Vaguely Based on a True Story: a Book Trailer

by Ian Carlos Crawford

In 2014, with the combined effort of every person involved, I made a book trailer for my unpublished manuscript, Vaguely Based on a True Story. It was a labor of love and recorded over the course of one very very long weekend.

I started writing the book in 2013, while working as a nighttime office manager at The New School. I had plenty of free time at night and thought writing about my second job, working at the Museum of Sex, would make for a fun non-fiction book. I got about 30 pages in when I realized, “Nah, there’s no story here.” A lot of scenes without a plot does not make a book, that makes for a Tumblr post.

So, being the big gay nerd I am, I made the plot supernatural. I pulled elements from things I loved from Twin Peaks to The Shining to Donnie Darko. I created a dead ex-boyfriend character named Brendan based on an Australian musician I was a fan of, Brendan Maclean. I amped up the craziness of the bosses at the job. The main character was suddenly being stalked by a knife wielding man in a fox mask. I added a drag queen as a coworker. I even gave the main character a dog because I really wanted a dog. The main character was even named Ian until the 3rd or 4th draft when I decided that’d be a little too weird — so, I changed his name to the name of my childhood pug, Adam.

After about 879 edits, I decided I was done with the book in 2014. My then roommate/best friend, Kevin, who works in lighting for TV/film brought up the idea of making a short movie for my book. He’d read it and really liked it — I knew nothing about film or lighting sets but was immediately into the idea. We decided it’d be like a movie trailer, but for my unpublished book. I wrote a short script while interning at BuzzFeed. A coworker happened to know Brendan Maclean, the Aussie musician I’d based the dead ex-boyfriend character on, and he was going to be in America when I was filming the trailer. He introduced us and Brendan immediately agreed to be in the trailer. Brendan crashed with me the weekend we filmed and it all felt really surreal. That first day, we filmed in a warehouse on Saturday from about 10am until 2am. I could only pay everyone in love, pizza, coffee, and alcohol. I cried when we finished filming that day from stress and happiness.

Oh, and I had never acted before so there was a lot of, “Ian, stop talking into the camera” and “Ian, stop talking like a robot.” There was a scene where I was supposed to scream and I found out that I don’t know how the hell to scream on cue.

The second day, we recorded all the scenes in the tiny Brooklyn apartment Kevin and I were living in. We recorded the breakup flashback scene between Brendan and Adam that day, which was a chore for me to get through. It was really weird to act through a really emotional breakup scene I’d written that I’d based off a real-life breakup with someone I’d stayed good friends with. I wanted it to feel real and feel like a breakup where you didn’t really want to take sides. Brendan had to talk to me privately and give me a few pointers. He told me to pretend like he was the man I loved most in the world and he was breaking my heart. And also to cut some of my lines because my delivery was less than stellar. When we finished filming that scene in my bedroom, Kevin and I were both actually crying.

I’ve spent the last few years querying my book but nothing has stuck. I’ve even toyed around with the idea of making this into a movie script. Even if my book goes nowhere, I can say I’ll always be proud of this trailer (for which Brendan Maclean recorded an original cover of “At your Funeral” by Saves the Day). You can watch it below.

About the author:

Ian Carlos Crawford grew up in southern New Jersey and, like most people from NJ, he graduated from Rutgers University. He then graduated from New School with an MFA in nonfiction writing. His writing has appeared on sites like Geeks Out, BuzzFeed, NewNowNext, and other random corners of the internet. He currently co-hosts a podcast about his favorite thing, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, called Slayerfest 98 and is shopping around his fiction manuscript (you can view the book trailer here). Follow him on Twitter @ianxcarlos