By Gregory Meyer
May 6, 2016
I have a confession to make, when Tim asked me to join the Children of the Wells project, I almost told him no. When I read his texts, I mentally fought with myself from declining the offer. I was in a bad place mentally at the time, and I didn’t know if I had it in me to try writing for someone again.
From Dark Souls 3 and wallpapersbye.com
Back in 2010, before all of this, I had just come home from a trip to my University for my wife’s graduation. I was an inexperienced writer at the time, and I was in high spirits, having finished a cartoon script for a class that my tough to impress professor genuinely found funny. While in Virginia Beach, a filmmaking couple my wife and I were friends with asked if I’d be interested in writing a screenplay for them about zombies. I worked with the couple previously on a short story script that had been received well, and I jumped at the chance to write a script that had the potential to be made into a feature length film. My eyes had stars in them, and I thought I was on my way to success. After all, when you’re presented with a grand opportunity on a silver platter like this, how can you say no?
There was just one catch, though. While I enjoy creepy stories, I don’t like zombies. Never have, never will. Just ask my wife how I am when she watches The Walking Dead on TV, I’m out of the room faster than you can say “Brains” or “S.T.A.R.S.” for you Resident Evil fans. But this was going to be an MST3K-style movie, so I thought. I could write a silly movie with zombies getting hacked to death by a guitar wielding drifter with a heart of gold.
I struggled in front of my Word document, writing, erasing, and trying again. I even watched Shaun of the Dead as inspiration, trying to jumpstart my creativity. Eventually, after weeks of creative agony, I had a treatment for a story I felt I could get behind. I sent the story to the couple and waited for a response. The one I got back wasn’t good. The movie was too silly, and the project needed to be something that would end up on MST3K, rather than the comedy I wrote. I felt absolutely deflated, and the thought of starting over crushed me. I crawled away from the project like a coward, not even bothering to contact them again for the project, something that I’m still ashamed of to this day. (more…)
