CineForge Co-op – Why I Write

Frequently, I consider tossing my laptop into the trash can.

Usually this comes after checking one of the two websites keeping a running dashboard of the status of my screenplays. When you enter a screenplay festival, these websites keep track of the date the results are expected, and three potential outcomes; In Consideration, Not Selected, or Selected. Further, if you are Selected, there is one more possible step – “Award Winner.”

I am about 90 percent “Not Selected,” ten percent “Selected, and three percent “Award Winner.” Those stats suck. What would be more defeating would be two more stats – the amount of hours spent writing (thousands) and the amount of money spent entering contests (thousands). Abysmal return on my investment. Worse than abysmal, shockingly disgraceful.

I have one film credit to my name as a writer/director, “West of the New Kansas,” which I spent most of 2023 working on. I raised about thirteen thousand dollars, put together a fantastic team of cast and crew, and filmed the movie in July. After it was all filmed, I realized that the audio was, for the most part, unusable and had to be re-recorded in a sound studio. I spent another three thousand dollars trying to fix the sound. My pickup truck was in one scene; however, it was a period piece from the 1800s.

When I felt like I had fixed as much as I could, I began entering the film into film festivals. Thousands of dollars went flying out the window. The tally is 99 percent “Not Selected,” with the only selection earning a Top Fifteen Film Award and an Honorable Director Award. I finally showed the film in Columbus at the National Infantry Museum in January of this year. What I realized, as I watched the film play on an IMAX screen, is I understand the many reasons why it was not selected. Facing the possibility of sinking another handful of thousands of dollars to fix it, I again felt very strongly that I should chuck my laptop into the trash.

I am a social worker by trade, with a specialty in focusing on adolescents with substance abuse issues. In quiet moments I am disgusted with myself that I spend all these hours and all this money and end up at 98 percent “Not Selected.”

Then, I pick up around the house, pick up my son’s LEGOs which I stepped on, a plate with a cream cheese bagel, half eaten, with tiny teeth bite marks, one of his spelling tests, or I rearrange some of his artwork I keep on my desk, or wash his clothes, stained with marker and grape juice and pizza grease finger prints. I hang up clothes and often look at a shirt of his I keep unwashed, splotted with blood stains from a cut he got at school when he ran into a brick column. Even this was months ago I still feel the tension of rushing into school with my wife to collect him after the school called, and seeing him, trembling and afraid at the sight of all that blood on his shirt, and us wrapping our arms around his body, hot with sweat and panic, feeling his heart beating like a thousand hummingbirds trapped in a small fabric sack.

I take deep breaths, and think of his breathing while he sleeps, and look at his shoes, a progression of growth, tastes, and styles. And I wonder what our son will do, and be, later in life. He says he would like to be a veterinarian, but he will have to get out of the phase of tossing our cats around like they are socks. He is enamored with weaponry. If there was a federal agency regulating NERF guns, I am sure we would be on their registry. As he has grown up around an Army base and sees things that I did not see when I was his age, I wonder if he will be a soldier. Or an artist. Or a rock star. Or just a guy.

I am an older father. My wife and I had him when I was forty-seven; I equate this with having less time than I want with him. In a moment, can be gripped with grief or elation of equal measure, two-chambers of the heart, two-hemispheres in the brain, the earth and the moon around one sun, seen through two eyes, and compressed into my singular shot at life.

It is in those moments that I open my screenwriting software and start writing. Some screenplays start with a clear idea, some start with endings, some start with a title, some start with fear, some start with an outlandish premise, some start with a joke. I have written many stories, but they all start with love for my son. No matter what the content, each screenplay is a scenario with a message to him. No matter the outcome, or arc of the character, or the language used, the geography, season, hardship, or elation, my son is the central character. This world is overwhelming and magical, but it is also a tenuous moment. I increasingly tally up a larger list of concerns about our trajectory than my list of decent things. I worry my son will feel this in me. Since he is seven now, I hope to hide my fears away in these scripts where he cannot find them just yet. I want to give him time to come into himself and believe in his own resiliency and capacity to manage emotion, fear, and heartbreak.

In my scripts I try to offer hints and options for how to manage situations, many times through examples of what not to do. But I also want him to laugh aloud, and think about me sitting at my desk writing and and shake his head in amusement.

I write because I want to honor humanity. I write because I am filled with love, and sometimes sadness, and sometimes anger. I write because I am aware of time, and aware of loss. I write because I can. I write because sometimes I feel compelled to. But overall, I write because I want my son to know I am leaving him with my observations on humanity. I write because I am his dada.

Don’t get me wrong, I also love to write, and I can write well, of that I have no doubt. Because a lot of my work hasn’t been selected, I’ve given people worlds to live in, people to love, loss to overcome, triumphs to celebrate and dreams to realize; none of which A.I. will ever experience. And I’ve got several movies in the works. If things go my way, you might just see TOW, Our Father’s Hands, and No Shallow End on the screen one day. But if you don’t, my son will read them one day, and that really, truly, is the ultimate life win.

By Andy Carpenter

CineForge Co-Op is a collective of passionate filmmakers aimed at building and supporting the filmmaking industry in and around Columbus, Georgia.