Rosario Dawson has my Script!

Posted By:	The Boneman
Posted On:	Sun Jul 30th, 2006

As you may have guessed if you follow the site at all, I've just returned from San Diego and the spectacular Comic – Con and I have to say that of all the film festivals that I've been fortunate enough to attend this one is far and away the funnest. Sure Sundance has it's charms, but it doesn't have two hundred people dressed up as Anikan Skywalker. Yes Anikan was far and away the most popular character at Comic-Con and I'm not talking about chintzy little costumes, these babies are probably worth thousands of dollars and the light sabers seriously look like they might work. Hell of course they work, they probably weigh twice as much as a baseball bat – if somebody gave one of these guys any shit for turning their back on the Jedi and being seduced by the dark-side, they wouldn't need to fire it up and swing a little "whoom whoom" saber music, they could just smack ‘em over the head with it. Fight over. Chalk one up for the turncoats. Plus, as I mentioned there was a veritable army of Anakins, you would not want to mess with ‘em. And (unless there's a lot of internal "these guys stole my idea" bitterness at work, weakening their collective power) the Skywalkers could easily overpower security and take over the convention. What a radical scenario – Dozens of power-drunk Anakins confiscating the comics and action figures of the weak, a handful of Hagrids trying to stop them but in the confusion they are easily outnumbered and conked unconscious by brutal blows from the dark sabers. Couldn't you just picture the mass hysteria? People being trampled underfoot, in a crazed, geek stampede?

At some point order is almost restored when Samuel Jackson (there to promote Snakes of the Plane) tries to reason with the rogue Skywalkers. This nearly works until Quentin Tarantino seizes the mic from Jackson and goes nuts, "why are you stopping? Don't stop! This is awesome – it's the coolest thing I've ever seen – come on I'm filming this, do you want to be IN A MOVIE. With that absolute madness ensues – the booths selling 10 dollar hot dogs are upended, looters invade the exhibition hall and scramble from booth to booth filling their bags with valuable treasure. Unable to tell the difference between good people and bad, a wild brawl erupts – the innocent and meek struggle in a mosh pit of madness to locate an exit and in a corner by herself smiling coyly, the one girl dressed as Carrie fingers a Bic lighter. After a few unsuccessful attempts to get the lighter to work, Tarantino stoops down, gropes his pockets and produces a lighter. "Here try mine." And then we slam to black.

At this time I feel I should confess to something I did at Comic – Con that may prove to be ill-advised. You see, like at least half of the people at the convention I had a screenplay in my backpack. Is it any good. I believe it is, yes – in fact I might go so far as to say it's very good. An opinion I've had confirmed by a script doctor who moved from Hollywood to my neck of the woods and whom I met rather serendipitously. He helped me with some technical aspects and after reading my latest draft paid me the compliment of saying it's the best "first script" he's ever read in his life. Which was nice, because after he'd read the first draft I gave him over a year ago he told me it sucked. In those very words. Still getting your script into the right hands is one of the biggest Catch 22's I've ever heard of. Basically, no one will accept a script from you unless you have an agent or studio representation – but by the same token, unless you already have a successful script or at least have sold a script you cannot get an agent or any kind of representation. It's a fact, so in order to surmount this initial obstacle, you pretty much have to do something at least somewhat dishonest. The truth may set you free, but for a first time screenwriter in Hollywood, the truth won't get you squat.

In any case I was walking around Comic – Con with what I think is a valuable script. I gave a copy to my friend Quint from aintitcool.com, who said he'd read it on the plane, to which I said "yea and you can roll it up and fend off a snake if worse comes to shove." Quint worked as hard as I did at Comic – Con, he'll be sleeping his way back to Austin. That's okay Quint would wind up helping me get my script in some pretty impressive hands, and not only did he not mind, he doesn't even know. I don't want you to think that I just spend the whole time just concocting ways to get my script read, you pretty much have your hands full and I just carry it with, in case some perfect situation presents itself. Which of course it never does or ever will. In fact it was Guillermo del Toro that got me so fired up. His panel for Pan's Labyrinth was extremely entertaining and inspirational. During Q&A someone asked him what it takes to break into film-making and he used the metaphor of the sperm and the egg. Basically he said your chances are about the same as the one sperm cell out of thousands and thousands that ends up fertilizing the egg. Just imagine yourself in a race with millions of other squiggling sperm – you gotta fight like a dog, swim your ass off and never give up. Never give up, because everybody else wants to fertilize that egg and all but one of you is going to end up limp and dying in the fallopian tube. That's what it takes, you've gotta be the most ambitious sperm of them all, the sperm king. So good luck – get out there and start swimming upstream."

Ergo when Rosario Dawson was on stage doing a solid for her friend Kevin Smith, I thought man, that woman is one hell of a kick-ass egg – soon I began to twitch and then wiggle, I tried to hide it, but it was no use – I was no longer the Boneman I was the Eggman, koo koo ka choo, koo koo ka choo. Rosario has a new comic book out that she helped create and even writes for called OCT (Occult Crimes Taskforce) and she gave out her booth number 2729 – I memorized it and wiggled some more. Not only does my script delve into aspects of the occult, but Rosario would be perfect for the female lead. I mean dead-on bloody fucking perfect – I just know that if she read it, she'd want to be Beth. It's an awesome part that would give Rosario the perfect vehicle to showcase every aspect of her acting chops. But how? I'm just a silly little wiggler with a big head and a flagellator. I'd used my oversized head to formulate a plan, but I wasn't sure I had the nerve to actually put it into effect. In fact, the last panel had just let out and people were packing up their display booths and I just figured, t'hell with it – it's just a nutty spermheaded notion, I'm just gonna leave. But as we were walking past the exhibition hall I had the strongest prompting to just do it, I really didn't have much to lose so this is what I did – I hope y'all can forgive me. I took my press badge and turned it around backward ( they're always flopping over backward anyway), Backward, there would be no way to know what my name was, but it would be clear that I was a member of the press. The OCT booth was still up and operational and there were two girls and a guy sitting behind the booth desk so I stopped for a second to mutter my "sperm mantra" "Swim like a fish – don't be a boob/ Don't wind up in the fallopian tube. Rinse, lather repeat. To sell my reuse I had to rush up to the booth like I was in something of a panic, which was good because that way my nervousness would just come off someone in a hurry. First of all I asked the kids manning the booth if Rosario were around, like I'd known her since grade school and when they said no, I went into my story. "Listen, I'm gonna be in so much hot water, you guys gotta help me out. I'm Quint with aintitcool.com and I was supposed to get this script to Rosario. Harry Knowles is "this close" to optioning it, but he really wants Rosario to play the role of Beth and he wants to find out if she might be interested before he picks it up." Now before you judge me too harshly – remember I'm a sperm on a mission and it is a fact that Harry is getting into the business, he wants to produce and direct, so the whole thing was somewhat plausible.

Right away I got the standard "she's not allowed to accept unsolicited scripts." I swear the next time I hear those words I'm just gonna snap and go into some kind of strangling frenzy. Still I'm the king of the sperm and that old bullshit line is not going to slow me up. "I realize that," I said as Quint, "but I think Harry has alreadly talked to her about it – anyway that's the impression I got when he handed it to me. It was like the part of my trip that he cared about the most, you gotta bale me out here?" Still she remained unmoved by my phony plight and just about the time I was ready to just flounder on down to the fallopian tube, a guy standing toward the back of the booth motioned to me with his head. So I just kind of played it cool, no hard feelings and kind of wandered back to where the guy was. He told me "listen, you see that guy over there in the cowboy hat," motioning with his head. "Yea" "That's Rosario's uncle, he'd probably help you out, but play it cool." Thanks bro. So after giving it a second, so little miss Sunshine would move onto destroying someone else's dream. I made my way over to her uncle, gave him pretty much the same schpeil (minus the panic) and wonder of wonders he says, "sure man, I'm going over to her house tomorrow so as long as that's soon enough, I'd be happy to take it to her." I swear I heard the swell of heavenly choirs – Halleluiah halleluiah – as I walked away the proudest sonofabitchin' sperm cell that ever lived, I glanced down to check my press badge and sure enough it was still backward – thus as I'm writing this Rosario may have in her possession my script.

Oh shit, I forgot about one important detail, stupid sperm head. During Kevin Smith's Q&A he was asked about his feud with the message boardsters from aintitcool, he mentioned that the whole thing was over, but it was clear that he was still bugged. Shit, Rosario and Kevin are like butthole buddies, As soon as she hears the word aintitcool she's just going to drop it in the trash. Then again, it might be that she finds the whole thing intriguing. She might think it' some kind of prank, but if she thinks that, she'll probably at least read a little bit of it. The fact that my name is Kevin Jones vs Kevin Smith might give her pause, but if she gets in 15 pages I figure I've got her. Plus I checked aintitcool.com and Harry gave Clerks 2 one of the best reviews I've read period, and he's terribly complimentary of Rosario – who knows, maybe. The script has my name, address and two phone numbers along with all the copyright and WGAW stuff. Keep your fingers crossed – we were all nothing but a sperm cells once.