There was an owl hooting outside my bathroom window this morning. The owl was so loud! Usually I hear crows cawing and it makes me happy because crows are my favorite birds, but this morning it was a noisy owl.

I looked up "owl" in my animal totem book, and the book said owls are messengers. When I was brushing my teeth, I came up a great idea to open my screenplay. The second draft opening of my screenplay has my baseball player dude guy getting into a tax in front of Pac Bell Park, and we see the taxi taking him from the high rise luxury of downtown San Francisco and the South of Market to the lower to middle class neighbourhood of the Outer Sunset. I wanted to show the difference between my baseball player dude's professional world and his family's world. Plus, I thought it would be so cool to have the opening credits rolling over scenic shots of San Francisco.

Originally, I had a voiceover as my opening scene. I love voiceovers in movies. So what if it's overdone and overplayed, it's a tried and true Hollywood storytelling device. American Beauty had a Kevin Spacey doing a voice over, and The Quiet American has Michael Caine doing a nice voiceover. A voiceover sets the mood and tone for the movie, gives you background information, and tells you right off what the main character is thinking.

My screenwriting teacher suggested that I take it out, saying that voiceovers were so overdone. Well, they're overdone because they work. Reluctantly I agreed, but only because I didn't want to fight with her on my opening scene.

I love how the movie "About Schmidt" opened. We see Jack Nicholson's character sitting in his empty highrise office, with all his stuff boxed up, and just waiting for the clock to get to 5 pm. It's a great metaphor for Nicholson's character thinking that life will begin again for him after retirement. The movie then goes on expose the lie of Nicholson's view.

This is my new idea for the opening for my movie. I’ll have the baseball player dude talk to the cab driver. Like maybe the cab driver recognizes him and says he was a famous local player. And then at the end of the conversation, the cab driver says something like the more things change, the more things stay the same” or something like the “the sunset never changes – it’s stuck in a time warp”.

The conversation with the cab driver will give the audience background on the player, and the last line once I figure it out, will set the tone for the movie. I think I like the cab driver guy saying "them frenchies think the more things change, the more they stay the same. Maybe they've got a point. The Sunset hasn't changed since you left it".

The rest of my movie will then explore whether the cab driver was right. Does your relationship with your parents change after you've left home and made a name for yourself? Or do you get stuck in a time warp once you enter your parents' house, and you replay over and over again the same fights you had with them as a child, only now you're an adult. And, if you take the question out wider can you escape your past, your roots, your socializations, can you forge a new life and identity for yourself once you leave home, or are you bound to end up like your parents no matter how hard you try. I mean, ending up like your parents is fine if they're great parents, but what if you had totally dysfunctional parents? Are you doomed to be as dysfunctional as your parents?

How Nathaniel Hawthorne huh? How biblical! The theme of the sins of the parents being passed down to the children from generation to generation. And will there be a "christ figure" in my screenplay, who will stop the cycle of sin and destruction, and lead the baseball player dude to redemption and a new life?

How Easter and Lenten of me. Well it is Fat Tuesday and Mardi Gras, the last call" before the expected reflection and abstinence of the Christian Lenten season.