The Screenplay I Wrote to Say Goodbye to Hollywood (I’m still here)

I’ll open with the result of the story. It’s a feature screenplay, THE GENTLE PATH, written and set at the beginning of the MeToo era, in which Kevin Spacey enrolls in a sex addiction rehab facility in an effort to burnish his decaying public image. It was inspired by real life, in which Kevin Spacey enrolled in a sex addiction rehab facility to burnish his decaying public image, and happened to choose the same program— called The Gentle Path— as pioneering sex pest Harvey Weinstein.

The only fictional element of my core premise is that, in my thing, Kevin and Harvey have to be roommates. Harvey’s a slob and Kevin’s a neat freak. They team up, producer and actor, in a cynical attempt to lie their way through the program and set the stage for their return to Hollywood. But, in the process, Kevin finds himself digging deeper than he ever expected to, and realizing some shocking truths that will change his life.

The script struck a chord with many who read it, and without ever being touched by a representative (my manager at the time refused to share it and I’m still bitter about that), it floated around town enough to be named to the Hit List in 2018. What that means to me is that a lot of people feel the same way I do about the corruption at the heart of the business. Or maybe they just like reading something written purely for fun. Or, possibly, they loved the cum jokes. There ARE some good cum jokes in this screenplay.

It’s not a “real” script, in that I never had any intention of making it into a movie. It was an exercise, a protest song of frustrations that I’d been dealing with since college and which were close to getting me to give up entirely. While writing it, I planned for it to be the last thing I ever wrote, a form of career suicide in which I showed this town what I can really do, right when they couldn’t have me anymore. I would throw the script out the window on my way to Portland and never come back. At first, I wasn’t even going to put my name on it. All this meant that I could write it precisely as I wanted to, taking my commentary and jokes all the way, without regard for impressing the money folks or preserving my reputation. Because, in Hollywood, if you do something distasteful or critical, such as writing a highly explicit comedy about a famous rapist in therapy, it can hurt your reputation and therefore your career.

Unless, of course, you are an established talent with a proven track record of making hits. In that case, almost nothing will hurt your career.

Because I wrote this script with such abandon, it remains to this day my favorite screenplay in my portfolio, and I would argue the best, as well. It is a pure distillation of a simple concept, the characters are rich and alive, it’s truly fucking hilarious, and it’s even structured well, with a perfect break into Act 2 and the best ending ever written into a screenplay.

Also, at the insane time of March 2018, the second year of the Trump presidency and the ascent of MeToo, a time when everyone and their mom had a take, my screenplay managed to say something new. In addition to mocking the worthlessness of the sex pests it’s about, the script speaks to a greater systemic issue. Namely, that Hollywood runs on fear. Because success in this business is largely arbitrary, handed out by decision makers to the lucky, the connected, and once in a while the deserving, everyone— I do mean everyone— is afraid of losing. Afraid of failing at a thing that requires absolutely everything of almost everyone who attempts it, but which can take it away at any time. It is that fear that not only compels Hollywood people to work themselves to death, to the great benefit of the top rungs of the business, but to allow a situation in which people like Kevin and Harvey can exist. In a just business, there would be no such thing as a casting couch, and no such thing as an Academy-Award winning rapist. Because there would be no such thing as looking the other way, or pretending one guy has so much value that he gets to decide who works and who doesn’t.

It was not my goal at first, but THE GENTLE PATH, as a historical document, suggests that the subjects of the screenplay, the writer of the screenplay, and the reader of the screenplay are all complicit, to one degree or another, in this culture of fear. Everyone in this business, whether they are directly involved with sex crimes or not, is part of that machine, that machine whose fuel is the hopes and dreams of every kid who spent their life wanting to make movies.

Much as Donald Trump is a symptom of a greater political and cultural rot in America, Weinstein and Spacey were symptoms of a Hollywood that, barring systemic change, will only create more monsters. Removing the worst offenders, as the industry rightly did to a handful of sex pests in 2017 and 2018, is a step. But only turning away from fear and toward something like creativity for its own sake will we ever be part of a beneficial machine.

To repeat, I am still here. The most important lesson of writing THE GENTLE PATH was reminding myself that I love writing movies. I love it. I still don’t care much for the business side of it, but it’s a hell of a lot easier when you’re proud of what you create and can be satisfied with having created it. If we succeed at that much, the opinions of the decision makers simply don’t have as much power as they could, and the fear slowly but surely begins to subside.