It All Began With Wally

Wally found me - as so many clients do - by reading screenwriting magazines and trolling the Internet for advice. He liked what I had to say and wanted to engage my consulting services to mentor him through his Epic.

Yes, you read that right. Epic. Wally was fixated for some inexplicable reason on Lewis and Clark. In fact, he had spent a good deal of his adult life reading everything he could about the intrepid explorers and decided the time was right to tell The True Story.

Wally had also checked his Calendar of Really Important Historical and Film-Worthy Dates for Aspiring Screenwriters and discovered that the 200th anniversary of the pair's journey to the Pacific Northwest was coming up. "If I write a movie now," he told me, "this could be huge at the box office."

I gently pointed out to Wally that he might perhaps not be the only person on the planet who was aware of this auspicious occasion and that other Lewis and Clark fans might be planning a similarly themed blockbuster even as we spoke.

Wally, however, was not daunted by this and told me that there hadn't been any movies about Lewis and Clark since the 1950's. (For trivia buffs, the film in question featured Donna Reed as Sacajawea which gives you a sense of its gripping authenticity.) I suggested that maybe there hadn't been any movies since then because, well, maybe because Lewis and Clark just don't resonate with moviegoers in the same way as giant sharks and big-headed extraterrestrials.
Wally was unphased by this and told me he would be dropping his first draft in the next day's mail...