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| How My Life
Became a Movie of the Week by Michael Dare  Most of my employers were pleased with my work, but something always went wrong down the line. One film was canceled two weeks before production when Wall Street crashed and the financing disappeared. The director of another project inconveniently died. Then, due to circumstances totally beyond my control, my personal life went down the crapper. As a result, I'm now co-producing a CBS movie-of-the-week.It could have happened to anyone. Several years ago, I became embroiled in a child custody battle from hell. I was trapped in a bureaucratic bind with no chance of escape, suffering endless torture, crawling up the walls with broken fingernails. This left me with my son but no job and no savings. All my editors had deserted me, so returning to journalism seemed impossible.Suddenly, the solution to my problem flashed before me. Why not just turn my life into a movie? It was so simple; why hadn't I thought of it before? Television was full of stories like mine. Hell, I couldn't watch a single day of talk shows without seeing at least one group of unhappy people I belonged in. Extramarital sex, illegitimate children, single fatherhood, betrayal, child abuse, parental neglect, pornography, incest, drugs, prostitution, draconian government interference, false charges, subtle manipulation, kidnapping, courtroom drama, rare diseases, surprise births, and sudden death, my family's got them all somewhere in the family tree. Maybe you are not so lucky as to have such a vast wealth of misfortune to draw upon. Chin up. It's not too late for circumstances to draw you to the brink of disaster. Hang out in the mid-west long enough and you're sure to end up in a flood. Stay in California if you are into earthquakes or weird religions (though Texas seems to have momentarily co-opted the whole cult thing). Wanna get raped? Just dress up as a choirboy. Don't worry. If you live long enough, something bad is bound to happen to you. Then, surprise, you're that much closer to becoming a media star. Obviously some personal tragedies translate to the screen more effectively than others. Many MOWs start in the news department. Having Jay Leno make a joke about you doesn't hurt your chances of a sale, but that doesn't mean your story won't make it just because it never passed the lips of a talk show host. If one were to go by the experiences of the single individual who has been the subject of the most movies of the week, it would seem that the most effective way to turn your life into an MOW is to marry a United States Senator who becomes president, then gets assassinated. There have been "Son of Sam" laws that prevent criminals from capitalizing on their crimes, but many states have declared them unconstitutional. Still, its recommended that you be a victim rather than a perpetrator. It's possible to lead an interesting life without breaking the law. After all, if your script is "based on a true story," you're admitting you did it. How will you be able to spend all that money in jail? Of course leading a tragic life is only the first step. All those years of honing my screenwriting craft did not adequately prepare me for the actual act of turning my life into a movie. It demanded an enormous change of perspective. After all, if I knew how to give my life proper dramatic structure, I would have lived it that way. Thank God I kept a journal. Anyone who plans on capitalizing on their own misfortune had better start writing it down while the misery is still fresh. There's nothing worse than being in the middle of a pitch meeting and not being able to remember whether it was your right or left leg that was caught under the tractor. Let your journal become your psychiatrist, allowing you to repeat past mistakes, learn from them, and sometimes actually correct them. Like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, you can rewrite your life over and over again, simply to get it down on paper. I was tired of telling everyone my story. Through some form of reverse miracle, I hadn't made the news, so it was up to me to fill friends in on the details, which were endless. I took my journal - that rambling, sometimes incoherent jumble of facts - and gave them shape. |
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