While scouting his latest mark in a small town coffee shop, a hitman engages in four seemingly random conversations as he contemplates a life-or-death decision.
Paul is a man of many secrets; an interrogative hitman nearing the end of his career. A...
Thank you all again for following along and reading my story, Coffee: a Hitman Story! It is actually a story that I love very much, and I consider it to be one of the best screenplays I've ever been involved with. So I thought I'd share a little of the development of it as we gear up to film this script--especially since you have to wait till Friday for the next chapter/part 😉
The whole thing started as an inquiry on a writer's forum to collaborate on a screenplay where no one knew the ending--not even me--only the setting and the fact that something shocking might happen in the end. I offered up the coffee shop as a setting, gave some very slight instructions as to what each writer would do, which is write a conversation between my character, Paul, and a character of their choosing, until the conversations led up to a tragic ending. I wanted 5 writers initially, one for each character that Paul would interact with, but only 2 writers volunteered--it turned out better than I could have imagined!
Shelly Paino and Arran McDermott stepped up to the plate and knocked it out of the park, with Shelly writing two of the conversations and Arran writing the other two. I took care of the edits of all conversations, and the interactions between Paul, April and Sky--it was kind of like directing the script, which was pretty cool! The project took about two years, with all of us getting some things written, running into a little writer's block--mainly since we didn't even really know the ending--and then when it finally hit me, I finished the script and sent it back to my writing team--we all agreed we had something pretty special. After that, well, you know what they say, "Writing is rewriting!" So that's what we did.
Once the rewrites were done it was time to start thinking about production, and that meant developing some key art, posters, etc., so we could start creating a buzz on all the social media circuits! The artwork, all done by the very talented Joe Howard, is some of what came from that buzz campaign, and I wanted to share it with you all. I will be posting the character development artwork every Tuesday that was introduced the previous week. For now, here is the progression of that art for the characters Paul, April and Sky.
Original Concepts: Paul
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Next Phase: Paul
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