Alrighty folkerinos, Harry here with a script report on a movie about a day long remembered by GEEKS the world over.... 5-25-77.... It's not just a date, but the title of the film. Back during the FANBOYS talkback, we had multiple reports about this film, and I have to warn you that this report may be a PLANT.... But if it is a plant, just disregard the opinion of the piece, and use it to find out more on the project. Basically, all you have to do is look past phrases like "Greatest" and "Coolest" and those sorts of words. But.... here ya go...WARNING!!!! SPOILERS ARE CONTAINED!!!! WARNING!!!
First of all... They've changed the title to "5-25-77" The cover page says it is by Patrick Read Johnson and that it is the FIRST DRAFT, dated April 4, 1999. We were told that Gary Kurtz is indeed producing this film! Since Gary also produced STAR WARS, THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, and AMERICAN GRAFFITI, his attachment bodes well for this project!
I can't copy the script and send it or I would. We've been warned that the producers will know who did it by some kind of code contained in each script. Maybe they're lying. Maybe not. But I can't take the chance. Forgive me. So instead, let me share with you the story. (What follows is essentially my script coverage, heavily reworked to avoid detection. I would have sent it sooner but I had to wait till I knew that the script was making the rounds around town.) Here's what we've got to look forward to!
"5-25-77", as most of your readers will know, is the day that STAR WARS was first released. For a lot of us, this is a day that took place before we were even born. For the director and writer of this script it was a turning point in his own teenage life. The script he has written is a kind of cross between American Graffiti and Cinema Paradiso. With wonderous, moving, and often hysterical homages to Star Wars, Close Encounters, 2001, and other sci-fi classics thrown in.
In fact, the opening scene is a dream sequence that re-creates the Dawn of Man section of 2001, but with a very funny twist. It starts with Moonwatcher and the other apes sitting around the monolith, fat and happy, when suddenly a strange new sound echoes across the land-- The sound of evil MECHANICAL BREATHING. I won't tell you what happens next, except to say that mixing 2001 and Star Wars in a dream-state competition for the honor of being the dominant Sci-Fi film in history makes for an opening that will leave you in hysterics.
After this opening dream, the movie then seques into the life of the dreamer-- 17 year old Pat Johnson, a student at a little high school in a tiny down "on the edge of the edge of nowhere" in semi-rural Illinois. Pat's the ultimate sci-fi and film geek in town. In fact he's the ONLY one in town. Ever since seeing 2001 when he was a little kid, he's dreamed of directing movies. Every available space in his home has been converted to some kind of Super-8 movie production space. There's a spacecraft cockpit set in the basement, complete with a cobbled-together front projection system! There's a swimming pool full of blood-red water left over from the shark attack he filmed in it weeks ago. There's a garage with a starfield on the ceiling made of tiny white Christmas lights and a wire and harness rig to hang his little brother in a space suit for shooting zero-g shots just like in 2001. But Pat makes his films alone. There's just not much of a film industry in Wadsworth, Illinois.
Soon, through a series of truly amazing (and apparently ALL TRUE) flashbacks we find out that a few months before the events in this film, Pat's mom, frustrated over not being able to help her son get any closer to Hollywood, had snatched up one of his American Cinematographer magazines and called up the editor of the magazine, out of the blue, to ask for his help! She basically sweet-talked the guy into letting her send Pat out on a plane so he could tag along while the editor went around to the various effects stages of certain films that were in production that summer. In the first flashback, we see Pat and the editor of the magazine watching some visual effects guys shooting clouds in a water tank. As Pat sits there in amazement, a young guy in jeans, sneakers and a baseball cap comes over and plops down next to him, offering him a Coke. Pat thinks the guy is just another crewmember until he calls CUT when something in the tank goes wrong. The lights come up and it turns out the guy next to Pat is STEVEN SPIELBERG! They're on the set of CLOSE ENCOUNTERS! Mr. Spielberg proceeds to give them both a tour of the entire FX facility and goes out of his way to make Pat feel like there's hope for him, if he can just get his butt out to L.A.
As if that wasn't enough to inspire him, the next day-- The editor of the magazine takes him out to a little-known warehouse in the San Fernando Valley where a bunch of long-haired FX Geeks are working on some little unknown movie called-- get this-- STAR WARS? Remember-- At that time NOBODY knew what Star Wars was! John Dykstra (Visual Effects Supervisor of Star Wars) plays the tour guide this time and not only lets Pat see all the models, (even enouraging him to BREAK one of the explodable X-WING models just for fun!) he even shows him the ENTIRE ROUGH CUT of the MOVIE! And even though it still has uncomposited blue-screen shots and WW2 footage cut in to the space battles, it's more than enough to convince young Pat that he MUST somehow become a director of REAL movies. (REMEMBER. These events ACTUALLY HAPPENED to Johnson. If you read that Steven Spielberg biography book that came out a couple years ago, it actually mentions these events!)
Now, on May 25th, 1977, as he reaches the end of his high school life and as the film that he's been blabbing about to his entire utterly disinterested town for months is finally coming out, Johnson is faced with a tough decision. Does he stay in the little town of 750 people he's known his whole life? Does he stay with the girl he thinks he's going to marry? Does he stay to help his mother raise the younger brothers and sister abandoned by his violent alcoholic father... In short, does he give up his dream to deal with what he's starting to believe is his pre-determined fate of never getting out of his hometown? OR Does he pack up his Ford Pinto and drive out to L.A. and try to bust into Hollywood like many of us wanted to do?
It's an emotional trap that he will only be able to sort out by going through events of the next 24 hours. As he tries to juggle his desperate attempt to get EVERYONE in his town to go see Star Wars-- the needs his mom and younger siblings-- and the sudden decision by his girlfriend that THIS of ALL NIGHTS is the one when they should finally "do it", Pat is strapped onto a roller-coaster ride of often funny, but just as often deeply moving events that culminate in one of the most satisfying endings I've read in a LONG, LONG time. I can't give it away, but I can promise you that if you EVER hoped and dreamed of "making it" in the movie biz, this movie will make you laugh out loud, cheer, and unless you have no heart left in you at all, cry your eyes out.
I've been told by those who've spoken to him about the film, that Johnson is making this as a kind of homage to George, Steven, and Stanley Kubrick, the holy trinity of Johnson's particular film religion. But also as a kind of revenge for ANGUS, the film he directed a few years ago, that was taken from him in the editing room and cut to shreds. Johnson was apparently so unhappy with the final version of Angus, with all its sloppy editing and the wall to wall Green Day montage crap that he nearly took his name off it.
If the powers that be let Kurtz and Johnson make the movie that's written on these pages, he'll get his wish. He'll also have made something that no person who loves Star Wars, or movies in general, will be able to resist.
All I can say is... This film proves there is hope for all of us who hope to make it in Hollywood. Especially if we originally come from somewhere else. (like me!)
I have HIGHLY recommended this script to my superiors and I hope our client decides to do the show. If you can get ahold of this script-- DO IT. You won't be disappointed.
More to come as I get it!
