Bye Bye Bandit

Dear Sideshow Bandit,

This is the end of the road, my friend. I have stood by you for all these years, but now, it’s over. I birthed you and loved you. I still love you. But I’m handing in my resignation as your primary caregiver - not because I don’t believe in you anymore. You know I do. But they don’t. And they are the ones who can make or break you (and me).

You were meant to go out into the world and become something more than you are. Like a caterpillar becoming a butterfly or a bud that blooms into a beautiful flower. Without that further developmental step, you are like a song without a tune, a car without an engine, bubble without the squeak.

So adieu, my beloved screenplay, I’m onto other projects. Not that I won’t think of you often. You were my first, after all. My very first feature screenplay. Based on the true story of Elmer McCurdy, you told the story of a young man’s life and death, a forgotten man who died young and then spent his afterlife as a sideshow attraction.

While Elmer’s story is out there for anyone to write about, you did his life and times justice. You won awards. In your early days, you garnered attention from some legit film festivals and writing competitions. Your biggest prize was $6000, a very nice amount for a struggling writer. So, I feel like a bit of a heel, giving you the royal boot, but I have to move on.

But first, let me thank you for taking me to LA. Our first foray into film festivals landed you a nomination for Best Screenplay at the Catalina Film Festival. Also known as Hollywood’s Island, Santa Catalina is a strange and fascinating world and, although you didn’t win, I had the time of my life on the isle and the mainland.

There were other noms and laurels and prizes for you. As an Official Selection for the Female Eye Film Festival you got a reading by professional actors.

When the pandemic hit you had a few shining moments. Actors could not go to work and one of them, Stephen Lang (No Exit to Brooklyn, Avatar), got in touch with me. Slang (as his pals call him) was the biggest bite thus far. But, in the middle of our talks, lockdown restrictions lifted and he was offered acting work on some film or other. You were abandoned, left by the wayside, just like your subject, the orphan Elmer McCurdy.

There was one competition where the guy in charge actually called me on the phone to say congrats you won and here’s what you get: some cash (always appreciated) but most importantly, contacts - producers, agents, VIPs whom I’d won the right to talk to. I was emailed their names and addies and it was up to me to contact them. I diligently did so but no one replied. I followed up. Crickets.

And then one day, a big Hollywood Agent called me. She talked with me at length, and during that length I had to remind her several times of who I was, what I’d won, who the sponsoring party was, what I’d written, all the while trying to bring the conversation back to you, my Bandit. The agent and I became great friends during that call.

And I never heard from her again.

Let's be honest: you are a failed screenplay. Ironic since your protagonist was a failed outlaw. Elmer McCurdy tried hard to become something more than the bastard child of a teenage girl, just as you have tried hard to become more than mere words on paper.

For all his struggles he died in a shootout at age 31. With no one to claim his cadaver, he went on display. He became a carnival attraction, a movie prop, a circus mummy. For sixty years, from 1911 to the early 70s, his body played the circuit, and then he was discovered, hanging in a boarded-up funhouse ride, abandoned again,. His mummified cadaver had been painted dayglo orange. The LA coroner autopsied him, followed the clues then identified him. After which, he got a decent burial.

I always knew that someone could pick up Elmer’s story and run with it. He’s an historical figure with a pretty extraordinary story. This past year a group of artists created a musical based on his life and curious afterlife. It made it to Broadway. And I’d say that’s a final blow for you, my cherished screenplay. The musical has received seven Tony nominations and I can’t help but think it’s squashed your chances once and for all.

Not that there can’t be other tellings in other mediums, such as a feature film. But your budget would have to be huge because you are a period piece with exploding trains. BTW it's worth noting that your research was impeccable: Elmer as you depicted him was indeed a nitroglycerin enthusiast, often using too much rackarock to blow a safe - he once melted thousands of dollars worth of silver into a safe door as a result.

I’m putting you on the shelf, where no one of your excellence should reside, but there are other stories I must tell, other fables to be written and rewritten and shopped around.

All this doesn’t mean that screenplays aren't art unto themselves. They are. It’s just that, the audience is small for the written version of what we see on the screen, and usually only has readers once the screen version is financially successful and/or critically acclaimed, like Fatal Attraction or Citizen Kane.

I’m sorry, Bandit, it’s not you, it’s me. No, actually, it’s them, whoever they are. But I am a writer and I have to create anew. Perhaps I can write a movie about the non-making of you, à la Terry Gilliam’s The Unmaking of Man of La Mancha.

My new screenplay could be called Requiem for a Screenplay: The life and death and afterlife and after-death and resurrection and reconstituted life and final death of a screenplay.

With Love,

Your Devoted but Defeated Creator