Writing a character’s death into the script has been very challenging for me, especially since the character is modeled after one of my nephews. My sister (mother of the nephew in question) thinks it’s creepy. And it is.
I’m testing out something new now that seems to be addressing this challenge.
I go back to one of my old muses…one of my old ghosts: 1977, James Harris, age 12. Some of you grammar school mates might remember him. His life was tragically cut short in the middle of the 7th grade.
What you might not know is that James Harris has haunted me ever since. I hear him in my thoughts. I see him on the street. He has appeared as a minor character in several short stories. And, he is the subject of a poem. He has been trying to make his way into this script since the idea sparked with him back in 2004.
His ghost is slowly taking over the character of Chicken Bootie, and it suits him just fine. I have no illusions that James will stop haunting me when this film is done and gone. But that’s just fine with me. He will forever serve of a reminder of that time in my life when childhood started to slip away. When we realized that we were not immortal. When one of us was just gone…vanished…into thin air.
