Screenplay Based Upon The Menzingers ‘On the Impossible Past’

What a super perfect idea!

 

great idea. no way i'm reading 70 pages tho. i'll throw money at it.

 

so cool, I'll definitely be checking this out.

 

Can't wait to read this.

 

Read this entire thing earlier, reinforced how much I love this album lol.

 

Yeah, I really liked the story. I definitely left him a long note that he probably won't read.

 

What a cool idea. Will remind myself to read sometime this week.

 

this kicks ass. i just read the entire thing in one sitting. now i'm sad and just want to listen to this fucking album.

 

Haha yeah, I really enjoyed his story. Hopefully more Menzinger fans will read it and we can discuss it in one of the band's threads while we wait for the new record.

 

This was considerably better than I expected.

 

I'm the guy who wrote this. Hi everyone! Thank you @Jason Tate for posting this and for anyone who has taken the time to read it. I am pleasantly surprised (to say the least) how many people are into it and sending me cool emails about it. If nothing else comes of this, it's awesome to know that my writing is having an impact on people in the same way that OTIP did for me. Shout out @Michael Schmidt for the long note by the way. I now have my fingers crossed that chorus.fm has some readers in Hollywood who happen to be interested in making a movie about The Menzingers lyrics...

But yeah, I'm looking for feedback. I've worked on this for so long (and sometimes went through month long phases of not even being able to look at it because I was so sick of it) that it's hard for me to discern what works and what needs tweaking. If anyone's got any feedback for me, hit me.

And...

Haha, sorry to break it to you, but it's 126 pages. Dang!

 

I always see this album like a movie in my head whenever I listen to it. It'll be interesting to see how much of what I see matches with the screenplay!

 

absolutely LOVE this idea

 

This is so so AMAZING. I'd love to see this brought to life!

 

This was such a great read! I was hooked from the beginning and it gave me a new appreciation for an album that is already one of my all time favorites. The attention to detail is fantastic and I was able to picture the story as if I was watching it in the movies. Hollywood needs to pick this up haha. If anything to critique I think the setting feels more like a small blue collar town (like Scranton, pa - where the menzingers are from and myself) rather than Philly. OTIP is filled with Scranton references and such things you included like the paupack cliffs.. It's a pretty common theme for people in Scranton to get stuck in the routine, wanting to escape but never leaving. Buttttt that's probably just my personal bias coming through and I understand that Philadelphia is going to be more relatable to a wider audience which probably makes sense for what you're looking to achieve. Anyway, great job sir and thank you for that enjoyable read.

 

Thanks man! All I need now is a ton of people who feel this way to start bugging agents to give it attention.

Yeah, I just read an interview with Tom on how OTIP was about Scranton and how it used to be a town with good blue-collar jobs and that's no longer the case, so it's run down and kind of dead end and I guess a lot of people are doing heroin lately. Might make sense to stick it in Scranton to up the "gotta get out of here" vibe. I'll give that some thought. By the way, it totally didn't cross my mind that Paupack Cliffs are like more than a hundred miles away from Scranton when I was writing the script. Whoops.

I've gotten some really amazing emails with feedback on the screenplay and I'll be making some changes soon-ish based on those emails. From small stuff to changing Casey's attire when they hike (thank you @Michael Schmidt), to removing some of the rape jokes in the dialogue, to tweaking Greg's back story a bit, among other things. I'm really excited for the next draft. If anyone has suggestions, I'm open.