Slacker Dispatches #1

The first update on our BQE-produced slacker film

Meet your slacker, Sirena (not really a mermaid)

This is the first dispatch on the writing and production of Sirena, A Drag on America. Read the second dispatch here.

Hello everyone!  You’re likely aware of the genre research I’ve been doing in service of broadening the slacker genre.  Now, I’m pleased to show you what’s been going on with actually making our slacker film–namely, starting to build the basic blocks of the story.  

Below, you’ll find a link to the most recent version of a treatment I’ve been evolving, as well as (way too many) notes on the thought-process so far.  I hope to update you on the story’s progress semi-regularly…let’s say every 6-8 weeks…until we actually start writing it out in script form. 

Any and all feedback is welcome!  

Whether you want to write me directly or flame me in publicly in comments, I want to hear it.  I’ve never worked publicly like this, especially not sharing drafts that at this initial (and really rough) stage, but I think it’s a great opportunity to shape the story before it gets more elaborately built into a script. 

The basics

Working title:  Sirena, a Drag on America 

Working logline: A young woman who unwillingly crosses into the US with her family is taken in by a patron who tries to assimilate her into the American work ethic.  When she actively resists this new culture, everyone pressures her to embrace her new life.

Current stage: Wrapped up the heavy research stage—watching slacker films at a faster pace than I’ve been able to write about them, plus some supplementary reading.  Now I’m focused more on plotting and character design.  Currently, I’m on the third draft of what’s called the “two minute movie,” a treatment combined with a 2-3 page high-level account of the story.

Current working treatment file: Find it here.  You’ll notice this is extremely rough—most characters don’t even have names yet.  It will likely change dramatically between now and the actual script draft.

The thematic “north star”

American culture can’t stand for marginalized people who have been “given a chance” at prosperity to be content and unproductive.

Screenwriting manuals encourage having some sort of “thesis” or at least a “central question” through which you filter your story and all your decisions. While I had a starting question to launch the project (“who would America NEVER tolerate as a slacker?”), I didn’t have a “thesis” in one sentence until I read

Marta

‘s beautifully-put observation in this essay about slowing down:  “...our culture can’t stand for someone to be quite well and happy and still unproductive.” I adapted this into the above “north star” statement that distills what the film is about for now.

This answers my own starting question:  America doesn’t tolerate slacking from poor people, especially if they’re from marginalized groups that tend to be cast as less “deserving” of participating in mainstream culture.  My goal for this film is for people who identify with these groups to feel less pressure to “prove that they belong at the table” through how hard they work.  

(A screenwriting teacher may say that this statement doesn’t yet have a strong positive point of view…that it’s just an insightful observation.  I may need to “strengthen” it somewhat moving forward.  We’ll see.)  

Meet your slacker:  Sirena

Her name is Sirena, and her deal is that her family forces her to cross illegally into to the US but she can’t stand the way of life here. Namely, how much of a miserable workhumper (my words, not hers) everyone is.  So she actively resists doing “the right things” to fit in and become accepted in her new home.   

Sirena’s name may change, but honestly I kind of like it.  “Mermaid” in Spanish, it has a fantastic quality reminiscent of what Tricia Hersey calls “dreamspace,” a state of mind she considers crucial escaping grind culture.  (I’m slowly working on a future post exploring this concept)

Our chosen “north star” dictates that Sirena belong to one or more traditionally marginalized groups.  My initial instinct was to go with “Latina immigrant mother,” for many reasons:

• To flip the genre-convention of male slackers hounded by work-humpy women.  Also, women specifically tend to experience pressure to grind in very specific and contradictory ways which will be interesting to look at through a slacker lens. 

• The rhetoric both attacking and defending Latinx immigrant’s “right” to be in America centers hard work: opponents say they’re lazy, defenders say they work harder than anyone else.  I’m enticed by how many heads will explode at the suggestion that a Latinx immigrant “deserves” to be here without working insanely hard.  

• Our hero being new to the country serves as a set of fresh eyes through which to examine American work culture.   

• This is an archetype that I directly know to SOME extent, which helps.  (There’s a lot which I don’t know…more on that later)

• As if the above identities weren’t blasphemous enough for a slacker, making her a recent mother, responsible for a baby, would push things to 11.  And why not?  Let’s be totally unapologetic! Right?

…I stuck to this archetype through two treatment drafts, but this third one I’m submitting to you does not make Sirena a mother.  While I want to raise my middle fingers as high as possible, I think this choice massively increases the risk of most audiences reading Sirena as selfish and possibly “evil”—a parent putting her child at risk through her slacking.  This may be a bridge too far and shut them down to the film’s broader message.  

Instead, I’m giving Sirena a very young sibling.  A child sibling allows her antagonists to guilt her and raises the stakes of her commitment to slacking (especially in family-oriented Latin American cultures).  But the child not being her DIRECT responsibility makes her slacking feel less negligent.

You gotta meet people not EXACTLY where they’re at, but still somewhat close.

Meet her antagonist:  Zoe

Zoe is a successful, rich, in many ways bad-ass woman who takes in Sirena’s family and tries to mentor Sirena for success.  As Sirena refuses her guidance, Zoe becomes more resentful and morphs into the film’s main antagonist (maybe even villain).  

I love the dynamic of a problematic mentor (it’s straight out of Boudu Saved from Drowning). It can be very interesting fleshed out in the context of people of color (especially in different economic situations) mentoring each other with the best intentions, yet reinforcing the toxic expectations placed on their identity group. So far, Zoe’s the most contradictory and nuanced character.  It’s probably not a coincidence that while I see some of myself in Sirena, I see A LOT–way more than I want to admit–of myself in Zoe. 

As of this draft, she’s also Latina, though of a VERY different background than Sirena. However, I still haven’t set that in stone.  If she ends up not being Latina, she’ll at least be very appreciative and well-versed in the culture and language.  Her spouse will remain Latino, as will her daughter (a large character in the story).   

Meet her possible love interest but also secondary antagonist:  [SUITOR NOT YET NAMED]

I told you there were unnamed characters!  Sirena will have something resembling a “love interest,” though I’m not sure she’ll be interested in him.  He’ll definitely be interested in her, though, and on top expect her to play the “traditional” role of girlfriend who motivates and supports her man’s passions. He’ll more than likely be a Latino young man who eagerly buys into the notion that entrepreneurial work mores will improve his station in life.    

This “SUITOR” will exist in part for us to flip the usual slacker love interest subplots that match slacker men with wound-up “voice of reason” women.  And, instead of the voice of reason winning out, I think it’d be interesting for Sirena to “ruin” this straight-laced suitor.  

What does Sirena want, and what’s the main societal/psychic “enemy” getting in the way?

I don’t yet have a solid sense of this.  As a character, Sirena’s still as thin as the doodle I slapped on the top of this post.  This is probably the most pressing need to address.

Right now, I have a “surface” desire for an afternoon at a spa that kick-starts the story and drives a lot of the second act.  However, this is a holdover from when Sirena was an exhausted new mother and saw the spa as an opportunity to take a restful afternoon with her baby.  Now that she doesn’t have (as much) physical exhaustion, this desire feels random and weak.  

Other thoughts on plotting and story

• The 2nd half of the second act (and the whole ending, really) is a hazy, wishful placeholder where Sirena fully dives into embodying everything that the American protestant work ethic hates.  This is similar to act 2B of The Beach Bum (analysis forthcoming).  We may not be able to do this without it feeling forced. 

• I’d like to give Sirena a fun hobby she comes back to throughout the story, a nod to The Big Lebowski’s (analysis forthcoming) bowling vignettes.  This plot device would keep the story light and fun, and give Zoe a chance to pressure Sirena to monetize or turn her hobby into a career–a relatively recent form that grind culture has taken.

• Right now, Sirena and her family cross the Rio Grande into the US. You’ll find doubts about this choice below, but the reasons in favor are: 1) it’s the emblematic image that most if not all Americans imagine when picturing undocumented immigrants, which makes it very tempting to play with, and less importantly: 2) it goes nicely with the name Sirena, 3) it’s another nod to Boudu. 

• Because of Sirena’s background, I’ll have to study a couple more overlapping genres: films about immigration specifically, and “neorealism” films more broadly–movies that depict the struggles of the poor, starting with but not limited to the post-WWII Italian classics that gave the genre its name (Rome Open City; Bicycle Thieves, etc.)  These genres, while meaning well, tend to make their subjects “likable” by making them hard-working.  Watching these genres may inspire ways to subvert this.

Thoughts on non-story aesthetics

I haven’t thought much about this yet, beyond that I want the film to feel much more “joyful” than traditional immigration and/or neorealism movies (more in tune with a typical slacker film).   Friday (UPDATE: analysis…here!) is a great example of a slacker movie that does the same vis-a-vis tropes about life in neglected Black neighborhoods.

What am I currently happy with?

It’s too early in the process to be fully “happy” with anything…I’m trying to stay flexible and not too enamored.  I will say, I’ve had a lot of fun thinking about Zoe’s character so far.

One thing I do know: Sirena will definitely NOT give up slacking at the end of the film, hell or high water.  Much love to Clerks, but I will not go down the “redemptive” road.  It’d feel like betraying the mission of the film.

Most pressing fears and doubts

Is Sirena’s attitude at all realistic for her situation?

I’m scared that Sirena’s flippant attitude (and her relatively “advantaged” situation of being taken in by someone) is simply not realistic for someone who had to cross into the country through the Rio Grande, and that this film will make those type of migrants’ lives look wayyy easier than they are.  There’s a point of desperation at which people MUST work really hard to survive–no matter if they’re slackers at heart. 

A trusted partner suggested that maybe Sirena should come to the country by plane, which is how a lot of undocumented immigrants with more means do it.  I’m gonna keep that option in mind, but right now I think it’d water everything down.  

This is where I should note that while I can speak directly to being an immigrant from Latin America, I cannot speak to the experience of clandestine crossings by land.  I came into this country “through the big door,” on a plane, with a visa, even stopping by Disney World on my way in.  At some point, I would definitely benefit from collaborating with a co-writer with more direct knowledge of Sirena’s particular experience.  

Either way, I think it’ll be good to acknowledge that Sirena’s been spared a typically harsher situation, and Zoe can even throw that fact in her face.

Making a challenging, unpopular point without falling into stereotyping

Probably what scares me the most is that, by being too heavy handed, I end up making a film that reads as reinforcing negative stereotypes about immigrants while its larger point gets lost.  I got some good advice that to avoid this, Sirena needs to have a clear and explicit philosophy behind her refusal to go along with work mores.  Getting clarity on her driving desires will help with this. 

This same person told me that he could see a lot of my fellow Hispanics getting really upset at the film.  I’d take that as a badge of honor, a sign that the film is challenging “conventional wisdom,” but there’s a thin line between that and unwittingly putting on a minstrel show.

Third act problems out the ass

Clearly, I don’t have a good idea for how to end the story yet.  This is normal for this stage, but it still stresses me out. 

Next Steps

The “official research phase” is over, but research will continue

Beyond watching films on the subject, I need deeper research on the experiences of immigrants, especially Latinx immigrants who come by land.  I will also continue to watch slacker films from the study list, though at a slower pace. 

But since research could go on forever and become a tool to procrastinate, I’ve scaled it down to reduced sessions in between drafts of treatments and outlines.  

Treatments that slowly evolve into outlines (and eventually a first script draft) 

The plan is to do a few reps of the following 1-to-2-week cycle:

• Write an updated draft of the treatment

• Read it over, noting the most pressing questions or gaps

• Lightly research, journal, and brainstorm on said questions 

• Write another draft, integrating any new insights from the above

• Repeat

By Fall, I hope to have evolved the treatment drafts into more detailed outlines with each story beat and scene mapped out.  We’ll see.

If you read this far, you’re a champ. Thank you!