One crafty writer’s never-say-die quest to tell a story for the page or screen.

DIE TRYING is a work in progress.

Watch me tickle, in real time, the fat bottom of a garish rooster that never crows.

I’m attempting to sell a screenplay. If that fails, I’ll publish it as a novel. If that fails, I’ll document why.

And it will soar. No grim failure porn here.

This isn’t motivation, “branding” advice or Hollywood mythmaking. It’s a candid record of submissions, silence, false momentum, real momentum and the head toll of trying to make something exist in a market designed to ignore you.

If you write, read scripts professionally or are trying to understand how stories actually move through the system, this is for you.

If not, it probably isn’t.

From my years of video production, I adhered to the rule “don’t show it to the client until it’s a finished product.” Don’t let the client see the rough cut or the work in progress.

They might see the creaky wooden framework rather than the finished home.

An actress knows this lesson well. Don’t let the camera capture you unless you have your makeup done and gown on.

A film script is the first step in a work in progress.

Today, we examine the finished product of SINNERS. We examine how the film differs from the script and how the two narratives differ in structure.

THE BLUES AND THE WAY OUT

Last week, we wrote about how the SINNERS screenplay relies on binaries. Like good and evil, black and white.

Sammie, the young bluesman, creates music that stirs the soul of Merrick, the Irish vampire who drains life. Life and death in two opposite characters.

The film SINNERS relies on a circular structure.

The film opens with Sammie entering his father’s church, bloodied and holding the severed neck of a guitar. His father demands he embrace God and stop playing the devil’s noise.

In this shot, we see the binary structure that I discussed in the SINNERS script. The cross and heaven pitted against the hellish state of Sammie the musician, bloodied by his pursuit of the blues.

The script differs from the final film in that it opens with Remmick biting Joan and Burt, establishing the vampire characters. This is a more linear structure. We are first introduced to the antagonists, who will then battle the film’s heroes, the Smokestack Brothers.

In the film, this vampire intro scene comes later, just as the brothers’ juke joint is nearing opening.

In the film, the penultimate scene flashes back to the opening scene and reveals Sammie’s choice. He sticks with the blues. In the next shot, we see him driving to Chicago to embrace his dream of being a bluesman.

The film repeatedly flashes back in a circular structure.

When Smoke is about to kill Hogwood the Klansman, we see shots of Annie, Smoke’s love interest, being killed by the vampires. She had made Smoke promise to put a stake through her heart if she was bitten. This frees her soul from the vampire’s curse of being trapped between heaven and hell.

Next, Smoke sees a vision of Annie and their baby. They’re dressed in white, and Annie is breastfeeding their baby. The cycle is complete for Smoke. His final act is to kill Hogwood before reuniting with Annie and his child in the beyond.

The circle is complete.

The film starts and stops with the creator and his “gift of making music so true, that it can pierce the veil between life and death,” as Annie narrates in a voice-over.

Then we have a concluding scene play over the end credits. We flash forward to a Chicago blues bar where Sammie, now an old man, plays on stage. He is visited by the ever-young vampires Stack and Annie, asking if he wants to be a vampire and be eternal.

Sammie declines and recalls the fateful day the film chronicles. It might have been “the best day of my life.”

The hipster Stack in the circular shades agrees: “No doubt about it. Last time I seen my brother…last time I seen the sun. And for a few hours, we was free.”

The vampires leave, and Sammie smiles at the thought of being free. He is still alive, still human.

The last scene of the movie flashes back to Smoke, Stack and Sammie riding in a car down a Mississippi dirt road. Stirring music plays on the soundtrack.

The linear road is the conduit, a visual metaphor for the way out of an enslaved circle. Music and art break the chains of bondage, offering freedom.

THIS WEEK IN DIE TRYING

• Total words analyzed by Grammarly since February 2017 installation: 18,273,541
  

• Number of Going Perm scenes I proscratined over, then aced : 1
  

• Reads requested: 0

• Mood: “It should be noted, therefore, in the public interest, that some writers possess .44 Magnums and can puncture beer cans with 240-grain slugs from that weapon at a distance of 150 yards.”—Hunter S. Thompson

If you’re reading this because you write, read, develop or sell scripts:

Who will win Best Picture: SINNERS or One Battle?

Hit reply. I read every response.

—Michael