Hanging chads

Hey, I just realized this is my 500th post. Yay, me. I'm a wordy bastard.

Last night I had the opportunity to read Danny Strong's screenplay Recount. It's number one on this year's blacklist, a list of most anticipated scripts scuttling around town at the moment. It's about the Florida election debacle of 2000 that brought us our current glorious presidential administration.

The big question I had going into the read was, will this be interesting? Because 1) it's about a political election, much of which was dedicated to counting little holes in sheets of paper and 2) we already know the outcome.

Not that knowing the outcome is always bad. We know the boy will get the girl. We know Oedipus already married his mom. We know Romeo and Juliet are going to die.

Oh, ummm spoiler warnings there, guys.

The Democrats lose.

But it's the way they lose. The story follows a member of the campaign as he desperately tries every possible way to count the votes that were lost in the election and you just ache for him because so many cards are stacked against him in a state run by the other guy's brother.

There were moments in this script where I was really rooting for the Gore campaign, hoping somehow they'd beat the odds and celebrating every time they won a victory. Then I'd remember that I already know what happened and I'd get sad.

That's a hell of an achievement for the script.

It's very clear who the good guys are in the story. Strong doesn't really try to be impartial, and I think that's what prevents the script from being too dry. You have to root for somebody. At first I was worried that he was making the Gore campaign look too noble and righteous, but not only did that stop bothering me as I got more involved in the story, but the script also hinted at some of the flaws the self-righteousness created in a fierce competition with the devious Bush campaign.

For the Bush camp, winning is everything. For the Gore camp, the whole world is a beautiful place and we must all be fair and honorable and dance in the forest with the fairy creatures who live under the waterfall of ambrosia.

I'll be interested to see how this script lands when all is said and done. Hollywood's a liberal town but America is a conservative country. Either way if this film gets made it's gonna piss some people off.

I want to write a script that pisses people off. Good on you, Danny Strong.