Wine & Spirits
One of the reasons I’ve never made it as a writer is that I can never focus on one project at a time. I always have multiple ideas rolling around in my head, and I can’t finish one project before I move on to another one. So, at the same time I was working on the singularity story--this is between 2006 and 2008-- I was also writing a screenplay called Wine and Spirits. It was written to be a movie I could make myself, on a low budget, in the area of Kalamazoo, Michigan. Too many ideas fed into it for me to bother explaining where they all came from, but there is one thing I want to point out.
With the exception of the titular bar, the locations in Wine and Spirits were all real places…but I hadn’t actually been to all of them. This is why a few of the descriptions might come across as vague or altogether inaccurate to people familiar with the area. The most notable example is West Lake, which I ‘scouted’ by looking at a map to see what lakes were close to the Kalamazoo airport. While the scene calls for a lake surrounded by undeveloped woods, I found out years later that the actual lake sits on a busy suburban street with a residential neighborhood on the opposite shore. Whoops!
I stopped writing Wine and Spirits just a few scenes shy of the end because I noticed how short it was. The screenplay for a feature length film should be at least 70 pages and I probably wasn’t going to break 50. It seemed pointless to ‘finish’ until I had bulked up the middle, which never happened because I missed my window of opportunity. By 2009 I‘d lost three shooting locations to business closings and construction, and before long the generous tax credits Michigan offered filmmakers at the time were drastically reduced. Regardless, the PDF below includes a brief explanation of how it was going to end. I've also included a few reference photos of the locations I was familiar with. Finally, if you just can't get enough Wine and Spirits you can click here to read the sequel/rewrite.
With the exception of the titular bar, the locations in Wine and Spirits were all real places…but I hadn’t actually been to all of them. This is why a few of the descriptions might come across as vague or altogether inaccurate to people familiar with the area. The most notable example is West Lake, which I ‘scouted’ by looking at a map to see what lakes were close to the Kalamazoo airport. While the scene calls for a lake surrounded by undeveloped woods, I found out years later that the actual lake sits on a busy suburban street with a residential neighborhood on the opposite shore. Whoops!
I stopped writing Wine and Spirits just a few scenes shy of the end because I noticed how short it was. The screenplay for a feature length film should be at least 70 pages and I probably wasn’t going to break 50. It seemed pointless to ‘finish’ until I had bulked up the middle, which never happened because I missed my window of opportunity. By 2009 I‘d lost three shooting locations to business closings and construction, and before long the generous tax credits Michigan offered filmmakers at the time were drastically reduced. Regardless, the PDF below includes a brief explanation of how it was going to end. I've also included a few reference photos of the locations I was familiar with. Finally, if you just can't get enough Wine and Spirits you can click here to read the sequel/rewrite.
The alley Harry sleeps in in the first scene.
Outside Harry's apartment building.
Wine and Spirits entrance.
The rest of the alley W&S is in, including the fire escape Harry climbs during Golem attack.
Where Thor and the troll fight near the end.
Same location, different angle. Buildings in background are Harry's apartment.
Yet another angle.
The guy in the sunglasses is who I pictured when writing for Harry; the guy he pulls onstage is the gremlin.
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