Undeveloped and Unforgettable
In writing for both the television and film industries, Boretz remained steadfast in his desire to capture relevant and relatable stories of people and their experiences in the world that would resonate with a wide range of audiences. The freedom that the length of a film granted Boretz allowed him to expand upon his normal research methods and continuously work on projects over the course of a few years. He jokes in an interview that due to the nature of films requiring years to be produced if you "try to write something that's popular when you start it, you're liable to miss the boat." It is clear that Boretz never attempted to write what was considered "popular" events or stories in his film scripts but instead often chose to focus his stories on exploring a person's biography or on developing a complex relationship between two fictional characters. However, even after crafting narratives and tirelessly pitching his ideas, Boretz was left with dozens of unproduced film scripts.
The Legend of St. Nicholas (1970) came the closest of his unproduced films to be developed. The film was set to film in 1970 and even commissioned music and lyrics to songs from Ray Charles, but UM Productions did not follow through with the filming and left the script unproduced. Other films like Baker and Bernstein, a film about a young lawyer who befriends an elderly Jewish woman who is fighting rising rent prices, and Sometimes I'm Happy, a story following the rise of the Andrews Sisters group, both received attention from studios like MGM, but neither was able to successfully move forward in the production process. Baker and Bernstein even underwent intense changes to the narrative when Stanley Donen of MGM turned Bernstein into a female character.
Other films were less successful in their marketing but remain full, well-written stories that detail different versions of learning to experience life and love in the twentieth century. Boretz's unproduced film, Connecting, boasts some of his most detailed ideas and notes on a film that showcase his process for developing characters. Connecting is the story of a preschool teacher named Paul and the mother of one of his students who is caught in a bad situation. While the pair meet in various ways across the different versions of the script, the story details their tumultuous relationship and how love can be found in unexpected places. The different versions of Connecting's script illustrate Boretz's process of developing and learning his characters through the process of re-writing material. While Connecting focuses on romantic and familial love, love in friendship is the key theme of Harold and the Rabbit, a film about two friends who learn that their mutual friend Harold - a former basketball star who was diagnosed with cancer - is back in town and wants to enlist their help to begin playing the game again. Though neither of these scripts made it onto the screen, these stories, along with all of Boretz's unproduced works, deserve to be showcased as a testament to his writing's quality and consistency.
