Have you ever conjured up an action scene involving your antagonist / protagonist, then once the screenplay was competed, you were handed the opportunity to recreate that character's actions at the actual historic / iconic location?
Case in point: The main setting of my new horror screenplay, HORROR-FEST, is The Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood. I stayed there in 2019 to attend the Beverly Hills International Film Festival in support of a nomination I had earned. I didn't think I would ever return to the hotel, yet was recently informed that another script had been nominated for 2024. So, looks like I'll be heading back to The Roosevelt once again in May.
The action I plan to recreate is to climb the 12 flights of stairs at The Roosevelt. Unlike my antagonist, I'll be WALKING up. I've attached a page from the script that describes a portion of the action.
Quick background leading up to this scene:
Horror film icon Trey Wallace comes to the aid of his co-star Lisa Martinez as she and her bodyguard struggle to get a very drunk film producer, Ellis Trent, into his hotel room and onto his bed. Trey is then assigned to babysit Ellis for a few minutes as Lisa and the guard exit. Trey kills Ellis and employs a stroke-of-genius maneuver in removing the body.
Ninety minutes later, Lisa texts Trey, informing him she's on her way up to the 12th floor to check on Ellis's condition. Trey discovers both elevators in use, so he races up the stairs to stop her from knocking. If there's no answer, Trey assumes she'll contact the front desk so they can perform a physical courtesy call.... to an empty room.... where Trey was the last known person connected to Ellis.
YES! THE RACE IS ON!!!
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Well that sounds...strenuous. LOL! I'd probably tip over by the third floor. :P
I know which scene I'd want to imagine re-inacting, but only because it'd give me an excuse to visit the Coliseum in Rome. LOL
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Congratulations on your script being nominated, Bill Brock! Maybe take some footage of the hotel to use in your pitch.
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Sallie Olson WHOAH, Sallie! The Coliseum? Now THAT'S thinking BIG.... and VERY Cinematic!
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Can't say that I have, but it sounds like a genuine experience that lasts a lifetime. It sounds like being in the 80s, living in the 80s, and keeping the 80s alive while others CRY and WHINE about traveling back in time to the 80s.
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Maurice Vaughan Great idea, dude! It'll be fun getting re-acquainted with the hotel. One thing I seem to recall is that the lobby was very small. Perhaps I'll do a running commentary on script scenes and where they occur -- The Roosevelt, The TCL Chinese Theatre, The Cinerama Dome Theater, and the
IN N OUT burger location on Sunset.
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A running commentary sounds like a great idea, Bill Brock.
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Bill Brock ...and not at all what you're imagining, I assure you. <runs away laughing...> Hey, go big or go home, right? :D
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Last time I visited the RH, they had CCTV cameras in hallways & stairwells. But it's a movie, change whatever to make your story work.
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Dan MaxXx Agreed, Dan. I always consider logic in my scripts. SPOILER ALERT: Trey's influence drives her NOT to knock on the door. She does, however, inquire that the manager provide a courtesy call and the room is discovered to be empty by Lisa and her body guard. She raises the question of CCTV cameras, to which the manager replies that he can review the footage, but can't share his findings with her due to privacy concerns. She then inquires about filing a missing persons report with police, and is schooled she would have to wait a minimum of 48 hours to do so.
At the moment Lisa is killed, we cut back across the street from the Chinese Theatre to the Roosevelt, where the manager and an assistant are shocked to discover a man wearing the iconic "Sad Man" clown mask exiting Ellis's hotel room while dragging a body bag behind him. They click the mouse to freeze-frame the horrific shot. Because Trey is attending an event honoring his horror film franchise, TONS of fans are cos-playing throughout the hotel, so NO ONE stops to question him. Many fellow horror fans are giving him devoted shout-outs as he leaves the building!! : )
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Another instance of writing a character's action, then experiencing it for myself occurred in 2017, when I needed a vacation, called a friend to accompany me, met up in HOLLYWOOD, and stayed at the new Dream hotel. During my research, I discovered the hotel had a rooftop pool. Once we got into town, we hit the rooftop for lunch. We passed the swimming pool and sat down at a table. As I took my seat, I looked past my pal's shoulder to see the HOLLYWOOD sign.
And THIS is where it gets WEIRD!!!! I had just finished my supernatural thriller feature script, THE DRESS, which opens with a drowning murder in a swimming pool and ends with our protagonist at the HOLLYWOOD sign!!
The script would earn a nomination two years later at the 2019 Beverly Hills International Film Festival.
Anyway, getting back on topic. I wasn't expecting to visit the sign during the trip, but my buddy set us up for a guided trek to see it. So I got to experience what my character, Steve Harp, saw at that location. The only difference was a sunny day for me and a 3 am torrential, unforgiving rainfall for him.
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Bill Brock You know you have a powerful imagination when the things you envision manifest in your reality! The summer I started writing my series, which features giant black wasps...black wasps tried to invade my house by nesting in the walls, and whether indoors or outdoors, they kept flying right up to my face and just hovering there, exactly as I'd imagined them doing in the story. (Except, in the story they are as big as horses...LOL)
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Sallie Olson Agreed! Cool concept. Wasps the size of HORSES? OMG! What do their nests look like? NFL STADIUMS???!!! I actually come from a family of clairvoyants. I can see the future at very odd times. It used to happen so often, I made a list! One example: Listening to a radio show a few years ago. The host had asked the caller who their favorite celebrity was. MEL GIBSON instantly entered my brain.... And then the caller spoke: MEL GIBSON.
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Well, hello fellow Seer! Bill Brock ! Long line of Clairvoyants in my family too. Only the women though, for some reason. (An Inuit Shaman once told me I was a descendant of a Bear Clan Shaman, which was extra trippy since twenty years earlier, an old Indian gave me a single handmade earring that had a grizzly bear on it and said it was always mine, then walked away. LOL). I was also blessed with Clairaudience, which can be a bit disconcerting at times. (Who said that???) LOL!
Re; the giant wasps....in book four (Spark of Fire) the MC has to crawl through their nest which is inside a volcanic mountain. He has to avoid the larval form in the tubes, as well as the "worker wasps" who tend the larvae. More than once, he has to lay flat in a tunnel as a worker wasp runs right over his back in the midst of doing it's busy-work. And since the giant wasps are carnivorous, the whole nest stinks of rotting meat...and the antagonist disposes of bodies from his dungeon by feeding them to the wasps, so of course the MC has to fall into a pile of rotting corpses in the midst of his harrowing journey through the nest. There was laughter...lots and lots of evil laughter, as I wrote those scenes. LOL
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Sallie Olson Sounds like a winner! Can't imagine a horse-sized wasp crawling on my back while face-down in the mud! Question: Wouldn't the dude be crushed to death if the Mega-Bee was horse-sized?
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What a cool idea, Bill Brock! That sounds like such a great exercise as a creator, but also a great experience period.
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Bill Brock Maybe if it had all six legs on him at once. But it's scrambling through, rushing to its next destination, it could easily pass over with only one or two of its feet making contact, or none at all for that matter, considering their anatomy spreads their legs out to the sides while the man would be long and narrow, centered on the tunnel floor. It's Fantasy...suspend reality just a little bit? LOL
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Ashley Renee Smith Agreed, Ashley. I stayed at the Roosevelt almost 5 years ago. It'll be a total blast revisiting the place and seeing how well my memory served me as I wrote the script. Characters running up stairs, taking elevators, entering the large ballroom, the small lobby, then doing the same across the street at the Chinese Theatre, then heading over to the Cinerama Dome Theater, and the IN N OUT Burger joint. ALL are settings in HORROR-FEST!! : )
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very intresting