ACROSS THE UNIVERSE

Yeaaahh! Quick debrief.

“Everything Flows as in Nothing Stays the Same” — great, that one is coming along just so well, I’ve got the last 1/3 to work out, the scenes with the Zen Master Sybil to craft, but that’s it, and that will be a complete movie idea.

I don’t have a sense of length yet except these scenes might be longer than not, in a good way, that’s just what it requires…thinking a lot about the objective in writing for a team of people, but actors in particular, which I think has been the great joy more so than anything else. The dream. So anyway, that’s almost done.

I’m moving onto Miracle Mile…and I’ve got a version of that…

The father/daughter coming out of this scenario really grabbed hold of me though — taking this father for a real exploration of the territory— so much fun. Not seeing the impossibility of the task but rather being with it and seeing what we could do here.

Now, I’m leaning on Across the Universe, a title more like that, where he’s a rocket scientist, hilariously, and we’re talking about outer space…We find ourselves in outer space…very real…and we’re going to be in a real and unreal world in that this father has room to explore style-wise…he can lose it, I mean, range. Get looney. Exit realism. Whatever.

It’s about this guy maybe learning to make different choices. “I’m sounding like my father,” which can be funny, how he comes to realize that, sitting on some bed in IKEA, because he suddenly barks at his child that it’s HIS money, so it’s HIS house… uh oh. Okay. Making new choices might LOOK and FEEL unnatural — but there’s a poetry to that, I follow that, nodding along as an audience who is going…how…are they going to do it? And you might cry, you just might.

I see him in the end — a true transformation — and that has meaning in it, even at his age.

I’m going to take it in that direction and see what happens. Get a tight crew of supporting characters, maybe her pediatrician since kids are always there…he’s gotta go to the urologist, you know, which he did. A meeting of these two people. Now I can start to see this dramatic arc — the WEIGHT of this has to be great, which ended up being the major problem for “us” in real life that most people didn’t understand.

“How impossible, how sad, this poor man,” so lost, and “this isn’t the way it’s supposed to go,” right? He’s not supposed to lean on her either, and yet, they went through hell.

What do you do with that?

Well, this doctor, pediatrician, someone, he might get looney at times, I mean it was so looney, these people are coming back from OUTER SPACE, we’re in outer SPACE actually…this doctor, someone, might actually encourage this father in the opposite direction…meaning don’t get crushed by the impossibility of it, don’t go that way, the “this is wrong,” but rather, rise to the occasion, be there for each other. Reach out. A new unknown, exactly. It’s a big place. Live again. Maybe he never really lived. I mean his feelings, meaning, this problem.

His heart starts to activate, and he falls in love with being a father? Maybe comes to wake up to what his life meant to him, um, remembering, even, um, he doesn’t “play,” no, so he might, learn that himself, with a baseball glove with this girl who’s just bright, just happy to throw a football — she’s just wanting to connect with who he is. There are plenty of opportunities for humor and waking up — do you want to do this? Sure. They play sports, handball, hilarious. Maybe they really go for it. She becomes queen of the court. BOOM—watermelon. That’s where we actually connected: handball, I know, just digging into the real stuff.

I might make her older just because people might not actually believe me, which is fine, so she’s in this situation from 5-10? 6-11? Tack on another year? And she comes out.

I’m sort of leaning into pushing the situation they’re coming out of — to its max.

They come home from this insane scene on Miracle Mile where he’s been manipulated, okay, and this mother who’s been protecting MARIA from him, presumably because he’s a child molester? All that comes out. His daughter responds in some capacity to this person actually coming alive, and he has to, and when you’re in this situation, I can follow this pair driving home…which has been taken over, basically, since there’s some ESCORT, some man — who’s protecting her mother?

It gets bad, comedic, something, and the presence of someone who’s there changes everything, even if he’s fictional, my mother would have resisted anyone coming to take her, they would have probably had to restrain her, they would have put her on a watch, and sure, that’s really really hard, this ESCORT — what? Sure, we can get into a hilarious scene of sorts, where the other mother — STEPS on it — this is personal — she’s driving across the universe to tell the cops exactly what happened. Okay? BOOM. Six kids with her. My mother was at the cops a touch too many times — game over. Her word falls.

I have to figure this part out, if he’s going to try, if he’s really going to try, and he’s going to need real help. “What do I do?” I mean, that’s a real question. And she’s a great kid, and the problems are enough. Rockets shooting, we have a whole sky…to reach…this guy. He’s going to evolve, and it’s just amazing how that can happen — cracking up at him looking hilarious and dapper in the end. Don’t know about the mother, but he might let that go, not sure, since this escort might functionally….take over?

Across the universe — good sentiment for him. He’s a rocket scientist, cool, unexpected. What? Strangely smart. Character. He was a mechanical engineer — I saw the right guy just slipping out from under the hood, mask off, “what? what did you say?” Oh, he made some — gotta get the language back — maybe losing his memory, don’t know, it’s just his disease is— whoosh —another can of worms that isn’t needed, but explaining what he built to reach the moon to take care of the waste in space. A major problem. So it detached from the spaceship…

His cars were a point of connection —classic cars —since he was a mechanical engineer. That’s fun.

I used to bark at my father as a four-year-old, and he really didn’t seem to know what a four-year-old was…He allowed a four-year-old to get behind the wheel…so she could get down the stairs on her bum and bark — where are we? They can have a hilarious scene “what’s that?” Finally, “a planet!” “What’s that?” And the graph paper comes out. He’s explaining the universe to a four-year-old— “there’s a CORE, well how else does it spin? You need heat. Everything is about HEAT, Maria. The SUN.” Pointing to the sun. Rotating on its axis. Smile, “the smallest minutia…” between his fingers: an element. She’s pretty blown away. A WORLD.

“There are forces,” she’s looking at this graph paper, “that keep it all…” how is he supposed to explain the gravitational forces…she snaps. He tells her to jump. JUMP. She comes back down and stumbles. “That’s gravity, you see? You go up and down, you’re on the ground, that’s gravity. And he just tends to add on when he doesn’t have to, suddenly, we’re at “everything is MATH, Maria, everything’s MATH” in a sudden surge of emotion. MATH.

Is that a sweet start?

I might try and start there, take you through the darkness of it? A bit. Her — the problem of the mother. That way, I hope, you’ll care about their relationship…? So, she’s snatched, in a sense, and it’s like — nooooooo. Not Maria! She’s so cute and hilarious. The mother is from outer space! So here she goes… with Julio Iglesias playing across the universe… and her father flies over, something, lands…comes home… to…a ridiculously different house. Nightmare.

I might not need to over-explain it.

Maybe you go from that funny “The Universe Explained by Nicholas J Mocerino” into — the door opening — four years later? His face. In the house…on Miracle Mile where Maria has been kept for her own protection by a stranger. He might not be able to even get it yet, that he isn’t asking for her? You know? Or confused. Manipulated. And the scene between him and this other mother will take its proper dimension.

I’ll keep problem-solving now that I have a better sense of — we’re going on his transformational journey through this experience. He doesn’t have to be the best guy in the beginning, better if he isn’t, in a sense, he has real problems, and we’ll see how he moves through that arc with space to still be him, human, all that stuff. I like that. At least as an idea. He has meaning — he’s going to find meaning in some way, show us how far you can come back, really…

That’s it. Feel good about that.

Off to Miracle Mile first from her — MARIAs — standpoint. See where I can end up. Everything Flows IS — it is already — but it’s not Once Upon a Time on Miracle Mile I think as a title though she says it…but that’s looking good because it’s tight. I’m trying to do something with the love songs, the Brazilian mother, so I got that one already…

I started off on a train…where she’s remembering all this… or begins to and though something is interesting about that, it doesn’t GRAB you, too intellectual, dunno. But starting with — scene one, Dr. J coming to tell…this other mother who is already at her WITS END that her father is a child molester…OH… God, manipulation, she understands why this child has problems now, might even feel terrible, and this Dr. J cannot even apologize ENOUGH, she…didn’t expect to find herself in these circumstances… she just has been trying so hard. Blah blah blah.

She’s villainous Dr. J, what are you supposed to do? Is it her fault? Not my problem this time around. Call her Martha for the fuck I care.

For MARIA’s journey — a debut on a train where she’s by herself…she’s remembering…that doesn’t seem to work…the “fairytale” element sort of makes me giggle…with the Pan’s Labyrinth soundtrack beginning…tongue and cheek. “Do you know JULIO IGLESIAS?”

With the father/daughter idea, however, that first scene of them having this ridiculous convo might work because it’s about them but really HIM, and it’s hopefully so funny, especially him, how he acts with this four-year-old that it might be rather affecting — they are funny people, no? She can’t LET IT GO, right, she MUST get to the MINUTIA — which is more of the NOTE to strike.

I thought, oh, MARIA walks in to interview Dr. J’s lover— also hilarious, heartbreaking, and he listens into this? But I’ll get there, I think in this case. Just his eyes closing to her saying “psychological experiment.” Again.

“The Universe Explained by Nicholas J Mocerino” might be it. I don’t know.

Thanks for reading.