The Audible

It's in my genes, apparently.

My father, before I was even a twinkle in his eye, slapped a Dan Fouts sticker on a notebook and got to work on an idea he had for a feature-length screenplay about a guy that, in today's age, would resemble Jerry Jones of the Dallas Cowboys if he'd invented cell phone batteries and had no remorse for anything but the bottom line.

His handwriting was/is very similar to mine: Forceful and determined. Mine, at times, gets a bit grandiose and wavy. I can take lowercase “g” and bring the swoop across multiple lines.

I transcribed everything he'd written in one sitting on a flight from Chicago to LA, carefully turning the bronze-edged pages. He'd written 7/9 of it and told me how he wanted things to end, so I took it and ran with it. After transcribing it, I edited what he'd written, making notes on what I thought I'd augment or switch up on notepads that, at the time, I wasn't very organized with. I always liked playing paper football as a kid and it turns out to be a good way to organize notes from separate sources that were in a container and not a folder.

It took forever. Garnered the utmost respect for editors subsequent to this project.

After editing what he'd written, I tacked on my thoughts, finished the story and edited it again. I must have had other people edit this, too. From the looks of things, I had a girl edit it for content and readability. Probably did it to impress her. . . and I'm almost positive it didn't work.

I finished this and sent it in for a script contest. From what I recollect, it was accepted and made it’s way in to the first round, but I don’t think it got further than that.

I remember staying up 2 straight nights to spruce it up for the contest. I had all of these visions and ideas that I wanted to add late in the game but with time being a factor, I know the end product wasn't 100% what I wanted it to be.

The day I finished it, I printed it out in my boss's office, sent it in, went out and bought myself a drink. . . At 3PM.

I punctuated this story with a Jack & Coke. Not a bad memory.