Dr. Jack Spelling
The screenwriter who wrote other people’s endings—until he came home to rewrite his own.
“What if the life you’ve spent years authoring… isn’t the one you were born to live?”
I’d been living vicariously through the characters in my head, some darker than the ones I’d dare put on the page. Meanwhile, I was spinning stories about the characters I loved in my own life, until they exited the scene completely.
It was the same story from my time as a clinician: I could give advice but never take it. That pattern repeated when I became a screenwriter: I could craft a hero’s journey for my protagonists, but never live one myself. I was a spectator in my own life, watching the same tired scene play out as I numbed myself with booze, Xanax, and whichever antidepressant (SSRI) that I’d been prescribed that month.
I’d had writer’s block for months, with studio deadlines looming, but my mind was fixated on unresolved questions from my past life as a clinician: health and happiness go beyond a session on a therapist’s couch or any increase in your prescribed or unprescribed drug or distraction of choice. But what if I could combine my experience editing characters—both in therapy sessions and on the page—to create a new form of entertainment?
I was in my bungalow in Beverly Hills, wasting away late at night on my couch, ignoring a deadline for a script, instead brainstorming what that new form of entertainment might look like.
And then as if on cue, my phone rang. My tortoise shell glasses, the ones that made me look smarter than I felt, fell to the floor. It was a call for help from my childhood friend from St. Louis, **Riverfront Tim.** He was excited. He had a plan. I never knew whether he was brilliant, or batshit crazy, but it was probably more than a bit of both.
“Save the soul of St Louis? How?” I humored him.
He replied, “We must show the way for St Louis, to…
Belong St Louis, Be Strong St Louis, Reach Far (again) St Louis
Together, United, country, county, and city,
We. Must. Dream. Again.
St Louis was once a light on a western front, a gateway to The West, an arch that bridged across the Mississippi river of rage that once divided our land, and seeks to divide it again.
Be not the gateway, St Louis. Be The Arch. Be the bridge…
…between a future ruled by technology, and a past ruled by people.
Leaders build bridges. Bridges are strong enough to be walked on.
He opened a book on his shelf, mentioned it was a book from a high school friend of ours from John Burroughs, flipped to the last chapter—Talk SHIFT #22, and began to read the closing lines of the book muttering something about how “writers save the best word for the very, very End…”
It’s not just broken relationships that need bridges. Cities, counties, and countries need them too, St Louis, in a world of Walls, we need Windows, and Bridges. Be The Bridge, St Louis. Again.”
As Riverfront Tim finished his monologue I’d already opened the Southwest app to find the nearest nonstop flight from LAX.
He was calling with an opportunity to turn my thoughts into action, questions into answers. I decided to embark on a hero’s journey, albeit wearily at first, and investigate an artistic and financial revolution underway in the pages of a manuscript floating around my hometown. Riverfront Tim called it, ‘The Plot to Save the Soul of Business—(with music).’
My time as a screenwriter was helpful in assisting the families of St. Louis in rewriting the stories theyʼd been telling themselves, and their families, for years: The stories that no longer served them. Because life is a social play. And we play many parts for many people. Itʼs important to understand our roles. Donʼt you think?
I soon found my role as lead of the writer’s room for of a film studio in St. Louis that was working alongside the world’s first social TV and radio super-studio. We were all after more genuine moments, less fictional ones. I wanted real connection and not just want to live with the characters in my head.
It turns out, I wasn’t alone.