My last screenplay I wrote, about Kiev in 1917, was a comedy. I then showed it to some an old "industry" friend and she said, "This is absolutely...the most terrible black, dark, pessimistic awful thing I have ever read. It makes me want to run to the kitchen and turn on the gas and...just....just light up."
Now, this was a vehement reader. When have you gotten a reaction like this? The public. My public. Hives. I replied, "But it is a comedy. It really is a comedy....with a certain shading."
"A comedy." The eyes on this person were like plates.
"... yes, don't you see it's a light comedic piece. It's a comedy about a serial poisoner, insurance fraud, revolution... love. Didn't you understand it was also a love story?"
This is how you loose friends Sam. The writer's lot is so hard. If I'd gone out and said this screenplay was a black, dark movie about the tortured innerworkings of an insurance company and fraud in Kiev; about an English mass murderer in pre-Revolutionary Russia, well then people would probably have thought it was a comedy given what is now happening in the world.
We are all victims of our time I suppose.
My best to you,
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