PILLOW TALK
Last night my wife and I had the strangest of pillow talks. I discussed with her on my next writing gig. Now, does that kind of talk ever qualify as pillow talk? I guess a talk will always be a talk and when you are lying on a pillow talking, what else can it be called other than a pillow talk?
My next project actually is rewriting a draft screenplay written by Zareer, my writing partner and myself several years ago for a once very active studio, now a very dead volcano. For reasons I’m unaware of, they somehow failed to settle our payment. So this draft has been lying on the shelf collecting dust and spreading with cobwebs.
Then earlier this month Coco Hassan, a good friend of mine who’s a renowned cinematographer in the local film industry called me. He said a newbie producer was interested in producing a film and wanted to meet me on writing a screenplay. The very next day we met.
I mentioned to them about this draft which was loosely based on a real incident that my original client witnessed firsthand. Then they asked me if my original client would agree on the deal since it was loosely based on their story. To answer this issue, I return to my pillow talk once again.
A similar incident which was more related to the screen story of my draft actually happened to a cousin of my wife. And it happened quite recently and some part of it I have witnessed with my very own eyes. That’s why I asked my wife to relate everything she could recall of the incident including the background of everyone involved.
As I lay next to her holding her hand, when she began, all I had to do was close my eyes. The way my wife narrated the whole story was like watching a movie. When she was done, we both then discussed on molding the events in the draft to the events she had narrated. It was the most beautiful screenplay outlining I have ever done so far.
However, I knew something was not right when my wife was agreeing to whatever I was suggesting. She’s always on her critique mode whenever she deals with my screenplays. She’d cut it, dice it, mince it, grill it and burn it. But this time it wasn’t happening until the very climax. That’s when she pulled out her knife set at me. She disagreed to the ending. Then I asked her how she would want it. The ending she suggested was simply terrific. Then we both tweaked the ending here and there. After the whole session was over, she asked me the usual question, ‘buney?’ meaning ‘say it.’ And as usual I gave a kiss on her cheeks, a big squeeze and said, ‘Thanks honey!’
Cheers!
Mahdi Ahmed 
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