The Sins of Jack Branson was first conceived in 2017 as a feature film. I was listening to my then-boyfriend Howie's Pet Shop Boys greatest hits CD for the millionth time when "Rent" came on. And I had heard that song a thousand times, mind you, but for some reason I was curious about its subject matter, male escorts, and so I looked up Male Prostitution on Wikipedia and skimmed through the highlights. I have always been a sucker for gay history, especially before WWII. One line in particular struck my eye:
"The most famous male prostitute of the Victorian era was the Irish born John Saul, who was involved in both the 1884 Dublin Castle scandal, and the Cleveland Street Scandal of 1889."
So much to unpack there. The fact that there was such a thing as "the most famous male prostitute." Not just one sodomy scandal, which was already bad enough, but TWO? Of course I had to learn more about John Saul, and oh boy what a deep dive that was. I was eating it up. I asked myself how someone in those days could have the confidence and pride to take the stand in a public trial like that and say all those things. And weirdly enough, not much was known about him outside those scandals. That made it easier for me to write his story when I could invent a personality and not be considered historically inaccurate in doing so.
The working title was Rentboy, and I used the three things we knew about John Saul, the Dublin Castle scandal, The Sins of the Cities of the Plain, and the Cleveland Street Scandal as the structural framework, the renamed Collins Affair serving as the First Act Break, the anonymous publishing of Jack's erotic memoir serving as the midpoint, and the Montgomery Street Scandal being the second act break, and Edgar v. Withers being the obvious climax. The ending, in which they lose the trial even after everything, was kept in line with history to avoid getting maudlin and silly, as well as to tell the adult lesson that sometimes we don't get our happy endings, but at least we tried. It's the Rocky ending, sure, but it works.
I realized as I was writing it that, if Rentboy was going to be a success, I had a responsibility in avoiding the Imitation Game problem of introducing a relatively unknown real person to the world with a heavily Hollywoodized interpretation. And so, I changed John Saul's name to Jack Branson, named after Tom Branson, my favorite character in Downton Abbey. After I finished the screenplay, I took about a year to edit it and renamed the title The Sins of Jack Branson, a play on Saul's memoir The Sins of the Cities of the Plain. Glenn Chandler followed the same thought when he named his John Saul biography The Sins of Jack Saul. I didn't know that book existed until after I finished writing the script; the similar titles are a coincidence. I also didn't read the original memoir, The Sins of the Cities of the Plain, to avoid any leakage into my story. Turns out it's a bore, so I did good there.
The book is substantially different from the screenplay, but believe it or not the screenplay really isn't that different from the book. The final draft of The Sins of Jack Branson screenplay is 115 pages. It focuses mainly on Jack himself. Most of his scenes in the novel were lifted directly out of the screenplay. Certain parts of his story weren't depicted for pacing reasons. The detour back to Ireland following the Collins Affair wasn't in the script, the events of which summarized by Jack to Oliver following his return to the brothel as depicted in the novel. The Incident itself was never explained, revealed, depicted, or even conceived, and the characters of Seamus, Kenny, Bayrd, Danny O'Brien, Greg O'Brien, and Mr. Munce's son Tommy were thought of only after I made the decision to turn it into a book. The backstory of Mary and Louise was the same as in the script, and Francois and Denny's were only superficially touched on, but the origin stories of Oliver, Charlie, and Mr. Munce were nonexistent. Morty Blasmyth, named Marty Williams the entire time in the script, was a minor character and had no depth whatsoever. Wyatt never comes back in the third act to snap Jack back to reality, and the interaction with Claire the bookstore girl wasn't there either. Delice de Mousse was originally called Mousse Delight. The letter from Jack's mother is verbatim how it is written in the screenplay. In the end, Jack and Oliver go to Paris to start a new brothel there, a fate I'd later give to Francois and Andy so that Jack and Oliver could go to NYC instead.
I first started writing the novelization of The Sins of Jack Branson in September 2019, finishing the first draft in April 2020 (Thanks COVID) and the final draft in December 2020. It was originally written in dry 1880s style in first person throughout. The first major rewrite made the prose more choppy and fragmented, the way a novice writer with a farmboy's education would write.
The second rewrite was drastic, changing Part II to third person. I did so for two reasons. First, the original memoir Jack writes in the script and the earlier drafts was simply his diary in its entirety. On reread I felt the audience was only briefly told what was in the diary, and if the publication was going to be a monumental event, I wanted the audience to know every page of it so they could feel Jack's anguish, so I changed his memoir to be an original manuscript... the manuscript they were reading all along. Second, I realized it would be more interesting to change Jack writing all the events in retrospect in Paris to him writing only part of the events and living out the rest, really selling it to the audience how unprepared he is when more shit goes down. I invented the addendum part, written two months after the main part, to bridge the transition from past to present and to make the audience feel the book was being written in real time before landing us in the real world with real time.
The third rewrite added in The Incident and cleaned up some inconsistencies throughout, specifically the chronology of the Montgomery Street Scandal. Jack the Ripper was added in to explain the police's motivation in raiding, and I needed the scandal to be Jack's fault because he published the book but also Geoffrey Grant's for outing Edgar and bringing Jack's book into it, and also Edgar's for not playing along with the game, but also Charlie's for thinking he could fight the trial. It made for more of a roller coaster then just plopping in at Grant's introduction to Jack. Charlie's ambush was a late addition too.
The fourth rewrite occurred after Tory Hunter gave her critique of my manuscript in January 2021. I added the postscript, which turned out to be a smashing addition. I also gave Charlie more depth through additional scenes: the human lie detector scene with Jack, his backstory existing let alone being relayed through Oliver, Charlie's rant to Jack justifying misleading the public in the name of the greater good, Charlie's fight with his solicitor specifically refusing to force Jack to testify, and Charlie and Jack's tender scene in the witness room, all of which were invented mere months before publication. On Tory's insistence I added more scenes of Seamus, specifically Jack coming out to Seamus in Ireland and telling him about Oliver, which turned out to be one of my favorite scenes. The last changes involved converting the entire book to British spellings, grammar and word choices (except for Andy's dialogue, because he's American) and boosting Morty to main character status, adding the scene between Jack and Morty at the start of Part II, the comic relief scene between Morty and Mr. Munce, and the final farewell between Jack and Morty in the last chapter. I had realized the parallels between Morty's naive love for Jack and Jack's naive love for Danny O'Brien, as well as the differences between the closeted Morty and the relatively spoiled Oliver, so I decided to expand on that.
A chief influence of The Sins of Jack Branson is Carol, one of my favorite movies of all time, and I used Carol and Therese's relationship to frame Jack and Oliver's love story, Jack being the one more established in his gay identity with more awareness of how homophobic the world is and Oliver being the naive romantic just happy to be a part of it. Also inspired was Carol's cheeky references only gays could pick up, like Therese's boyfriend Richard (literally "Dick") asking Therese what she thinks about visiting Europe with him and Therese stalling by saying "It's so cold I can't even think straight." I added a few wink-winks of my own throughout Branson.
Downton Abbey plays a huge influence too, specifically the Barrington Place scene and the overall accessible tone of light historical accuracy to preserve more modern dialogue. After hearing how badly written The Sins of the Cities of the Plain was, I didn't think anyone would mind me adding some flair. Turns out a lot of people had a problem with it.
As I was writing the novel version I was deep diving even further into the discography of the Pet Shop Boys, and their song lyrics, which feature so many nuances of English gay lifestyle, inspired many little parts of the story. The full track list is featured in Andrezj of Hollywood with Drew's half-animated Pet Shop Boys musical adaptation.
I was overall driven to the story because of the interesting dynamic between a whore for closeted Tories and also a radical gay rights organization, kinda like a gay whore in DC at the height of the Lavender Scare or the Bush/Reagan administrations and their complacency in the nationwide gay rights movement, so I based the story around that. I saw the brothel as the first gay bar, just something they realistically wouldn't have a word for. I was also obsessed with stories of famous 20th century gay writers (can't remember their names) who got their start in life living on the street in exile, sometimes fucking dudes to get by. That's such a haunting life and I wanted to contribute a story like that of my own.
As the first installment of my Modern Myth Trilogy, The Sins of Jack Branson is an inverted postmodern interpretation of The Odyssey. Instead of a road trip home and all the crazy episodes that trim its path, what if there simply was no home to go back to? What if you had to make your own instead? Your own family? Your own hometown? And instead of creatures and Gods tripping you up, what if it was yourself? Your pride? Your anxiety? Your lack of guidance? Your own past affecting whether or not others will trust you? And what if those structures you built get washed away, what then? Do you start all over? Do you fight to win them back? It's a more personal epic translating all that into the mind of one character and yet no less heroic.
Just before The Sins of Jack Branson was published I watched Russel T. Davies' It's a Sin and I saw so many similarities that I actually got scared people would accuse me of stealing his idea, even though I wrote the screenplay version years before the miniseries was released, which Davies wrote decades before I even heard of John Saul. Serendipity, I guess.
In the margins of the story is an entire plot that occurs only in the background, and I call this side-story “The Guilt of James Monro.” Vic is gay and turned into a monster by homophobia, and yet he sleeps with the private and secretly gay commissioner James Monro on the side. When Vic goes too far and loses his night stick bashing in a gayboy's brains in, Vic gets Pete to blackmail Jack Branson for his money. Pete, greedy man that he is, turns on Vic and runs off with the money. Vic, pissed off, punches Monro in the jaw, forcing Monro to fire Vic. But Monro is still haunted by Vic's memory, a monster of a man but a man that he loved, and he feels guilty allying himself with such a boogeyman for homosexuals. Monro hears of Jack's impassioned speech on the stand and realizes the power of standing up for yourself. Inspired, Monro thanks Jack by inexplicably not prosecuting Jack, promising to live a less complacent life himself.
Fun fact, Morty and Monro are in the same room together, just the two of them, and neither one knows the other one's gay too. How sad. They could've used that to help each other. That's the power of silence right there.
Included in The Sins of Jack Branson is my love for writing and pop culture, specifically how writing serves as therapy for Jack and the other characters and how pop culture serves as role models even then, Jack inspiring people with his book, Les Miserables inspiring Charlie, Oliver Twist inspiring Oliver, etc. Also added in are autobiographical elements, all of which are elaborated at length in Andrezj of Hollywood, in addition to little nuances I’ve learned since the screenplay by being a waiter. I’ve never been a prostitute, but I couldn’t have written The Sins of Jack Branson if I hadn’t been a waiter.
The dedication to my mother serves as the novel's overall epigraph:
"There is nothing in the world more gratifying, more powerful, more indispensable than the love of a mother."
It applies literally to all the characters. Jack's mother's silence hurts him more than the memories of his father's abuse. Denny's mentally ill mother tried to kill him and made him a cripple. Francois's bohemian mother cast him out. Mary and Louise's mothers didn't give a shit. Andy's mother spoiled him as long as it suited her. Oliver's mother died young and yet he's always felt the void. Charlie loved his mother even after everything she did to him. The brothel itself is Charlie's mother's house, being a mother to all of them. These are boys deprived of love, of home, some even of femininity, and other non-manly qualities like crying, fear, communication, nurturing. The ones that force themselves to live without all that turn monstrous, like Wyatt, Henry, Tucker, and Vic. Oliver, upon learning Jack's story, takes it upon himself to be Jack's mother figure (with mixed results). They all know how to be men, but the reason the brothel works is its motherly qualities, the "warmth" that Morty describes, and that reestablishment in their lives make them all better men even after the brothel is shut down.
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