Sixteen Candles, ever heard of it? 1984? Molly Ringwald? Michael Anthony Hall? Most of you have probably at least heard of it.
For me, as a fifteen year old at the time (yes, I do realize that I’m actually dating myself here), John Hughes’ classic film was probably one of the better teen movies from the 80′s, about what it was like to be a teenager in high school. Maybe even one of the best.
Michael Schoeffling was an actor in the movie. He plays Molly Ringwald’s love interest/obsession, a sensitive jock named Jake Ryan.
I met Jake–I mean Michael–a long time ago. It was over Labor Day weekend back in 1986.
Me at 17 years old, standing outside The Excelsior Hotel in Manhattan, where I stayed for my one night in NYC.
Michael and his manager, Davien Littlefield, paid for my train ticket to the Big Apple as well as my hotel room. They had expressed a strong interest in my very first (and crappy) screenplay entitled On the Edge of a Cloud.
Michael Schoeffling with his manager Davien Littlefield.
In a nutshell, it’s about four Americans who go on a remote backpacking trip north of the Arctic Circle in Alaska.
While on their ‘vacation’, the continental U.S. is completely destroyed by a fictitious Arab country. They only learn of this horrifying truth after they encounter a Russian soldier who’s defected from his company (after America is gone, the Soviets send over thousands of troops to secure the Alaskan pipeline).
In the end, in the middle of what was the Cold War, the Americans and Russian learn how accept and love each other. A post-apocalyptic Breakfast Club, if you will. Anyway, that’s the 30 second version of my first attempt at being a screenwriter.
I’d also like to take a moment here (okay, maybe a couple of minutes) to explain exactly how I got started in this business in the first place.
In high school, as a sophomore, I began to have an inexplicable interest in the end of the world, specifically, The Book of Revelation. Not the Bible, per se, but The Book of Revelation, the last part of the ‘good book’. I began to read everything about it that I could get my hands on.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, The Book of Revelation basically summarizes how the world is going to end, according to the Man Upstairs. I definitely DO NOT want to start a religious debate here, or anywhere else, for that matter.
But let’s just say that as a teenager, what I read was so absolutely horrifying and disturbing to me, and that’s putting it mildly.
That year I had the unfortunate experience (or fortunate, depending on your point of view) of watching a movie at our local theater entitled The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey. It was based on his book of the same name.
After watching it, I ran out and picked up a half dozen of his other books and read them cover to cover. I actually remember playing sick (sorry mom!) and staying home from school one day, just so I could finish one of them.
After all, if the world was going to end (which at that time I was absolutely certain that it would) I had to at least be informed so I could let my friends and loved ones know (as delicately as possible) about how to prepare for Armageddon.
I remember being at a party at my uncle’s house in Orland Park, Illinois, shortly after being brainwashed. I was sitting alone, completely baffled, as I watched a dozen family members laugh, eat, and talk like there was no tomorrow. . .
If they only knew, I thought. I didn’t know what to do. I knew I was right and they were all so completely clueless. I wanted to jump up on the couch and start screaming at the top of my lungs; I needed to let them know that all of this would soon be over. But I couldn’t get even a single word out. Not one.
So I decided to do the next best thing and started to cry instead. Twenty five years ago but I distinctly remembered that much, crying as I sat alone at a family get-together. I was quick to wipe away each tear before anyone knew what was happening, regaining my composure after a few minutes.
In hindsight I considered myself lucky, fortunate that I was able to hide the fact that I might actually be going crazy from my family. Appointments with a counselor or therapist, possibly even medication, none of those things were what I needed.
What I needed, desperately, was some kind of outlet, a place where I could (a cliche, I know) take these messed up feelings that I had and channel them into something more positive. That went on for a year without any end or outlet in sight.
Was I depressed? I’m not sure. Probably. Disturbed? Most definitely. As far as I’m concerned, at the time meds probably would’ve helped me–or at least they couldn’t have hurt.
The rest of my high school existence seemed like a blur but that particular period of my life, my ‘year of living aimlessly’, I definitely remembered. There would be no prom or homecoming dances for me. And no real dates, for that matter, as difficult as that may be for some of you to believe. . .
Anyway, in all seriousness, at the time all I wanted to do, quite frankly, was to make it to forty, the Big 4-0 (mission accomplished, by the way). I just wanted to live; I didn’t want the world to end, regardless of how crappy it seemed most of the time.
Senior year I graduated early, in January. I was just sixteen years old.
That’s a longer story for another day but the abbreviated version: one of the deans, Mr. Yeates, (who also happened to be my english teacher at the time) threatened to punch me in the face (his words, not mine) if I didn’t graduate early. What a deal!
Not to mention that he would also suspend me for ten days for ‘the stunt’, as he called it, that I had managed to pull off a year earlier (it still boggles my mind to this day that the rest of the senior class seemed to know of the prank I had pulled, on the last day of school the year before, the moment after I had done it).
So I did exactly what he asked of me: I graduated early from high school.
Soon after graduation, I ended up working as a clerk at Krochs and Brentano’s, a now-defunct bookstore at the local mall. On the Edge of a Cloud originally began as a novel.
But at sixteen years old, with no real life experience under my belt (sorry, high school doesn’t count) it didn’t take long for me to realize that my fledgling novel was slowly turning into an absolute pile of crap. My good friend and co-worker at the time, Randy, suggested I turn it into a screenplay.
“Screenplay? What in the world do I know about writing a movie?”
Then he reminded me that we work in a book store. So I picked up a couple books on how to write a feature-length screenplay and got to work.
Knowing absolutely nothing about backpacking in Alaska, being a soldier in the Soviet army, or trying to survive nuclear winter (impossible, I hate to break it to you), I found myself reading several books on each subject. I quickly learned that I absolutely loved the process of researching, even before the advent of the Internet.
Over the years I’ve discovered that research tends to grow the story, drive the plot, and in most cases has an amazing way of shaping my characters and making them more credible.
By the start of the summer of 1986, I had finished a final draft of my first screenplay. I was ecstatic, really believing and hoping that maybe this could be the start of something great.
It was only then, after nearly six months of work, that reality finally decided to rear its ugly head. All my naivety quickly vanished in a puff of smoke, replaced with the sinking realization that I knew absolutely no one in the movie business.
Before I could even begin, I was dead in the water.
(To be continued. . .)