The following is an introduction to the screenplay of the future film Ulterious written exclusively for the readers of TheSkyKid.com :

——————————————————————————————–

A movie about a boy should start with the boy. Mine does.

Well, it’s not a movie yet! For now, it’s only a screenplay, called Ulterious. Once it’s made, however, it will be the kind of film that would be reviewed here, and discussed here, and hopefully cherished, by all those who love coming-of-age movies.

Some of my favorite films are stories of boys caught in conflict: Ivan’s Childhood, The Return, Forbidden Games, Hope and Glory, The 400 Blows, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Devil’s Backbone, Come and See, Bicycle Thieves. When I set out to write this screenplay, I kept those films in mind.

Ulterious is a story of good versus evil, as two teenage boys square off against each other. One boy, Caio, is a skateboarding detective – the story starts with him, as he’s the hero, a sort of junior Philip Marlowe on wheels, cheap cigarettes and all. The bad boy, Max, a Katrina Orphan, is cold and deadly, in the classic “Bad Seed” mode – we learn that fact about him early on.

As the tale begins, Caio’s best friend, Tadeu, has gone missing. Max is the reason why. Once Caio’s investigation starts to unfold, he begins to suspect Max; then, more than anything, he wants to bring Max down, hard and fast.

But, as Max is modeled on The Talented Mr. Ripley, he proves a very slippery fish to catch.

In a film like Talented Mr. Ripley (or Purple Noon, another interpretation of the same Patricia Highsmith novel), the audience is tricked into pulling for the bad guy, despite all their best impulses. (Of course, it helps to cast Matt Damon or Alain Delon as Ripley.)

Well, in Ulterious, I want the viewer, in the face of all moral qualms, to want Max to get away with it, no matter how bad Max has been, and no matter how much they’d like to see Caio catch him. (Fortunately, like the Ripley books, I have sequels in mind, so I don’t want Max to get caught either!)

For a story like this to succeed on the screen, the bad kid has to be good at being bad, but in a likeable way. In a film like Joshua, for instance, the filmmakers make the boy look perfect: not a hair out of place, his every word precise, his tie straight, his khakis obsessively creased. How could there be something wrong with Joshua when he looks so right?

Max, however, is an anomaly: he’s a poor black kid (Louisiana Creole) transplanted and adopted into blue-blooded Boston – into the Northups, an old-money family on the North Shore. He didn’t fit in, at first. By the time the story begins, however, he’s overcome all obstacles that he’s confronted and conquered almost everyone whose ever had the nerve to stand in his way (with the possible exception of his racist great-grandfather).

To help make the opposition between Caio and Max more physical, I made them wrestlers. Caio has always gotten the better of Max on the wrestling mat. Furthering their antagonistic relationship, Caio represents the lowly public middle school, whereas Max fights for the upper-crust Northup Prep squad.

In the background of all this, there are two other teen boys who figure prominently in the Ulterious storyline: one, most obviously, is the missing boy, Caio’s best friend. Tadeu is also a wrestler, but he’s night-and-day different from Caio. For one thing, he’s gay – and just starting to become up-front about his sexuality, so that there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind.

The other boy is a runaway slave, who escaped on the Underground Railroad 150 years previously. Like Tadeu, his journey ended at the old Northup house, where Max now resides. Thus, the past becomes the present, as original sins begin to stain the modern fabric, and everything comes full circle, pulling Caio and Max down deeper into a spiral that will lead them onward.

Ulterious is a completed, 119-page screenplay, available as a .pdf, .txt, or .fdr file. It’s low-budget, high-quality, good to go.

For more information, please see my blog.