Guilty Lookin' Fat Man
Guilty Lookin' Fat Man is track 11 of the 27 tracks on the Carbon Harbor soundtrack album.
Warren Cates, son of the late Austin Cates, is a key character in both drafts of my Carbon Harbor screenplay, however his role has changed significantly in the second draft. In draft one he is single, and it takes a while to establish a connection between him and the first body found in the bay in 1984. That connection was slowly developed to a suspicious one, making him the prime suspect for the murder, but as we become certain of the connection, he, too, is found in the bay.
He's always been intended to act as a ruse, to throw off my main character, Chic, if only for a while. In the second draft, however, it's a shorter lived distraction. In draft two Warren is married and it's his wife found in the bay. He immediately becomes the prime suspect and is rounded up, but then he manages to escape. Later, he appears to go careening off the Pacific Coast Highway into the ocean. At least his car does, but we're not certain about whether or not he was even in that car. Later we learn he definitely was not in the car, and we have a whole new ball game. It's a new game because, even though we learn before Chic does that Warren is back in town, Chic is already following another trail and leaning towards a belief that Warren is innocent. It's the same trail that leads us back to the Carbon Harbor history and back story I've written about in this blog.
My problem is that Warren is becoming a road block in the second half of Act II. I'm not sure, exactly, of what it is Warren has come back to do. I have a vague notion that it's a mix of revenge and simply clearing the name of his father, but I don't know how ugly I want it to get. I want Warren to be mad as a hornet, but I don't want us to lose all sympathy for his cause, yet, on the other hand, I don't want him coming off smelling like a hero. I want Chic caught right in the middle. That is, by the end, Warren and Chic are going after the same culprit, but it's his job to uphold the law, so he can't let Warren get too much of an upper hand on the villain, and I don't want it to be Warren's own self-restraint that holds him back.
I think I've got everything else locked up if I could only figure this out.
Warren Cates, son of the late Austin Cates, is a key character in both drafts of my Carbon Harbor screenplay, however his role has changed significantly in the second draft. In draft one he is single, and it takes a while to establish a connection between him and the first body found in the bay in 1984. That connection was slowly developed to a suspicious one, making him the prime suspect for the murder, but as we become certain of the connection, he, too, is found in the bay.
He's always been intended to act as a ruse, to throw off my main character, Chic, if only for a while. In the second draft, however, it's a shorter lived distraction. In draft two Warren is married and it's his wife found in the bay. He immediately becomes the prime suspect and is rounded up, but then he manages to escape. Later, he appears to go careening off the Pacific Coast Highway into the ocean. At least his car does, but we're not certain about whether or not he was even in that car. Later we learn he definitely was not in the car, and we have a whole new ball game. It's a new game because, even though we learn before Chic does that Warren is back in town, Chic is already following another trail and leaning towards a belief that Warren is innocent. It's the same trail that leads us back to the Carbon Harbor history and back story I've written about in this blog.
My problem is that Warren is becoming a road block in the second half of Act II. I'm not sure, exactly, of what it is Warren has come back to do. I have a vague notion that it's a mix of revenge and simply clearing the name of his father, but I don't know how ugly I want it to get. I want Warren to be mad as a hornet, but I don't want us to lose all sympathy for his cause, yet, on the other hand, I don't want him coming off smelling like a hero. I want Chic caught right in the middle. That is, by the end, Warren and Chic are going after the same culprit, but it's his job to uphold the law, so he can't let Warren get too much of an upper hand on the villain, and I don't want it to be Warren's own self-restraint that holds him back.
I think I've got everything else locked up if I could only figure this out.
posted by Bryrock at 12:02 PM
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