Many of you know by now that the next film up on Mattoid’s slate is “Who Killed Jane Finch?” a dark comedy that follows the wacky misadventures of a gang of wide-eyed murderers and the rising body count that they (sometimes) unintentionally leave in their wake.

Fun right?

But what you may not know (actually, unless you’re Josh, Jenna or Andrew you don’t know) is that “Who Killed Jane Finch?” started out as a very different movie, in fact “Who Killed Jane Finch?” bares virtually no resemblance to the idea that sparked its creation.  But to understand how the story came to be, I guess we’ll have to start back at the beginning…

DISSOLVE TO:

JEREMY, emaciated, sits chained to a desk in a dark dungeon as ANDREW and JENNA dressed in fine clothes stand behind him and scream for him to come up with better ideas.  JOSH, another writer chained to the desk, lay dead having succumbed to the torture some time ago.

Just kidding.

Actually the original story was something I had toyed with for quite a long time and was based on actual events.  It was a very small, very contained Noir-drama revolving around 7 men locked in a cell trying to discover who among them had actually committed the crime for which they were all being held as suspects.

Andrew, Jenna and I all agreed the story had potential, and it was certainly doable on an independent production level.  So then my writing partner (Josh Simon) and I set out to write it.

Immediately after beginning the project Josh and I were besieged by story, character and structure problems that only continued to mount as we trudged our way through an outline.  It quickly became clear to us that for this story to work we were going to need to add external stories, so with Jenna and Andrew’s blessing we added a few locations.  But something still wasn’t right.  So, again, I went to Jenna and Andrew and demanded more characters!

“I need more characters!” I demanded.

“So… go write more characters.” Jenna and Andrew replied.

“Oh, yeah, okay.”

And so I did.

Josh and I went back to the drawing board and thought about what characters we should add.  Clearly the story needed a female character, and if there were only to be one female mixed into this dark situation with all these guys, she was going to need to be a very strong and interesting character (the birth of Alicia).

We toyed with our additions for some time and tried many different angles for the story, but it still wasn’t working.  There were just too many holes we couldn’t fill believably and too many leaps the audience would just have to take “just because” that neither Josh nor I would be willing to take in a similar script.

One day, as Josh and I sat, one of us suggested (I don’t remember who, so we’ll give Josh the credit as he’s generally the smarter one) “Man, this would be so much easier if it were a comedy.  In comedy we could ask people to take these leaps and even make fun of them as part of the story.”

“Brilliant!” I exclaimed (or he did, I don’t know.  We both get very self-congratulatory when we write.)

So back to Jenna and Andrew I went.

“I need to make it a comedy now and I’m going to hold my breath until you let me!” with that I planted my feet, crossed my arms and took one last deep breath.

“Do whatever, just go write the damn thing already!” they replied.

“Okay!” I exhaled and rushed back to Josh with the good news.

Josh and I immediately went to work rebuilding the story and creating an outline.  This time the story and characters came to us immediately, and after all the outlining was said and done Alicia was the only character from the original story with enough substance and depth to survive the transition to the new story (truth be told, I don’t remember a single other character from the original).

From there the script and characters evolved naturally and all of the holes that necessitated it becoming a comedy seemed to fill themselves in on their own.  From that point on (with few exceptions) the writing process for “Who Killed Jane Finch?” was a good time had by all (and by “all” I mean me).

And that is why; even today receipts are written on paper and not cornhusks.

Wait… what?

That’s my story, thanks for reading it.

Jeremy McGovern

Writer/Producer “Who Killed Jane Finch”