When I look over our script, I sometimes think the story arc resembles something from the TV series “Lost,” with subplots spinning off tangents introducing characters bringing new subplots.
All that intrigue works great on TV. “Lost” has had four years to weave its complex storyline and won’t be tying up loose ends until 2010. We have no such luxury here, and I’ve been worried we’d never find our way out of the morass.
David Benullo must have sensed my concern. A busy, working screenwriter, Dave checked out our project and saw an opportunity to help straighten things out. The key for him was to combine some of the loose story threads, beginning with the one involving the mystery-shrouded, cult-like group, The Order, which may be tied to a rash of murders.
“I was trying to stitch the pieces all together, and The Order felt like it would have committed the murders to retrieve the map,” he said, referring to Mayor Napolitano’s crudely drawn guide to the Wilshire corridor’s subterranean methane pockets.
“Who knows what goes on behind the walls of a compound like that? Especially in the higher echelons of power.”
In our script's newest pages, 23-27, Dave has brought Napolitano inside The Order in a twist that sets up the screenplay’s long middle section.
Is Napolitano serious when he hints to his friend Hendricks that he’s thinking about “joining a new religion” in order to get at some of the cult’s deep, dark secrets? Maybe, maybe not. But it’s clear that his involvement with this powerful group will fuel our story’s second act.
David had other concerns when creating The Order’s prefect, Patrick Duvane. “The hardest part was not making the villain mastermind a cliché,” he said. He did this by introducing Duvane at his laptop where, like seemingly everyone else in town, he’s banging out a screenplay.
No word from Dave if Duvane’s monitor should display the latest pages of “Right of Way,” but I don't think so.
That would be too much like “Lost.”
