30 Minutes. 30 Days. Day 14, 15, 16

This is Buckingham Fountain. It was built to honour Charles Buckingham who was a well-to-do businessman and tremendous art collector in Chicago.

I've just written a scene around this fountain.
Joyce tells the history in improvisational glory. Her son Brady mimes good old Charles Buckingham. The tour group listens but is more distracted by wedding photography going on. On cue the fountain erupts into a dance. Lyric of the lake as they use to say.

Meanwhile our parking lot guy is below the fountain checking out the knobs and valves that control the show. This will play later in the film of course.  Where there is a great fire...a great fountain can be useful.

p.s. photo credit to myself on my one trip to Chicago and in which my fleeting memory of this park is the sole inspiration for this film

30 Minutes. 30 Days 11, 12, 13....I have no idea what day I am on.

Wobblies' Headquarters

Confession. I've skipped a day of writing. Maybe I skipped 2. I have no excuse other than I didn't want to do it. Obviously I'm classic. I'm the type of person who most likely breaks New Year's resolutions 2 weeks in, cheats on diets and generally has a very short attention span, even for a short attention span kind of assignment. It's only 30 minutes...sheesh!

However, I've jumped back into my script Millennium Park. Despite still being stuck in the first 3 scenes, my characters are all evolving.

Joyce, in her 50's and the only one not to become famous from her improv troupe, is a trooper. She will practice her craft no matter what - even if it means repeat performances for tour groups with only a slight interest in Chicago history. She lives for the laugh and is still hopeful to one day get an uproarious chuckle from a group of more than 10. In her wildest dreams it's in a stadium of 25,000.

Brady, is her son. He joins her in the tour group act because as a struggling millennial it was the only job he could get. He's an engineering genius and has little patience for the imaginary world his mother so adores. His ability to notice things (like fire hazards and how things are put together will be useful later!) But he goes along with it, even if he has to dress up as a cow.

Al, who may be Banksy, segways himself throughout the film, leaving his trademark graffiti here and there. It's not the graffiti that's the thing though, he is in fact mapping out a giant message via GPS from his route.

Immigrant Parking Lot Guy (sorry guy - no name or nationality yet) - gets yelled at often as he works the lot underneath the park. He tries so very hard with his English but never quite gets it right. His only source is his dog-eared Guide to Chicago which he is memorizing and mapping out locations of the park from it's underground points - which may look like some terrorist scheming (aha).

The history is rich. I did not know Walt Disney was from Chicago and worked there. I did not know there was a radical union organization called the "Wobblies" and I did not know there were bombs and terrorist threats. All of this, I intend to weave into this modern day-in-the life of unsuspecting tourists and guides in Millennium Park.

So...12, 13 days...maybe it's 14 days in. I don't have much of a functional script - but a whole hell of a lot of ideas.

30 Minutes. 30 Days. Days 8,9,10

I'm having doubts. I don't think I am progressing at all. I'm questioning my commitment to this challenge. I do get my 30 minutes in, but part of me knows that if this turns into a terrible script or an unfinished script it doesn't really matter. No one will read it. It will never get produced.

At this point my story is going in circles. I have 8 pages of content and I'm still stuck on the first scene. I'm wondering why I chose to write about a city I have only ever been to once. If I look back at all of my original work (plays, films etc..) they have always been completely fiction so that is not new for me. But this I'm missing a single clever premise for this. I have 100 complicated ideas that are not working themselves out yet. I will persevere...but tonight I have my doubts.