The first time I sold a screenplay option (a nonrefundable down payment with the ‘option’ to purchase the script) was for a Halloween comedy called The Bag Snatchers.
Where I grew up snatching candy bags was serious business and much more fun than merely trick-or-treating. The thought of having your bag full of candy snatched away in an instant was more frightening than any fake ghosts or phony gravestones. It was the absolute worst thing that could happen to any trick-or-treater. Conversely, snatching someone else’s candy bag and instantaneously increasing your net candy worth was a pure adrenaline rush. Halloween was different back in the pre-cellphone era and, in my opinion, quite a bit more fun.
I wrote The Bag Snatchers when I was an MFA student at NYU, Tisch School of the Arts in the Dramatic Writing program. The story is a Goonies (1985)-style kids adventure that takes place on Halloween night when a few shorter-than-average bank robbers pull a heist and then dress up as trick-or-treaters to escape.
Given their short stature and costume disguises, they simply blend in with all the other trick-or-treaters for an easy getaway.
But if it’s that easy, then we’ve got no movie. Unfortunately for these small-time crooks they chose the wrong neighborhood. They chose a neighborhood like the one I grew up in where the kids are all out snatching bags from everybody, which in this case, includes the bank robbers whose bags are filled with money from the bank heist. Comedic hijinks ensue as the mischievous, yet clever kids battle the robbers in Home Alone (1990) fashion but with a Goonies-style larger group of kids.
Recently I was reminded of the synchronistic way one particular element in this script fell into place. The story’s basic plot came super easy. Once the kids snatch the bank robbers’ bags, it’s pretty clear what needs to happen next. But the story still needed an anchoring element to help tie all the different characters together. As mentioned above, this project was something I was writing for class at NYU. During my short time there (I left school early for professional and personal reasons) I was commuting from Hartford, CT to NYC, about 100 miles each way…every day. Two or three hours of sleep per night finally caught up with me and one morning I overslept leaving me no way to make it to the city in time for class.
I was getting burned out and needed some time to reassess my life situation because I knew I couldn’t keep it up much longer. Rather than heading back home and completely wasting the day, I decided to drive to a spot I used to go sometimes when I needed to think. It was a small parking area along the Farmington River in Windsor, CT, my hometown just north of Hartford. It happens to be the same spot where they filmed the scene from the movie War of the Worlds (2005) where Dakota Fanning’s character sees the dead bodies floating in the river.
Sometimes when there are no other cars parked there you can hear the river gurgling across the rocks and it’s a quiet, therapeutic place to clear one’s mind. It was a perfect fall day, bright sun, bright yellow leaves gently blowing and not another car in sight. So, I sat on the hood of my car and listened. I waited for the river to speak, but the river had nothing to say to me that day. Still, the sound of the flowing water helped calm my anxiety until my peace was rudely interrupted.
An older pickup truck pulled into the parking area and parked in the space right next to me despite the fact that all the other spaces in the parking area were wide open. The raggedy truck sounded like it had a hole in the muffler and loud rock music played through crackly speakers. I could no longer hear the river and was beyond frustrated at that point. To make matters worse, a man climbed out of the truck and came directly toward me eager to socialize.
It was still morning, and the guy was already drinking a brown-bagged beer. I tried to be cordial, but shortened our conversation, hoping he’d get bored and go away, but the guy was persistent. It was like it was his mission to force me to listen to his problems. He told me he was a roofer and had sustained multiple injuries from work and how he just got fired. I didn’t care about this guy’s problems, I had my own more important problems to worry about, like how was I going to finish this story I was writing? Against my better judgement, I went ahead and explained to him that I was working on a movie script about Halloween. The man’s face lit up.
He told me he loved Halloween and even had a specific gag he did every year. He’d dress up in a gorilla-suit and sit on the porch really still making people think it was just a stuffed suit, kind of like a scarecrow. He’d also have a sign warning trick-or-treaters to only take one piece of candy from the tray. Then he’d suddenly jump up and scare the crap out of the trick-or-treaters. It was an old gag I’d seen before but hadn’t thought about it since I was a kid. Instantly my mind began to fit his gorilla-suit idea into my story. It was a perfect fit and made me eager to hear more about this guy’s Halloween stories. But suddenly, the guy was done talking. He got in his truck and left. Now that we had something in common (Halloween stories) I was ready to talk, but the guy was gone. It was like he had this one specific thing to tell me and then he bounced. Could it be that some unseen (infinitely organizing) power had orchestrated these seemingly unconnected events? Me missing class and this guy getting fired somehow brought us both to the same parking area at the same time so that this stranger, a roofer no less, could help me finish my story, right? Or maybe it was all just a coincidence. Or maybe not?
Either way the synchronistic incident reminded me of reading The Celestine Prophecy, when after reading that book, everyone was thinking everything was a sign and everyone had a message for them. Most daily interactions are indeed mundane and routine occurrences, but what if sometimes the universe orchestrates things just so you come across a seemingly random person, situation or even a blog and it has a specific message for you; an answer to a question you’ve been wrestling with? As a creative storyteller, it’s usually when I let go and stop looking for an answer to a problem when the universe provides a solution, and often it comes from the least likely sources. As video games become more and more lifelike perhaps it’s because this thing we call life is actually more game-like than we realize where we all take turns being both Players and NPCs in each other’s life-games? Maybe the next person you interact with after reading this will have a specific piece of life-changing information tailor made just for you…or you for them? The signs are everywhere as they say.
Story-wise, the Gorilla-Suit gag served as an anchor point. Although it’s repetitive to keep using the same gag over and over each time a different group of neighborhood kids visits Gorilla-Guy’s house, by drastically changing each outcome, it also serves as a narrative compass for the audience. Sometimes repetition can be the best tool for demonstrating dramatic change in a story. Groundhog Day (1993) is probably the best modern example of this technique.
Here is one of the scenes from The Bag Snatchers: A Halloween Comedy where the neighborhood bullies first encounter Gorilla-Suit-Guy.
By,
Marlon G.
Trick-or-Treat! -- I’m too old for candy, but you can put a virtual coffee in my Halloween bag by hitting the button below.
Thanks for reading. See you in the next one.
