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Confessions of an
11-year-old Screenwriter
ADULT JEN (V.O.)
(Con’t)
The potatoes turn out to be good, everyone compliments Kramer, at which point Kramer says “the bugs” (in his apartment) “liked them too.” Everyone spits out their food in a big potato spit take. Juvenile, yes, but the jokes worked. The plot didn’t, but I was young enough not to care. I was addicted to laughter and assumed that the more laughs I could fit into thirty pages the better.
Jen scrolls her mouse up to save.
ADULT JEN (V.O.)
(Con’t)
Kramer was my favorite, the master of physical comedy. Tall, clumsy, awkward, loyal, lazily ambitious, Kramer was the “Where’s Waldo” of the group. The dreamer. The one who you couldn’t quite imagine the others actually being friends with. The outsider. The one who spoke to me as a precocious eleven year-old aspiring screenwriter.
Jen scrolls her mouse up to print and her dot-matrix printer WHIRS loudly as the pages slowly start to appear.
INT. JEN’S BEDROOM- NIGHT- CONTINOUS
Jen sits on her bed and goes over her work with a red pen. There are pages crumpled up in balls tossed casually on the floor. Her forehead is crinkled and she is determined.
EXT. JOHANS BACKYARD- DAY
Jen sits on a swing and watches nervously as PAUL, a 15 year-old blonde boy with glasses and a San Francisco Giants t-shirt reads over her script. It’s a windy day and Jen zips up her jacket.
ADULT JEN (V.O.)
I wrote a few drafts, and then I showed it to Paul, my best friend, who knew Seinfeld better than anyone I’d ever met. Paul was my test audience.
Paul sets down the script and Jen stops swinging.
JEN
Well?
PAUL
Hilarious. The dialogue sounds like stuff they would actually say.
ADULT JEN (V.O.)
That was good enough for me.
INT. HARDWARE STORE- DAY
Jen watches her dad compare prices of screwdrivers and hammers. He picks up the same screwdriver twice and sets it back down. Bored, Jen, looks at her watch.
JEN
I’ll be right back.
Jen runs out of the aisle.