I make coffee every morning using my French press and beans I ground in my cool little grinder (thanks, Macy's). It takes four minutes for the coffee to steep in the press before I can pour it into my cup and thermos. This morning I used that time to write a script for the Hallmark Christmas channel. It's really a pretty simple thing to do.
Start with the basic ingredients:
- A 26-year old female with long curled blonde hair named Tiffany.
- A buff 30 year old male named Tony.
- A major city for the first 15 minutes.
- A small midwestern home town for the rest of the movie
- Large craftsman style bungalow
- A gazebo in the center of the small midwestern town
- A Golden Retriever (Tony's dog)
- Lots and lots of Christmas decorations
Optional ingredients include
- An adorable 5-year old boy, Tony's son by a failed marriage (wife deserted them).
- Self-obsessed rich boyfriend/fiance' who lives in the city, ignores Tiffany, treats others rudely, and can't spare the time away from his business to accompany her home for the holidays.
- Tiffany's parents and sister who live in the bungalow that's beautifully decorated and welcome their distraught but stiff-upper-lip daughter home for Christmas.
- A snow storm, a car (Tiffany's) sliding into a snow bank, and a rescue by Tony who happens to be driving by on his way to the town's general store buy a firetruck as a present for his son.
From here on out the story writes itself; just stay out of the way. If at any point it begins to lag just add a scene in which both Tony and Tiffany have a conversation they both wish would lead the other to declare their love but ends with the 5-year old entering the room to say how sad he is that he's not part of a real family.
Things that should be left out:
- Any and all singing (I don't know why, but carols never appear in these movies)
- Any and all references to baby Jesus, the nativity, or other biblical elements related to Christmas.
- Any mean people once we're past the jerk boyfriend back in the city. The one exception is the optional town curmudgeon who must reform into a sweet old man by the end of the movie.
I haven't decided on a title yet, but I'm thinking of "The Christmas Connection" because it feels good and says nothing.
We may have had the Hallmark Christmas channel on too much at our house. You can tell because even the walls are sticky.
AND THOSE MOVIES ARE STILL RUNNING, ALMOST A WEEK LATER.
I need a Chasing Classic Cars marathon to restore my sanity.
2 comments:
I have to assume that you sat there and watched several of these Christmas specials. LOL
The sacrifices we make to get on the Good Husband list.
But no, I've never made it through an entire movie. Why bother? They are the definition of predictable. If you can't say how it's going to turn out after the first 20 minutes you're pretty much hopeless.
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