What follows in an introduction to a screenplay I wrote in 2002. It is available with the original screenplay as a 6x9 paperbook book for $10.00. It can be ordered here.
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The other day my wife and I were engaging in spring-cleaning. Finding ourselves running short on needed storage space we decided to tackle "the drawer". I suspect that every house has one or two of these drawers that seem to collect all things, lost and forgetten about – the at-home equivalent of a black hole. As we dug through the drawer we found checks to bank accounts we no longer had, a DVD borrowed from a friend that we have since lost track of, and several magazines we no longer read. As we neared the bottom I unearthed an early draft of the screenplay you are holding in your hand.
My interest in filmmaking ultimately goes back to my childhood friend Casey. Casey had a father who was a movie buff and made little Super-8 films as a hobby. As kids, Casey and I started playing with his dad’s camera and having just seen an “edited for TV” version of Terminator 2, were particularly enamored with special effects. Our effects were very low-tech and consisted of stop-motion clay "slugs" dripping out of faucets and crawling into my brother's nose. Around that time we got involved in pyrotechnics and began filming model buildings that we blew up. (I'm quite fortunate to have both hands to type this.) Like most projects that Casey and I were involved in, the Super 8 filmmaking kind of fell by the wayside for other passing interests, such as music, video game programming, and to some extent girls. I don’t know whatever became of that Super-8 film footage. Perhaps it is lost the bot-tom of a drawer in his parent’s house.
With Casey and I, hobbies went in cycles and some years later when we were teenagers we again got interested in film-making and special effects. Casey had upgraded from stop-motion claymation to computer animation and digital effects software. We talked somewhat about making a Star Wars “fan film” and did some brain storming sessions of plot-points and performed limited location scouting. (I envisioned that with some added decoration the oil refineries that dotted my backyard might look just like a spaceport.) In the special effect department Casey had figured out how to rotoscope the all important light saber glow over our homemade PVC lightsabers. I admit that I was pretty excited when I saw that test footage of us stepping through a choreographed lightsaber duel with spot-perfect lazer effects. Yet ultimately my heart wasn’t really into that sort of moviemaking. At this time I was much more interested in doing a smaller, personal film.
This change in preference was mainly because I began to take an interest in Independent Cinema. I would often go to the Tivoli theatre in University City and see the latest indie films and attend the annual St. Louis film festival. It was at this time that ultra-low budget films like Slackers and Clerks were begin-ning to make filmmaking more accessible to the everyman. Whereas before making a movie was a bit of a daydream at least now it was practical if you had enough credit cards. This be-came even truer when digital video became an option. Suddenly making a film was immediately feasible with a minimal amount of money and a prosumer DV camcorder. This caused me to really start looking seriously at the possibly of making a feature film. But, before I could have something to put up on a screen, I needed a screenplay.
The first screenplay that I ever wrote was called Knocked Up. It was a comedy revolving around a young married couple that is suddenly faced with the possibility of an unexpected pregnancy. Because my wife and I were just in such a situation it was familiar subject matter. When I wrote it my favorite writer/director was Kevin Smith and my script was heavily in-fluenced by his style. That is to say it contained rapid-fire dialogue and was heavily punctuated with four-letter words and crude humor.
I held the idea that I would one day film it; but since I was one of Jehovah’s Witnesses I knew there would be serious repercussions if I ever did so. In the United States, Jehovah’s Witnesses unofficially, yet very forcefully, shun R-rated films and if Knocked Up was ever made it would have been pushing the limits of an R – and for that matter good taste. So I settled on the idea that I would try to sell it as a spec screenplay and hide behind a pseudonym. In the end, I never really pursued it and I put it to bed. After multiple computer changes and hard drive failures I lost track of that screenplay. All things said, that is a good thing. When I came to Christ in 2005 I probably would have burned it anyway.
Because I still wanted to make a film I decided this time to make it on a subject matter that I could actually bring to the screen without getting expelled from the Watchtower Organiza-tion in the process. I thought what better way to do it than to write about being one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Since I was born into the religion and was a devout JW this was something I knew all about.
At the time I had been married for a few years and was, I guess, transitioning into adulthood and looking back at my teen years. I was working with my dad doing home improvement and there was a considerable drive time to and from the job during which I daydreamed about what my story would look like. I thought I might center it around the annual District Convention of Jehovah’s Witnesses; which, for Witnesses was an important event.
I finished the first draft of Truth in 1999, which was then called Fall in reference to the season the film takes place and it also served as a subtle foreshadowing of the dramatic center-piece of the story-arc. Whereas Knocked Up took me many months to complete Fall took only about a month. It helped that much of it was based on my own recent experience-though greatly distilled and then embellished.
Finding it again this year prompted me to sit down and read through it. After finishing the first draft I renamed it Truth as I wanted to give a truthful account of what it meant to be "in the Truth", a phrase that Jehovah's Witnesses use describe being in their organization. To say you are "in the truth" is to say you are one of Jehovah's Witnesses.
Though this work is fiction many of these characters are amalgams of people I know or situations I have been in. Be-cause, I would never be able to film at a District Covention I decided to keep things small and instead center the events around a house party. Apart from the weekly religious meetings and ministry service, parties and gatherings were generally the high points of our lives.
This particular party takes place in "the city". Growing up we often joked about "city witnesses"; because they tended to be a little less strict with their morals. Outwardly the confessed the same moral code that we did but their lifestyle was much more divergent with their beliefs.
All things considered our lives were relitively care free and I feel that the script reflects that childhood naievity. Of course there was the typical girl-boy drama; but the only major trauma that we tended to face was losing friends who were dis-fellowshipped, removed from the congregation. This may seem relatively minor to an outsider but to one of Jehovah's Witnesses being disfellowshipped is the equivalent to dying. If a friend got disfellowshipped you knew there would be a good chance you would never seem them again, they may as well be dead.
For me it would be interesting to look at these characters now ten years laters. What would have become of them? Most of the characters seem pretty confident in their religion and strong in their faith. They love being Jehovah's Witnesses and envision no other future apart from their religion. Yet that is how I once was and now I see things quite differently and therein lies the biggest irony. When writing Truth the character I mostly indentified with was Ash. While Ash argues hard against "leaving the truth", I have now done just that very thing.
In restrospect looking at the script, the character of Felicia stands out. In writing the screenplay I was on a certain level working out my feelings that I had about a friend of mine that had been disfellowshipped a couple of years earlier. Though in looking at the character of Felicia I believe she made some wrong choices in life she was at least honest about it and in that way is perhaps more true than others "in the Truth".
Regretably, in real life I cut her off after she was disfel-lowshipped and thought little of it thinking I was doing the right thing. When I was disfellowshipped myself some ten years later I was moved to contact her and apologise for dropping her so quickly and shunning her. I wish I could say that she ac-cepted my apology; but as might be expected she had some animosity toward me for my cruel treatment of her over the years and for that I am sorry.
While I started out attempting to write a screenplay that I could put on film and not get removed from the religion I won-der how ultimately Truth would have been received had I finished the project. In my attempt to make it honest and truth-ful to my personal experience I didn't hold back from painting a picture that may have been poorly received by Jehovah's Wit-nesses who are generally not use to anything but glowing portrayals of their religion as some sort of moral utopia or “spiri-tual paradise”. It would no doubt have been shocking to hear a character confess to premarital sex and admit that it was enjoy-able to them. Even more to have a character confess to homosexual feelings, though not acted upon, was definitely ta-boo and would have made many extremely uncomfortable.
When I originally set out to write the dialogue my goal was to speak the truth and now I still want to keep things true to my perspective back then as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Though I have been removed from the religion and will have detractors because of that, my desire is to honestly say in pre-senting this screenplay that it was written by one Jehovah’s Witnesses. I may not agree with it but it still stands as an honest portrayal of how things were then, or at least how I perceived them to be.
So why release a screenplay to a film that was never made? I guess rather than put the script back in the drawer and lose it again to time I decided to make it available in this printed format so that at the very least it can move from my junk drawer to my bookshelf. In preparing this screenplay for print I made the decision not to make any changes to the last draft I wrote in 2002, with the exception of correcting spelling and punctuation. This was not an easy thing at times as in retrospect some of things the characters say now make me cringe.
I've given up any dreams of ever making this film (or any film) as I'm quite content and busy in other efforts in quiet serv-ice of the Lord. In putting this out to the public I hope that some may find it of interest to read. In particular if you were one of Jehovah's Witnesses and a young adult in the 1990's you may be able to relate to some of the characters and the feelings they express.
Looking back at my life a teenager and young adult within the Jehovah's Witnesses religion I have few misgivings. I cherish my old friends and think fondly of many good times we had. Compared to many of our peers we tended to live a better life and were highly moral. When it came to the Bible we were educated and literate - albeit, from a Watchtower-centric per-spective. My one real regret though is that while we were outwardly moral and heavily involved in a religious system that we too often missed having a true, inner relationship with God and even more so with Jesus Christ. Today my relationship with the Father and the Son is the most precious thing in my life and for me it took leaving the Watchtower organization to gain them.
As previously mentioned, when the characters in the screenplay speak about “the Truth” they are talking about the Jehovah’s Witness religion, as is the title. What I’ve come to discover is that ultimately “the truth” is not an organization, or a set of religious teachings, or even a concept of right – “the Truth” is an individual, Jesus Christ. Just as Jesus says about himself, “I am . . . the Truth” (John 14:16)
In the opening scene of the screenplay, the character Ash says, “It never fails that the most dramatic upheavals in my life always take place during the fall.” At one time this was true for me but in the last few years this has shifted from the fall to the spring. Spring is typically the season for renewal and it was dur-ing that season that I came to the Lord. Religions tend to call such an experience by different terms such as being “anointed, “born again”, “receiving the Holy Spirit”. I don’t really know what to call it but I know it happened and it was powerful and it turned my life around and ultimately lead me right out of the Je-hovah’s Witness organization into the arms of Heaven. It gave me an initial glimpse of Jesus and like the apostle Paul the goal of my life since then is to ultimately “know Him” (Phil 3:10) Today I am very happy to be free in getting to know that real Truth that exists outside of religious organizations.
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