Read The Last Bachelor by Pablo Fenjves  (The Complete Screenplay .pdf)

The Last Bachelor is a film about commitment, or, more specifically, the fear of commitment. When I wrote it, back in the late 1980s, people in the industry thought of me as a thriller writer (if they thought of me at all). I had sold several small noir-ish scripts to television, and all of them got lost in the bottomless black hole of development. Finally, in 1988, I sat down and wrote a spec feature—another dark thriller—and sold it to Paramount. About a year down the road, when it became apparent that film wasn’t about to be rushed into production either, I decided to try my luck with comedy. I was single back then, and not in any great hurry to change that, but I was curious about marriage, and I began to wonder what it would be like to look at someone and simply know: This is the one. This is the person with whom I hope to spend the rest of my life. The temptation was to write about a character who thought about those things, but that idea sounded dull and self-serving, so I did the opposite: I created a character whose entire life was designed to avoid thinking about them. The result was The Last Bachelor, which found a home at Outlaw Productions, then based at Warner Bros.

In the original draft, the protagonist, Eddie Harper, was actually the owner of a Manhattan bookstore, but over the course of my conversations with the creative team at Outlaw—and there were many conversations—he was transformed into a baseball player at the tail-end of his career. The metamorphosis was actually much less complicated than it might seem. In the original, Eddie, the bookstore owner, was a master of self-delusion, and he enjoyed telling himself and others that he was working on a novel (he wasn’t). In the new draft, Eddie was equally self-delusional: he was convinced that he had plenty of good years left in the majors (sort of like a Hollywood writer). In short, Eddie Harper was still Eddie Harper, if somewhat more buff, and the movie was still the same movie, but it became a better movie.

Eventually, the script found its way into the hands of Tom Cruise. He read it (or so I was told), liked it, and expressed an interest in seeing the next pass. At that point, the studio hired another writer, which happens, believe it or not, and many months later the producers were kind enough to share the revised draft with me. I won’t say I wept when I read it, but I came close, and I don’t know whether Mr. Cruise wept when he read it, or even if he actually read it, but I do know that he passed.

Over the course of the next decade, my own, improved, fading-ballplayer version of The Last Bachelor floated around town, and every two or three months I’d get a call from an interested party: Who owns it? Why hasn’t it been made? How much money is it going to take to get it in turnaround? I had the answers, or some of them, anyway: Warners owns it; I don’t know why it hasn’t been made; it’s going to take serious money.

I’m still very fond of The Last Bachelor, and still optimistic about its chances of getting made. After all, it’s a romantic comedy. I’d like to think both comedy and romance will be around 10 years from now, maybe not for me—but for the rest of you.
 
The Setup
Eddie Harper’s got it all: A 34-year-old bachelor, he’s “head-turningly handsome,” an all-star baseball player with the New York Mets, and a serial seducer enjoying sex in the city. Perhaps that’s why sports photographer Jessica Harding managed to remain his best friend for 13 years—their relationship is simply too close for sex. Jess is “charmingly unaware” of her own special beauty and ignores Harper’s “killer smile.” Instead, they love to bicker like brother and sister. Besides, Jess is finally engaged, and to a successful restaurant owner in California no less, and scheduled to drive cross-country with her fiancé to live in a mansion in Bel Air. Eddie approves, explaining that “Frank’s the first responsible adult male you have ever dated.” However, as Jess is saying goodbye, Eddie twists his knee. Before leaving for a new life of romance and luxury, she delivers her best friend to a hospital . . . where Eddie Harper is about to lose it all.