Cover art for and the history of Chumpty Dumpty

So I’m doing this. I’m finally doing this. I can’t keep putting it off. The script is just sitting there, waiting to be adapted but I’ve never had the courage to open the file until tonight…

After reading it I remember why we both loved it and wanted it to come to life.

Phillip died of cancer last September before we could turn the screenplay into an illustrated children’s book. I told myself I would finish our work, but then six months passed and I never could muster the courage to open the file.

Finally I did it and now the work begins…

I’m shooting for sub-200 pages. I want this to be accessible for kids. That was our target audience when we first hashed out the story over a decade ago and I want to stay true to that.

I was hoping to start the first chapter tonight but then I wrote the dedication and that took the rest of the night. Here it is…

The history of Chumpty Dumpty, silly title and all, dates back to 2009. Phillip and I took five days off work, Monday-Friday, locked ourselves in a Hotel, and set about to write a screenplay. He had an idea. I had nothing (yet).

Monday was a waste. On a lark we tried, foolishly, to crack and write a Green Lantern script, dreaming (again, foolishly) of pitching it to Warner Bros., not thinking at all how such scripts are never bought as specs. This was 2006, years before Warner Bros. finally released a GL movie (though it was horrible). I remember, later, he and I laughing over the phone when the first reviews of it came out.

Tuesday and Wednesday were more productive. We worked on his idea, a story born out of our mutual love of Charlie Chaplin. For the first half of day one we talked out the story, then divided the scenes up between us. For the rest of the day and the day following we wrote, nonstop, until a first draft was done. It was fine; nothing remarkable. It didn’t have a title, though. We just kept calling it our “Chaplinesque” story. Eventually that became the heading on the cover page.

The first half of Thursday was much like Monday. We had the first draft of Chaplinesque done and we wanted to set it aside and focus on something new. Trouble was, we had nothing. Well, okay, we had a half-dozen little one-sentence ideas that never went anywhere.

We went to lunch and sat quietly, eating our Wendy’s and thinking about what we would do with the last day and a half. I had this idea that came to me that morning while we were pitching rapid-fire ideas. I was nervous to share it, thinking it too stupid. As I ate my hamburger, though, the idea kept coming back to me and I kept chuckling to myself. Finally he insisted I tell him. By that point I was failing to contain my laughter.

“Okay…” I started. “I had this idea for an animated movie. It’s kind of a fairy tale and nursery rhyme thing…” I paused to laugh again.

“Just say it!” he insisted.

“I can’t. It’s stupid. It’s too stupid.”

“No. Green Lantern was stupid!” he said, my laughter infecting him. We both looked hysterical sitting across from each other at our little table, leaning back in our chairs laughing at nothing (yet). “What’s the title?” he asked.

That made me laugh even harder. “The title is worst part!” I composed myself enough to get through the opening of the pitch. “Okay, so I was thinking about a fairy tale story featuring the kids of a bunch of nursery rhyme characters, like Little Bo Peep and Humpty Dumpty.”

“Okay…” he said. I could see his brain working. That only made me feel worse as I knew my idea was too stupid for any contemplation. I pressed on.

“The hero is the son of Humpty Dumpty. And his name…is…Chumpty Dumpty.”

We laughed for five minutes straight. He did that thing he always did when he really laughed; his head and neck scrunched back and his hands kind of retracted into his body like a T-Rex. I’m laughing right now just thinking about it. The whole conversation is forever seared in my mind.

The rest of Thursday was spent breaking the story and dividing up scenes. Friday morning came and we set to work. By Friday evening—in one day—we had the first draft finished.

We spent the next year or so revising both stories, talking at night on Yahoo Messenger and sending emails of our Final Draft documents back and forth. Time wore on, we managed to secure an agent and gave him our two scripts though nothing ever came of it.

We both kept working, and though we talked often about getting together again to write, we never did. We were both too busy. We pitched a lot of ideas to each other over the years, many of which we developed over text and email, but we never wrote together like we did for that one five-day stretch.

This book is a loose adaptation of our screenplay. His personality and character is as entwined in these pages as mine. Even though I wrote the book-version, I tried very hard to recreate his “voice” when writing the parts that were “his scenes.”

Phillip had a very particular writing style; he was always so wholesome, emotions on his sleeve, almost shmaltzy. I was always the more cynical and sardonic one. His humor was more classic, timeless; mine had a little more bite. I don’t know if they blended well together, but I couldn’t change it. I thought about him, my friend, on every page, as I do on so many books and stories that I write.

He’s been gone half a year now.

I miss him still.

I don’t have a timetable for when I’ll finish. This is the kind of project that I’ll only be able to do when the right kind of mood strikes. I hope, however, to have a copy in my hands by September.