Genre: Article/True Story
Premise: After having a stroke, a prominent Los Angeles doctor begins rapping, eventually taking his talents to the heart of the Los Angeles street rap scene.
About: This Atlantic article was discovered and picked up by producer Michael Sugar (Spotlight). Sugar will produce the film for Netflix. John Hamburg (I Love You, Man and Why Him), will adapt and direct the film. Jeff Maysh, who likes to write articles that have the potential to become movies, wrote the article. Here’s another of his articles about a unique catfishing story. And another about a wedding used as a drug dealer sting. Neither have been optioned yet. Maybe someone here will change that.
Writer: Jeff Maysh
Details: Article appeared in The Atlantic on January 16th.
We’re doing something different today. As I’ve talked about freely over the last year, spec sales are down, which means you have to be more strategic in the way you approach breaking in. If you’re not writing a contained horror, contained thriller, or guy/girl with a gun spec, you need to be open to new avenues besides the straight spec script.
One of those avenues is to write articles or short stories and post them on the internet, or look for popular articles and stories and try to get the rights to them. This brings up a larger question about what makes a good movie idea. When you read a short story, news article, or Twitter rant, how do you know if it has the weight to be adapted into a feature film? I have the answer for you. But before I go there, let me break down this article.
Dr. Sherman Hershfield was a neurologist in the 1980s and 90s. Then, during the 90s, he started having blackouts. Later, those blackouts would turn into a stroke. And when Hershfield came out of the stroke, something was different. Without trying, everything he said came out in rhyme. Unable to practice medicine anymore, Hershfeld began obsessing over poetry, and, eventually, rap.
One day, when someone heard him rapping on a bus, they told him he should check out Leinhart Park. They had an open mic for rappers there. Anybody could get up and spit rhymes. The only catch was that Hershfield was a 50-something Jewish man. And Leinhart Park was the area where Rodney King got beaten up. To say the area was skeptical of rich white men would be an understatement.
Hershfield went anyway. But when he got onstage, he was far from an immediate sensation. He was more a poet than a rapper. The only reason he didn’t get kicked off that first night was because the crowd felt sorry for him. But Hershfield wasn’t fazed. He began studying the history of rap and practiced every day. Even as his Beverly Hills family became embarrassed of him, he didn’t stop.
One day after performing, Hershfield met rap legend and now mentor KRS-One. KRS-One saw a passion, but more importantly, a unique point of view, in Hershfield. He was bringing a different kind of battle to his music. KRS-One schooled Hershfield on the technicalities of rap, and now when Hershfield went to Leinhart, crowds were looking forward to his performances. He would eventually adopt the moniker, “Dr. Rapp.” Unfortunately, Hershfield’s health began to deteriorate, and after a series of seizures, he would pass away. Still, everyone who knew Hershfield admitted that he was never happier than in those final years where he found and honed his passion of rapping.
So what are you looking for when you option an article?
Two things.
A great story.
Or a fascinating character.
Every once in a blue moon, you’ll find the HG (the Holy Grail). That’s when you find a great story AND a great character. But one is good enough.
Dr. Rapp has the great character. I mean look at all the things that are going on with Hershfield.
You have irony. A rich white doctor who goes to the poorest areas of the city to rap.
You have a fall from grace. A man whose career was derailed by a stroke.
You have a fish out of water story. A white man inside a world he’s totally unfamiliar with (or as someone else put it: “It was like Larry David had wandered into a Snoop Dogg music video.”).
You have an underdog. An older white man trying to make it in a profession dominated by young African American men.
And on top of all of that, you have a role an actor would die for. Why? Because it’s not a role actors of this ethnicity and age ever get to play. When you have a role that actors have never gotten to play before, they swarm to it.
With that said, I knew this had a good character based on the press report alone. An older white man rapping is a unique role. My question going in was, “Is there a story here?” It doesn’t have to be a great story. But there has to be a place to go with the narrative. What’s the destination?
I’m not convinced Dr. Rapp has that yet. But it has some pieces to work with. For starters, I like Leinhart Park itself. It feels like the area is its own character, an entire community of unique personalities. I also like this mentorship between KRS-One and Dr. Hershfeld. I’m immediately thinking of Kevin Hart and Bryan Cranston in The Upside. You’d do something like that.
Where the adaptation has me worried is the stakes. It doesn’t sound like Hershfield did anything outside of become a mini-celebrity within a sub-community. Is that enough? He didn’t make an album. He didn’t break out into the mainstream. What will the culmination of this journey be? That’s the problem with these people you’ve never heard about before. There’s usually a reason you haven’t heard of them.
I suppose you can take the feel-good life-lesson route. Hershfield is dying but he still wants to rap because it soothes the soul. But that still doesn’t tell me where the story’s going to end. What’s the big rap-related event going to be? That question becomes more important when you take into account who’s adapting the material. This is the writer who made one of the worst comedies of the last few years, Why Him. How is he going to nail a character-driven comedy-drama without a clear plot? Even Why Him had a clear end point (the end of the weekend, when the parents were leaving).
But there’s potential here. This might be a case where the right actor comes along, creates a classic character, and that’s all that matters. We’ll see!
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Audiences like watching cultures collide. Remember that the best stories contain conflict at their core. So it’s not surprising that someone would be interested in making a movie where a rich white man attempts to become part of the inner city culture. The conflict is ready to go before you’ve written a word.
Next Monday: Captain Marvel Review! I have a feeling it’s going to get bloody!
