I will admit that when I first wrote thing thing back in 2012(geeze has it really been that long?!) I was thinking about two things: my brother's birthday and the fact that I had two weeks to write his present--the script that is now called Angels Alley. Because these two things were at the forefront of my mind, I set Angels Alley in the 1940s because
A) I already know more about that era than was probably good for me(thank you TCM) and
B)I happened to be in the middle of my DEK/James Cagney/Humphrey Bogart obsession.
Oh yes, and C) I wanted to write something that a high school kid(my brother) could shoot with his film buddies for peanuts(behind his high school, where there happened to be a sand hopper already built for the high school wood shop, but I digress.)
That was my two week first draft. And then after my brother's birthday, when the script had not been shot(high school boys, go figure), I pulled it out again and not only revised the poor script to within an inch of it's life, and then wrote the "sequels"(oh the things I do when all I want is the answer to a plot question).
As I was going through the revision process, I got to thinking a lot about style. Sometimes, just for fun, I write one or more of my drafts in a specific style. If the style works, it stays; if not, I scrap it and call it a good revision exercise. The style I chose was to write one draft according to the Hays Production Code of 1930. I linked it here because the thing is so long and has so many rules. The Code was written to still get films into theatres without offending the public. Clever filmakers and actors could occasionally bend Code rules, if they were careful, but if a film didn't pass the Code, it wasn't released. Sometimes, as in the case of the film the Public Enemy the film studios had to put things like this in during the credits to avoid sticky situations later on.
This is why it made my revision process so much more fun.Writing something that was a film noir with restrictions on language and content forced my creative juices to work overtime, which is something you need in the revision process. Not kidding.
The upshot? The "Hays Code Draft" as I came to call it, worked so well, it stuck clear through to the final draft.
For more Angels Alley tidbits, just click here
