WEED DEMON

 Hey! I know it doesn't look like it, but it's felt like forever since I've decided to sit down and write a blog post. It's kind of hard to believe that it was such a strong habit of mine that I was able to post frequently for a year. I've really enjoyed my more lax expectations when it comes to the scheduling for the blog, but it's also led to a new conundrum: what is worth blogging about?

    Obviously, there is no requirement or standard that I've held my blogs to in the past. That was the point, after all: I just had to write something, anything, twice a week, and I'd be happy with it. But now that I'm going to be posting much less frequently, I do feel a strange sort of duty to have more of a qualitative approach to these blogs. For weeks, I haven't been able to come up with any ideas "worth writing" about, but finally, a thought came to mind, one so obvious that I literally smacked my own face for not having thought about it sooner.

    For months, I have been working on a short film script titled Weed Demon. I've always said that for all of my potential as a writer, my fatal flaw has always been titles for my projects. Back in high school, I made a short film called Computer Funeral which was, well, about a computer funeral. For a screenwriting class I took last semester, I wrote a short script about a kidnapper grabbing the wrong guy, and I aptly titled it Wrong Guy. I had never meant to title this film Weed Demon, it was just the working title I used to refer to the project while I thought about a better title. But that never happened, and besides, a lot of the people who proofread the script thought the title was pretty funny. So it stuck.

    All of this yapping about naming projects, and I still haven't even explained what the film is about! Essentially, the short film follows James and Clover, who are two law interns attending a nature retreat with some trust fund rich guys in order to secure their business for the firm. However, it turns out these rich dudes are big stoners, which leads to some discomfort for Clover, who had a past with drugs. I don't want to spoil too much of it, but I will discuss more aspects of the film in more detail further on in this blog. So that's the basic premise.

    From what I can tell, thanks to my journaling and extensive documentation of my creative process, the earliest mention of this script idea was mid-August 2024. I had written down a summary of how I wanted the general story to go, although there were some distinctions between the first-ever idea for the story and the final product. For starters, the two lawyers were initially both male (Simon and Luis) and the two stoners were named Dante and Chris (I'm like 99% sure Dante was a reference to my dormmate Devonte from my freshman year of college). It was a pretty straightforward story, with the two groups meeting, smoking, encountering the Weed Demon, and then burning their weed to defeat the demon. 

    For months, this idea laid untouched and undisturbed in the pages of my notebook. But around December 13th, I guess I had decided that I wanted to revisit this story, but not alone this time. When revisiting this concept, I had pitched it to Wade, and together we got excited about the possibility of working together on a creative project for the first time in a few years. I would write the script, then he would produce the film, and by the end of it we would have a fully developed short film that was made independently! With new wind in my sails, I pored into my journal, jotting down different ideas for the Weed Demon and how it could look like, what sort of threat it would pose, whether the perspective of each character would influence its appearance... all stuff like that.

    At this time, I also decided to further flesh out the characters. The characters who would eventually become James and Clover had pretty much been conceptualized Day One, but distinguishing the two stoners was a complication. Then one night, Wade brought up a very good point: Is the whole cast going to be male? Honestly, I had never given the gender of the characters much thought, since the concept of addiction and peer pressure is genderless. However, Wade did bring attention to something that had been itching at both of our minds: most, if not all of our projects were male-centric, and generally lacked female representation. 

    As we struggled with this issue, something random popped into my mind. Wade had often told me about how the experiences on set were on his film school projects, and being friends, he usually shared some of the drama with me as well. One such incident was that a female classmate of his had constantly complained about feeling overlooked, ignored, and talked down to by some of the male classmates on set. For whatever reason, this story stuck with me, and it further upset me to think that even among our generation, which is pretty progressive, misogyny is still very much present. And then it hit me: why not take this issue and make a comment on it within this film? 

    Thus, Clover was born, as a representation of how competent women are often put down by arrogant men (looking at you James) in working environments and to generally add a layer of subtext to the film which would flesh out the story more. When I took a horror film class this Spring, one lesson stood out to me: at the core of every horror film, there must still be a fundamentally insecure thing happening, even when you strip away the supernatural or violent element of the film. Applying it to our film, when you strip away the idea of a Weed Demon haunting a group of people in the woods, you still have a horrific scenario for most women: being stuck in the woods with a bunch of men you don't know, and you're not sober. Even though I wanted Weed Demon to be a primarily comedic film, this aspect of the film makes it a better balance with the light thriller inspiration I was aiming for.

    James was always meant to be a representation of the "golden boy" trope, but with a nasty people-pleasing habit. I've always loved slimy characters in movies or shows that say whatever it takes to get their way, and so this was my opportunity to write someone like that, but in a less directly antagonistic way. Over time, James became the idea of the kind of guy that isn't a great friend, but isn't outright malicious. He's just selfish to a point that he will do whatever it takes to get his promotion, whether it be throwing Clover under the bus or desperately appealing to the stoners he's trying to befriend. The fun with writing James is that he's the kind of guy who thinks he's a few steps ahead of everyone else, but in reality everyone else sees straight through him.

    The two stoners were initially pretty interchangeable, but we decided to try to distinguish them into a more aggressive asshole (Nick) and the passive but still problematic guy (Forest). While the obvious theme that these antagonists are pushing is peer pressure, I still wanted to have them illustrate the underlying themes of misogyny with how they interact with Clover. Both of them interrupt Clover whenever she speaks, but we made the distinction that while Forest unintentionally talks over and interrupts her, Nick very intentionally does disrespect her as a sort of power play. 

    I feel as if I could talk about these characters forever... I've written plenty of characters before, but these four feel like they are the most fleshed out, human characters I've ever written. Maybe it's silly to say this, but I feel like I've explored each of these characters so intimately in my notes and conversations with Wade that they feel like real people I know. Even today, months after we finished the script, we still point out certain things or phrases to each other and we say stuff like "Yeah, James would 100% talk like this" or "Dude that guy dresses exactly like Forest." This is probably the reason for why I'm so proud of this project, since it feels like its the most I have ever accomplished writing wise. I'm really happy with all of the time spent on this project, whether it was spent alone writing the script, talking with Wade about notes and revising it together, or reading the feedback we received from a bunch of people who read through the script. It is, at the time of speaking, the most fulfilled I've felt from writing.