The Mo(u)rning After A Dead Dream
This story begins several years ago. I was 16 (2008), and I had a dream — a really funny dream. Upon sharing it with my friends at school the next day, I realized that the story was well-received, and that I wasn’t the only one who found it hilarious. I took the dream, put it in my pocket and held onto it for a few years.
When I ended up in film school (2010), I held out for the entire program until we got to the last class — Producing. Each team had to pitch a film, cast it, crew up, decide on locations, shooting styles, storyboards, budget, the whole nine yards. I thought, “This. This is the one I’m going to take the lead on.” I gingerly pulled my high school dream out of my pocket and showed it, in cupped hands, to a few classmates. They got right on board and after a month of R&D, we nailed that pitch. Even better, I had a solid 51-page PDF document that I could use as a jumping-off point for when I really wanted to write the screenplay of my once-dream, now-logline.
Fast-forward a few years (2013). Things were quiet in my post-production career, so I decided to take on a Master’s degree in writing. After all, how can I write a screenplay if I don’t really know how to write a screenplay? I already knew what I wanted my thesis to be. It seemed perfect that my *brilliant* idea would get the opportunity to be reviewed and manicured by not only my experienced teachers, but also my target-audience classmates. I wanted ALL the feedback. I wanted all the suggestions. Please, tell me how to make this better. Help me grow this idea into something tangible and beautiful.
As I watched my idea come to life, page-by-page, assignment-by-assignment, I dreamt of my promising career, my directorial debut, my role in the industry as a successful and admirable feminist badass who knows how to make shit happen from the ground up. I meditated for hours on the relationships of my characters, how to approach sensitive topics, the clichés to avoid. I put my heart and soul into that screenplay. I cried on the train at least three times a week, under the pressure of a full-time job, a full-time degree and a relentless passion for this project.
Upon graduating (2014), I had a real thing. A real screenplay. It was only a third draft, still many, many drafts from the final. It had major holes, tons of tweaks, maybe even whole characters and scenes to be removed, but it was real and it was mine. From an idea in my pocket, to a 51-page research paper, to a 110-page screenplay… like a six-year-old baby that I conceived from my dreams. It was called, “Jane the Virgin”, a female-driven stoner comedy about a high school girl who gets miraculously impregnated by the Holy Spirit and is going to birth “the next Jesus fucking Christ.”
I hope you just did a double take, because that’s what I did when my actress friend told me that she had recently auditioned for a pilot called “Jane the Virgin” that got picked up by the CW in early 2014.
I was so confused. I shook my head back and forth and said, “No… no, you’re thinking of the sample I sent you from my screenplay, ‘Jane the Virgin’.” She said, “Mmmm, nope. It’s a show about a girl who gets pregnant as a virgin in high school and has a crazy Spanish family.”
My stomach dropped to my butt, my heart started racing and tears were streaming down my face before I could get any other words out.
A resilient person may have shrugged it off. They may have said, “My story is different and actually better than the one that they have. I’ll change some key details and release it anyway when the time comes. When MY time comes.”
A resilient person may have gone back to the drawing board. “This idea is really good, but I bet there’s a way to go all the way back to the start and rebuild, while keeping the themes, nuances and relationships alive — just under a different context!”
A resilient person may have taken out their notebook filled with brilliant ideas, crossed off the one on the top of the list and taken a dive into the next 10 that were just as good.
What did I do? I waited. I waited for production to stop. I waited for a main actress or actor to contract some bizarre disease. I waited for the rights or the funding to get pulled. None of these things happened. I watched as “Jane The Virgin” started popping up in my timeline, in the subways, all OVER the fucking mall. Gina Rodriguez’s unsuspecting face of adorable concern was plastered on a pink background everywhere, mocking me with a tagline that was better than the one I made for my film. I created an event on my iCal for the show’s premiere. I ignored it when it did. I waited for the reviews. My sister, who watched it for me, told me it was nothing like my story and that I should just keep working on it. But I waited.
To be honest, I’m still waiting. I can blame my career and busy life all I want, but the truth is that I’m scared. I’m scared that I don’t have any other stories in me that are worth telling or that I’ll go through years of devotion to another project only to be flopped over once again. I’m scared that there are no good ideas left, and that anything I come up with is just a thinly veiled version of someone else’s secondhand garbage version of a former masterpiece. It’s a downward spiral kind of thought, and it hasn’t left room for much resiliency.
This piece is part of my recovery. I’m done standing on my soapbox and childishly telling everyone, “That thing was mine first!” I need to stop attaching the success of my career with the success of my first-EVER screenplay. It’s time to kill my darlings and move on.
** I am aware that the CW’s “Jane the Virgin” is based on the Venezuelan telanovela, “Juana la Virgen”. I have never seen or heard of it before this year.
