Friday, March 30, 2012

A Nancy Drew Movie

When I was 11 years old, my sister and I decided that we would do something no one had ever done before (meaning that we simply weren't aware that several people had done it before). We began production on a Nancy Drew- wait for it- MOVIE!

We chose to base it off of book #152: The Key in the Satin Pocket. This was mostly because #122: The Message in the Haunted Mansion required a mansion, and also because we didn't have any snow (as necessitated by #158: The Curse of the Black Cat).

It was going to sell out like crazy in our garage-theater showings, and Hollywood people (just people from Hollywood) would be begging us for the rights to screen it nation-wide. It would be our big break, the project that would catapult us pre-teen filmmaking prodigies to fame and global recognition. Our best friend, who played Nancy, would be lauded for her powerful performance, while our classmate (in a relatively minor role) would steal the show, ensuring that she would instantly be asked to star in the next Sandra Bullock movie.

We had everything planned out perfectly. From my own wardrobe and an old costume basket, I picked out costumes for each character and folded them into boxes labeled with the actresses' names. I wrote out a screenplay with a full list of actresses to appear in the film (I didn't have any close male friends at this time, so all of the characters were just female). I even created a magazine that would be released just before the movie, with bios of everyone involved in the making of it, speculation on what the next Nancy Drew film would be, a detailed history of the series, and a sweepstakes to 'win a day with the stars!'.

Did we hit it big? Were we met with high acclaim and rampant success?

No. You could have guessed that, I'm sure, but I'm feeling nostalgic today and I want to recount every way in which our attempt at a Nancy Drew movie was pretty pathetic but also inadvertently one of my favorite childhood memories.

1) It was essentially a home video of us having fun with our friends. Although I had a detailed script that everyone was supposed to follow, my friends usually either forgot their lines or randomly threw in their own comments. Example:

Friend [as Nancy]: There's something in the pocket... hey, it's a key! And it has a number on it- 682.
Me [filming off to the side]: Shh, that's not important.
Friend: What?
Me: That's not in the script!
Friend: Well it DOES have a number on it though...
Me: But it's not- whatever, cut.


Mistakes aside, my sister made a huge deal out of creating a snack table and inviting a few friends that weren't actually in the movie...

Me: Why is so-and-so coming? She's not in the movie.
My sister: She's going to help though!
*Invitee eats snacks all day*

2) We hardly knew how to operate a video camera, let alone transfer it to a computer program in which we could edit it. First of all, we didn't understand that movies aren't filmed beginning to end- they're filmed around the availability of sets, weather, etc. (For instance, the first scene shot in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was actually the last scene in the movie.) So where did we begin filming our movie? That's right, at the beginning. If you watched the whole thing (and unfortunately this tape has gone missing somewhere) you could see some semblance of a story, with an in-movie blooper reel. My favorite part is the 3-second take of our friend's cat wearing a Santa Claus hat (it was her video camera, and she decided she needed to film her cat's first Christmas, even if it meant taping over it later). Because we had no idea how to edit this film, my sister and I decided that we would do something revolutionary: instead of having a blooper reel at the very end of the movie, we would keep all the mistakes in the film. Not only would the mystery keep the audience in suspense, but it would let them know how funny we were. (Even though we weren't.)

3) We spent more time talking about how awesome the movie would be and planning for the premiere that we usually forgot the whole matter of actually filming it. I think we stuck to this project for about six months before ditching it. This rang true for pretty much any story I tried to write during adolescence- my plans for a Mary-Kate and Ashley-esque mystery series (The Adventures of Kelly and Leslie: Cousin Detectives), my novel about the Rainbow Tree (based very, very loosely on my memories about a magical tree in the schoolyard and my best friend and I always played at), and any number of mystery/fantasy books. And unfortunately, this movie was no exception- while I got caught up in publicizing it and running my friends through mock interviews to prepare them for the upcoming flurry of press coverage they would be subjected to, we had filmed a total of five scenes and about three times as many bloopers (although if you called them 'bloopers', 12-year-old me would sniff and say that they're just as integral to the movie as the takes that actually went according to plan).

But you know, in hindsight I can't really hide my face in shame. After all, we were just kids. And my parents' support and encouragement of this project was not so much about us showing the world our talents through a Nancy Drew movie- it was about letting us be kids. I'm sure they thought our movie was totally ridiculous. But that's not what mattered. And looking back, as painfully bad as our movie was, the memories it created were anything but.

(See? Nostalgia. It's one thing that brings me back to Nancy Drew when times are tough/busy.)