the second.
This is not how real life goes. The truth is, I failed at being a gaffer, I failed at filmmaking, I failed in comicbook. I failed in every fucking possible way.
This colleague I spoke about earlier, I once wanted to tell him about the first comic book I wrote. And I realized what I thought was the first was actually the second. When I was fourteen I wrote an entire episode of the Crow, the James O’Barr creation. This project failed because I wanted one of my friend to be the illustrator, problem was he was an untreated schyzophrenic with a heroin addiction. There’s no grudge, this is life is all.
The first time I wrote seriously was four years ago, I wrote a spin-off to a French series. Took me one month to put down one hundred pages. Sent it to the publisher, who responded somewhat nicely, had a chitchat with the IP owner — because the publisher hinted at this — and then I dropped the ball. I assure you, this script can still stands on its own leg, but I dropped it.
Back to back I then wrote three complete comic book scripts. The first one, my girlfriend who then worked in an animation studio found me an illustrator for. We developped the whole thing, he was talented, he believed in me, yet I didn’t see the sheer indolence within him. I tried to shake him up, but I was so poor. Still we put the whole thing up, I gave it mano à mano to the publisher THREE TIMES, and the CEO finally asked for our pages to get coloured. It took my illustrator four months to colour five pages and the publisher never spoke to us again.
Second script I wrote? I tried for at least four illustrators. Some declined because of reasons. Some because the publisher I wanted to work with didn’t pay enough (they were farer ahead in their career than me) other just left sail one day without saying anything.
My last comic-book, I searched the internet for an illustrator, we worked for two years, making character sheets, cover, storyboard all of that. And then my illustrator just quit, although he first found himself a replacement.
This is the history of my failure in script writing… In comic book form.
A while ago, I found a post on Facebook where a producer asked for screenwriter who would be interested in developping a certain pitch. Trying to impress this person, I wrote a treatment of the pilot in 48 hours, sent him. Our first meeting went well, he liked what I did, hence why he introduced me to my colleagues. We weren’t all on the same page. Producer wanted a comedy, I had tried to make one despite me being a horror writer, but my fellow creators had only written drama.
Believe it or not, I actually took some of our ideas and tried to build a coherent storyline out of it. Hence why the producer asked me to become the lead screenwriter on his project. But there were no money, no contract so everybody just left one day.
If you were to look at my scenario files right now, you’d found four entries. This pilot, a series I wrote for another company, the first short film I wrote whom ending cost way too much according to my then-girlfriend and a set decorator. And then there’s Life Space.
Before January 2022 rolls in, I’ll finish this flick. Before I made it, I failed one tv series, three comic book projects and you could not count the number of rejections I’ve gotten in plain fiction writing.
It’ll never be I just made a good movie and a producer found me.
I failed and I failed and I failed.
May I succeed just this one time.
Stay tuned, for the next French Fights will be about Brotherhood of the Wolves!
