by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
One of my favorite books is “The World According To Garp” and in it, we learn that Garp’s literary agent has a “secret weapon” — his office’s cleaning lady. She’s the person who read Garp’s mom’s feminist manifesto and loved it so much, giving the agent some sense of its potential.
I’ve kept that plot point in my mind since I first read it many, many moons ago as a young man and I’ve gone out of my way to find just an average person to bounce novel and movie ideas off of to see what they think. The latest incarnation of this secret weapon is the young woman who cuts my hair.
I told her the plots of the four thrillers I’m working on and she was quite impressed. This made me very happy. So, I decided to try again when I got my hair cut today and gave her a broad outline of the screenplay I’m currently mulling.
She really liked the third act, which is currently the most developed part of the story. I’m even more determined to see if I can develop this specific concept into something I at least won’t be embarrassed by — the same metric I have been using for the thrillers I’m working on.
She liked the premise of the story even though it subtly belies my liberal-progressive leanings on an existential basis.
But I still have a lot — A LOT — of work to do. And I am going into this side project knowing I have the severe headwinds of Hollywood agism, where I live and also my general Twitter reputation as nothing more than a crank.
And, yet, so what.
