JANUARY 2002

Complete first draft of The script

FEBRUARY 2002

I get some feedback from friends, actors and crew members who will be working on the film. The feedback ranges from positive "couldn't put it down" to negative "Doesn't quite pull all the elements together". The thing that gets most criticism is the end where the rent boys crashing in and helping the hero are seen as a bit too melodramatic. I decide I will work on this, plus making the concept of the alternative Reality/World..."The World within the Flame" as clear as possible. There is some nervousness from my colleagues (Although not the actor) re the first scene....which is a sort of Gay "Betty Blue" start. I think it is justified and will play well with the gay audiences, at whom the film is aimed.

MID FEBRUARY 2002

I do a bit of pre-casting, putting an ad in "shooting People" on the web. The response is large and amazing (60 actors in the first hour that the ad runs). I think seeing faces will help push me into making the film a reality and also help me think of the characters further whilst doing the re-write. Interestingly about 70 percent of the responses are from Women although I make it clear in the ad that the film has an all male cast apart from the one female role. I begin to feel sorry for all the actresses out there...seeking to make an honest buck, and guilty that I haven't written a very meaty role for them.

Actually the effect of seeing so many photos and faces is to make me ask myself if I really know my characters?

EARLY MARCH 2002

I have to take a week off work anyway ( I should have been shooting by now!) and decide to do the re-write. I incorporate people's suggestions where possible. So far the two rent boys who are Paul's best friend are too similar. One merely seems to take over from the first (as Paul's confident) when he is killed half way through the film. I take the suggestion from Roger (My DOP) that there should be more conflict and make Pan antagonistic towards Paul, because he is jealous of the attention he gets from the first rent boy Griffin. I also invent a semi derelict warehouse crash pad for the rent boys, which will make shooting logistically a lot easier as it takes it off the streets. I am beginning to realise that most of this film will be night shoots!

There is a lot of dialogue in the film which articulates Paul's emotions. I spend a lot of time this week thinking about the themes of the film, and what drew me towards the story in the first place.

 MARCH 16^TH 2002

Finally the muse strikes and I re-write the end of the film and finish the second draft. Its curious how you can be reading and re-reading your script, with no idea how to progress a particular element, when one day you sit down and write with a clear head and it all just seems to come together...in a process not unlike automatic writing. I ended up simply axing the last five pages and taking the ending in a slightly different direction. Now Sarah and Paul actually take the two villains into the World within the flame (Where they have always wanted to be) but in order that they can be punished for all eternity.

A friend and possible producer for the project suggested, after reading the first draft, that there had to be a reason why Paul seeks out clients to help him get into the World within the Flame and doesn't simply have a relationship with one of his fellow (gorgeous) rent boys. I had put something wishy washy into the script about "love somehow always getting in the way". Clearly Paul is disturbed and the journey he makes in the course of the film is from only being able to be fucked by his clients (a kind of masochism) to being able to recognise that he is loved by his fellow rent boys and being able to have a conventional (healthy) relationship with one of them.

My producer friend had suggested that, at some point in the script, it should be revealed that Paul was abused when he was in the care of the monks who first taught him (in a non sexual way) his way of entering "The World Within The Flame". I resisted this because the whole film is based around the premise that gay sex is not just OK, it is beautiful and in a Lawrencian way enables entry to a higher spiritual plane. To then suggest that this was the result of abuse turns the whole thing on its head.....and could end up being misinterpreted as saying that abuse is a good thing (Which, of course it is definitely not)

However, in this draft I have got Peploe suggesting that this happened. Early on in the script, Peploe talks about having sampled Paul's magic at some time in the past and wanting now to "finally close the circle". His comments kind of melt into the ether and aren't referred to later in the film. Now I have Peploe, in his climactic confrontation with Paul suggest that he was one of the monks and that abuse took place but Paul has been blocking it out (a possible reason for Paul's neurosis). But Paul immediately accuses Peploe of just trying to "fuck with his mind." He significantly states that his "memories are his" and that Peploe is just trying to make negative something that is a gift....his gayness. He tells Peploe that he was just a client who couldn't let go (A more likely scenario) and that in fact it is Peploe's inability to really come to terms with his own gayness, that has turned him into the twisted killer he is. I think this is a significant comment. If most serial killers could have turned they sexual urges into healthy directions they would not have been killers. Certainly some of the rare, but significant Gay Serial killers that have come to light over the last couple of decades, seem largely to have killed because they felt they had to suppress their desires and these desires became 'perverted'. Obviously this comment doesn't apply to child killers who have a whole different set of problems.

The film concludes (as it did in draft 1) with the main protagonists surviving and walking off into the sunset (metaphorically speaking) Whereas before my final scene was the beginnings of a love scene between Paul and Pan, which rounds off their subplot I now see no need for this. Instead I have a voice over from Paul which adds to our understanding of "The World Within The Flame" and sets it in context. It talks about it as an Eden...a paradise that existed before our World, somewhere where people could love in the way they wanted to free of guilt. It also suggests that when we few love we are entering this dream fugue state...an that hopefully death is a final entrance into that state. All a bit syrupy maybe, but a kind of humanistic version of what I believe is probably true.

So much of gay cinema is about self expression. Gay men and women have been under-represented in cinema, just as they have in all other parts of mainstream life. In many ways we are no different to any other men or women. So, the argument could go, "Why do we need our own genre?". The answer is difficult to define. Partly because like a racial group that finds itself in a minority in a society, it is useful to see positive expressions of your "race" on screen, but also, partly 'caus gay life can be so damn complex, sexy and intriguing.

In a way much of gay cinema is a celebration of what it is to be gay, and also a celebration of the body beautiful. In many ways "The World Within The Flame" is all about the body beautiful and how it is lusted after. Ironically we are not just talking about a lust for flesh, but a lust for the soul as well. That's probably why the film features serial killers. Because what they do (Although terrible and horrible) is a tragic extension of what we all do. When we someone we think we love we want to possess them, in real time and forever. This can be true of our loved ones, or icons we see from afar...the Marilyn Monroe's of this World....right through to gay Porn hunk's like Lukas Ridgestone.

But people are people, they are not there to be lusted after. That is why the sex industry (Again a large element in my film) is so interesting. It is all about selling something that is intangible. It is also all about thinking of what we most desire and putting a price on it, a concept with Faustian connotations