Let’s Not Do Maybe Again

Let’s Not Do Maybe Again is an 85,000-word romantic comedy about Billy and Sangeeta Lake, a screenwriting duo who need a hit to save their careers and their marriage.

When Billy and Sangeeta write two rom-com bombs in a row, they know the magic’s gone from their work and their love lives. They’re thirty-six, no kids, living in Hermosa Beach, California, and they’re having a crisis.

In the summer of 2020, their agent Rajbir Williams offers them something new: a chance to write a pilot for a rom-com series to stream on BubbleCheeks. That’s gum. Chewing gum.

This is what their lives have come to.

Chapter 1: Sign In

We see a man and a woman.

We see Billy and Sangeeta.

We assume they’re in love.

Sangeeta says, “Are you ready?”

She wants to say: Are you sure you’re ready?

Her subtext: I love you, but you never listen to me.

Billy says, “I’m always ready.”

He wants to say: Of course, I’m ready.

His subtext: I love you, but you never believe in me.

Chapter 2: Who’s Watching?

Trivia: As a screenwriting duo, Billy and Sangeeta Lake are known for acting out scenarios during story development. They’ve been called “method writers” for their process of living their research. Their successes include This’ll Be Love (2016) and My Side of Our Conversation (2014). However, the couple missed badly with 2018’s disappointing The Husband Lasso. They followed that embarrassing dud with the box-office bomb As Long As It Lasts (2019), an action rom-com starring Meryl Streep and Ben Stiller that earned a 26% on Rotten Tomatoes. For As Long As It Lasts, the screenwriters went cliff-diving in Hawaii, participated in a role-playing exercise with Honolulu law enforcement, and renewed their vows on the Big Island. Preproduction on their latest film, Leave Us Together, began in January 2020 but has been suspended.

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As young screenwriters, Billy and Sangeeta learned that their writing improved when they performed the actions—large and small—that their characters were performing. They were always surprised by how things actually went, as opposed to how they’d imagined they’d go. Real life was unpredictable and therefore exciting. 

“You want to run it method?” one of them would say. And that meant it was time to get up out of their chairs, step away from their computers, and live a little. The technique bonded Billy and Sangeeta as writers, and the surprises of living life this way bonded them as a couple. 

In March of 2018, to research their script for As Long As It Lasts, Billy and Sangeeta vacationed in Hawaii. The story was set in Hawaii, and they wanted, as usual, to live out the scenarios to enhance the writing in the script. 

EXT. WAIMEA BAY — DAY

And so, in 2018, Billy and Sangeeta, in swimsuits, stand together, scared to death, on a cliff at Waimea Bay.

SANGEETA

Are you ready?

BILLY

Of course, I’m ready. This is going to be awesome.

SANGEETA

Okay.

Sangeeta refuses to jump. 

BILLY

I can go alone.

Sangeeta nods. Billy jumps off the cliff by himself.

BILLY

I don’t want to die!

Sangeeta watches him vanish beneath a tiny splash. 

SANGEETA

I’m always going to be alone.

Billy surfaces, happy to be alive, and waves. Sangeeta shakes her head and turns toward their rental car, a black Nissan Maxima. 

EXT. WAREHOUSE — DAY

Billy and Sangeeta, armed with pistols, stand outside a warehouse door.

SANGEETA

Are you sure you’re ready?

BILLY

I’m always ready. This is going to be awesome.

SANGEETA

Okay.

Billy breaks down the door. Sangeeta hesitates.

BILLY

Come on!

Sangeeta watches him cross the threshold and vanish into the dark.

SANGEETA

I’m always going to be alone.

INT. WAREHOUSE — DAY

Billy runs ahead without her. Sangeeta gets lost in the warehouse while Billy corners the bad guy between the restrooms and the emergency eye-wash shower station. 

By the time Sangeeta catches up to him, law-enforcement personnel in charge of the exercise are congratulating Billy and offering him tips, namely not to leave his partner behind.

EXT. BEACH — DAY

Billy’s in a tux. Sangeeta’s in a boho beach wedding dress, white and vintage and flowy. It’s a small ceremony, a dramatic exercise, on the beach. The altar is decorated in a Hawaiian style: fresh flowers, garlands, and so on. A young woman plays the ukulele, which is (they learn) pronounced oo · koo · leh · lay, not you · koo · lay · lee.

BILLY

This is going to be awesome.

Billy fumbles and drops the ring on the white platform they’re standing on. The ring rolls away into the sand. Billy searches frantically.

BILLY

Shit. Okay, so this is where we both crawl around and reach for the ring at the same time and brush fingers and share a laugh, right? Working together? Restoring the moment?

Sangeeta stands there not in shock exactly, and not in a way that suggests she was waiting for this to happen or has been expecting it to happen, but maybe in a way that’s like she’s not surprised this is happening. And also it’s not about this. It’s about more, but she can’t articulate it yet. It’s just a feeling she has, a feeling that drives her to storm away from the altar, her flats slipping in the sand, and tear the garland off her head and fight back tears. She snatches a bottle of champagne from the table under the white tent and continues up the walkway and out to the parking lot to the Jeep, which is festooned with absolutely beautiful fucking flowers.

SANGEETA

Fuck.

Sangeeta pops the champagne. She takes a swig and gets in the Jeep and realizes Billy has the keys. Billy, wisely, watches her from a distance, an ache in his heart for what he knows he has done and what he doesn’t know he’s done and a knot of worry on his forehead for what he doesn’t know he should be doing. This is not the story they expected to be living.

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Correction: As Long As It Lasts (2019) earned a 16% rating, not 26%, on Rotten Tomatoes.