Based on an Original Sin

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And He saw that it was good. Good, but not great. The project was high-concept but the story was a mess; basically, God needed a writer. That's where I came in. First, God created me, then He created a window so we could have a meeting. He had His people contact my people to schedule it. Of course, I didn't have any people, just some little shapes made out of mud and twigs. That's all God had, too, but He could do that thing where He just breathed on them and suddenly a full size, naked accountant is in your face.

Anyway, we set up the meeting, but God cancelled at the last moment - something about needing a break after working six straight days - and then, when He finally found another window, I arrived at the meeting to discover that He'd created a lawyer. The lawyer made me sign a contract which gave God all the rights to my work, in return for an "additional material" credit, plus an eternal soul, which the lawyer assured me was very valuable, although I've never really figured out how to use it, and it came without any instructions. In the meeting, the lawyer showed no respect for me personally or for the writer's craft. But God was pretty pleased, and after the meeting He asked me how I'd like to develop the lawyer character. Which is how I came up with the idea for Satan.

           

I didn't get credit for the idea of Satan even though I created a lot of the stuff that made the role so distinctive, like the whole 'Lucifer' concept of the good guy who gets brought down by a fatal flaw in his character, which introduces the whole dynamic of an internal conflict and gives the antagonist some real depth. At first God didn't like that, because He thought maybe people would find the villain more interesting than Him, but pretty soon He came up with plenty of ways to make His own character more complex and conflicted. So much so that everyone's been trying to make sense of it ever since. And then, of course, He claimed it was all His idea in the first place. But that was always happening. Basically, He was a jealous God...

It was the same with all the work I did on the Garden of Eden scenes. For example, the serpent was my idea. In God's original outline it was a parrot. But once God got His head around the idea of a talking snake, there was no stopping Him; He couldn't get enough of the whole surrealist, metaphysical thing - burning bushes, plagues of frogs, you name it.       

           

And another thing: it was me who came up with the whole concept of Time. I'm a big fan of Time because, let's face it, without Time everything would happen at once. Which is what it did in God's original story, which went like this: Creation; Adam meets Eve; the human race sins big time; boom, apocalypse. Running time: the blink of an eye. I recommended that the running time should be at least several billion years, or people would ask for their money back.

           

Speaking of money, the whole project began to spiral out of control, and what finally sent us way over budget was the idea of giving the protagonists Free Will. We're not just talking about a little improvisation to open up the dialogue, this was basically telling the actors to make everything up as they went along. Like Mike Leigh gone crazy. Only funnier, obviously. It wasn't my idea; one of the other writers came up with it. Did I mention that by now there was a whole team of us? God had created more writers, using a sludge-like substance that was left over after he'd finished creating yeast infections. And He figured out how to keep the writers totally under his thumb: the trick was to create insecure neurotics with very low self-esteem.

           

Anyway, all the new writers specialised in one particular thing. There was one guy who worked exclusively on begetting. So-and-so begat whatsisname, and whatsisname begat so-and-so, all that stuff. I think he now works in the adult entertainment industry. And one writer just worked on taboos. He was a weirdo. "Thou shalt not eat of a kid that has been steeped in its mother's milk." I mean, you'd have to be twisted to even think of doing that in the first place. There was also this radical, firebrand type who tried to unionise us. But negotiations with God broke down when the writer proposed shorter hours and a fairer pay structure, and God proposed condemning the writer to burn in a lake of fire for all eternity. The writer still held out, until God threatened him with six months working on My Family then he caved in.

           

Things always got a little tense in the writer's room when it was time to get the producer's notes. The standard reassurance, "nothing's written in stone," didn't apply, because God's notes were, in fact, written in stone. And it was murder trying to get some laughs into the script. God was great with the big set pieces, and the special effects were stunning. But no sense of humour. For example, I came up with a gag for the end of the big flood sequence, where the dove comes back with an olive branch and Noah freaks out because he'd actually sent out for a plumber. But that didn't make it into the final draft.

           

But I can't really complain, because I haven't stopped working. It turns out that the project is a huge, rolling franchise, with the next sequel always in development. And there are some really spectacular productions on the way. I can't reveal any details, but let's just say there's one genre that never goes out of style: disaster movies.

           

Oh, yes; you remember that "eternal soul" thing I never figured out? The lawyer has offered to buy it back, and for a fair price, too, so maybe he's not so bad after all. 


Parts of this article first appeared in Scriptwriter Magazine (now twelvepoint.com)