Different Drummers in the Spokesman

Marching Down a Different Path

By Dan Webster - Staff writer - MAY 15, 2007

Don Caron and Lyle Hatcher were afraid they’d screwed up. More than three hours into the WorldFest Houston awards ceremony on April 29, their names still hadn’t been called.

They knew they’d won something. Only winners get invited to the ceremony, which in this case was the final event of Houston’s 40th annual film festival. And besides, the screenplay they’d collaborated on, "Different Drummers," had already won an award at the San Fernando Valley (Calif.) International Film Festival.

But the evening had featured a few mistakes. Some winners had been overlooked. Others had registered wrongly.

Yet when Caron and Hatcher questioned a woman at the registration table, they got a surprise.

"She smiled and said, ’I think you gentlemen should go back to your seats,’ " says Hatcher. "But she just kind of smiled and waved us on. I don’t think either one of us knew what all that meant."

They found out soon enough when "Different Drummers" had been named Best Screenplay, making it one of the festival’s 10 grand award winners (called Remis).

"The great thing about getting one of the top awards is that those are the people that the industry folks go after," says Caron. "So you get what you go there for, which is the networking and all the offers."

But if the folks at WorldFest had surprised them, Caron and Hatcher – both 52 – surprised those same industry folks right back. Instead of taking any of the offers — "huge offers," Caron says — that were thrown their way, the screenwriting partners decided not to part with what had taken them a year and a half to create. They want to take a crack at directing the movie themselves.

"To us, the script is only about 20 percent of the story," says Caron. "You can’t get it all on paper. And so the only place that the real story and the real characters exist is in our heads. ... I’m sure there are a lot of directors who would make a very cool movie, but we want this made a specific way."

Part of what makes the screenplay special is that it’s based on Hatcher’s life. The movie revolves around two fourth-grade boys from the North Side of Spokane who become friends despite their obvious differences: One has muscular dystrophy, the other has what is now known as ADHT (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder).

Hatcher’s real-life friend David Dalke, who died in 1967, is the basis for the character who, as Hatcher explains, "is a kid in a wheelchair, watching life from the picture window."

In contrast, Hatcher describes himself as "one of the first kids on the North Side diagnosed with hyperactivity, which is what they called it back then." The screenplay is set in 1965 and, Hatcher says, "is about the energy of one kid who has too much and another one who is daily, systematically losing his. ... (David) was, in his own way, trying to give me some guidance. And my way, obviously, was just, ’Let’s go, right now, rain, snow, shine.’ And it ultimately ends up where my behavior puts our friendship in jeopardy."

It was while fulfilling a family request that Hatcher, a Spokane stock broker, met Caron, a musician and composer and co-screenwriter of the 1999 film "The Basket." "This boy and this story have been in my mind and been haunting me for 30 years," Hatcher says. "I’ve told it many, many times from different angles, and my family had asked me to put it on a CD."

Hatcher took the recording project to North by Northwest Productions, the Spokane production company that had produced "The Basket." And it was Caron who worked with Hatcher and who first told him, "This story has to be told."

Once they worked out the details, they shook hands and set to work, blending Hatcher’s memories with Caron’s talent for screenwriting and the knowledge of Spokane that both share as native North-Siders.

Beginning in late 2006 they’d write, Hatcher says, "sometimes 12, 14, 15 hours a day, seven days a week." They met regularly with Dalke’s mother, Gloria, who still lives in the same house that Hatcher remembers from his childhood, to get the inside view of a boy, Hatcher says, "who never complained, never had a negative things to say about anybody and who had a belief system that was kind of overwhelming."

Once they had a draft, they entered it in on a whim in the screenplay competition at the San Fernando festival. And to their surprise, they won.

"I got the first e-mail from San Fernando saying that we had been selected as a finalist, and it was almost like getting one of those sweepstakes e-mails or something," Caron says. "So I kind of ignored it. Finally the festival director called me up and said, ’Well, are you guys coming down to receive your award?’ I just stuttered and said, ’Let me call you back.’ "

They were far better prepared for WorldFest, even if they experienced a few doubts as the evening wore on. One thing neither doubts is their combined ability to get the film made, as they envision it, in Spokane.

"We really think we can do it locally," Hatcher says. "There’s a lot of money in Spokane."

Not that there aren’t obstacles. They’re trying to complete the project for a mere $2.6 million. Anything over that, Caron explains, will require them to deal with industry trade unions, which could add millions to the overall budget.

So far, though, the quality of the script already has attracted the attention of at least one big-name cinematographer (whose identity they won’t divulge). Because the adult roles are smaller than those of the two fourth-grade protagonists, they also hope to snare one or more big-time actors who, like the cinematographer, would be willing to work for a couple of days on a non-union project.

"The thing we’re discovering from talking to people ... in the crew world is that this is a rare project that people want to be involved in," Caron says. "So I’m hoping that applies in the acting world as well."