The Mystery of the Cape Cod Treatment pt 2

​Welcome back! We’ve done a bit of holiday decorating and set up the Linde Christmas tree. All of the presents shown above are available physically and digitally (save for my appearances on Comedy Club Network which are digital only). Order early and beat the Christmas rush.
 
And now back to our regularly scheduled blog. The Mystery of the Cape Cod Treatment (Part 2).
 
The pay had been negotiated, half now and half upon completion of the project. Before I had even signed the contract, I hurried over to Powell’s City of Books, in Portland, OR, and purchased a copy of Phoebe Atwood Taylor’s novel. I immediately ripped out the spine and copied each page onto an 8 ½ by 11-sized page so that I would have plenty of room to take notes.
 
I read somewhere when adapting a book to screenplay, you read the material several times. First time is to get an overall idea of what you’re dealing with. Each subsequent read is used to determine what must be kept to keep the story moving along with any bits of pieces that you feel make the novel what it is. Supposedly, you accomplish all this with aid of several colored felt-tip pens. Check. So far, so good. 
 
I read the book three times the first day. To be honest, and I am going completely from memory here, there was nothing that made the material stand out in my eyes. I was familiar enough with the formula, also very familiar with the type of reader this type of material appeals to. The question seemed to be; how do I adapt the work for a modern audience? Perhaps too quickly, I settled on quirky.

​Hitchcock’s “TROUBLE WITH HARRY” immediately came to mind as far as tone and style. There is a definite New England style of laid-back humor to the material which I believed would work for Tavern. I saw the characters of Asey Mayo, a sort of Jimmy Stewart detective everyman and Eve Prence as a fussy middle-aged Nora Charles. The interplay between the two older protagonists could be challenging and fun. 
 

​Now, all of the above I knew. What I did not know was how to successfully convey all of this into a precise and well-written treatment. It should also be noted that even though I had a word processor of sorts (more about that later), I did not really know how to type.  So, there you have it. A would-be writer who was a hunt and pecker with more ambition than brains writing a story that most definitely required more than a rudimentary skill to carry it all off. Sometimes you tackle something with no expertise, and it comes out much better than expected. Other times, well, this is my story. More about that later. 
 
After I had dug-in to the point of being sufficiently overwhelmed, I received my first check from the production company. And, guess what? After weeks of waiting, the check was not signed. 

To be continued...