SOMETHING WICKEDLY FUNNY THIS WAY COMES
Sardonic screenwriter-director Allison LiCalsi, who left the toil and trouble of academia to follow her star in the movie business, is ready to debut her first feature film - "Macbeth: The Comedy"

By Shannon Mullen, staff writer
ASBURY PARK PRESS
Sunday, September 2, 2001

Editor's note: In Allison LiCalsi's satirical send-up of Shakespeare's Scottish play, the Macbeths are lesbian lovers, the three witches are flamboyantly gay men and the noblemen are a bunch of wise-cracking misfits. "Macbeth: The Comedy,'' which will get a prime-time screening Sept. 10 at the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival in New York City, is the first full-length feature by the 34-year-old former Middletown resident, who now resides in Somerset with her husband, Patrick Murray. LiCalsi's truly twisted tale "takes us back to a time when men were not necessarily men and ruthless tyrants could also be strict vegetarians,'' according to the film's synopsis. LiCalsi's own story is one of gradual self-discovery and a sudden change of course. Unhappily on track to become a college art history professor, she quit academia at her husband's urging seven years ago to pursue her real dream as a screenwriter and filmmaker.

ACT 1
SCENE 1: Library of Bayshore Junior High School, Middletown, 1980.
YOUNG GIRL carries a stack of English biographies to the circulation desk. Enter Allison LiCalsi, the NARRATOR.
NARRATOR: I try to block out junior high, actually, but growing up, I was into all things British. I listened to the Beatles exclusively and I loved reading biographies of people like Queen Victoria, Queen Elizabeth I, Florence Nightengale. At the time the only female role models I could find tended to be British. In the summer of '81, I watched Charles and Diana's wedding on TV. It was the earliest I had ever gotten up in my entire life.

SCENE 2: Student Center, Rutgers University, 1987.
ALLISON and FRIEND emerge from showing of the Woody Allen film, "Manhattan.''
FRIEND: So, your first Woody Allen movie. What'd you think?
ALLISON: It blew me away. It was so real. While I was watching it I was thinking, "This is how movies ought to be.''

SCENE 3: Off-campus apartment, New Brunswick, around the same time.
ALLISON remonstrates with her ROOMMATE, who has just returned from seeing another Arnold Schwartzenegger movie.
ALLISON: How could you spend money to see something like that?
ROOMMATE: Well, you couldn't do any better. Do you know how hard it is to write a script like that?
ALLISON: You give me two hours and a bottle of vodka and I could give you a better script.
ALLISON faces the audience as the NARRATOR again.
NARRATOR: The funny thing is, I really don't drink. My point wasn't necessarily that the alcohol would enhance the writing, but that even dead-drunk I could have done better.

SCENE 4: New Brunswick area movie theater, 1989.
ALLISON and future husband PATRICK emerge from showing of Woody Allen's "Crimes & Misdemeanors.'' Neither knows it yet, but this is their first date.
PATRICK: Was that Mussolini scene great?
ALLISON: Oh my God. What about that line, "What is comedy? Comedy is tragedy plus time"? How funny was that?

SCENE 5: Apartment in Somerset, spring 1994.
ALLISON, looking weary and agitated, vents her frustrations with her Ph.D. dissertation on English art critic Roger Fry and with her ongoing panic attacks. PATRICK interrupts her.
PATRICK: I think what's really wrong is that you're not doing what you really want to do in life. If you could do anything you wanted, anything in the world, what would you do?
ALLISON: OK, you know what I would do? I would write and direct films like Woody Allen.
PATRICK: Then do it.
ALLISON faces audience as NARRATOR.
NARRATOR: When he said that I thought, "This is silly,'' because it seemed like an impossible thing. I was 27 at that point and I thought it was too late to change my mind about what I was going to do. I thought I was stuck with just a couple of options. I think very few people ever ask themselves that question: If they could do anything, what would you do? I don't think the average person working in an office would choose
to be there over any other place in the world. It reminds me of a scene from ""East Enders,'' the BBC TV series, where these two women are doing wash at a Laundromat, talking about how their lives have turned out, and one of them says, "I think to myself, Am I really sitting here watching laundry spin around?''

SCENE 6: King's College archives, Cambridge University, England, summer 1994.
The ARCHIVIST hands ALLISON a pile of papers.
ALLISON: You know, I really don't want to do this. I'm thinking of becoming a screenwriter instead.
ARCHIVIST: Really? Do you have a script in mind?
ALLISON: I have an idea.
ARCHIVIST: Oh, make films. Don't do this. I'd love to read your script when it's finished.

SCENE 7: Allison's and Patrick's Somerset apartment, present day.
ALLISON and PATRICK are being interviewed by a REPORTER.
REPORTER: You said an agent in London really liked your first script, then he dropped you flat when the BBC said it wasn't interested. How do you deal with that kind of rejection?
ALLISON: Originally, I would go berserk when I got rejected. Now I don't really care. Actually, yoga has helped me a lot. I've been doing it for a few years now and it's made a big difference. I started to slowly notice, little by little, that I was dealing with things better than I used to.
PATRICK: She used to bristle when someone would make comments about one of her scripts.
ALLISON: Like I wanted to kill the person. Now, after doing yoga, it's like, OK, if it
happens, it happens. I don't get caught up in the what-ifs like I used to. In yoga you learn
that it's actually the process that's important.

SCENE 8: Rutgers Gardens, New Brunswick, January 2001.
Two feet of new fallen snow cover the grounds. It is bitterly cold and windy as a small film crew and a group of actors trudges through the woods. It is the first of a frenetic 11 days of filming for "Macbeth:
The Comedy.'' At the end of the shoot, the cinematographer nearly passes out from exposure. ALLISON, the director, loses sensation in her toes. She addresses the audience as the NARRATOR.
NARRATOR: That was a horrible day. We were doing the Birnam Wood scene. Our generator broke. I thought I was going to have to get my toes amputated. We were all thinking about the "Macbeth" curse. You know, how you're not supposed to say the name when you're in a theater, or bad things will happen. Historically, I guess, bad things have happened during productions of "Macbeth, " like people getting hit and killed by sandbags and that sort of thing. You're suppose to call it the "Scottish play'' when you're in the theater. We would refer to it sometimes as the "Scottish film.''
Enter TED DeCHATELET, who plays Macduff in the film.
TED: When we broke for lunch that first day, people were like "Uh-oh, is this really going to work?'' But once we got going, it was fantastic. It's rare when you feel really good about a project and can get behind
it and feel excited about it. This was definitely a cut above the other independent films and student films I've done. Allison was great. She's very anti-Hollywood. She'd rather not see the film get made than to compromise and have it made poorly.

SCENE 9: Allison's apartment, present day.
ALLISON at the kitchen table, being interviewed by a REPORTER.
REPORTER: How big a deal is this film festival?
ALLISON: Well, it's not Sundance, but it is New York, so it's still possible to get people in the business there. If we sell out the 280 seats in advance, we get a second screening, so we're trying really hard to do that.
REPORTER: The best thing that could happen, I guess, is that the right person sees the film and wants to distribute it and you become a star. What's the worst that could happen?
ALLISON: The worst that could happen is that nothing happens. Actually, there is no worst thing that could happen, because when I'm 87 years old I'll still be able to watch this film and laugh. The way I see it, no matter what, there will at least be one day where people can buy popcorn and see my movie on a big screen.

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