Revisiting Maybe Molly
A movie that I really enjoy is Two Family House. Written and directed by Raymond De Felitta and starring Michael Rispoli and Kelly McDonald. If you've never seen it, please do. It's really good. Like most good movies, it deals with several themes. One of those themes is what I had in my head while writing the feature screenplay, Maybe Molly.
Buddy Visalo (Rispoli) has a dream to own a bar and while he first believes his wife and friends support him, he soon discovers that are in fact the ones holding him back. I'm sure that sounds familiar to many. When I started writing about Molly, I thought about all those cliques we form in high school. Just pick your favorite high school movie and you'll see those cliques on full display.
Maybe Molly is about two people who have been locked in their place dictated by their friends and family. They have been told who to be in the present because of how they were in the past. Through their own actions and desires, these two characters seek to break out of their molds and in the process find each other.
So I wrote the script. Re-wrote it several times over and it sat there. For some time. A few people have read it. Generally, it's well received. But again. It collects digital dust on my hard drive. That's when it was decided to a take a scene from that script and shoot it. It could be an example of what the script would be like.
And we did just that. Casted the roles, found a location and shot the 4 minute short that takes place at the beginning of the script. There are some things I like about it and some things I do not. Everyone involved did me a big solid by giving up their time for one long night. It was very appreciative.
The problem with doing little scenes from a bigger script is that your short better be pretty spectacular. It needs to be amazing and make people demand to read your feature script. Unfortunately, this short does not do that. That's my fault. The choices I made as a director failed the content and the people involved.
But you learn from it and move on. That's all you can do. It's all you should do. Even is the short was nominated for an Oscar, if you don't learn and move on, you lose in the long run.