I Gotta Be Me: The Musical!

An early draft was optioned by Michael Miner, co-writer of the original ROBOCOP, who likened the bizarre retro-futuristic elements of the punk rock comedy to BRAZIL meets WAYNE'S WORLD. Ironically, Rich Figel wrote it as a rebuke to all the screenwriting books that said you need to have likeable protagonists who must do such and such to achieve their goals (or not). So he created characters who were opposite of everything the screenwriting gurus suggested. As it happened, in the rewrite process some of the original crudeness and rebellious screeds got smoothed out to make it more palatable to agents and producers that Miner wanted to show the script to. Alas, no one got it and the script faded into obscurity. But Rich continued to write new, original material that won or placed in many screenwriting contests and got him a semi-famous manager named Cathryn Jaymes. She was best known for discovering Quentin Tarantino and repping him the first 10 years of his career. Sadly, she passed away from cancer and Rich was back to square one. During that time, he saw the success of HAMILTON as a musical in which words were rapped or sung to convey the story and realized there were similarities between hip-hop and punk rock. Since the original I GOTTA BE ME was about the commercialization of rock music and re-make mentality of Hollywood, why not redo the dialogue as lyrics, Les Miz style? Here is the revised, revamped version. It's a battle cry against the mindset of current agents, managers and producers in the movie and TV biz who would rather greenlight stale remakes and rebrand old stuff as New, Improved Products for consumption... but it's really the same old shit in fancy new packaging. Hate it, love it, share it -- I don't care anymore. As a writer, I have learned that I just gotta be me!