When I wrote the screenplay, YOUNGER, the ideas, like all of the best ideas, just started coming – as if out of thin air. But this is Southern California, and the air is anything but thin. The signs have been clear for a long time. We are heading for a Great Change, or as JAMES HOWARD KUNSTLER puts it, The Long Emergency.
What I've noticed as we go into development of the film is that the Near Future only seems like science fiction – all of it's technology is grounded in the present. I keep running into things in Real Life that echo something that I have written. Maybe not as developed, but clearly headed in the direction that I have already written. One of my associates just asked me about one Bio Medical development that I use in the screenplay that I thought we would have to visually invent but just recently found already exists in some form and is in use - “how did you know this?” Well I did and I didn't. We'll still have to dress up what already exists and take it into the future to make it work, but like most things, the Change has already taken place, most people just haven't noticed yet.
Coming up in YOUNGER:
Changes brought by present conditions have caused the collapse but not the destruction of human civilization – Billions have died – most cities and infrastructure has been destroyed and laid waste.
Like the rest of the world, North America is a vast lawless waste. In North America an Orwellian government controls the few intensely inhabited areas - it's only inhabited Free area is the Outlaw region of Southern California that can only be reached by surviving the crossing of the Great Waste or by sailing the deadly sea.
I mentioned Kunstler earlier because I just discovered that he makes a great argument for what I picture in YOUNGER. Kunstler tends to sound very serious when he talks or writes about this, which I don't blame him. It is serious. But for a more light hearted view you might also want to take a look at what Mark Morford writes in
I Cannot Yet Skin A Deer
Are you prepared for the Big Collapse? Peak Oil? Rural life? Can you pickle meat and eat bark?
Well, can you? Some people that I know can do some of those things, I think. My friend the Hunting Guide in the Navajo Nation territory, where I lived for a while, can surely skin a deer, or an elk or an antelope and any number of animals that people hunt. My friend the Big City Attorney (Denver, CO, where I've never lived) who hunts, probably wouldn't have much trouble with that either. Two people who on the surface of things are radically different from each other. Who would know that they share such a common skill set?
But there are only so many deer, and when things happen, there will be a lot of hungry people who might suddenly decide that they want to adjust their skills.
There are going to be some Really Good things that won't be stopped by the Big Change, and some that will come as a direct result of it – if people are to survive – some good things will have to happen. That's where a lot of "science fiction meets reality" Bio Medical will be. I'll write more about that as we get a few more things lined up.
What really offends me is that this didn't have to play out this way. The oddest thing is that for much of my life, the 21st Century seemed so far away that I doubted that I would live to be a part of it. Now I sometimes wonder if I want to. Well, here I am, and here we are. It's past time to get used to it – the Big Parts are already in sight.