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

Hey! I’m that guy trying to sell my latest screenplay, publish it as a novel or die trying.

In DIE TRYING, you will get an unvarnished look at a bitterly honest writer struggling to make it. No name-dropping or Hollywood phoniness. Just the facts ma’am on what the media landscape is really like behind the curtain.

In TODAY’S ISSUE, we examine the feel-good movie The Sheep Detectives and whether it is a mirror of these times or of the past.

Is a film and its screenplay a product of its time or completely a creation of its own, impervious to the machinations of the outside world?

In filmmaking, particularly in sound, there is a concept of diegesis, or the story's narrative. Non-diegetic sound is something like the score or voice-over that the characters cannot see or hear. Diegetic sound would be a song at the club that the characters can hear and react to. They dance to it at Jack Rabbit Slims!

Are things happening in the culture, politics and world in general diegetic or non-diegetic to a screenplay?

Do current events influence the screenwriters and other technicians?

Is this really important or just the nerd shit of people following the exegesis or critical interpretation of works of art?

I like Godzilla stomping things and could really give a flying f*ck if it is a collective psychic freakout by the Japanese following the nuclear annihilation at the end of World War II.

I asked myself all these things after watching the new film The Sheep Detectives last weekend.

ARE FILMMAKERS SHEEPLE IN THE MIRROR OF WORLD EVENTS?

The Sheep Detectives is a delightful not-just-for-kids mystery story where a group of sheep must find the killer of their beloved shepherd, played by Hugh Jackman.

The film has a long timeline.

It is an adaptation of the 2005 book Three Bags Full by German author Leonie Swann. Screenwriter Craig Mazin, known for The Last of Us, adapted it ten years ago, and an Amazon MGM executive resurrected the project.

What was going on in the world ten years ago?

In 2016, Brexit, the United Kingdom's divorce from the European Union, rocked the world. The election of Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton to be the 45th U.S. President further cemented the rise of right-wing populist movements worldwide.

Shepherd George Hardy is a proxy of the good lib. He is a picture of earthy benevolence, reading murder mystery novels to his flock, which compels the plucky animals to try out their real-world detective skills when Hardy is murdered.

2016, seen in douchey right-wing terms, is the launching of lib tears when the bad orange man rose and strangulated the hollow core of respectability politics.

“I’d voted for Obama a third term if I could” was dead, replaced by the craven MAGA hordes and American carnage.

What happened in 2005 when Swann’s book was published?

Hurricane Katrina rocked the United States, the Iraq War dragged on and German Chancellor Angela Merkel was the first woman elected to office.

In the film, Hardy’s long-lost daughter Rebecca Hampstead is targeted for the death of her father. When the sheep help the bumbling police officer find the real killer, the daughter takes over and continues reading to them at night.

A woman, like Merkel, has become the benevolent leader of the good flock.

Did these momentous events in 2005 and 2016 shape the clay, or did author Swann and screenwriter Mazin concoct a thematic story entirely non-diegetic to the outside world?

They say film is a mirror of the culture.

I would say that The Sheep Detectives is well-made entertainment that rises above talking animals kiddie cringe into deeper themes of death, loss and abandonment.

I have come not to expect Hollywood to make popular films that are actually good. The Sheep Detectives has a sweetness that hearkens back to a less cynical age. I believe that the mirror is shifting again, and people yearn for something more wholesome, not Trump-age corrupt.

THIS WEEK IN DIE TRYING

• Scripts Recently Submitted to The Black List: 1
  

• Number of Emails With Black List Support Trying to Figure out Platform: At Least 8
  

• Number of Years Working with Complicated Marketing Platforms That Should Make a Screenplay Evaluation Site Easy: 15

• Mood: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. ”—Aldous Huxley

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

Is the rise of inexpensive vertical video a mirror to the culture?

I wanna know!

—Michael