Horror In Hollywood Short Story Contest: “I Will Not Read Your Haunted Script” by Patrick Barb (2nd place)

I Will Not Read Your Haunted Script 

By Patrick Barb

tw: violence, language, death

(In the spirit of Josh Olson)

I will not read your haunted script.

Be brief. That’s one of the first big lessons you need to absorb if you want to become a screenwriter. Any books you read, classes you taken, overpriced workshops from hack gurus you attend, if they don’t mention “the economy of words,” then ask for your money back. Now. Producers, actors, directors, all those folks above our paygrade, they barely read anything. So getting to the point with what they do read is essential.

So, when I say “I will not read your haunted script,” that single declarative sentence should do the heavy lifting of a conversation I don’t want to have and you probably don’t want to experience.

Then again, you’re still here. You’re standing in my foyer with a stack of pages bound together with two dull brass brads that resemble the worn-down doorknobs of an antique house. I can smell the heat radiating from paper freshly-ejected out of a printer, so I’m guessing you stopped at the FedEx Kinko’s around the corner. 

Look, I’m sorry you drove all the way out here to the Valley. Believe me, I’ve lived in your shoes, doing the whole “desperate neophyte writer” thing. I appreciate the initiative and I hope my dogs, wherever they’ve gotten off to, didn’t scare you too bad. 

I know why you came here to see me. I know why you insist that out of the millions of writers, wannabes, and was-once-and-never-agains in Hollywood, I’m the only screenwriter who can appreciate your script and the fact that it’s “haunted.” 

But now, because you’ve come out all this way and because you’ve got me here alone--practically cornered, I have to play the bad guy. Again. Lucky me.

But the truth is, you’re the asshole here. Yeah, that’s right. Let’s kick this conversation up to a PG-13 because I need you to understand the seriousness of the offense you’re committing. You’ve already told me again and again that your screenplay’s haunted. I see you wiping sweat from your brow and your right leg’s shaking slightly. But I won’t offer you a bottled water or a seat, because either one of those actions might get interpreted as an invitation to ask again about reading your damned haunted script.

And I won’t read your haunted script.

You think that because I wrote the first script for that first movie in “The Franchise,” that horror film series so notorious I’m forced to “Scottish Play” it and leave unnamed, that I have some insight into possessed, cursed, haunted, or whatever the hell you want to call them, scripts, films, et cetera, et cetera. But I don’t.

I mean, if you are the type of person to believe in Hollywood curses and the existence of haunted screenplays, then you already know that first movie has ended up dead as a doornail. Maybe dead-er in the case of our director Cam, with that whole “experimental submarine imploding from deep-sea pressure on a livestream at the Oscars” thing. 

And if you know all that, then you also know that I’m the film’s last survivor--crew or cast.

I’m a writer. I’m the credited writer on that first film in “The Franchise.” We weren’t aiming for high art or cult status appeal when we made it. We conceived it as another late 80s “gore, tits and ass, and blood and guts” flick. We certainly didn’t think we’d jumpstart a movie series, clothes, posters, cute little stuffed versions of our masked maniac, and even an ill-advised Saturday morning cartoon series and tie-in breakfast cereal. Folks like you think all that success stemmed from my screenplay. That’s if you believe everything you see from the Writer’s Guild arbitration committee.

By the look of you, especially the absence of the blue-black bags of sleeplessness you can see around my eyes, I’m guessing you’re too young to have seen the first movie when it came out in the theaters. So, I’m thinking you either had a big brother or sister who rented it and you snuck out of bed to peek at it behind your living room couch. Or you waited until later when you could buy a re-released special edition on Blu-Ray. 

You don’t wanna tell me which one it was? That’s fine. But you have seen the movie. Of course. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here…at my house…asking me to read your haunted script.

And I won’t read your haunted script.

You’re probably thinking, “The parts with the ‘old woman,’ that’s where haunting occurs. They’re so dialogue-driven that there’s no way they didn’t originate in the screenplay.”

But let me tell you, if you wanna make it here in Hollywood, prepare yourself for disappointment. Do you know how many scripts--original scripts, ideas from my own brain--I’ve written since that first produced one? Hundreds. I used to print them out and keep stacks in my office. But it got hard to maneuver around the paper mess. Now I just save them onto flash drives. So I’ve got drawers full of these rectangular metal things and no clue which scripts are on them.

The point is, I never stopped working on my own ideas. Coming up with characters, conflicts, building these worlds…I love that shit. But ask me how many of those hundreds of scripts that I’ve written got made into movies.

Zero. But you knew that, didn’t you? Bet you have my whole IMDB profile memorized. 

So, yeah. 

You write a screenplay and everyone thinks it’s haunted. Everyone. I found out the hard way that no one wanted to buy anything original from me, because they were afraid it might be another haunted script. And I had to go through three agents and five managers before that lesson sunk in.

Of course, the residuals from the first “Franchise” movie and the “story by” credits for the sequels and that remake they tried, all of that, comes to me in checking account deposits of varying amounts. Plus, I do get brought in for punch-ups and last minute ghostwriting on projects already in the pipelines at the studios. I’m a reliable old hand, especially to rosy-cheeked junior studio execs fresh out of Stanford Business School or wherever.

But I’m never credited. I write, I work, but no one ever knows about it. They make me sign these NDAs. Some people try and guess. My writer friends--the guys I play poker with once a month--they’re always trying to pin some new horror cult favorite or superhero blockbuster on me. I’d say they’re about 50/50 in terms of their accuracy.

Still, with no new credits to my name…it’s like I don’t exist out here. It’s like, I might as well be dead, as far as this town is concerned. 

Sorry, sorry. I’ve become a melancholy middle-aged fuck. I either started drinking too early or I haven’t drank enough yet today. I can never tell the difference.

The point is…I’m probably drunk and I still will not read your haunted script.

So don’t think about leaving it by the front door or slipping it into my mailbox or placing it under the windshield wipers of my car. I’ve seen it all. If I find it, I’ll throw it away. Or burn it. 

I’ve done it before. What, do you think you’re the first person to bring a supposedly haunted screenplay to me? It started with friends passing me their scripts--the ones where they wrote about all the messed-up, weird shit echoing back from whatever past drug trips they’d embarked upon. 

“Bro, think I got a haunted script here?” 

And I’d smile, take the print-out or open the PDF attachment, and read. They’re my friends after all. It’s not like I could say “no” to my friends.

Next, the production companies and even some studios came calling. They were all looking to replicate the success of “The Franchise,” big enough so you could ignore any accompanying curses, assuming they didn’t directly affect you or your bottom line. If a few creatives had to die under mysterious circumstances along the way? Who cares?! UCLA cranks ‘em out fresh and palatably edgy every year anyway.

I had an agent who kept a whole separate folder in her email for requests to have me read this or that allegedly haunted screenplay. She’d say, “I don’t think there are even that many dead people around to haunt that many scripts. I bet they’re killing people just to get more ghosts to haunt the damned things.”

Starting out, I tried to read everything I got sent. I felt like I had to read my “friend’s” scripts out of obligation and the “studio” scripts because I wanted work. But it was a slog. Eventually, the friends would stop calling after I’d tell them I didn’t think they had a haunted script. They thought I was holding back on them. Like I wanted to be the only “haunted screenplay” guy in town.

It was almost the same story with the work-for-hire “haunted” scripts. I’d head into these meetings with well-tanned development executives, and I’d sit on their comfy leather sofas, sipping from their complementary water bottles. And I’d start my pitch, saying, “First, I don’t think this script is haunted. But I did notice some structural and character motivation issues…”

They’d cut me off around that point and send me on my way. They didn’t want me. They wanted the assurance of a profitable haunting.

But I couldn’t--I can’t--give that to them. I can’t even  point them in the general vicinity of ghosts. Do you know why?

I didn’t write the haunted parts of that script.

There you go. Hopefully that juicy tidbit makes the drive out here worth it. I mean, I’m sure you bought a copy of the screenplay book they put out. Real nice binding on that thing, right? And so, I bet you have that scene memorized. Because that’s all everyone ever talks about. We’re in the middle of a scene where our masked killer is somehow using a chainsaw underwater to hack off the kicking, flailing limbs of some co-eds, and then…BAM, we…                     

#

CUT TO:

EXT. COTTAGE - MAGIC HOUR

A simple gingerbread-style cottage in the woods, surrounded by tall pine trees. Like something from a fairy tale illustration. An OLD WOMAN whistles inside her home. We follow the sound of whistling through the open FRONT DOOR…

INT. COTTAGE - CONTINUOUS

We move past the modest FOYER and into a sparsely-furnished LIVING ROOM. The Old Woman sweeps dust across her hardwood floor. She wears a black housedress and a red kerchief tied haphazardly around gray hair that resembles steel wool.

OLD WOMAN

He’s coming. He’s coming.

We must prepare. He’ll be here soon.

#

God, you’ve got that hungry, but worshipful look in your eyes listening to me talk about that scene. It’s not the first time I’ve seen that look, believe me. And that’s just the beginning of the scene. The movie spends some twenty minutes following the “Old Woman,” as she’s so creatively named, as she cleans her little grandmotherly cottage in the woods and talks about this mysterious “He” whose arrival is imminent. Twenty minutes of screen-time! In a horror movie!

Any horror flick worth its salt should be a solid 80, 90 minutes of running time. Tops. No one wants to be scared longer than that--because then it starts feeling a little too much like life. So, stop and ask yourself, would I really write a script that spent nearly a quarter of its length on cryptic, folksy weirdness that had absolutely nothing to do with the plot of my cheapie, cash-in slasher flick?

#

EXT. COTTAGE - FRONT PORCH - NIGHT

The Old Woman leans against the guardrail enclosing her front porch. The weathered board under her feet are nearly stripped of paint. The MOON hangs full and low in the sky. So low, it almost looks like she could reach up and touch it.

We hear footsteps O.C. Someone approaches from deep in the woods. The rustle of something that sounds like pages being turned accompanies the arrival of

#

Then, BANG, they jump cut to the movie’s virginal heroine discovering the dead bodies of her fellow camp counselors, all mutilated in various gruesome and creative ways. Most of those death scenes got cut because of the damned cottage scene.

And no one even knew until the first screening--the big showing to all our investors, so they could be sure they hadn’t wasted their kids’ future college tuitions or whatever. I couldn’t speak when the credits finished rolling. No one could. Don’t believe that shit you see in the DVD special features. None of that “spontaneous applause breaking out” B.S. is remotely true. What happened is we all stood up and filed out of the theater. One by one, no one saying a goddamn word.

Then we went over to the bar they’d rented for the after-party. I remember pushing open the double doors at the front, and then stepping into another world. Like, I’d crossed over into another timeline where my screenplay hadn’t been completely hijacked by an injection of some random artsy-fartsy crap. Everyone was hugging and high-fiving, ten sheets to the wind and only ten minutes into drinking. 

“Brilliant.” “Revolutionary.” “Genre redefining.”

All that nonsense they said.

I went up to Cam and our editor Elise Joyner, asking them “What the hell happened?” Cam insisted he’d never shot that footage. And Elise said she’d never cut it in to the print. Getting that much out of them was tough. They both looked doped-up, half-dreaming. Stars in their eyes, you might say. I left them to make my way around the bar, nursing a Jack and Coke and asking everyone from our crew if they had any idea where the scene had come from. No one knew anything about it. But they were sure as hell happy to claim it.

And, yeah, I’ve read all the fan theories that’ve come along in the intervening years. There’s the group that thinks the Old Woman’s supposed to be my masked killer’s mother. But, c’mon, I know Sean Cunningham. You think I’m gonna rip off what he did with those “Jason” movies? No way. And then, there’s the people who think it’s a whole Jesus thing. Jesus! Let me tell you, I wish it was. God knows (heh), I’d love to have the kind of notoriety that comes with making a movie that pisses off my old Sunday School teachers and their ilk.

Finally, there are people who claim it’s their mom or grandma or whomever as the Old Woman. But she’s never playing a part. “Oh no,” they insist, “that’s her. She’s being herself.”

I’d get tear-stained fan letters, folks thanking me for including their Mee-Maw or Mama-Lou or Gin-Gin in my screenplay and conjuring her back from the spirit realm along with my fellow filmmakers so she could prepare her loved ones for…

Who knows?

When the movie took off and everyone kept talking about the Old Woman scene and my haunted script, the producers dug up an alleged copy of my final draft. Except someone added in that scene. I sure as hell hadn’t. But it looked like I had, and we’re talking about Hollywood where the way things look will win out over the way things are each and every day.

So, it became my haunted script. I carry that with me for the rest of my life, for the rest of whatever I patchwork together into a career. And I hate that. I hate it.

So, no, I won’t read your haunted script.

You know what, we’re done here. Let me get this door for you and you can get on your way. And I’ll get back to not reading your haunted script or anyone else’s.

Step right this…

What the hell? Where did-- There’s not supposed to be a…

#

FADE IN:

INT. FOREST - NIGHT

The moon remains where it’s always been, hanging fat and heavy among the pines. The WRITER, a middle-aged man whose receding hairline, sweat pants, flip-flops, and stretched-out Star Wars t-shirt tell us everything we need to know about him, turns at the sound of a DOOR closing behind him with a CLICK.

WRITER

The hell?

But there’s no door. No bungalow. 

Just trees, trees, and more trees.

#

Stop it. Stop whatever this is right now. I’m going to…

#

With nowhere else to go, the Writer walks ahead, deeper into the night woods. Pages of the screenplay he now holds in his hands rustle back and forth, like tall blades of grass caught by an autumn wind. He looks down and we ZOOM IN on the script page.

WRITER (READING)

His lips move with the words, as he realizes 

he’s the one reading. He’s the one speaking 

the scene into…

#

Existence. This is real? How is this real?

And where did you go? Hold on, I think I see something up there. Wait, is that the…

#

EXT. COTTAGE - MOMENTS LATER

After a break in the trees, the Writer steps onto the land where the Old Woman’s cottage sits. Her simple dwelling is lit up and sparkling clean.

The FRONT DOOR is already open and the Old Woman stands in the doorway.

OLD WOMAN

He’s here.

The Writer flips through the pages of this haunted script. The one he refused to read. The one he wanted nothing to do with. 

But now, something compels him to keep going. Leaves crunch under his feet. He’s desperate for a way out, some MacGuffin or Chekhov’s gun set up for the final pay off. But he’s the only writer here, and he’s got no idea what happens next.

He’s on the bottom step. Three more steps to go and he’ll be on the porch. The Old Woman holds a hand out for him to take.

The Writer can’t look into her eyes. He won’t look into her eyes. He looks down and flips to the last page.

#

Nothing. There’s nothing here. It’s not even finished! You brought me a work-in-progress.

#

CLOSE-UP: But he’s wrong. There is something, right at the top of the last page.

FADE OUT.

END