Spanish lecturer Michael Fawcett got the idea for a screenplay from his experience as owner of a Marilyn Monroe tour guide company in Los Angeles. “Marilyn, Marilyn” is a collaboration between Fawcett and Cal Poly English lecturer Carson Medley, who met three years ago when Medley was a student in Fawcett’s class.
When they realized that they both liked to write, they became friends, leading to Fawcett talking about the tour.
“One day Carson says, ‘Let’s do a screenplay about your experiences as a Marilyn Monroe tour giver,’ which led to ideas,” Fawcett said.
They chose to focus the screenplay on the tour to give the viewer a sense of what the tour was like while also watching the movie.
“It was hard taking actual legs of the tour and incorporating them into the plot so to speak,” Fawcett said. “So that you we’re giving the Marilyn Monroe tour in the movie, but it wasn’t just lots of information that would put the viewer to sleep.”
One year, thirteen partial drafts and at least eight full drafts later, the screenplay is complete. Medley and Fawcett ran into a road block known as ‘spec writing’ when they tried to sell their manuscript.
“A spec screenplay is expected to be 110 pages by a producer,” Fawcett said. “It’s a courtesy thing.”
For a producer to even look at a spec screenplay, which assumes everything is read on speculation, it has to be cut down to 110 pages. Since Fawcett and Medley’s finished draft was at about 136 pages, they had to cut some things and change it.
“We had to cut the script by 20 or so minutes, and literally it was like cutting the legs off a child,” Fawcett said. “What they want in a spec script (is) they want the story told as clearly as possible.”
Telling the story as clearly as possible may not leave much room for creativity but Fawcett and Medley are willing to take the chance. Medley said this movie is about Los Angeles, starting from Santa Monica to Hollywood, and it shows the audience what L.A. is about.
“This movie has the potential, I think, to be the most accurate portrayal of Hollywood,” Medley said. “It’s like, were doing for LA what Woody Allen did for Manhattan.”
Although both Medley and Fawcett didn’t originally grow up in California, they both had dreams to come here. Fawcett studied film at University California Los Angeles and became inundated with the movie business, while Medley moved around before settling in San Luis Obispo.
Both of them have written books and continue writing together and separately. Currently they are working on a John Muir screenplay that documents Muir in his youthful days, which Medley said is very uplifting like “Marilyn, Marilyn.”
Fawcett said the screenplay is uplifting because it is a journey story, like “Wizard of Oz.”
“All the characters go on literally a journey through LA and Hollywood and in the end, they all find something in themselves that they didn’t have before,” Fawcett said.