Witness… The Dancing Outlaws

To start this entry off, I wanna talk about Aaron Sorkin. I’m a fan. I acknowledge all his flaws and how bombastic and pretentious he can be, but there’s no denying how talented a writer he is, especially in the field of dialogue. He’s quoted as saying dialogue sounds like music to him, and this is something I take to heart— dialogue is, indeed, musical. Still, and you may have seen the supercut floating around the web, Sorkin tends to steal… from himself. Whether intentionally or not, there are several instances where he used the same lines in multiple different projects of his. Now, I get how that can happen: your mind can just sometimes go back to a particular exchange without even realizing that you’ve used it before. Hell, in editing the audio for this season, I found many instances where lines were repeated across episodes, either partially or verbatim. Some of them I left in and you may have noticed them! But hey, if you’re gonna plagiarize, best to do plagiarize yourself, right? Especially after years and years of conceiving, starting and never finishing “tributes” to the things that inspired you, in my case, Goosebumps and Michael Crichton.

Anyways, let’s go back sixteen years.

After I dropped out of college (for the first time 😬), I knew I should take advantage of this sudden burst of free time and get some art done. Writing screenplays was always the plan, but getting them produced? That involved luck and the right connections and was never (and still isn’t) a sure thing (anyone wanna give me a job?). Making movies myself, however— that seemed feasible, especially after I bought a GL-2 camera, the kind that I had used while in the Communications Academy (ComAcad, for those in the know) in high school. That camera might not seem that impressive these days, as there are far better means to take video in these modern times, and hell, even when I bought it in the mid-2000s, it was kind of a relic. But hey, it still captured video, so who was I to be picky?

I did end up collaborating with two friends, another Andy and Chris, on some of their projects, both as a cinematographer and performer. It was very guerrilla-style filmmaking with them sometimes; we technically trespassed on private property and the cops showed up and scoped out the area while we hid. Oh, and did I mention I was brandishing a fake gun for the scene? Not awkward at all! Good times. I also made a fake movie trailer based on a short film idea my friend Alex and I had developed one summer years earlier called The Vampyre Slayerz, which was an extremely fun project. For the most part, though, there was a lot of writing, talk of producing and pre-planning of some content, but never any follow-through. I wrote a web series based on a trilogy of screenplays I’d written based on my friends in high school, and I co-wrote another web series based on a singular screenplay that was originally based on that co-writer’s original concept (follow that?). I wrote the script for a short film that involved somehow wrangling a duck, which didn’t seem possible (put a pin in that for next week, he said knowingly…), as well as one that was inspired by hearing MGMT’s “Kids” over and over on the radio.

That project, the MGMT project, seemed like something I could film with all the means at my disposal. It was called Outlaws, and it told the story of a teenage girl who lives in a world where artistic expression is, well, outlawed. All she wants to do is dance to music, but of course, she would be arrested if she was found out; even people who told jokes were hauled off to some unknown detention center. The girl goes to an “art dealer” in order to get her fix of music, this time in the form of a Speakeasy, essentially a single Air Pod that acted like an iPod Shuffle (btw, this was written before Air Pods were a thing, so I guess I invented them?). She goes to the deep woods, turns on the Speakeasy, “Kids” starts playing, and she starts dancing. Soon, she comes across a boy her age also dancing in the woods. When they realize they are not threats to each other, they start dancing together, but just as their chemistry reaches its peak, the authorities arrive, capture the two teens, and take them away in a helicopter. The girl asks the boy if she saw the same art dealer, but the boy says he was just dancing to the music in his head. This gives the girl hope in this hopeless situation. The end.

It didn’t seem like the story called for a large budget. All the filming locations it needed would be accessible (friends’ homes, outside, and that’s it); props and costumes didn’t need to be futuristic, as the whole thing looked overly saturated in my head; and I, of course, had plenty of friends who could act in it. It was doable.

But I never did it.

Instead, I expanded upon the world I had created in an effort to turn Outlaws into a feature length screenplay. I figured out why artistic expression was illegal. The music in the boy’s head turned out to be basically one of those Speakeasys implanted into his brain, and whenever someone touched his skin, they could hear the music, too, because, you know, science. The art dealer’s role became larger, and eventually he ended up as the girl’s brother. And, of course, the whole thing would climax with the bad people in charge losing and the prospect of hope, love and art finally on the horizon.

I started three drafts, but could never finish the thing.

There was one line, though, that lasted through the drafts and always stuck with me. A mother is watching her toddler-aged son play make-believe, and after the main character asks her what her art is, she explains that it isn’t her. It’s her son.

An excerpt from the third draft of Outlaws.

And yes, I was writing a screenplay in Microsoft Word. No excuses.

“Plagued by imagination.” That phrase has stuck with me for years. So, after failing to crack one story for Season 3, I started to think about the bare bones of Outlaws as a feasible replacement. I also started to think about The Last of Us, and the journey of a child and their ambivalent protector. Those have always been stories that interest me. So, like Mr. Sorkin, I decided to rip myself off (finally, it all comes together).

The script for this episode ended up being the longest of the series so far, at 72 pages. Yes, even though this is a shorter episode than E3, “The Noble Steed,” and technically speaking, you can pool both parts of “The Driving Test” into one script, but facts are facts, and “Plague” ended up being 72 pages. And in all honesty, that’s because I didn’t know how to end it. Just when I thought I was getting close, I realized there were still some loose plot threads that needed detangling (or tightening? Cut off completely? I don’t know). What ended up helping was thinking of “Plague” as the first in a series of stories that have yet to be told, or better yet, the pilot episode of a soon-to-be multi-season Netflix (or whatever) saga, which meant that not everything needed to be resolved. For whatever reason, I kept thinking about the original pilot for Firefly, and how all these storylines were set up but never really had much of a payoff because the show was canceled (yes, there’s Serenity, but you get my point). So everything with Crash’s parents, the question of whether or not Terrence is indeed “The One Who Saves All,” and Mag and North Star’s mission to rescue their friends— all of those would be storylines for “future episodes” of this series that won’t ever exist. At least, there are no plans for a sequel at this time. but never say never.

Casting for the episode was no easy feat. I didn’t write the roles with anybody specific in mind, except for maybe Girl, who was someone I thought Olivia Puerta could play. Olivia, as well as being a terrific improviser, is also an amazing singer (I mean, you heard her!). She and Season 2 performer Emily Markoe (from “The Secret in the Swamp”) are both part of the improvised opera team (yes, you read that right) La Spatzatura, which translates to “garbage.” But let me tell you, they are anything but garbage, as not only are their voices amazing, but the stuff they come up with and sing in those amazing voices is some of the most hilarious improv I’ve ever seen/heard. So, knowing that Olivia was capable of both singing beautifully and coming up with lyrics and melodies on the spot, I had a feeling she would be perfect, and goddamn, she was. I wrote the lyrics for the puppy song and the “I Love Butt” song, but she invented the melodies herself and improvised the other two songs completely.

Clockwise from left: Jevin Cokash (Officer One-One-Sixteen), me, Zoe McCook (Officer Two-Ninety), Olivia Puerta (Girl), and Dominique Salerno (Mother).

This is when Olivia sang the puppy song. One take was all it needed.

The other performers I desired came together soon, and the arduous task of scheduling a recording date began. This was going to be another multi-time zone affair, with both Dominique Salerno (Mother) and Daniel Shanker (Boy) living on the East Coast, and Sid Singh (Neighbor) all the way in London. I mean, I think he was in London. Sid is a hilarious stand-up comedian with whom I performed regularly in Missed Connections, an improv show inspired by the infamous Craigslist page. But as he tours across Europe regularly, snagging him for this episode was going to need a stroke of good luck. Thankfully, he had some downtime and was able to do it. However, he was not able to attend the primary recording date that was chosen, nor was Daniel, which meant another Andy-Fills-In-For-Multiple-Roles-And-Ends-Up-Arguing-With-Himself situation.

Well that’s certainly a wide array of emotions.

Recording with Daniel and Sid, as well as Zoe, who was able to attend and help out, took place three days later, with substantially less arguing with myself.

Clockwise from left: Sid Singh (Neighbor), me, Daniel Shanker (Boy), Zoe.

Sid, didn’t you get the memo about over-the-ear headphones only?!

Both recording sessions went off without any hitches, save for a vacuum cleaner deciding it was clean up time in the hallway of Dominique’s apartment building and Zoe’s baby making some wah-wahs during one scene. Neither turned out to be a big deal, thankfully, as the vacuuming ended not long after I noticed it so we could go back and rerecord those moments, and Zoe’s son was gracious enough to mostly cry while his mother was not delivering dialogue. Although, if you listen carefully, during the scene where Office Two-Ninety becomes englightened/imaginative/ inspired/whatever you wanna call it, if you listen carefully, you’ll catch a quick baby wail as she speaks, which I kind of liked in a weird metaphorical sense and decided to leave in rather than have Zoe retake it. Your kid’s a star, Zoe!

“The Imagination Plague” was the third episode to be locked in, and I think I approached the editing with an extra amount of perfectionism. Mostly because I’m insatiable, but I think also because this was the culmination of a ten-plus-year idea that I was always looking forward to sharing with the world. I pride myself as an artist, regardless of the quality of my work or whether or not it’s received favorably. I need to create. So stories about creation are always something I’m drawn to. People held back from expressing who they are finally breaking through against all odds and shouting to the world, “This is me!” I don’t want to be pretentious (too late) or preachy, but I think that’s a sentiment that’s really prescient today. So many assholes are trying to force people to live in the boxes they’ve created for them, whether by denying them choice or fulfilling their true identity. In the long run, I think the right side will prevail, but times are really scary right now, so who knows when that prevailing will happen. I hope soon. As long as voices continue to shout over the cacophony of hate and exclusion that’s bombarding the world right now, I think we’ll be successful. I hope I’m able to contribute even a small squeak amongst those shouts if it means it all gets heard.

—Andy