Sk8er Boi

Dear James,

A few months ago I came across a page on Wikipedia called "development hell", about novels and projects which were optioned by Hollywood but never made it past the development stage. The page which has since been edited and no longer features what I'm going to tell you, which suggests it was all bollocks to begin with, but I obviously refuse to disbelieve anything I read on Wikipedia:

In 2003, Paramount Pictures optioned the popular Avril Lavigne song for adaptation into a feature film. As of April 2008, the film has apparently been abandoned.

Clearly, the film was abandoned when it became apparent that Avril Lavigne was only going to be famous for three months, but what a great idea for a film! Let's set the scene: He's a boy, she's girl. Bit obvious so far, but bear with us. He's a punk, she does ballet. Now we've got conflict, and if there's one thing I've learnt form my script-writing course, it's that conflict is the driving force behind all writing. Well, that and talented writers who get up before 11am. Back to Sk8er Boi: He wants her, she doesn't tell, secretly she wants him as well, but due to peer-pressure she ultimately fails to follow her heart. There's your fatal flaw and your first dramatic twist, when the girl with the stuck-up nose turns down our boy.

Moving on to Act 2, we're now five years later. Our stuck-up girl, in keeping with ladies of her type, has fathered a bastard and is resigned to a life of feeding said bastard and watching MTV. It is here that she sees the guy that she turned down, rocking up MTV. Imagine! MTV showing music instead of reality shows! She calls up her friends, who are such good friends that they already knew, bought tickets for his show and didn't bother to tell her. She "tags along" to the gig, because gigs are like parties and if you haven't got a ticket it's OK as long as your friends are all going. I'm beginning to see where the film development broke down.

In a flimsy Act 3, we find out that Sk8er Boi is now with... the narrator of the story, who has a magical ability to "see the soul that is inside". How she does this is not explained, but we are told that they "rock each others' world". And that's about it. Terrible idea for a film. I wonder how much they paid to option it. Mind you, this guy's into the idea: