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 disclose trauma as the glue that binds the summer box office.

Don’t mind me, I was gone for the last two weeks…

I was preparing for our nation’s 250th birthday by pumping iron with RFK, Jr. and Kid Rock. We’re pumping iron again today and gonna mix protein powder with the green algae in the Reflecting Pool for a glorious post-workout recovery drink.

In between slamming Coors Lights with the Crazy Kennedy and the 90’s relic rap rocker, I did see Speilberg’s Disclosure Day. And, after seeing just three movies, I am ready to identify a trend in the not-yet-completed summer box office zeitgeist.

Trauma!

Let’s dig in. But hurry, cuz Bobby is slagging me for my bad bench form…

I WENT TO THE SUMMER MOVIES AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY TRAUMA

The most interesting screenplay conceit in David Koepp’s Disclosure Day script is weather lady Margaret Fairchild’s growing empath abilities. In the inciting incident or plot point that kicks off the story, the Emily Blunt character sees a red robin and is able to instantly speak foreign languages and divine people’s inner torment.

This super power comes in handy towards the end of Act II when Margaret rescues rogue cybersecurity specialist Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor) from a government black site. Kellner is in possession of extraterrestrial technology that he wants to disclose to the public and the evil U.S. government contractor desperately wants to bury.

Margaret breezes in the black site warehouse and escorts Daniel out. Multiple soldiers try and stop her and Margaret stops them by disclosing their childhood trauma. One female soldier morphs into her younger tween self and Margaret, who evidently has been listening to a real ‘90s act, Dinosaur Jr., and their song “Feel the Pain,” consoles her.

So where’s the trauma theme that unites these summer movies? As I wrote about Backrooms, the female lead literally uses a chunk of concrete symbolic of her childhood trauma to give a stalking monster a beat down.

Obsession, the third summer movie I saw, doesn’t really align with my thesis, as the script really doesn’t delve into the male lead’s reticence to expose his feelings to a young woman who gets spelled into a love interest worse than Glen Close boiling rabbits for Michael Douglas in Fatal Attraction.

Two of three ain’t bad, I guess. I think these screenwriters and filmmakers are reacting to our present hellscape where the world burns and our clownshow Dear Leader grifts to the tune of $2 billion in his first year.

If movies are a mirror, albeit a cracked one, trauma is being disclosed on screens around the nation.