31 Plays in 31 Days, #20 - "Tap Dance"
Aug. 20th, 2020 06:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
breakinglight11This scene comes in the back half of the fourth episode of Dream Machine, at some point after Day #5 - "Park Moms", Day #13 - "Mobile Set Pieces", and Day #16 - "Crawling Back".
Thanks to 31P31D this year, I've drafted about half of episode four, which focuses on nailing down the lead cast for the network's new show. I want a big part of it to force Leah and Josie to work together, to figure out who the main character Josie is going to be playing is. The show is an adaptation of a romance novel series from the 90's, and they have to collaborate to imbue the new version of character with a personality that is compelling to an audience of modern women. But Leah is resistant to working with others, while Josie is pulled between her own artistic ambitions and her desire to please and win the approval of the people around her. Forcing her and Leah to hash it out will be a good source of conflict, and something that will finally push Josie to standing up for herself and her work.
This is a somewhat poorly excerpted moment from a larger interaction between the two. This is the point where Josie starts to get tired of trying to be what Leah's looking for and starts calling her on her lack of collaborative effort. I like using what I think of as the Pinter method of forcing interpersonal conflict, by locking the characters in a room unable to get away from each other, and so their issues come out.
A big chunk of this is stolen from a pact Bob Fosse and Paddy Chayefsky supposedly had with each other, with Josie as Fosse and Leah as Chayefsky.
Day #20 - “Tap Dance”
From Dream Machine:
"1.04 - The Opposite of People"
By Phoebe Roberts
~~~
JOSIE CARRAWAY, the lead actress on Offcomer, early thirties
LEAH LUCCHESI, a showrunner at Dream Machine, mid thirties
Los Angeles, 2020
~~~
INT. PAMPLEMOUSSE SOUNDSTAGE – NIGHT
JOSIE: Fine! If you’re not going to work on this with me, I’ll figure out who this character is myself.
LEAH: Over my dead body! You are just a meat vessel for my vision! I will figure this out without you!
JOSIE: Well, without this meat vessel, your vision is just— brain masturbation! And nobody’s going to give a damn. So over my dead body!
LEAH: Oh, you think dying’s going to get you out of this? No way you are screwing over my show like that!
JOSIE: Yeah? What’re you going to do?
LEAH: I’ll— write a really boring eulogy for your funeral! Not one joke or amusing anecdote, and it’ll go on for hours. Your corpse will be the lucky one!
JOSIE: Really? That’s your revenge?
LEAH: I’m a writer, I don’t have a ton of practical skills!
JOSIE: Yeah, well, I majored in movement for the stage— you don’t know from impractical! So, at your funeral, when you die from crew mutiny, I’m gonna do a tap dance!
LEAH: ...that sounds awesome, actually, you should totally do that.
JOSIE: I’m glad you like it. Because at the rate you’re smoking, you are definitely gonna go first.
LEAH: I’m stressed, okay!? I’ve got to build a whole show around this person and I don’t even know who she is!
JOSIE: Why? What’s the problem? Because you can’t build her from the ground up?
LEAH: Are you kidding? I took over West Chesterham after the second season; I basically wrote Marian Granville fan fiction for the next three years. And other kinds of fan fic for twelve.
JOSIE: Then what’s so difficult here?
LEAH: Ugh… so we have this woman who has to keep jumping back and forth between her life in the modern day, and another time and place in history every episode. So she needs a convincing motivation to do it.
JOSIE: In the books, it’s Duncan— chasing whatever incarnation of Duncan she can find.
LEAH: Yeah, that’s the problem! Is that the character you want to play? Some ‘90s-era romance novel heroine who gives up indoor plumbing to chase some dude who doesn’t even know who she is half the time? Does that speak to you as a modern multi-dimensional woman?
JOSIE: No, not really.
LEAH: So I have to figure out some way to make this person make sense, while still feeling recognizably loyal for the audience of wine moms, spinster librarians, and Reddit trolls whose dollars we’re chasing! And you wonder why I’m stressed?
Thanks to 31P31D this year, I've drafted about half of episode four, which focuses on nailing down the lead cast for the network's new show. I want a big part of it to force Leah and Josie to work together, to figure out who the main character Josie is going to be playing is. The show is an adaptation of a romance novel series from the 90's, and they have to collaborate to imbue the new version of character with a personality that is compelling to an audience of modern women. But Leah is resistant to working with others, while Josie is pulled between her own artistic ambitions and her desire to please and win the approval of the people around her. Forcing her and Leah to hash it out will be a good source of conflict, and something that will finally push Josie to standing up for herself and her work.
This is a somewhat poorly excerpted moment from a larger interaction between the two. This is the point where Josie starts to get tired of trying to be what Leah's looking for and starts calling her on her lack of collaborative effort. I like using what I think of as the Pinter method of forcing interpersonal conflict, by locking the characters in a room unable to get away from each other, and so their issues come out.
A big chunk of this is stolen from a pact Bob Fosse and Paddy Chayefsky supposedly had with each other, with Josie as Fosse and Leah as Chayefsky.
Day #20 - “Tap Dance”
From Dream Machine:
"1.04 - The Opposite of People"
By Phoebe Roberts
~~~
JOSIE CARRAWAY, the lead actress on Offcomer, early thirties
LEAH LUCCHESI, a showrunner at Dream Machine, mid thirties
Los Angeles, 2020
~~~
INT. PAMPLEMOUSSE SOUNDSTAGE – NIGHT
JOSIE: Fine! If you’re not going to work on this with me, I’ll figure out who this character is myself.
LEAH: Over my dead body! You are just a meat vessel for my vision! I will figure this out without you!
JOSIE: Well, without this meat vessel, your vision is just— brain masturbation! And nobody’s going to give a damn. So over my dead body!
LEAH: Oh, you think dying’s going to get you out of this? No way you are screwing over my show like that!
JOSIE: Yeah? What’re you going to do?
LEAH: I’ll— write a really boring eulogy for your funeral! Not one joke or amusing anecdote, and it’ll go on for hours. Your corpse will be the lucky one!
JOSIE: Really? That’s your revenge?
LEAH: I’m a writer, I don’t have a ton of practical skills!
JOSIE: Yeah, well, I majored in movement for the stage— you don’t know from impractical! So, at your funeral, when you die from crew mutiny, I’m gonna do a tap dance!
LEAH: ...that sounds awesome, actually, you should totally do that.
JOSIE: I’m glad you like it. Because at the rate you’re smoking, you are definitely gonna go first.
LEAH: I’m stressed, okay!? I’ve got to build a whole show around this person and I don’t even know who she is!
JOSIE: Why? What’s the problem? Because you can’t build her from the ground up?
LEAH: Are you kidding? I took over West Chesterham after the second season; I basically wrote Marian Granville fan fiction for the next three years. And other kinds of fan fic for twelve.
JOSIE: Then what’s so difficult here?
LEAH: Ugh… so we have this woman who has to keep jumping back and forth between her life in the modern day, and another time and place in history every episode. So she needs a convincing motivation to do it.
JOSIE: In the books, it’s Duncan— chasing whatever incarnation of Duncan she can find.
LEAH: Yeah, that’s the problem! Is that the character you want to play? Some ‘90s-era romance novel heroine who gives up indoor plumbing to chase some dude who doesn’t even know who she is half the time? Does that speak to you as a modern multi-dimensional woman?
JOSIE: No, not really.
LEAH: So I have to figure out some way to make this person make sense, while still feeling recognizably loyal for the audience of wine moms, spinster librarians, and Reddit trolls whose dollars we’re chasing! And you wonder why I’m stressed?
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