THE ART AND BEAUTY OF MISERABLE BASTARDS
Blaze, a wacky comedian loses her TV gig, her dying mother moves in and now she’s doing therapy with inmates who are
even more damaged than she is. The environment is
bleak and the inmates struggle to find their
voice. Blaze tells them, “See this blank
piece of paper? It has all the freedom you need
to be who you are. Artists are just miserable
bastards who get that. You guys start with that
advantage! Stephen King— he’d be sitting right
next to you if he couldn’t write.”
Ultimately, Blaze discovers her own capacity for love and violence when the power of art elevates their suffering to song— and then morphs into a murder…
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scriptanalysis@bluecatscreenplay.comWriter
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Project Type:Screenplay
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Genres:comedy, drama
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Number of Pages:99
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Country of Origin:United States
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Language:English
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First-time Screenwriter:Yes
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Student Project:No
I'm a lefty, in spite of my Russian grandmother's determination to change my hand every morning after breakfast. This is no small fact. My confusion about which hand to use morphed into an awkward flexibility that I now embrace as my creative spirit.
My next psychotherapy patient was late... I sipped a cup of coffee and gazed across downtown Manhattan from my fourteenth floor window. Suddenly, a plane decapitated the World Trade Center. Half my practice was killed that morning. I still wonder if some of the specks falling from the towers were my patients, especially the one that floated onto my couch.
I moved to California shortly after with no direction and a heavy heart. My mother had just died. When my funds ran out I was forced to take a job at Donovan, a maximum security prison in San Diego. That place changed me forever. I will never forget the human suffering, the inhumanity that lurked between those walls. Nor will I forget the love and generosity of spirit it takes to get up every morning to hear grown men cry, "Thank you, Doc.”
My script, The Art and Beauty of Miserable Bastards, is a fictionalized account of how creative expression gives meaning to the deepest hurts. It's about how finding our voice vitalizes the most wretched of us and forges the connection between us that makes us human. While writing, The Art and Beauty of Miserable Bastards, I enrolled in ancestry.com. My script took a sharp turn off the road when the results revealed my father was not my father at all. In fact, I too am a miserable bastard!
But even before this intimate revelation, my first novel, “Irregulars,” was published in 1999. It was based on my experience as an artist and psychologist living in an isolated loft in the Meat Market of NYC.
Some years later, I had the opportunity to collaborate with the Broadway producer/director, Tom O’Horgan (Hair, Jesus Christ Superstar). He introduced me to the magic of writing for Off Off-Broadway. The Art and Beauty of Miserable Bastards, is the culmination of years of writing with the delight of using both hands on the key board!
The producer Michael Phillips (The Sting, Taxi Driver) had this to say, “...I think this is a very legitimate project and the writer is talented. Her characters, relationships, and dialogue had me laughing.”
I look forward to your expressed interest in my story.
Thank you for your consideration.