Let's Boogie

Remember when I said it was a good thing I was bilingual?

My writing partner returned from Argentina earlier this week and brought news: The wheels keep turning on the up-coming production of Omission (aka Omision) and international stars have read the script and are in talks to play the leads.

The production was also pushed back a month due to the worst winter Buenos Aires has experienced in recent years and our film’s need for many exterior night shoots.

The change of schedule has also freed up the availability of the DP we wanted—he photographed a previous Best Foreign Film Oscar-winner “The Official Story”, and has worked under Vittorio Storaro, DP of The Conformist and Apocalypse Now, whom we’ve always worshipped.

Aside from all this news, my writing partner met with several companies about potential projects. While at lunch with the head producer of our feature, my partner (I’ll refer to him as MPC from now on) mentioned he had always dreamed of adapting a famous Argentine comic strip by the name of Boogie El Aceitoso (aka Boogie The Oily One.)

The comic strip is an R-rated action-comedy about a former Marine-turned hitman in New York. His words and actions are always deplorable, but surprisingly humorous.

This hugely-popular comic strip (over there) has been around since the early seventies and satirizes contemporary culture, our views toward violence, and skewers both right-wing and left-wing ideals. Boogie is the arch-typical asshole. He can also be a lot of fun—think of Stephen Colbert.

I know this all because for years, while working on dozens of scripts and outlines, MPC was always doodling, what I at first thought, was a cartoon of himself.

Over time, conversations drifted to this character and the personal freedom he represents – or at least how a seemingly unsympathetic character can somehow still connect with an audience.

While working on characters that we were somewhat constricted by (or we were constricting), we would point to Boogie and say, “If we were writing him we could make him do whatever we want…”

So back to MPC having coffee in Argentina—

He’s at the table, he mentions his love for the comic strip, and our producer tells him that a producer he knows has acquired the rights and is looking for writers.

Well, things working faster there than here—or us simply having the right connections—led to a meeting the next day. After several hours of spit-balling potential premises that would transform an episodic comic strip into a feature, the producer offered the gig to my writing partner.

MPC came back and give me the news. He said I didn’t have to take it if I wasn’t interested or felt it would take too much time away from the other scripts we’re working on.

I took it for the following reasons: the strip can be scathingly funny, there is money on the table, the picture has a green-light and budget in place (which means another potential IMDB credit and poster on my wall)—plus this is one of MPC’s dream projects and I figured he’d owe me one.

The company had even put together a teaser, which was shown to me and made me think of an animated version of The Departed.

Would you take it if you thought you could pull it off?

Oh, and the deal states that we can not be fired or lose credit as writers and must approve all notes. Try finding that deal in L.A.

Here’s the snag:

Not only had my partner not consulted me, he never called our manager or agent either. As you can imagine, they are pretty disappointed about the whole thing right now…

But that’s another story.