My lifelong dream is to not only write an amazing script, but also to SELL it. So far I’ve written about 4 scripts (that are okay, not amazing), and have yet to make a sale. I think I will probably continue to keep writing until I’m dead in pursuit of this one goal. Even if I sold a B-movie Grindhouse script called “BULLET TO THE BALLS!” to some foreign action movie producer for only $10,000 I would be able to die happy. I just want recognition for my fucking writing someday. I’ve wanted that since I was 11 or 12 and my dad bought me a book about filmmaking at some shitty bookstore. Even if that doesn’t happen, it’s the PURSUIT of this dream that keeps me alive and well. I am not confident about a lot in life, but movies are something I don’t fuck around about. I live, breathe, sleep, and eat this shit.
Each year the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has a screenplay competition, and the early deadline is sometime in the spring. I try to submit to the contest each year even though I know the chances of anything happening are fucking low.
The average process for me might go like this: I kick around an idea in my head for months, or years. It’s an idea that will not leave me alone. If I feel like I can go through life without the script existing, then I don’t write it. But if I wake up at like 3 or 4 in the morning or some shit, and I have to rush to a notebook nearby to write an idea down; that’s usually a good sign the script is a keeper. I usually chart out what I’m going to be doing for a good month or two (November and December). In January I write a script by hand, and February I go through it and do a second draft. I let that breathe for awhile, and then by the end of the month I rifle through it again and polish that for a third draft I usually date “Feb. 28” (the date of my birth). It sounds horribly pretentious to say, but it feels nice bringing something into the world the same day I was. My cat’s birthday is also Feb. 27, so every year it’s a nice long week of celebrating screenwriting & creativity, my life, and my friendship with my cat. Then in March I submit the script to the competition.
Anyway, this is the script I sent to the contest last year. Absolutely nothing happened with it (like everything else I’ve ever written), and it’s just been sitting on my computer ever since. I feel like if I don’t share the work it almost doesn’t exist.
This one is called JUST BE YUSUF, and it’s about a Muslim teenager growing up in North America who has a crisis of faith. It’s a mixture of comedy and drama. I’d say maybe 70% is based on instances from real life. The idea of doing a bildungsroman work greatly appealed to me at the time because two of my favourite works of all time are A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Great Expectations. James Joyce and Charles Dickens both changed my world and values, and I hope to do the same for someone else someday maybe.
Now that some time has gone by I still think it’s a pretty good script, but maybe the ending is a little off. Anyway, here it is. Enjoy or not.
