Laurie and Dag: The Story Behind the Story
Part I: Dag, Glenn and Ronnie.
(Please Note that if you have not read Laurie and Dag or The Kid & Me, this article contains spoilers. If you are interested in reading the stories, the links are in the right hand column. The story actually begins with The Kid & Me.)
When I finally completed The Kid & Me, I had no interest in immediately starting another story for The Sims 2. It’s not that I didn’t find the experience rewarding but writing a lengthy and in depth story takes an extraordinary amount of time and patience. I’m not talking about the text, but working with and manipulating temperamental Sims can sometimes be a royal pain in the butt. It was not something I was ready to deal with again too quickly because by the time I typed on The End to The Kid, the only thing I was looking forward to was a long break from the rigors of writing.
When I had reached the midway point of The Kid though, I had in fact built up a loyal following and there were many who were urging me to try another story. After just about three weeks, I had begun to recover from the first go round of Sim Storytelling, and began to give some thought of trying again.
I began to consider many different scenarios that I might write about. The only thing I was sure of, or thought I was sure of, is that I didn’t really want to write a sequel. I had so much as said so many times during the writing of The Kid & Me, and planned to stick too that even if I did change the ending of that story at the last minute. Perhaps when I did that, it was my subconscious way of keeping the door open for the characters to return in one form or another.
One of the first ideas I had was to take an old film from perhaps the forties, fifties and sixties and converting or updating it. I think this idea had come about because of the disdain many young people have for any movie that was made before 1990. I remember reading a message from one young person in fact who said they never ever would watch a film that was in black and white. So my idea was to take a film, update it if I had to, see what kind of audience I could get, and then reveal what the film was to prove that yes Virginia, there were movies made before MTV, Vh1, and American Idol, and yes they could in fact entertain you if you would give them a chance.
So having decided on what I wanted to do my next problem was deciding which film to update. A lot of films were automatically eliminated simply because I knew it would be way too difficult to do them in them with Sims. Let me explain. What you can actually do with Sims is limited. They can’t draw a gun, they can’t do stunts, and at that time they couldn’t yet drive a car. (Yes, I know I had them driving a car in the stories I wrote but that took a lot of time and patience to get it to look like that.) However, if you have a good photo shop program and are extremely adept with it, it certainly gave you the opportunity to at least make your Sims look like they were doing something they were not. I had a photo editing program that could do some things, but it was very limited. So a lot of photo shopping was out of the question and honestly, I didn’t care for Sims stories that were overly photo shopped. (Note: With expansion pack of The Sims, they of course gain the ability to do more things, and more items to do them with. Also, as time has gone on, the wonderful hackers like those at Mod the sims2, inseminator and inteeminator, have made what you can do much easier.)
My main hope was to write a story with some teeth, that I would also be able to make a point with. There was one movie based in the fifties that was not only a film but a best selling book. A lot of it was just fluff, but there was one subplot that I thought could be adapted and I could make a point in the process. The only problem was, that subplot was so buried in forties sensibility (Note: The film was made in the fifties. The story took place in the late thirties and early forties) that I didn’t think I could move it into the 21st Century. (Note: Or so I thought. I have since changed my mind and have figured out how to update it. That project may yet see the light of day which is why I am keeping the title under wraps for now.) Undaunted, I began to look around the internet for Sims items from the fifties. I did find some fifties fashions, but I wasn’t sure there were enough to see me through what would be a very long story with many characters, but thought I might be able to get by. What finally did the project in was finding enough thirties type buildings, landscapes, and home furnishings to tell the story and to make everything myself would take way too much time. There were a few things available at the time, but not enough for what I wanted. So that was that.
I don’t know how many films I ran through my head to see if any of them could be converted for the Sims but I know it was quite a few. I had decided that because of the Sims limitations, it was going to more than likely have to be a romantic comedy. Yet, I also had the urge to add a few serious elements. I wanted to write something that even in a small way might be meaningful to someone, somewhere.
So I guess this is what I was thinking about one night when I was playing the Sims game, and playing with the Baker family. Dag had gone off to college in my game play, and Laurie was still a teen. As my Sims Joe and Bettie approached becoming elders, I thought again about The Kid & Me and how well I knew the characters, their lives, their personalities and their motivations since it was my thought process that had brought them to life in the first place. I probably felt the same way about them as Walt Disney did about Mickey Mouse. I finally realized that perhaps it would be better to stick with the Devil I knew instead of the one I didn’t know. The Baker Family would live again, and having made that decision the floodgates of my mind opened up as if a burden had lifted.
I suddenly remembered an old 1963 film that was in a similar vein as The Kid & Me, and other films such as Sleepless in Seattle, and practically every Shirley Temple film you ever saw. In fact, it struck me how similar in some aspects Sleepless in Seattle was to this 1962 film. In Sleepless, wh
ich is also one of my favorite romantic comedies, Sam Baldwin (Tom Hanks) is a widower whose son Jonah (Ross Malinger) tries to find him a new wife. Shirley Temple, in her films, was always trying to play matchmaker for some couple so she could be adopted. Of course, in The Kid and Me, there was a chapter where the young Dag did this, but it was only a small part of a bigger story. So the 1962 film I chose was one called The Courtship of Eddie’s Father starring Glenn Ford, Shirley Jones, Ronnie Howard, and Dina Merrill. And now you know why I gave the character the names that I did, except for Dag. She of course took the Shirley Jones role and there was no way that I could possibly change her name to Shirley.
I decided to take the basic premise and expand on it. In the original film, it’s amazing how little we knew about the Jones character. The film actually centered entirely around Glenn Ford and Ronnie Howard (Yes, that Ronnie Howard.) The only time we even saw Jones was when she would come over to visit Glenn Ford or baby-sit Ronnie. By using Dag to tell the story, that alone would give it a new perspective. And that is how Dag’s part of the story was born.
As you know, in my story the first time that Dag met Glenn and Ronnie was at the apartment swimming pool. In the original film, Elizabeth (Shirley Jones) actually had known Tom Corbett (Glenn Ford) and Eddie (Ron Howard) for a number of years at least. Elizabeth had in fact been best friends with Tom’s wife when she passed away. We are never told why she died in the film but we know it was recent because Eddie is just then going back to school. And no, Elizabeth isn’t Eddie’s teacher either because Elizabeth is a nurse (but she must have had one heck of a settlement because her clothes and apartment are quite swanky, as you will see). Unlike Dag though, Elizabeth was married to a guy who apparently cheated on her (we can only guess, they didn’t spell these things out in 1963) and of course divorced him.
The first scene that I lifted from the movie for my Sims story was the scene in which Dag takes the cake over and Ronnie has a screaming fit over the dead fish. I wanted to change it to a dead dog or cat and make it different but at that time the only pet the Sims could have was a fish tank. So I just went ahead and used the scene as it appeared in the film because I felt it was important and you will see it in the clips.
In Eddie’s Father, there was also a housekeeper also but she is newly hired by Tom. The character, Mrs. Livingston is played by Roberta Sherwood and is actually quite funny. She has this running bit throughout the film about learning Spanish with a great punch line about it at the end. It was an element I couldn’t use in Laurie and Dag and if and when you see the film you’ll know why.
In Eddie’s Father there is also this running sub plot going on between Jerry Van Dyke and Stella Stevens. Tom, instead of being a manager of a TV station as Glenn was, runs a radio station at which Jerry is a womanizing disc jockey. This whole subplot isn’t entirely necessary to the film,
but Stevens and Van Dyke have some good moments together, or at least Stella Stevens does. Early in the film there is also a scene where Tom and Eddie are having an outing together, run into the Stevens character who needs to borrow Eddie. Why? See the movie, but it is an example of a scene from the innocent early sixties that certainly couldn’t be used in this day and age. I mean, would you let some stranger that looks like Stella Stevens borrow your kid? On second thought, don’t answer that.
Of course, in Laurie and Dag, I wrote in a steady boyfriend for Dag by the name of Reggie. In Eddie’s Father and having just been divorced, Elizabeth has no steady boyfriend. And remember Harold Nye, the Insurance Guy? There is no such character in Eddie’s Father, and of course there is no pool party given by the apartment manager. At one point though, Elizabeth does come home with the same kind of loser that Harold is on New Year’s Eve at the same time as Tom Corbett comes home from a date with Dina. But the guy she comes home with is a bone doctor. And yes, the rest of that scene runs pretty much the same way as I wrote it.
And there are some slight differences in the way that Tom meets the Dina Merrill character
(Rita) and in the way that Glenn meets his Dina although both meetings take place at work. In Eddie’s father, Rita is being interviewed by the Jerry Van Dyke character when Tom meets her instead of Tom interviewing her himself as Glenn did. I think Van Dyke was interviewing her about some fashion show, while Glenn of course was interviewing her about the wardrobe of the stations on air personalities. Of course, my Ronnie didn’t like Dina because she looked like Cruella. In Eddie’s Father, Eddie doesn’t like Rita because she has thin lips, squinty eyes, and big breasts. Good women have medium breasts and round eyes. One reason that I just changed it to Cruella as I felt since it was possible for Ronnie to have watched the Dalmatian film on video, it would seem more recent than if he were basing it on villainesses in comic books.
The biggest difference you will see is that at one point, they send Eddie away to camp. It is there that Tom and Rita come to visit, where Ronnie talks about his little girl friend Candy, and where Eddie gets mad at Rita for butting in. It is the camp that Eddie runs away from at about the same time Tom is asking Rita to marry him.
At any rate, that should give you some idea of some of the differences and similarities. In some aspects, as far as character motivation, I actually think my story improves on it quite a bit. In other aspects it does not. What my story couldn’t do is bring Ronnie to life the way the real Ron Howard brought Eddie to life. I know you’ve watched him on Andy Griffith show as a youngster, but the work he does in this film is extraordinary, and goes way beyond anything he did in that TV series. I hope if you enjoyed Dag’s part of the story you will look the film up on DVD. It is available from Netflix. Though much of it will seem dated, Ron Howards performance as Eddie is worth the rental.
Here are some clips from the film just as I promised that I strung together so that you compare it with what you read and I hope it interests you in checking it out. Watch them while you can because I don’t know how long these will stay up things being what they are.
Part I: Dag, Glenn and Ronnie.
(Please Note that if you have not read Laurie and Dag or The Kid & Me, this article contains spoilers. If you are interested in reading the stories, the links are in the right hand column. The story actually begins with The Kid & Me.)
When I finally completed The Kid & Me, I had no interest in immediately starting another story for The Sims 2. It’s not that I didn’t find the experience rewarding but writing a lengthy and in depth story takes an extraordinary amount of time and patience. I’m not talking about the text, but working with and manipulating temperamental Sims can sometimes be a royal pain in the butt. It was not something I was ready to deal with again too quickly because by the time I typed on The End to The Kid, the only thing I was looking forward to was a long break from the rigors of writing.
When I had reached the midway point of The Kid though, I had in fact built up a loyal following and there were many who were urging me to try another story. After just about three weeks, I had begun to recover from the first go round of Sim Storytelling, and began to give some thought of trying again.
I began to consider many different scenarios that I might write about. The only thing I was sure of, or thought I was sure of, is that I didn’t really want to write a sequel. I had so much as said so many times during the writing of The Kid & Me, and planned to stick too that even if I did change the ending of that story at the last minute. Perhaps when I did that, it was my subconscious way of keeping the door open for the characters to return in one form or another.
One of the first ideas I had was to take an old film from perhaps the forties, fifties and sixties and converting or updating it. I think this idea had come about because of the disdain many young people have for any movie that was made before 1990. I remember reading a message from one young person in fact who said they never ever would watch a film that was in black and white. So my idea was to take a film, update it if I had to, see what kind of audience I could get, and then reveal what the film was to prove that yes Virginia, there were movies made before MTV, Vh1, and American Idol, and yes they could in fact entertain you if you would give them a chance.
So having decided on what I wanted to do my next problem was deciding which film to update. A lot of films were automatically eliminated simply because I knew it would be way too difficult to do them in them with Sims. Let me explain. What you can actually do with Sims is limited. They can’t draw a gun, they can’t do stunts, and at that time they couldn’t yet drive a car. (Yes, I know I had them driving a car in the stories I wrote but that took a lot of time and patience to get it to look like that.) However, if you have a good photo shop program and are extremely adept with it, it certainly gave you the opportunity to at least make your Sims look like they were doing something they were not. I had a photo editing program that could do some things, but it was very limited. So a lot of photo shopping was out of the question and honestly, I didn’t care for Sims stories that were overly photo shopped. (Note: With expansion pack of The Sims, they of course gain the ability to do more things, and more items to do them with. Also, as time has gone on, the wonderful hackers like those at Mod the sims2, inseminator and inteeminator, have made what you can do much easier.)
My main hope was to write a story with some teeth, that I would also be able to make a point with. There was one movie based in the fifties that was not only a film but a best selling book. A lot of it was just fluff, but there was one subplot that I thought could be adapted and I could make a point in the process. The only problem was, that subplot was so buried in forties sensibility (Note: The film was made in the fifties. The story took place in the late thirties and early forties) that I didn’t think I could move it into the 21st Century. (Note: Or so I thought. I have since changed my mind and have figured out how to update it. That project may yet see the light of day which is why I am keeping the title under wraps for now.) Undaunted, I began to look around the internet for Sims items from the fifties. I did find some fifties fashions, but I wasn’t sure there were enough to see me through what would be a very long story with many characters, but thought I might be able to get by. What finally did the project in was finding enough thirties type buildings, landscapes, and home furnishings to tell the story and to make everything myself would take way too much time. There were a few things available at the time, but not enough for what I wanted. So that was that.
I don’t know how many films I ran through my head to see if any of them could be converted for the Sims but I know it was quite a few. I had decided that because of the Sims limitations, it was going to more than likely have to be a romantic comedy. Yet, I also had the urge to add a few serious elements. I wanted to write something that even in a small way might be meaningful to someone, somewhere.
So I guess this is what I was thinking about one night when I was playing the Sims game, and playing with the Baker family. Dag had gone off to college in my game play, and Laurie was still a teen. As my Sims Joe and Bettie approached becoming elders, I thought again about The Kid & Me and how well I knew the characters, their lives, their personalities and their motivations since it was my thought process that had brought them to life in the first place. I probably felt the same way about them as Walt Disney did about Mickey Mouse. I finally realized that perhaps it would be better to stick with the Devil I knew instead of the one I didn’t know. The Baker Family would live again, and having made that decision the floodgates of my mind opened up as if a burden had lifted.
I suddenly remembered an old 1963 film that was in a similar vein as The Kid & Me, and other films such as Sleepless in Seattle, and practically every Shirley Temple film you ever saw. In fact, it struck me how similar in some aspects Sleepless in Seattle was to this 1962 film. In Sleepless, wh
ich is also one of my favorite romantic comedies, Sam Baldwin (Tom Hanks) is a widower whose son Jonah (Ross Malinger) tries to find him a new wife. Shirley Temple, in her films, was always trying to play matchmaker for some couple so she could be adopted. Of course, in The Kid and Me, there was a chapter where the young Dag did this, but it was only a small part of a bigger story. So the 1962 film I chose was one called The Courtship of Eddie’s Father starring Glenn Ford, Shirley Jones, Ronnie Howard, and Dina Merrill. And now you know why I gave the character the names that I did, except for Dag. She of course took the Shirley Jones role and there was no way that I could possibly change her name to Shirley.I decided to take the basic premise and expand on it. In the original film, it’s amazing how little we knew about the Jones character. The film actually centered entirely around Glenn Ford and Ronnie Howard (Yes, that Ronnie Howard.) The only time we even saw Jones was when she would come over to visit Glenn Ford or baby-sit Ronnie. By using Dag to tell the story, that alone would give it a new perspective. And that is how Dag’s part of the story was born.
As you know, in my story the first time that Dag met Glenn and Ronnie was at the apartment swimming pool. In the original film, Elizabeth (Shirley Jones) actually had known Tom Corbett (Glenn Ford) and Eddie (Ron Howard) for a number of years at least. Elizabeth had in fact been best friends with Tom’s wife when she passed away. We are never told why she died in the film but we know it was recent because Eddie is just then going back to school. And no, Elizabeth isn’t Eddie’s teacher either because Elizabeth is a nurse (but she must have had one heck of a settlement because her clothes and apartment are quite swanky, as you will see). Unlike Dag though, Elizabeth was married to a guy who apparently cheated on her (we can only guess, they didn’t spell these things out in 1963) and of course divorced him.
The first scene that I lifted from the movie for my Sims story was the scene in which Dag takes the cake over and Ronnie has a screaming fit over the dead fish. I wanted to change it to a dead dog or cat and make it different but at that time the only pet the Sims could have was a fish tank. So I just went ahead and used the scene as it appeared in the film because I felt it was important and you will see it in the clips.
In Eddie’s Father, there was also a housekeeper also but she is newly hired by Tom. The character, Mrs. Livingston is played by Roberta Sherwood and is actually quite funny. She has this running bit throughout the film about learning Spanish with a great punch line about it at the end. It was an element I couldn’t use in Laurie and Dag and if and when you see the film you’ll know why.
In Eddie’s Father there is also this running sub plot going on between Jerry Van Dyke and Stella Stevens. Tom, instead of being a manager of a TV station as Glenn was, runs a radio station at which Jerry is a womanizing disc jockey. This whole subplot isn’t entirely necessary to the film,
but Stevens and Van Dyke have some good moments together, or at least Stella Stevens does. Early in the film there is also a scene where Tom and Eddie are having an outing together, run into the Stevens character who needs to borrow Eddie. Why? See the movie, but it is an example of a scene from the innocent early sixties that certainly couldn’t be used in this day and age. I mean, would you let some stranger that looks like Stella Stevens borrow your kid? On second thought, don’t answer that.Of course, in Laurie and Dag, I wrote in a steady boyfriend for Dag by the name of Reggie. In Eddie’s Father and having just been divorced, Elizabeth has no steady boyfriend. And remember Harold Nye, the Insurance Guy? There is no such character in Eddie’s Father, and of course there is no pool party given by the apartment manager. At one point though, Elizabeth does come home with the same kind of loser that Harold is on New Year’s Eve at the same time as Tom Corbett comes home from a date with Dina. But the guy she comes home with is a bone doctor. And yes, the rest of that scene runs pretty much the same way as I wrote it.
And there are some slight differences in the way that Tom meets the Dina Merrill character
(Rita) and in the way that Glenn meets his Dina although both meetings take place at work. In Eddie’s father, Rita is being interviewed by the Jerry Van Dyke character when Tom meets her instead of Tom interviewing her himself as Glenn did. I think Van Dyke was interviewing her about some fashion show, while Glenn of course was interviewing her about the wardrobe of the stations on air personalities. Of course, my Ronnie didn’t like Dina because she looked like Cruella. In Eddie’s Father, Eddie doesn’t like Rita because she has thin lips, squinty eyes, and big breasts. Good women have medium breasts and round eyes. One reason that I just changed it to Cruella as I felt since it was possible for Ronnie to have watched the Dalmatian film on video, it would seem more recent than if he were basing it on villainesses in comic books.The biggest difference you will see is that at one point, they send Eddie away to camp. It is there that Tom and Rita come to visit, where Ronnie talks about his little girl friend Candy, and where Eddie gets mad at Rita for butting in. It is the camp that Eddie runs away from at about the same time Tom is asking Rita to marry him.
At any rate, that should give you some idea of some of the differences and similarities. In some aspects, as far as character motivation, I actually think my story improves on it quite a bit. In other aspects it does not. What my story couldn’t do is bring Ronnie to life the way the real Ron Howard brought Eddie to life. I know you’ve watched him on Andy Griffith show as a youngster, but the work he does in this film is extraordinary, and goes way beyond anything he did in that TV series. I hope if you enjoyed Dag’s part of the story you will look the film up on DVD. It is available from Netflix. Though much of it will seem dated, Ron Howards performance as Eddie is worth the rental.
Here are some clips from the film just as I promised that I strung together so that you compare it with what you read and I hope it interests you in checking it out. Watch them while you can because I don’t know how long these will stay up things being what they are.
Click here to read The Story Behind the Story Part II
No comments:
Post a Comment