MY AUNT (Teyzem). 1986
Directed by: Halit Refig. Cast: Müjde Ar, Mehmet Akan, Yasar Alptekin.
 

This is my very first screenplay.
It was written in 1985-86 and was made into a film in 1986 June.
The screenplay won the first prize of the Screenplay Competition of Milliyet Newspaper. And I was chosen the best screenwriter of 1986 by film critics. The leading actress Müjde Ar, helped me a lot in finding the producer and the director.

The story was from my own experience. My aunt got married when she was very young, and got divorced in one year. She spent her life in my grandparents’ house. When she was in her late thirties she went mad. The story deals with her life story, taking into account the big social changes around her life and her disability of adapting herself to those changes. But the story is told from a little boy’s point of view. Her nephew (me!) doesn’t understand what happens to her, only years later he remembers his wasted aunt and tells us the story.

So far, I think this is my best screenplay but I’m not terribly happy about the film as an end result. The film is technically poor and when I intended to make a light, kind of stylishly tacky film using old diaries, 70’s cheap songs; the director took the subject quite seriously and made a pschological drama out of it. But still, the essence of the story was there and people liked it. The film was shown in every TV channel here, and it made me a screenwriter. This is the only film that's been made from my scripts which I can stand to watch time to time. (I'd like to direct it in the future again.)
The poster of My Aunt, in a way summarizes my experience as a writer in Turkish film industry. You can see "me" standing infront of the images of Istanbul and Müjde Ar's dreamy portrait. The artist who painted it was painting cover pictures for comics and he took one of my passport photos and added a strange body to it. Quite similarly, in my next projects I lent my head and let them use it in a picture as they liked.

BILLIONER (Milyarder). 1986-87
Directed by Kartal Tibet; Cast: Sener Sen.

The producer/director Ertem Egilmez was one of the most colorful personalities in Turkish Cinema. He was the creator of many very popular films. I met him through Müjde Ar, during the production of My Aunt, infact, he WAS the person who triggered the whole thing to start. After My Aunt he offered me to write a script for him. We worked on the script for about a year.

The story was his idea. It was about this poor guy who wins 1 billion (which was an enormous amount in those days) in the New Year lottery. He gets very happy in the beginning but then he sees how money changes his and everybody’s point of view. The story ends with him leaving his family and home.

Although it contains some funny moments, this film was a big failure. The story wasn’t that original and the director was a “hired killer”, technically a very very inept one.
 

MY DREAMS, MY LOVE AND YOU (Hayallerim, Askim ve Sen). 1987
Directed by Atif Yilmaz. Cast: Türkan Soray, Mü?fik Kenter, Oguz Tunc.

I started the business working for Atif Yilmaz as an assistant director. He was one of the most experienced and popular directors of our industry. I wasn’t wonderful as an assistant but after the success of My Aunt, he offered me to write a screenplay for him.

Türkan Soray is THE film star of Turkey. She was and still is the most famous name and face. She played a parody of herself bravely in this project. This story was about  a young screenwriter who had raised in an orphanage, watching Türkan Soray’s old movies and dreaming about writing for her. He lives in a dream, seeing two characters from her movies around him, talking to them. He writes a very delicate, sentimental story and tries to find the star. He manages to find her and get her to read the script and even get it made into a film. But the film becomes a big disillusion for him, ends up as a commercial product. (A bit of autobiographical element again).

THE DEVIL MY FRIEND (Arkadasim Seytan). 1988
Directed by Atif Yilmaz. Cast: Mazhar Alanson, Ali Poyrazoglu.

In 1988 the company I worked for tried to make a TV series, called Midnight Stories. It was planned to be something like Twilight Zone. I wrote this comedy-Musical for that project as a 45 minutes thing. But the project was not made. And liking the story, director Atif Yilmaz wanted to make it into a feature.

The story is about this struggling pop musician who “sells his soul” to the devil. But the devil appears to be a really incompetent one, for the people in music business are much more devilish than the original Devil. The musician can not get anything back for his soul.

This could be a really succesful film. Mazhar Alanson, with his group MFO was very famous those days and he was the right fit for the cast. But the story fell short, for it was thought only as one episode of a series. And the director Atif Yilmaz wasn’t into their music, or any music, he could not put any fun, energy, or anything in it. I didn’t see this film since the first screening.

PIANO PIANO BACAKSIZ. 1989-90
Directed by Tunç  Basaran, Cast: Rutkay Aziz, Taner Barlas.

This was an adaptation from a novel. "Bacaksiz" means "shorty". The story is about a little boy who lives in a big tenement house. The time is 2nd World War. People in the house are very poor. Some of them are burglars, tricksters etc. The book consisted only of imaginary letters written to two characters and as a written form it was quite difficult to adapt, stilll I believe that I did a good job. But during the production I had some quarrels with the director and left it on the halfway. In the end my name was at the bottom of a writer’s list in the titles. Still I remember it as a not so bad film.

BERLIN IN BERLIN, 1992
Directed By: Sinan Cetin, Cast: Hulya Avsar, Cem Ozer, Armin Block
A German engineer kills a Turkish guest worker by accident and gets stuck in the house of the guy he killed. The brother of the worker tries to kill him but the elders of the family says it’s against the Turkish tradition to kill a guest in the house. The engineer spends his time in the house waiting for his death and falls in love with the worker’s beautiful wife.

Director Sinan Cetin told me his idea for this feature film. I wrote the script but during the shootings some other writer (Gokhan Akcura) came and claimed that it was his story. Apparently the director worked on his story years ago and brought it up in this occasion without asking to the original writer. It was a sad and stupid affair. I felt quite bad and left the project. The other writer went to the court. It’s I guess still an ongoing story.

THE AMERICAN (Amerikali) 1993
Directed by Serif Gören. Cast: Sener Sen, Lale Mansur.

This was intented to be a film like ZAZ comedies, parodying the American box office hits, mocking some scenes from Pretty Woman, Basic Instinct etc. Our great actor Sener Sen is sometimes very funny in it but altogether it’s a really a bad film. I wrote a whole script but the director preffered to improvise on it, in the end my name was on the titles but I felt there was nothing in it from what I had written. Still it was the box office success of 1993. It raised hopes of the industry that a Turkish film can also sell.

SUMMER RAIN (Yaz Yagmuru) 1993
 TV adaptation of the story by A. H. Tanpinar;
Directed byTomris Giritlio?lu. Cast: Ahmet Levendoglu, Pitircik Akkerman.
 

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