“‘A lot of people go through life with heavy burdens,’ Jeremiah McLamb explained. ‘They are smiling but, emotionally, for them, things are really wrong. People wear a mask.’”
This epiphany in church, one Sunday, lead Jeremiah to the computer keyboard, circa 2008, to begin what would be draft one of “Masquerade” the movie. Later, he brought me fifty pages or so and a head full of ideas and together we massaged it into a full-blown feature film script. One of my biggest contributions at the time was the humor.
As Charlie Chaplin said, “if you want to end with a smile, begin with a tear.”
Humor acts as a pressure valve during the darkest moments. Not just for this script but also in life. Being able to laugh during the painful times has been instrumental in helping me move forward and keep my own sanity.
When we attended the “Masquerade” premiere we saw the film with an audience of about 150 people. The scene came up after the robbery where Ashley has been ditched in the middle of nowhere. Again. And here comes Jaime with that clunker car out of nowhere to rescue her. Again. The audience couldn’t help but giggle because the irony was delicious. It’s one of my favorite scenes.
My next favorite was soon after when Jaime drops Ashley off. This is typically the moment in the Christian movies where the Main Character gets preached at by the know-it-all Christian. We flipped the script. Made it so that Ashley wouldn’t let Jaime get a single word out. She just had to sit silently and be there for her as an ally in her pain. No words would have been enough. To just sit there in heavy anticipation. And the actresses pulled it off brilliantly. We saw Ashley’s pain, we saw Jaime’s strength. We found a thimble full of hope. All through silence and visuals. To me that was beautiful. A very touching scene.
Anyway, I was so happy to be able to revisit this story and characters I love in order to turn them loose in a book format where budgets and shooting schedules and location constraints couldn’t dim their fullest potential.
Hope you enjoy!
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: S. David Acuff lives in North Hollywood, CA and edits full-time for Walt Disney Television. He enjoys doing voice work for Audible projects (The Barnburner, The WOW Factor Workplace, Where An Angel’s On a Rope) as well as animated characters (Angel Wars, Herman Goes to School). He authored the epic Sci Fi story Historians Proper available on Amazon as well as wrote/edited the feature film, Restoration, distributed by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.
His life-motto is very simply, “What doesn’t kill you makes you funnier!”
Follow him on Instagram/Twitter/Facebook/Pinterest: @davidacuff