When did you write your first feature and how old were you?

[Robyn]

What was it about? Was it good?

[matt35mm]

The first one I can remember finishing was when I was 14 or 15.  I started writing screenplays at 13 but I can't remember what those were like, and most of them went unfinished.

So the first one I can remember involved a guy who falls in love with his best friend's new girlfriend, who turns out not to be what she seems.  Strange things start to happen, and it seems like the new girl is who's doing it all.  The whole thing becomes Mulholland Drivey where one person is now another person, and then about an hour in, the main character dies.  Then, he wakes up, in a completely new life.  He's told that he has been in a coma for a long time, but he doesn't remember anything about this life he's woken up to.  The next half of the movie is about him dealing with this (wife and son who he doesn't remember), while elements and characters from the first half of the film come in and confuse him.  I forget how it ends (it probably just ends with him accepting at face value that he had dreamed his whole previous life).

It never really had a title.  I called it Ethan's House because that was where the first scene took place.

I remember it having some pretty good parts, but also some pretty bad parts.  The characters were pretty undeveloped and uninteresting, except for a couple that I came to care a lot about while I was writing it.  Nobody's first writing attempts are good, though, so really it was just me trying this and that and learning from it.  I lost the file a long time ago so I can't re-read it.  I'd imagine that a few elements from the script will pop up in a future script someday.

What about you?

[polkablues]

The first one I ever finished was at 18. It was about a 15-year-old girl in a small coastal town, whose older sister disappeared under mysterious circumstances and she becomes obsessed with the idea that their father killed her. It had a great first act, an aimless second act, and an incomprehensible third act. It was the victim of my writing the script before I had figured out what story I wanted to tell. I love my main character in it, though. The script I'm in the middle of right now revisits a very similar character, but in a totally different (better) context.

[ono]

Sounds a lot like Lost Highway, matt.

Wrote my first one when I was like 8 or 9.  4th grade, some bus safety stuff.  I was a total prima donna with my material too.  Didn't like the creative direction my teacher was taking it, and I gave her shit about it, so she totally wrote my name on the board!!!

Done too many short things to count, and so I don't.  I have 4 or 5 substantial features in various stages of progress, tons of other glimmers of ideas, but I've never finished any of 'em.  Been writing seriously for about 7 years.  It's true, like PTA said: It's like ironing.  And it's nice to see a fragment of an idea you've scratched out in a composition book or something become something real on the page.  But I can't crank 'em out like some artists.  And finishing (and getting started, like Sorkin said, and like P pontificated of PTA) are two of the hardest parts.

If any of you have ever written plays, taken playwriting classes, you'll know, too. If not, I highly recommend it.  If you thought seeing an idea fleshed out was cool, it's nothing like the rush you get of having something you've written performed and it working.  Memories of a directing for the camera class I took back in college is all.

[matt35mm]

Sounds a lot like Lost Highway, matt.

You're right, it does!  I hadn't seen Lost Highway when I wrote it, though.  It's tonally very different but yeah, it's got a lot of the same stuff going on.

[pete]

I wrote an elmore leonard-esque script when I was really young (16?) about a paparazzi who got hired to stalk corrupt politicians because of his photography skills (and to replace the private gumshoe who died doing what he did) and he also met a phony psychic girl named Juanita.  the guy's name was Solid Eaton.

and then I wrote a feature length script that I now hate but still love the characters about a rough filipino kid who is secretly a badass on the guitar and a crazed vietnam vet who will do all he can to stop the kid from playing anywhere near the city. 

both of those are from so long ago I feel like I still haven't written a feature.

[Derek]

Jurassic Park 2.

About 14.

[Reel]

that reminds me of my lost world aspergers question nobody has answered

[Pubrick]

that reminds me of my lost world aspergers question nobody has answered

i'll answer it, what exactly don't you understand about it?

have you ever heard of asperger's syndrome? i'll start there then. it's a sort of specialized version of autism, it's not as severe or widely affecting as what you see in RAIN MAN. it affects some geniuses, einstein probly had it, mozart, all these ppl who are kind of obsessive over specific things. it's not like a superpower but some ppl have obviously combined it with some skill. like other forms of autism it affects ppl's ability to relate to others on a social level.. at the same time they become really good at focusing on specific tasks.

now i'll explain the lost world. the lost world was the second film in the jurassic park series. it is generally accepted to be a total piece of shit. one of the worst films spielberg has ever made. for someone with the talent of spielberg to make something as shit as The Lost World, something odd must be occurring in his mind. so the joke is that we blame his impaired decision making skills on his aspergers.

to summarize: spielberg has aspergers. the lost world is a piece of shit. we blame aspergers for the lost world. this is funny because we are using a single syndrome to explain not only the decision process that would result in choosing to make the film, but we're also saying the sustained effect of this "apsergers attack" resulted in the years long follow up commitment of production, etc. it's funny to imagine that a single syndrome would show itself in the form of a shitty film, especially since we don't credit spielbergs success on the same factor.

it's like this:

X: "what the FUCK was with the lost world?"
Y: "aspergers"
X: "oh, i see."

i hope that covers your question, which you found so pressing that it needed to be discussed in two threads. please don't hesitate to ask anything else which, as you admitted in your original post, if you had any real interest in figuring out you could fix with a simple google search instead of bringing it up again and again until someone rewarded your lack of initiative.

[Robyn]

What about you?

Well, I decided six months ago to write my first. And since it was my first, I wanted it to be:

a) simple. in the sense that the story isn't very complicated.
b) something I could relate to at this stage of my life. something that was honest to my own personal feelings.
c) something that could appeal to other people in my age.

so I decided to write a love story.. and six months later, I'm almost finished with the first draft. I don't know what others will think about it, but I think it's a good first attempt..

[Reel]

the joke is that we blame his impaired decision making skills on his aspergers.

to summarize: spielberg has aspergers. the lost world is a piece of shit.

Haha. I seriously would have never guessed that. I thought he might have a kid with aspergers or something. The Lost World seemed pretty good to me, but people have assumed at times that I have apergers 

anyways, sorry KarlJan for bogarting your thread

[Stefen]

that reminds me of my lost world aspergers question nobody has answered

i'll answer it, what exactly don't you understand about it?

have you ever heard of asperger's syndrome? i'll start there then. it's a sort of specialized version of autism, it's not as severe or widely affecting as what you see in RAIN MAN. it affects some geniuses, einstein probly had it, mozart, all these ppl who are kind of obsessive over specific things. it's not like a superpower but some ppl have obviously combined it with some skill. like other forms of autism it affects ppl's ability to relate to others on a social level.. at the same time they become really good at focusing on specific tasks.

now i'll explain the lost world. the lost world was the second film in the jurassic park series. it is generally accepted to be a total piece of shit. one of the worst films spielberg has ever made. for someone with the talent of spielberg to make something as shit as The Lost World, something odd must be occurring in his mind. so the joke is that we blame his impaired decision making skills on his aspergers.

to summarize: spielberg has aspergers. the lost world is a piece of shit. we blame aspergers for the lost world. this is funny because we are using a single syndrome to explain not only the decision process that would result in choosing to make the film, but we're also saying the sustained effect of this "apsergers attack" resulted in the years long follow up commitment of production, etc. it's funny to imagine that a single syndrome would show itself in the form of a shitty film, especially since we don't credit spielbergs success on the same factor.

it's like this:

X: "what the FUCK was with the lost world?"
Y: "aspergers"
X: "oh, i see."

i hope that covers your question, which you found so pressing that it needed to be discussed in two threads. please don't hesitate to ask anything else which, as you admitted in your original post, if you had any real interest in figuring out you could fix with a simple google search instead of bringing it up again and again until someone rewarded your lack of initiative.

This might have been my favorite post ever.

[Alexandro]

I was 15. It was a 3 stories thing a la Pulp Fiction, though in chronological order, mostly based around my tough guy / yuppie street gangs phase at the time. One of the stories was about a wanna be tough guy who steals the watch of his hoodlum mentor without realizing it and of course gets in some deep shit because of it, and the other one was about a guy who has to beat the shit out of his best friend to gain entrance into a cooler, rival gang. The third one I don't even remember it. I wrote it, finished it, read it and decided it was shit, so I erased it forever. Now I kinda regret that.

[socketlevel]

I was 15. It was a 3 stories thing a la Pulp Fiction, though in chronological order, mostly based around my tough guy / yuppie street gangs phase at the time. One of the stories was about a wanna be tough guy who steals the watch of his hoodlum mentor without realizing it and of course gets in some deep shit because of it, and the other one was about a guy who has to beat the shit out of his best friend to gain entrance into a cooler, rival gang. The third one I don't even remember it. I wrote it, finished it, read it and decided it was shit, so I erased it forever. Now I kinda regret that.

mimics my first, at 16 though. i didn't erase mine, i wrote on legal pad first (something i'll never do again, but did twice since) the script was really bad, but i had 2 really good scenes in it, one of which i told my friend about a couple of days ago and we've been brainstorming a new script around it as the main premise. it's good i distinguished the crap from the gold that lay buried.

a good idea is a good idea, regardless of age. but man... this first script is so laughable, i guess the difference between myself and guy ritchie is he actually got to make it.

[Gamblour.]

I have yet to write a completed feature script. I don't consider myself very talented with words (as evidenced if you've read any of my posts in the past 7 years), and so I get pretty disillusioned about half way through finishing. Hence why I have to unfinished 60-page scripts that I quit writing half way through.

The first was an awful story about a loser guy who befriends and starts to get used by a vampire. I had no idea what story I wanted to tell, and I was 20 and it was for a screenwriting class and I got a B. The second was pretty cool idea I had a year ago about two would-be scientists who invent a teleporting device that the government finds out about. Very 80s science-oriented and fun, but it fizzled out. I like to think that I'm better at showing stories than writing them.