BY DANA SCHOEL
The
best place to start when telling how I came to write a screenplay about Steve
McQueen is somewhere in the middle, around the time Netflix came knocking and
asked me to develop a project about the King of Cool. To be precise, Netflix
held a pitch session in 2018, in Montreal, where I live. Members of the Writer’s
Guild of Canada (experienced screenwriters) were invited to a swanky hotel,
where we went one-by-one into different rooms to meet the heads of various
departments at Netflix. I met with the head of Independent Film Acquisition. My
project was about a young Steve McQueen —a coming of age story, which ends
before he gets into acting; lots of amazing things happened to him before he
became a star, and in my view, those formative years were the most interesting
and dramatic. Naturally, Netflix wanted to hear more about Steve.
To
back-track a little: I’d written a screenplay about a young Steve McQueen ten
years prior. It had gotten positive feedback, even into the hands of some
Hollywood producers. I mean real ones; people who’d produced My Big Fat Greek
Wedding, The Ring movies, etc… But as much as they liked my script, they didn’t
see the commercial potential, and well, that’s how the movie business works.
Initially,
I’d chosen to write about Steve not because I was a particular fan or devotee.
In fact, I’d only discovered his movies a few years before (not having grown up
with them – being born in the mid-1970s when his career was near its end). As I
explored his work (who was this guy, and why hadn’t my generation heard more
about him?) I came to admire how he was the precursor of the modern star…
taking on a wide range of roles and passion projects which meant something to
him, even if they weren’t commercially viable, and sometimes were obvious
experiments (Le Mans, An Enemy of the People, Tom Horn, etc). Not many
Hollywood stars did that in his time, and still not many do it today.
As
much as I was drawn to his movies, what really drew me to write about him, was
his early life. As a teenager, Steve had already traveled the globe, served as
a merchant marine, worked in a brothel in the Dominican Republic; then he was
in the army… and risked his life to save fellow soldiers. He served on
President Truman’s yacht. Steve fell in love and had the chance at a posh job
with his potential father-in-law… but passed it all up to go his own way. He
was never bound by convention. All this before he became a star, or even
started acting. Steve’s life, his real
life —not just his time in Hollywood— was ripe with dramatic potential. Why
hadn’t someone made a movie about him before? Having had my first feature film
released back in 2008 (as well as an extensive career in documentaries), I
decided to take a crack at it.
We
can now fast-forward to when my Young Steve McQueen script sat in my drawer for
many years, after its first run among a few Hollywood producers. In 2018,
Netflix expressed interest in doing something about him, but my concept of a
globe-trotting Steve McQueen was deemed too expensive. So, I pitched an
alternate idea, centered on Steve’s later years when he walked away from
traditional Hollywood, and was focused on helping troubled youth. Netflix appeared
to like this approach which had a much lower budget. I spent the next year or so
developing the concept. Doing so, I was able to get in touch with Steve’s son, Chad
McQueen, who came on board as my executive producer. Chad was generous with his
time and he helped to make sure all the details were authentic. He also enabled
me to further my research. I spoke with Max Scott, former director of the Boys
Republic reform school, where Steve had attended as a youth. Steve later went
back as a star to help out troubled kids. I learned a lot about how he donated
his time and resources to help those kids, away from the eyes of the press. I
think even his son, Chad, learned something new: Max Scott told us how Steve had
supported a teenager from the Boys Republic with Olympic dreams… in bobsledding
no less! I could hear the surprise in Chad’s voice. It was inspiring to see how
much Steve had helped out. I learned a lot of other details about the Boys
Republic, too, how it functioned, and about Steve’s time there… like how he
once beat off a gang of tormentors by putting a bar of soap in a sock!
There
were major surprises for me as well. One day, Chad told me he’d just had lunch
with Steven Spielberg, and they were talking about my project. I’d written a scene
where Steve meets Steven, turning down the role in Close Encounters of the
Third Kind… and Spielberg provided corrections as to what really went down. Chad
told me he was pleased with how the writing was progressing. Unfortunately, as
I was finishing up the final draft of the treatment, Netflix came back and said
there wasn’t enough interest (among their audience) for a Steve McQueen film. They
never even read what I wrote. Needless to say, I was upset. But, I hate giving
up (if there’s anything Steve McQueen taught me!)
To
be clear, I couldn’t do anything with the Steve McQueen-Boys Republic project,
since it was tied up in various contractual agreements. So, I decided to return
to my earlier, Young Steve McQueen script and polish it up, based on my new
insights. It then occurred to me: if Netflix was unwilling to fork out a small
amount (say, under $5 million) to produce a film about Steve McQueen, it was unlikely
anyone would take the risk on a more expensive project, with lots of exotic
locations even though the script made the rounds again and feedback was universally
positive. However, the answer was equally universal. There’s not much of an
audience, today, for Steve McQueen. Or so they say. Are they wrong? I don’t
know, but that’s exactly why I decided to release the Young Steve McQueen script
in book form… to hear what real people have to say about it.
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