Becoming John Woo-kovich

I posted this on Halloween on the old blog, which I haven't decided whether I will shut it down.

My specialty is running an idea past a friend and if my friend doesn't do cartwheels and promise to name their first-born after me, I leave the idea alone like Ted Nugent at a PETA convention. I ran one past one of the only two screenwriters I knew personally at the time. He was a second-unit director on a couple of independent films and I figured that he had the experience necessary to help me stage it.

It was not that long after "George Lucas in Love" hit the Internet and putting your short film on the web as a calling card was all the rage. This friend, Mr. C., described "G.L.i.L" to me in an email while I had John Woo on the brain at the time because I was writing my own Hong Kong-style bullet ballet.

If you're not familiar with "George Lucas in Love," let the IMDB describe it for you. http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0203523/plotsummary "In 1967, writer's-blocked USC film student George Lucas has only three days to finish his script or he won't graduate. He ends up falling for a girl named Marian (with her hair done up in buns on the sides of her head) who encourages him to write what he knows and feels."

Or if you will, a combination of "Star Wars" and "Shakespeare in Love."

The surrealism of "Being John Malkovich" was still a major influence on me at the time so the next logical step obviously, was "Being John Woo-kovich."

I was going to open the film on a rooftop, a woman hanging laundry on a line and then have her bask in the sun like Nicholas Cage in "Face/Off." Then, plop...plop, "what the?" Have her look up and then, "John, you and these damn doves! Keep them in their cage or you are grounded!"

I would have characters enter John Woo's head by falling in an open manhole cover instead of an elevator stuck between floors as in "Malkovich." Instead of the protagonist and antagonist leaping in the air Woo-style and firing guns at each other at close range, John Woo and his son dueling each other with remotes!

John Woo cranking the TV remote and his son jacking up the stereo. Then, just as in Woo films when both the hero and villain run out of bullets, Woo and son's batteries would run out and they would scramble for the last pack across the room.

So I ran that past my second-unit director friend, Mr. C., in an instant message and yes, the man puts ellipses in his IMs.


Me: We could riff on all the John Woo standards...the dove, the point blank face-off, right?

Mr. C.: Okay.

Me: C'mon man, can't you see it? Instead of winding up on a Jersey turnpike, they would wind up in a restaurant kitchen in Chinatown where a crabby cook chases them out with a cleaver.

Mr. C.: Ah...yeah. I...guess.

Me: Whaddya say? We could shoot it for cheap.

Mr. C.: I don't know, you're more of the John Woo fanboy than me and you know his films much better than I do. Anyway, sorry. I gotta get up early tomorrow and...

Me: Okay man, your loss.

Of course I put it off like one-hundred other projects that did go gently into that good night. The moment passed just like that inexplicable seventh-grade crush on that girl who would cross her eyes at me everytime I said "hi." Somewhere in Chinatown, someone got payback on Noah Cross and there is a crabby cook who isn't so crabby because gwai-lo aren't falling from the sky.