So I'm updating for the sake of updating. I don't have anything to say right now, as my writing has stagnated recently. I mostly want to vent about things.
So, back in 2003, my senior year of high school, I turned 18 in January. For my birthday I'd received a digital camera. One month later, I was home alone from school due to some government class (going court watching) and I was playing with the video filters, which included a black and white style.
I started filming myself talking to the camera, talking about a murder. The first things that popped into my head was a Dragnet or Columbo thing, as I was a fan of both. The result of that hour of filming was a short I called "The Murder of Frosty the Snowman." That summer I did a sequel or follow up or whatever called "the murder of the wicked witch of the west." During the second one I gave the character an actual suit (a blue sports jacket and a blue dress pants and an un-tucked button down shirt, and the name Jerry MacArthur.
As you see, there was a pattern forming, which I took advantage of. The following year (in 2004) I started writing a full length screenplay. I expanded the world to the Drury Lane Police Department, where Jerry worked. I called the movie The NaRK or The Nursery Rhyme Killer. In that film I had jerry receiving a series of letters taking an established nursery rhyme and then changing it with a reference to a murder taking place.
After that feature length, I altered the concept even further. It was to be a TV Series that I wanted to develop. And with the Pilot I was going to go to Jerry's origins, or to the point before he became a detective. Kind of his "coming of detective age" story.
So, For my senior thesis project in the winter of 2009, I had written, and then directed (Yes, starred in only because I could not find someone else to play the part) A 42 minute or so Pilot Episode of the show "The MacArthur Files." At this point, the world consisted of the town of Drury Lane, where Jerry lives and works, along with his Aunt Geraldine and many other characters. As I wrote this I plotted out a season, with various episodes of locations including the City of Dell (as in the farmer and the dell story). I took things from Nursery Rhymes, Fairy Tales and Folk-tales and put them in this world.
What I ended up with in the pilot was the Murder of the Gingerbread Man (who, in the finished pilot is a man made of gingerbread, but in subsequent drafts has become a human who acquires that moniker at one point.) The idea, was the take characters from all those stories, who may be creatures or whatever, and make them all humans. Partially because it's easier to film that, but mostly because it's more creative.
So in the pilot I have the Fox from the gingerbread man story, but he's a human with red hair, an obsession with gingerbread, and wearing a brown bomber jacket with the furry collar. Kind of giving him the qualities of the animals characteristics but as a human.
After I finished that I graduated from college, and having wayyyyy too much (for my tastes) in loans that I had to pay back, I had to find a job and could not spend as much time on writing the re-write of the pilot or further episodes or editing the project the way I want to, I needed a job. So i worked, and worked as much as I could. I was in and out of jobs and plus I was also getting married (best decision ever), and needed to have money for a life out of my mother's house.
So as I continue slow work on the series and the pilot re-write I hear, earlier this year, of a show NBC is potentially releasing called "Grimm" hearing about its premise I start to panic (because I want to write for television one day and MacArthur Files is pretty much my 'baby' if you will.) Having watched a portion of the pilot of that show and read as many synopses as I can and viewer opinions I'm at the point where I feel I've wasted 8 years of working on ANY of it.
Jerry MacArthur is the son of Arther and Diane MacArthur, the best detectives Drury Lane ever knew, but they were killed in the line of duty when he was 6. He then went to live with his Aunt Geraldine. Their next door neighbor is the muffin man, and one of Jerry's Co-workers (Officer Jacobs) real name is John Jacob Jingle-Heimer Schmidt. Not every character in the show is supposed to be a derivative of a fairy tale or nursery rhyme or whatever, but all the guest characters are pretty much that.
Now, in Grimm, what i have noticed so far is that the main character, Nick, his parents died when he was young, (in a car crash he thought, but he was told in the pilot they were killed). After that he goes to live with his Aunt. So i'm pissed when i see that because it's all too similar to MINE. and MINE was first, just nobody's seen it.
Grimm is apparently a cop drama taking the fairy tales of the Grimm brothers and putting them into our world...but we acknowledge that they were stories and that they are real...
Whereas in MacArthur Files, it's more like we live in the fairy tale world but nobody acknowledges it as such. It's just the real world to the characters of the show. (a little harder to describe I know but accurate)
In Grimm, Nick is apparently part of a line of Grimms, who hunt, or protect the world from the creatures (such as a big bad wolf or whatever I guess). Sounds more like Buffy to me. And as it is created by one of the people behind Angel (Buffy's spin-off) I'm not shocked. But from reviews it seems to work for people as it is. Taking fairy tales and not saying who they are blatantly but keeping us guessing, I guess, which story the episode is about.
That's MY plan! I have taken characters and instead of giving them those exact names, I research the story and take things from them. like with the old couple who made the gingerbread man, I named the Penty's. in some versions of the gingerbread man tale, the old couple lived in a cottage. in other languages, specifically, french from Brittony France, the word for cottage is Penty.
From my research, the first or one of the first printings of the gingerbread man story, was printed in the St. Nicholas magazine. I named the man of the couple Nicholas. And that's kind of what I planned to do with much of the show, with its characters.
But if Grimm is not only popular and well received, and continues for several seasons, I pretty much feel MacArthur Files has no place in the world.
It's depressing, but I should have known this could happen, because it's not an untouched concept, but the way MY concept is, it's NEVER been done, not in the way I'm doing it, at least not much out of animation, which is not my venue at all. but with Grimm coming out or now ABC's Once Upon A time, and other various fairy tale themed tv shows, I'm at a point where I cannot spend time on these scripts and hope ANYTHING to come out of them.
so, wasting my time? or still worth it? I'm not even sure it's up to me to decide that anymore.
