Saturday Special 12 14

Chris Lowry

3 min readDec 14, 2024

Someone sent me a script.

It was for The Tomorrow War on Prime.

A sci fi action movie about time travel and alien invaders and a twist about people who are going to die.

Clever, if not clunky in some parts.

I mean, once you realize that in space, no one can hear you scream, everything else is just welcome to the party pal.

Yippie — ki — ay, motherjumpers.

Or however TBS dubs it.

The script for The Tomorrow War was not clunky.

It was clever, if a little forced at times.

But then, as an author, sometimes you have to pound a square peg to make it through a round hole.

I prefer that to being spoon fed, sometimes.

I enjoyed the script, and it reminded me of something I was told a few years ago. (more than a few years, if I’m four beers deep in a truth telling kind of mood)

One day, she opined, people will read scripts like books, and then yours will be discovered.

She was a little deep in the truth serum too, truth be told, telling me tall tales at a dark bar in Santa Monica, four doors down from where we ate $5 burger’s on Tuesdays after sunset.

She was a “producer” that doubled as a script girl for the company that made movies for Showtime.

I think she was flattering me because she wanted to touch my pee pee parts, and I felt flattered and like being touched.

Four beers can do that to you.

Or if you’re a cheap date like me, two beers can do it to you.

Or a warm wind.

Or a kind word.

Or a random Tuesday.

All depending on what she looked like and what she said, and how she floated the idea across of the martini soaked olives floating in her fifth.

She said she read my script more than once, it was so good.

Which had the ring of a not so truth to it, because I saw the stack of script in a TBR pile in her boss’ office.

None of them were getting perused twice by the same person, unless they were moving them up the chain of command.

Reader to editor, editor to assistant, assistant to executive assistant and so on and so forth until finally, the producer got the coverage, which was just a couple of paragraphs to get him excited.

No one that high read the script until it was time to pitch or a name was attached.

I liked the lie though.

Or the twinkle in her eye that made big promises, if not for a potential career, then for a potential night.

Flattery will get me almost anywhere.

And I liked the idea of reading scripts just like books because I did.

Part of it was to study and learn.

Get the patois down.

Figure out the beats and rhythms.

The in’s and outs of what leads up to a climax.

For the story.

For the movie.

Gosh, what did you think I meant?!?