First Script: The Alchemist

I had promised that I would discuss in detail ideas about scripts for films and TV. So having discussed theoretical details about the vision and B-plan, here's the first section of the first script - Alchemist (by Paulo Coehlo).

I look forward to your comments . I have decided to include a lot of quotations verbatim because it in these insightful pearls that the strength of the story lies. As a barebone story it might not sound so impressive.

The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo

This story is about a shepherd boy who listens to his heart, learns to read the omens strewn along life’s path and always follows his dreams without fear. What makes the story stand out is the pithy nuggets of insightful dialogues which have been masterfully planted by Coehlo along the path of Santiago’s journey. The magical journey is captivating and has the potential to be picturized through cinematography which would also require some fascinating special effects in order to bring out the full potential of the author’s imagination.

The story begins with Santiago waking up his sheep and desiring to go back (after an year) and meet the merchant’s daughter with whom he was infatuated. While thinking about the sheep, he thinks about how they trusted him and had forgotten to follow their own instincts just because he provided them nourishment (as is perhaps the case with most of mankind too).

Thinking of his past, he recalls that he had attended a seminary until he was sixteen and having studied Latin, Spanish and Theology his parents had wanted him to become a priest, and a pride to his family, but he wasn’t interested in knowing God or man’s sins. And he let his family know that his dream was to travel.

His father tries to dissuade him saying that people from all over the world to passed through their village, and although they come in search of new things, they leave as the same people as they were upon their arrival. They climb the mountain to see the castle and wonder whether the past was better than the present. They are blonde or dark skinned but they are basically the same people as anywhere in the world. They even wish to stay in their beautiful land forever.

But Santiago isn’t convinced and says that he wants to see those people’s lands and how they lived. His father tells him, that except for the rich, it is only the shepherds who travel the world, and Santiago says, “Well, then I’ll be a shepherd!”

His father finally agrees to let go of him and says that one day he would realize that their countryside is the best and their women, the most beautiful. Even though he says this, Santiago can read in his father’s eyes a desire to be able, himself, to travel the world. A desire that was still alive despite his father having had to bury it, over dozens of years, under the burden of struggling for water to drink, food to eat, and the same place to sleep every night of his life.

The boy was happy to able to live out his dream everyday. Whenever he could, he sought out a new road to travel, and exchanged the book he carried for a new one. The world was huge and inexhaustible and he had only his sheep to set the route for a while, and he would discover other interesting things. The problem was that the sheep didn’t realize that they were walking a new road everyday. They did not see that the fields are new and the seasons change. All they thought about was food and water. Maybe we’re all the same way, the boy often mused.

As he was getting excited about meeting the merchant’s daughter, he realized that it was the possibility of a dream come true that makes life interesting.

One day he comes across a Gypsy woman and tells her about his recurrent dream. The woman tells him, “You came so that you could learn about your dreams. And dreams are the language of God. When he speaks in our language, I can interpret what he said. But if he speaks in the language of the soul, it is only you who can understand.”

The boy tells her about the dream of a child who takes him to the Egyptian pyramids and says that he were able to go there, he would find hidden treasure. The old lady makes him promise that he would give her one-tenth of the treasure and that his dream was difficult as he would need to go the Pyramids to seek the treasure.

At first, the boy is taken aback but then the old lady says to him, “I told you that your dream was a difficult one. It’s the simple things in life that are most extraordinary; only wise men are able to understand them. And since I am not wise, I have had to learn other arts, such as the reading of palms.”

The boy asks her, “Well, how am I going to get to Egypt?”

She replies, “I only interpret dreams. I don’t know how to turn them into reality. That’s why I have to live off what my daughters provide me with.”

The boy was disappointed at no reassurance and he starts roaming around in the city. He knew a lot of people in the city and that’s what made travelling appealing to him. He always made new friends, and he didn’t need to spend all of his time with them. He thought that when someone sees the same persons everyday, they wind up becoming a part of his life. And then they want the person to change. If someone isn’t what others want him to be, they get angry. Everyone seems to have a clear idea about how others should lead their lives, but none about his own.

He started reading a book and an old man comes up and tries to strike a conversation with him. The boy taking him to be an illiterate old man with nothing to do and nothing interesting to talk about, tries to avoid conversation with him. However, he is surprised when after having glimpsed the title of the book, he says, “It’s a book that says the same thing that all the other books in the world say. It describes people’s inability to choose their own destinies. And it ends up saying that everyone believes the world’s greatest lie.”

Stunned by the man’s wisdom, the boy asks, “What is the world’s greatest lie?”

The old man answers, “It’s this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That’s the world’s greatest lie.”

The boy realizing that he hadn’t let that happen to him gets into a conversation with this mystical guy and come to know that he was the King of Salem. Again the boy is thrown into doubt about the old man. Then the old man starts telling Santiago about his dream and how he could help him. He writes the name of his family members and incidents from his life (which no one knew) on the sand and the boy is finally left in awe of him.

The boy asks why a king would talk to a shepherd. The old man says that it’s because he had succeeded in discovering his destiny. The boy asks, what “destiny” is and the king replies that, “It is what you have always wanted to accomplish. Everyone, when they are young, knows what their destiny is.”

“At that point in their lives, everything is clear and everything is possible. They are not afraid to dream, and to yearn for everything they would like to see happen to them in their lives. But, as time passes, a mysterious force begins to convince them that it will be impossible for them to realize their destiny.”

The boy asks about this mysterious force (in order to impress the merchant’s daughter with this knowledge).

The old man tells him, “It’s a force that appears to be negative, but actually shows you how to achieve your destiny. It prepares your spirit and your will, because there is one great truth on this planet: whoever you are, or whatever it is that you do, when you really want something, it’s because the desire originated in the soul of the universe. It’s your mission on earth.”

“Even when all you want to do is travel? Or marry the daughter of a textile merchant?”

“Yes, or even search for treasure. The Soul of the World is nourished by people’s happiness. To realize one’s destiny is a person’s only real obligation. All things are one.”

“And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”

The old man tells him about a baker who also wanted to travel but first decided to buy a bakery and put aside some money. Probably as an old man he will spend a month in Africa, never realizing that people are capable, at any time in their lives, of doing what they dream of. He too had thought about becoming a shepherd but bakers are more important people than shepherds. Bakers have homes, while shepherds sleep out in the open. Parents would rather see their children marry bakers than shepherds.

At this the boy gets scared that the merchant might marry his daughter to someone prosperous, perhaps a baker!

The old man continues, “In the long run, what people think about shepherds and bakers becomes more important for them than their own destinies.”

The boy asks why the old man is telling him all this, and the man replies, “Because you are trying to realize your destiny and you are at that point where you’re about to give it all up.”

“And that’s when you appear on the scene?”, the boy asks.

“Not always, but I always appear in one form or another. Sometimes I appear in the form of a solution or a good idea. At other times, at a crucial moment, I make it easier for things to happen. But most of the times people don’t realize I have done them.”

The old man tells him about a miner who had abandoned everything to go mining for emeralds. For five years, he had unsuccessfully examined thousands of stones looking for an emerald. The miner was about to give it all up, right at the point when, if he were to examine just one more stone – just one more – he would have found his emerald. Since the man had sacrificed everything to his destiny, the old man decided to become involved. He transformed himself into a stone and rolled up to the miner’s foot. The miner, with all the anger and frustration of his five fruitless years, picked up the stone and threw it aside. But it had been thrown with such a force that it broke open and embedded in it was the most beautiful emerald in the world.”