BRIAN ALAN LANE on THE CATERER

When I was 20 years old, my mother, brother, and best friend were killed in an auto accident from which I limped away. A year later I wrote my MFA thesis script about a man who sold "appropriate death". Called The Caterer, this was a dark comedy, an eccentric romance, a ride of mystery and suspense and even a little science mythology. The pre-eminent film critic/historian/writer/director Francois Truffaut happened onto it, championed it, and got it optioned for me. Wow. That was the first dollar I earned in the entertainment industry.

But, the film did not get made. After the option lapsed, over the years, various studios and producers would call me in to discuss the piece, even though I did not have an approach that the concept deserved. For all the courage it took to write about death, I was only able to go so far before pulling my punch. The character of that Caterer never quite really truly lived up to his pledge.

Then, last Summer, after surgery for kidney cancer (a fresh reminder that we are born to die), I came up with a wholly new approach to the story. The advent of Alzheimer's and AIDS and Ebola Zaire had made the notion accessible, if not the tippytop of everyone's depth chart. Now I had wisdom sufficient to justify courage, and courage sufficient to justify theme. I finally had something to say rather than just a story to tell.

I'd intended to write in prose -- a novel or novella or a short story that would lead to a novel or novella -- and was noodling with pages and voice, when the brilliant LeVar Burton agreed to star in it if I wrote it as an original premiere play.

With that kind of faith and the clock tocks booming, there is just one path, and no room for failure.

Whether you love The Caterer or hate it, whether you think it too true or too ridiculous, there is something chilling each of you will find: whatever this story is, it is all about you and no one else.

Brian Alan Lane

Los Angeles 2009