The Gumshoe – my short screenplay
In 2006, my Indian co-worker’s 8 year old son came into the office for “bring your kids to work day.” The boy was precocious, and for some reason I took a liking to him (may be I was projecting my id). I conjured up an image of him in a chocolate brown Fedora, and brown overcoat with a magnifying lens in his hand. He was solving some kind of case. The whole story for my film arrived fully formed. I went home that night and wrote it as a one page outline, and a week later, I was still kicked by the idea, and wrote a 10 page screenplay and a few re-writes for readability.
Film: The Gumshoe
Genre: Family Comedy
Logline:
A precocious 10 year old must solve the case of “the cookies and milk” before time runs out.
I read my script and was surprised that I wrote it. This was my first screenplay after learning how to write. It was quite good for two years ago. Obviously, I have become even awesomer since then. You can read the attachment and judge for yourself. Please don’t censor yourself from criticizing or any namecalling. Nothing you can say will be remotely as harsh as what I have said about it, plus it turns me on. Yeah, baby.
I was ready to make my next short film. I had made two shorts earlier, both silent B&Ws on existential angst shot on 16mm as part of a course I took at NYFA (film school pretention aka lame-o films. Those student films are always about a loner protagonist and their angst). One of the things you learn in the Lo-Bu indie world, and film school is to never fuck with children and dogs. There are 2 reasons for this. One, they cost a production valuable time and money for handlers etc., and they don’t usually do what you ask them to. Two, it’s illegal.
I knew that this was far more ambitious than anything I had done. I was going to shoot on super 16, in color, and with sound, and have kids and dogs in my film. First things first, I needed a house as my central location.
I lived in Manhattan, and didn’t know any rich people with homes. Alls I knew were bums who lived in closets. My mother had visited 2 years earlier, and as is the rule for all desi-mom visits to the US, we had to make a pilgrimage to Jersey to visit her cousin’s daughter’s brother-in-law’s nephew, whose parents my mother had met for the first time at a wedding that year. They were the closest things to relatives we had in Amreeka. I am quite terrible about staying in touch with “relations” (Why do they think they are doing me a favor by inviting me all the way to NJ to visit them for home cooked food? Why can’t they come to see me?)
Anyway, they had a nice house, and I was going to pull the family card. After I was convinced that I was going to make this short film, I called them. Now, I had not exchanged a word with them in two years. But I knew something they didn’t. I was 3 months away from shooting.
So, I told them that I had talked to my mom (untrue), and she still talks about the great time she had with them (true). It made me feel guilty that I had not kept in touch (totally untrue), and wanted to make amends (true). Like all good desi families, and some bad ones, they promptly invited me home for the weekend for “good home cooked food.” I showed up with wine, chocolate for their 6 and 8 year old, and enjoyed being the uncle. The last time I was around kids that age was 20 years earlier.
So, we had our kabab shabab, and drank our whiskeys and they tried explaining to me how we were related. Good times. The next day, the whiskey demanded to exit my body, and I asked the family for something to read. They gave me Calvin & Hobbes.
Motherfucker!
I had last read or thought about C&H 10 years prior. I immediately knew that my Gumshoe was Watterson’s creation, and over the years it had percolated deep into my subconscious, marinated in whiskey and brain fluid, and regurgitated after a communion of my neurons.
The book sat on the commode, and made very threatening eyes at me. I immediately pictured myself winning something at Berlin, being interviewed and accused of plagiarism. I would say, “I had never heard of Calvin & Hobbes until I finished my film,” and then do a monster parabola of coke to hide my guilt and finally blow my brains out with a shotgun to an open page of Calvin & Hobbes going down a sled.
Fortunately, my rectal dysfunction saved me and I had to take care of bidnezz first. I leafed through Calvin and didn’t find The Gumshoe character in that edition. I got off the pot, and got on the net. Here’s what I found.
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Gallery/1961/ch_trace_91.html
My story had a dog instead of Hobbes, different motivations, and different culprits. But, the idea/concept was clearly inspired. I knew what I had to do. Acquire student rights ( I was not a student any more but I had friends at NYU), which are usually reasonable. I called the Publisher, and they said Watterson is very much alive, and owns the rights. People have been trying to animate/film it for years, but he did not want them exploited so he does not grant the rights to anyone. Again, I knew what I had to do.
Chase down that recluse to his home town in Ohio.
Hijinks ensue in Part II.
Tags: English - Other
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
“Chase down that recluse to his home town in Ohio.”
Watterson! Eagerly awaiting next part.
“(Why do they think they are doing me a favor by inviting me all the way to NJ to visit them for home cooked food? Why can
I gather you have a thing for precocious children–your lovely short Frigid had an Avogadro no. knowing 8 year old..
Also,if I may ask are you one of those who espouse the beleif that story is just a pretext to say far more interesting things?…
it’s all good as long as you don’t kill any soccer teams my man. more after i read the story.. meanwhile, awaiting part 2.
Dabba: How much C&H had you internalized? It almost seemed Watterson writing those noir elements pat to the patsy reference (that’s a compliment). Rosalyn the baby-sitter might have been a good alternative to The Man
@ abhijit, vikrant, striker –
part 2 will come soon. thanks for reading. any thoughts on the screenplay? especially the inspired vs plagiarism debate we were having on the other thread?
@ french –
it may seem like that. I’m not certain if it is a recurring theme as these are the only two instances that i can think of. Thank you for appreciating frigid, by the way.
as for story as a pretext, i really don’t think about these things much. I just like to tell stories. the story i choose to tell may be because it is saying something, or perhaps I explore it in some capacity, but it is not a deliberate or concious process.
but one thing a story must do. Engage.
@ subrat –
over the course of a month in 1995 (no surprise that it was a girl that got me hooked on to C&H), i read pretty much all of them, maybe even multiple times. i still remember reading the Tracer Bullet segments and laughing my ass of. And get this. I had not watched a single hard boiled noir film or read any of those novels then.
this is why i have stopped reading others work. as i mentioned when i met you, if i like something, i seem to internalize it very consummately.
when i read the dialogues, i could not believe that they were mine. the action description parts i can recognize though.
i am happy that the amy/susan character had not made an appearance in the gumshoe strips.
@dabba
Your post and screenplay helped me understand your arguements better. I guess this is where it gets murky, between influence/inspiration and plagiarism. I am sure if you hadn’t mentioned the source I would have missed the similarities (read CH years ago). I also think that it is possible for someone to create a plot like this one without laying his eyes on CH. I am more ambivalent on this issue now than I was yesterday.
Acknowledging the source and getting permission is the honorable thing to do, and I admire your decision.
Whats with the pdf thing? Says “The page you are looking for no longer exists.”
why????
I have to quote your word, this is really “muddy”…here are my 2 cents…
my exposure to CH is limited to the one link you have in this article…but from that and from reading first half of your script…I see lots of similarities…as Subrat mentioned may be you have internalized CH and I have heard many cases where that happens subconsciously…thankfully you have discovered the source…good to know that you are trying to meet the author of CH…good luck.
Yesterday, I could only read first few pages and I found them very engaging…I want to finish it but when I try to open the pdf it gives me 404 error.
On a “muddier” note, isn’t it the case that most of one’s thinking arise from one’s intellect and hence past experience and influence. In some sense pretty much all our work is in some or other way derivative of our internalized knowledge and experiences. In some cases the permutations and combinations creates non-perceivable structures that we can’t correlate with existing one and we feel that its original…just thinking aloud…
@ editors
Can you please help with the pdf? Should i resend it?
dabba/neeraja.. we’re working on getting the file back up
it’s working now folks
god..its impossible. looks like frame to frame. next time i meet pritam,sanjay gupta or mahesh bhatt,will ask them if it happens like this….deep into my subconscious,marinated in whiskey and brain fluid, and regurgitated after a communion of my neurons…..but its amazing also.
about the screenplay,it looks bit complicated for a short. this that…the swing. i mean visually. or may b m not able to visualise it. on the other hand,the comic stip looks simpler. but its engaging for sure. btw, do u really need the rights…for whom r u making that film ? for yourself or larger aspect. why dont you make it n then courier it to ohio…who knows he may like it more than his writing n give u the rights.
Part II kidhar hai?