"JASMINE" - An Introduction

 Lately, it seems that everyone, either here in L.A., or over in Hong Kong, or somewhere out there in cyberspace, has been asking me who or what is “Jasmine.”  So, I thought that I’d dedicate my first real Alive Not Dead blog to officially answering this recurring question, in the hope that it might confirm a few rumors, dispel a few myths, and shed some light on what I’ve been up to for the past year or so.  However, to really tell the story of how “Jasmine” began, we have to go back even further, all the way to August of 2005, in fact.  It was just a few weeks prior to Hurricane Katrina, Natalee Holloway was still missing in Aruba, and I was in Hong Kong with my good friend and frequent collaborator, Byron Mann, conducting research for an as-yet-untitled horror project that we’re currently developing together.  One evening, Byron suggested that we have dinner with Jason Tobin, an actor with whom he had recently co-starred in a film.  I hadn’t seen “Better Luck Tomorrow” prior to that, although I was well aware of it.  Back in my development days, the film had made quite a splash and everyone was hailing Justin Lin as the next big thing.  Anyway, Jason and I hit it off from the very beginning.  It was one of those rare moments in life when you meet someone and you’d swear to god that you were best friends with them in a past life or something.  I’m not a big believer in reincarnation, but this was bizarre.  When Jason found out that I was a writer, I remember that he asked me a series of very specific questions – for example, who my favorite writers were, what some of my favorite screenplays were, which “how-to books” I’d recommend, etc.  Needless to say, these weren’t the typical superficial questions one asks when trying to feign interest.  These were the specific, probing questions one asks when they’re seriously considering writing something and are trying to figure out where exactly to begin.  We got to talking about my idol, Steven Zaillian, and films like "Schindler's List," and found that we had similar tastes.  When I got back to L.A., I mailed Jason a copy of Syd Field’s “Screenplay” (the screenwriting bible, if you will) and Linda Seger’s “Making A Good Scrīpt Great.”  We corresponded off and on via e-mail and, then, just a few months later, Jason landed a role in Justin Lin’s “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift,” which meant he was coming to L.A. after a prolonged absence.  We made plans to have dinner and catch up – and, feeling a little guilty that I hadn’t yet seen “Better Luck Tomorrow,” I decided to rent a copy and give it a look… Holy shit.  To be perfectly honest, when the film was over, I got on the internet and looked up the Academy Award nominations for Best Supporting Actor in 2002 because I had to know who was nominated instead of this kid.  Ben Kingsley, fine.  Jim Broadbent, fine.  Ian McKellen, OK.  Ethan Hawke, maybe.  Jon Voight, no way.  Not for "Ali!"  I was livid.  For some reason, I was taking this snub very personally.  I watched the film again.  In addition to his acting, which was a tour de force, what struck me most about Jason’s role as Virgil Hu was how completely different he looked and sounded in comparison to real life.  A lot of people may not be aware of this, but Jason isn’t American.  He was actually born in Hong Kong, he is Eurasian (half-Chinese and half-British), and he speaks with a British accent.  Furthermore, the guy is a gym-rat and has the physique to match.  To this day, he’s never told me exactly how much weight he lost to play Virgil.  All I know is that it couldn’t have been fun.  Upon witnessing such versatility and commitment, the gears in my mind started to turn... A seed had been planted. A lot of people may not be aware of this, either, but I started my career as a director, making shorts, documentaries, even a TV pilot.  I never considered myself a writer, per se.  I just knew that writing came easily to me and that I needed to write material for myself to direct because no one else was.  Unfortunately, many of my projects were still incomplete when I applied to graduate school, so I couldn’t show the admissions people my reel.  However, I could show them my scrīpts.  And so, I went to graduate school for screenwriting.  My writing career later took off and, although I wouldn’t trade it for anything, I longed to return to directing.  But, of all the scrīpts I’d written, I didn’t have one that felt right for my feature film directorial debut.  I had an idea, that was it.  Actually, it wasn’t an idea.  It was an idea for a character.  I was convinced that it would be a good role for an actor to play, but I didn’t have a story.  However, I did have an actor -- or, at least, I had one in mind.  In fact, from the first moment I met Jason, even before I saw "Better Luck Tomorrow," a little voice in my head said, “This is the guy.”  Now, I just had to convince Jason that he was the perfect guy to play the lead role in my directorial debut, for which I still had no story whatsoever.  We met for dinner and I made an impassioned speech.  I basically told him that I thought his performance in “Better Luck Tomorrow” was a tour de force, that I was pissed off that he hadn’t been getting the follow-up roles I thought he deserved, that I had a character in mind for him, and that he should develop it with me.  My diabolical plan was this: We would come up with the story together, I would write the screenplay, he would play the lead, I would direct, we’d shoot the film on the cheap in Hong Kong, and we would take over the world.  There was just one problem… Jason informed me that he had officially retired from acting. In addition to many other reasons, he was tired of being at the mercy of the roles being offered to him.  He wanted to diversify.  He wanted to return to Hong Kong where he could write and direct his own films.  He wanted to be in control of his fate.  But, he also said that, if there was a part that could lure him back to acting, it was the kind I was suggesting.  He was in.  Now, all we needed was a story.  But, first, we gave ourselves an “out.”  Basically, we agreed that, if ever there came a point in the development of the story where either one of us lost interest and didn’t want to pursue it anymore, then we could bail out at anytime with no hard feelings.  For me, this was especially important.  In many past collaborations, I have reached points where I have lost interest, but continued to push forward out of a sense of obligation.  On this project, though, I found myself in unfamiliar territory because I knew that, if ever Jason walked away, then I would not try and continue the project with another actor.  No one else could play this part.  Not like Jason.  So, if he wanted out of the project, there would be no project.  For the next several months, while I was writing “Charlie Two Shoes” and Jason was training for and shooting “Finishing The Game,” we met at a coffee joint on Melrose or over at a Thai joint on Hollywood, discussing the character and hashing out the story’s broader strokes.  Eventually, we figured out the basic concept, which we both liked a great deal.  The story, which we were now referring to as “Jasmine,” would be about the decline of man who is grieving the still-unsolved murder of his wife.  There would be a 180-degree twist at the end, which we felt was very strong and would offer us each interesting challenges in the acting, writing, and directing.  Still, real progress eluded us.  For my part, I was too busy working on paying gigs.  For his part, Jason was adhering to such a strict weight-training regimen for “Finishing The Game” that he had little time or energy for anything else.  Furthermore, after watching Jason undergo such an astounding physical transformation for his new film, part of me felt… well… a little guilty.  After all, his role in my film would require him to turn around and lose all of the muscle mass that I had watched him put on over the past several months.  For a while, we even entertained the notion of coming up with a new story that would take advantage of his new physique.  But nothing much came of it.  In the Fall of ’06, when Jason finally returned to Hong Kong, I had my doubts as to whether or not our little project would ever see the light of day. In January of ’07, while I was working on a new assignment at my home in New Orleans, the latent tug of “Jasmine” wouldn’t leave me alone.  That little voice in my head kept telling me that this was something I needed to do.  Unfortunately, I was in the middle of the new assignment and didn’t feel like I had the time or the energy to work on two projects at once.  But the little voice wouldn’t shut up.  So, I decided that I would write the first scene of “Jasmine,” e-mail it to Jason in Hong Kong, and see what he thought of it.  If he didn’t like it, then I could forget about “Jasmine” and focus on my current assignment.  If he did like it, then I would have real problems.  Son of a bitch liked it.  To be continued in the next installment: “Jasmine – The First Draft.”