Script 2
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The Script: |
By the summer of ‘97, it still wasn’t ready. Other factors going on with the company also prohibited the possibility of shooting The Basket at that time. So again we had yet another year. One might question why it was taking so long. There were long periods of time in which we didn’t work on it at all. In addition, none of us had written a screenplay before. Also, we hadn’t followed "the formulas" so there weren’t any texts that could tell us how to get out of the difficulties we had created. And more than any of that, there were four people that had to agree, each with their own unique agendas. I find it somewhat amazing that under those circumstances it got finished at all, and that most of us are still speaking with one another. During the final year of writing, we were also soliciting outside comments to add to the confusion: "Bessie and Martin should have an affair…It’s too slow…Who’s this movie for anyway?…Is this a kid’s movie?…There should be a lot more basketball… Too many characters…It doesn’t have a clear hero… My kids would never sit through this…There should be a lot less basketball…There’s too much opera…Bessie and Martin should definitely have an affair…etc."
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Unfortunately we lacked the artistic confidence to ignore what everyone was saying and make the movie more of what it was. It subsequently turned into a spy movie, with the teacher, Martin Conlon, as a German spy, and the father of the two German orphans as an American spy. The secret code was tatooed on the back of Helmut’s ear, and the opera, which Helmut brought from Germany, had the clue as to where the secret code was hidden and what it meant. In this version, Martin Conlon spends his time sneaking around trying to find this secret code, and in the process ends up switching sides. Spies do that. He also has an affair with Bessie. Spies do that, too. To tie things together even further, Ben, who returns injured from the war, ends up being the one who killed Helmut and Brigitta’s father in Germany, and Helmut realizes this when he sees Ben’s picture in the Emery house after being caught messing with Nicholas’ tractor. . He is not pleased. When we read it we all said, "This really sucks.|"
We went back to our original version, and from then on, we adopted a new stance. "It is what it is." It may sound a bit resigned, but in addition to an acceptance on our part that it had limitations, it also reflected our commitment to maintain the core of integrity that the story had, and to stick with that. With some help from a script doctor in LA, who enabled us to strengthen some of our characters and plot lines, and clean things up a bit, by mid summer of ’99 we pronounced it finished.