About a month and a half ago, I went over to the Party House (the house that Jenn and I lived in with some other Theatre Unleashed folk before we got married) to help clean out the garage. I have a ton of old shit that my friends were kind enough to let me leave there after Jenn and I moved because we now exist in a very small one bedroom apartment just a couple of blocks away. At one point, Jenn was going through one of the boxes and found one of my old notebooks. Flipping through it, she found some pages with the heading "Kids With Guns." Underneath those headings were some of my earliest notes on the story that would eventually evolve into Friends Like These. I'm going to share them here with you for nostalgia's sake, completely unedited. It's quite a fun walk down memory lane for me, and provide some interesting insight for those of you familiar with the show. Please be aware that there are plot-sensitive spoilers below. You have been warned.

"Kids With Guns" Notes - WA LAPG

Characters

Garrett - 16, Junior in high school. Trench Coat kid. Outcast. Dreaming of bigger & better things. Angry at how he's stuck in "Hell." Releases anger through games, music, writing and role playing. Straight edge. Shoots up the school.

Diz - 15, Sophomore. Goth/trench coat chick. Hangs w/ Garrett and Bryan. Still forming her own identity - has the same interests/passions as they do because they're into it. Sets Garrett up because she's jealous of him and Nicole.

Bryan - Bridge between two worlds. Friends with both Garrett and Jesse. 17. Part gamer, part jock. The "Balance"/mellow social butterfly. Cool, unassuming. Gets along with everyone.

Nicole - 16 - seems like stereotypical cheerleader at first, but has an attraction to Garrett. Sincere, sweet & innocent. Betrayed at end by Diz.

Jesse - Alpha Male jock. Cocky facade but angry and frustrated. Under immense pressure to live up to family's expectations. Takes his anger out on others.

Scene/Monologue ideas

• Opening/Closing - Newscaster reporting Garrett shooting up the school & killing various students. "Never saw it coming" "tragic" "misunderstood" Portrays Garrett as villain. Antagonist (Jesse) as hero w/ potential, Marine Corps Candidate that heroically died defending the school.
• Dialogue between G's parents about how they're worried about him after the police incident. G's spending too much time at the arcade. Good for kids, healthy. Cut to Diz/G. D: "What are you doing?" G: "Practicing"
• G & B @ a LARP - saving the world. Afterwards, back to reality
• Clip - Doom in God Mode played to RATM.
• Nicole approaches Garrett. Teaches her how to play Magic.
• Jesse - angry monologue while wrestling
• Antagonist complaining to Bryan why he hangs w/ G.
• Marine Corps recruiter pitching the Corp.
• Wrestling coach teaching dominance, aggression
• Cops arresting G, B, D, N
• Tail end of a game - packing. Hate going back to "Hell." Garrett - not very into it. Diz - Crush on Garrett. Bryan - not so into it.
• Jesse - picks on Garrett b/c Garrett
• Nicole meets Garrett
• Threesome - Diz gets jealous
• Diz sells out Garrett
• Nicole & Diz chat
• Jesse observes game
• Nicole vs. Jesse - Demon Worship!
• Jesse - getting dangerous
• Bryan warns Garrett, Garrett sticks to his guns, turns on Bryan. Diz sees this, plays.
• Garrett & Nicole
• Where is Angry Bryan? Left out?
• Bryan confronts Diz - tries to pin it on Nicole. Bryan figures it out.
• KEEP DEMON WORSHIP \m/
• Jesse humiliates Garrett
• Diz Confesses
• Jaw Healed
• Confrontation - Brian Dies
• Final Tableaux

Outline SCENES KWG

1. TV Announcement
2. Diz, Garrett, Bryan leave event
3. Jesse in Practice
4. Garrett vs. Jesse in the hall
5. Garrett meets Nicole
6. Garrett, Bryan & Diz - Diz Jealous
7. Garrett & Nicole on Date
8. Garrett, Bryan & Diz - Nicole @ Haven
9. Diz & Jesse
10. Cast @ Haven - Garrett & Diz / Diz & Nicole / Bryan & Jesse
11. Bryan & Diz
12. Cast @ Haven - Jesse breaks Garrett's Jaw
13. Bryan & Nicole @ Hospital / Garrett & Diz
14. Garrett tortured verbally @ school
15. Wires off
16. Diz reveals she lied to
17. Decision - Garrett practices
18. Shooting
19. TV Announcement

Interesting, isn't it? That's it for the notebook, but here are a few more fun things that this helped me remember:

• For a while, Jesse was meant to be super-Christian and referred to all gaming as "demon worship." That stuck around the script for a while, but ultimately it was taken out completely (save for one reference by Bryan about Jesse) right before the World Premiere.
• At one point, I'd decided that Garrett and Diz should have sex. In the script, it happened after Nicole dumped him and after the wires came off his broken jaw. It was the result of Diz's plan to get Garrett succeeding. However, in the next scene, her guilt was so strong, she revealed her manipulations, which ultimately drove Garrett over the edge and to the shooting. I scrapped this after the staged reading, thinking it was far too soap opera-y.
• Garrett was the shooter in my mind for a long time. I chickened out before the first reading and made Diz the shooter because I was afraid too many people would see "me" in Garrett and I honestly didn't want to change people's perception of me.
• For the most part, Diz being the shooter was well received by the audience, but I did get called out on my chickening out by one of the people at the reading who was perceptive enough to see what I'd done.
• After the reading, I put the script down and didn't touch it for almost a year because I was torn about who to make the shooter at the end. When I started up again, I had two versions of the last scene, one with Garrett as the shooter and one with Diz. It stayed like this until about two weeks before pre-production began on the world premiere when I was finally forced to choose.
• Another working title for the show was "Don't Care." The writing group didn't like it, and Friends Like These popped out of my mouth on the spot when they said I should try something else. It stuck.
• Yes, the title is based on the saying.
• The original vision for the show was much less of a traditional narrative, and more a collection of short monologues and scenes featuring a wide cast of characters. I'm glad the story evolved the way it did, because otherwise it would have been VERY similar to another fantastic play about a school shooting and I would have hated to be the cheap generic knockoff.
• After the first reading, the head of my writers group suggested that I write a scene in the hospital where Jesse comes and apologizes to Garrett for attacking him. This was when Jesse was still a very (hypocritically) religious character. I thought long and hard about it, but decided against adding the scene because I didn't think Jesse would feel a shred of guilt over what he saw as defending himself.
• That being said, the line "He hit me first" which Jesse shouts after knocking Garrett unconscious, was added by Jay Rincon during the FringeNYC run of the show. I liked it so much, I kept it.
• At one point, I did want to have an abstract, movement/dance scene in the middle of the show. It was going to illustrate Garrett's torment from being unable to talk, scream or otherwise express himself after his jaw got broken. That idea got shot down pretty quickly.
• Projections were going to play a huge role in my original vision for the show as well. At one point, I wanted footage of violent video games (Doom, Quake, Mortal Kombat, etc.) on the screen between scenes. Can you imagine the copyright issues with that?
• I got lots of questions after the reading and before the World Premiere about Nicole 's "true motivations." Was she sincerely interested in Garrett or just stringing him along? I wrote in two additional scenes at one point at the request of Phil Kelly where Nicole was on her cell phone talking to a friend. The first scene she did reveal it was all a joke and she didn't really care about Garrett. This would have taken place after she agreed to go out with him, but before the actual date. The next scene was right before the original act break and featured her on the phone with the same friend. Here, she stuck up for Garrett and made it clear that she wanted to be with him. Using this outline, Act II would have started with the scene at Haven where Jesse attacked Garrett and broke his jaw.
• Garrett's back story (his previous attempt at a shooting) came to me like a bolt out of the blue one afternoon. I remember having the thought while folding laundry, then running up to Jenn and telling her all about it. She had no idea what I was talking about.
• That night, I wrote Garrett's final monologue in one fevered burst. To paraphrase Walter Wellesley "Red" Smith, I decided I was going to sit down in front of my keyboard and open a vein. So I did. There was almost no editing needed after the when I was done writing it.
• Fun fact: I started work on the script again after putting it down for months and months because I was bored while working on the set of Role Models as an extra.

So there you go! I hope you've enjoyed this little trip down memory lane as much as I have. If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below. I'd love to see what you guys think.