Ten Drafts and What Changed

The first draft of Lenny's Vintage was 124 pages. Lenny talked too much. Marvin was a villain. Danny never showed up until act three. There was a subplot about a zoning board that I thought was hilarious and absolutely nobody else did.

By draft four, I figured out the movie was about three brothers, not one. By draft six, I figured out Marvin wasn't the antagonist — he was the mirror. By draft eight, I cut the zoning board, which physically hurt. By draft ten, the script was 91 pages and every scene earned its place.

The thing they don't tell you about rewriting is that cutting is the easy part. The hard part is knowing which version of a character is the real one. Lenny was funnier in draft two and more sympathetic in draft five, but it took until draft seven before I realized those were the same thing — that his humor was his sympathy, just delivered from behind a workbench.

Eleven years. Not continuously — there were gaps, other projects, a whole teaching career in between. But Lenny kept pulling me back into the garage.