Script Project: We're still here

Writers who couldn't get enough of the Times' Birds of Paradise contest still have a place to strut their stuff. A better place even, since the LA Observed Script Project was here first, film is way cooler than print, it's been featured on KCRW — and we offer a fun t-shirt. In the latest twist, Mayor Russell Napolitano's special friend Celeste has been kidnapped by someone who wants the map of methane pockets under the Wilshire subway route. Why? We still don't know, but we're getting closer as producer Eric Estrin explains in this week's script notes:

Our most recent contributor, Paul Smolarski, has come up with an explanation for the red herring that set “Right of Way” in motion -- the map of methane deposits under the proposed Wilshire Blvd. subway route.

You won’t find it in the script, because it wasn’t time to reveal it. But Paul knows why that map exists, even if our protagonist, Russell Napolitano, still doesn’t. And he’s given me the go-ahead to share that info here in the hope that, down the road when the time is right, one of you will work it into the story in just the right way....

Two questions have been dogging perceptive readers (and potential writers) ever since: Who left Napolitano the map? And what is the significance of a hand-drawn document that seems to reveal nothing more than what city engineers would already know?

Smolarski is not a practiced screenwriter, as many of the Script Project contributors have been. He secures rights of way for a telecommunications engineering firm, making him the logical writer to figure out what's the big deal with the map. Why are people getting killed over it? What's the role of the mysterious cult The Order? He points the way, now it's up to you. Next pages are needed by Sunday night. Read Eric's notes for more.