In 1999, a small fantasy style story sparked my imagination. I had written several scripts, short stories and novellas but had never tackled a full novel or should I say, I had never tackled a Tolkien-esque style world and wasn’t about to, (at 25,) try. As that year of visualization came on, I sketched drawings, stories, maps almost everything. It was like a middle earth on water. Star Wars with no technology and the planets were islands. It was mythical yet feasible. It was a rather cool “elaborate” concept with some real great stories coming out of it.

With a territorial war going on in my story, I focused on this small group of poor villagers on a neutral island and with the young inheritor of this village’s people desire to do something with his life and make something better for the township, he inadvertently changes the course of history. Granted, this Hero’s Journey Resolution would not be short enough to end in a three hour film so how would I get the story out? I had not done enough drawing after changing over mediums to do a graphic novel or comic book out of it. I wasn’t about to tackle a novel with no mentor around to guide me and I was young and was not about to share this great idea with a with anybody that may, be able to give me assistance on this elaborate, fictional pilgrimage.

Finally, I realized, the only thing I could do is put it into script form and see what happens. I would ignore the “1999” Screenplay Format Standards” that everybody so over worshipped as young screenwriters and just write as long winded and long paged as I damn felt. The first script was my favorite, of course. The story had already been laid out on 750 index cards so I wasn’t winging it at all. The script came to a whopping 310 pages and that was just the first story. That calculates out on the screen to about 3 hours and 50 minutes, (all the action included.) This would never do, so I began to pick the story apart and what I realized as I chopped away page by page was that the movie was actually not that long. The bulk of the script was descriptions and character profiles. In fact it was great description that carried into the story, set up and visualization of this world. The unfortunate part of all this was that, (being that I had never made a name for myself as a writer,) not one agent in town would look at so much as the cover page of a 310 script. So I chopped and chopped. Four revisions later, I had unsuccessfully weeded it down to 121 pages. The reason I say ‘unsuccessfully’ is the story I loved was not there anymore. I had to cut out so much description that I knew that anybody that could not borrow my brain to read my script wouldn’t really see the movie playing out.

I scrapped it for the time being and moved on to some ‘more simple’ movies. I said when I was “in”—I’d pitch the original. Years later, here I am still thinking about the story and trying to figure out how I am going to finish what I started. Epic was going to have to be completed or I would rest well at night. All I have is ONE hard copy of the chopped salad version of the script, my journal, sketches and maps I had done. No digital copy. If I do this I will have to completely retype the story and try to relive all those great vivid ideas I got several years ago… For the floppy disc this movie is on is laying to waste in some landfill in Chino, California, I’m sure.