Highlighted red

Every writer has a cemetery’s worth of dead projects.

Every writer has a cemetery’s worth of dead and buried projects. I found out Monday mine got one more: after two-plus years developing and writing and rewriting an animated film, it’s dead.

Pour one out for the movies that will never be.

Most movies don’t get made. I’ve had my fair share. In the good old days of Hollywood you could carve out an entire, very lucrative career writing movies that never got made. But I didn’t get into this business to write things that never see an audience. If I wanted to write for no audience I’d just stick to my journaling. The magic of the movies, Nicole Kidman ad of it all, is the whole point.

So every time something dies before it gets there, it’s a bitter pill — less about the time spent, more about the parts of myself that went into it and now don’t get to be shared. Yes, there’s the standard m blood, sweat, and mental turmoil that’s just a part of the process. But there’s also the beauty and meaning and wonder of the work itself. It’s a shame when those things won’t be realized.

Without giving anything away: this film was centered on a crotchety old man, based on my dad’s dad. My grandfather was a former racecar driver turned car dealer who was married six (almost seven) times. Sweetest guy in the world and a huge pain in the ass, in equal measure. He drank a Manhattan every night until he was in his 90s, when the kids and the nurses taking care of him started watering it down.

It would have been nice to bring that kind of guy to life. Especially for animation. Imagine the toys! The pot-bellied former race car driver figurine.

But it’s not happening. Not this time.

You can spend years breathing life into rich characters, shepherding them through very human trials, all with the hope of moving audiences and then — nope.

So I'm in mourning this week. Walking through the cemetery. Checking the stone markers. Every project takes a tremendous amount of time, and a tremendous amount of emotional energy, and most of them don't get made.

My cemetery exists as a spreadsheet. Dozens of rows highlighted red for dead. At any given time there are maybe 2-3 actively being worked on, in green, and another 3-5 in yellow meaning I'm waiting on someone for something. But most of the spreadsheet is red.

In a decade-plus of doing this professionally, there are just four purple (produced) lines. Two movies and a couple seasons of produced TV. It really is a drop in the bucket compared to the "tried and failed," the "couldn't ever puzzle it together," the "company got bought and everyone got fired..."

In the past I might have highlighted this one red and then moved on. I am pitching a movie right now after all. But I’ve been focused the last few years on learning to love the rollercoaster. Yes, to enjoy the fun highs, of course. But also to really savor the lows. Because that’s the career. There's never any reaching the stable next level. It's just a series of peaks and valleys. Bumps and starts and stops.

The hit ratio in the arts is bad. It's especially bad in film. And then even if you get someone to go make your movie, there's no guarantee it'll be any good.

But that's a problem for another day.

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I’m going to leave the comments open here, usually a paid subscribers only thing, because I’d like to hear from you. Any writers grief rituals? Ways you like to send off the movies that never get to be? Let us all know. I’m sure we could use them.