Amongst many strong reader feedback’s:
– Blue Cat Screenplay Awards 1st reader analysis: “Despite dealing with ghosts (and the chilly physics of the air around them), this script is full of warmth, a big-hearted and earnest read with endearing characters and a clever, original setup from the first scene. Joanie and Roy never wear out their welcome individually, but their dynamic together is fresh, compelling, and constantly changing — the writer smartly uses Roy’s neurotic transference to illuminate and twist the relationship between the two, as they shift from therapist and client to friends to near-partners to an almost mother-and-child kinship (which is healthier than the real mother-and-child relationship between Dottie and Roy). I appreciated that the script quickly inverts the predictability of Roy’s unrequited love for Joanie into a more complex journey for both of them, as he moves toward self-discovery and freedom while she moves toward commitment and purpose. The rules and details of the ghost world are fun to learn about as they unfold, but they never overwhelm the story, and the wonderful supporting character of Lyuba acts as an exceedingly funny tool for exposition as well as an emotional, bruised soul in her own right.”
– 2024 – First Prize Comedy Feature Screenplay – Film Crash (40th year)
– 2024 – Best Comedy Screenplay – Woods Hole Film Festival (32nd year)
– 2024 – Finalist – Catalina Film Festival Screenshot
– 2024 – Finalist – Houston Comedy Film Festival
– 2024 – Finalist – Northeast Film Festival
– 2024 – Semi-Finalist – Table Read My Screenplay (Hollywood)
– 2024 – Best Screenplay, 3rd place – Hollywood Reel Independent Film Festival
– 2024 – Best Fantasy Romance Screenplay – Golden State Film Festival (at the Chinese
Theatre in LA)
– 2024 – Semi-Finalist – Big Apple Film Festival and Screenplay Competition
– 2024 – Semi-Finalist – Flickers’ Rhode Island International Film Festival
– 2024 – Semi-Finalist – Los Angeles Comedy Film Festival
– 2024 – Quarter Finalist – Richmond International Film Festival
– 2024 – Quarter Finalist – Emerging Screenwriters Screenplay Competition
– 2024 – Honorable Mention, The Art of Brooklyn Film Festival / Screenplay Contest
– 2024 – Official Selection – Austin Comedy Film Festival
– 2024 – Official Selection – Portland Comedy Film Festival
– 2024 – Official Selection – San Pedro International Film Festival
– 2024 – Official Selection – Hollywood International Indie Screenplay Awards
– 2024 – Official Selection – Berlin International Screenplay Festival
I feel very stupid about this because I had no idea that one of my classmates at Yale, Christiane Riera had died of cancer 4 years ago at the quite young age of 44, leaving behind a son and husband in Brazil. (At least I knew she had moved back to Brazil after Yale.).
I just came across an email about a Facebook post from a few months ago where a theatre in Brazil was named after her. It’s beautiful that someone so young was beloved and had accomplished enough in a relatively short life to be so honored.
So, I just want to honor, late and after the fact, but well deserved with pictures of “her” theatre.
Obviously the bulk of her theatre, film and TV work was in Brazil, but a very good film she worked on was “The Constant Gardener” which many people should know. Here’s another person’s blog post where she goes through some of the details of Chris’ career and how she gave to her as a writer and person.
But I also feel so sad because Chris was such a nice person. In the arts, there are always people with egos and insecurities that lead them to do nasty things. She was SO the opposite of that. Kind and generous. I can’t think of a moment in New Haven when she wasn’t so. She had a shared apartment down in NYC and let me stay there, which allowed me to stay so much more connected to the NY art and theatre world while I was in New Haven.
And of course, it’s impossible not to relate her death too young to some other friends who died too young like Vivi Friedman – a talented film director I knew – who also died of cancer in her early 40’s. And friends and relatives who died (and some who survived) of the same disease. And of course, my own mortality and what seems like so little accomplished. And how we fool ourselves that our time is forever but in truth we’re sitting on the ledge of a figurative Grand Canyon. The awesomeness of life is before us, but our balance is always precarious and ephemeral.
So, the one message of it all, however trite it sounds but isn’t trite at all, yes carpe diem but also seize the connections with others just as much. Do it all with love.
I’m just days away from being able to approach investors to fund my movie with just a few more technical tasks however the Line Producer has completed the preliminary budget, one liner and DOOD; the LLC is registered and the Look Book is done. (I know it’s the proverbial needle in a haystack, but if anyone has any “qualified investor” leads for me, PLEASE private message me.) Here’s the cover design for the Look Book, designed by Brian Grondahl brother of Jennifer Grondahl Wozniak. I think he did a fabulous job making my content sing.
Limping Towards Babylon video for it’s successful Kickstarter (pre-production funding)
3 days to go in the LIMPING TOWARDS BABYLON kickstarter (Nov. 20)
Therefore, please, please spread the word to your friends directly and on social media.
So, today’s creative update is about the music in the video and what I envision for the film as a whole. So, exactly how did I meet a Grammy Award winning composer?Grammy Award winning Partch Ensemble. Alex Wand seated lower left
Los Angeles has a reputation for being a shallow, glitzy, materialistic, non-intellectual place. And there are certainly are many examples where the truth of that is as good as gold. But equally true is that LA is a complex city, with veins and pockets of other under-appreciated precious metals and gems.
So on May 5, 2015, at the rather unlikely location of Western and 2nd Street, I went to see a concert of “micro-tuned” guitars at Monk’s Place – from the outside, it looks like a small warehouse amongst, fairly downscale retail shops, and inside, likewise, industrial with exposed brick walls and uncomfortable, plastic white chairs for seating. Monk’s Space exterior
It reminded me of the funky little venues I would go to in the East Village and Brooklyn when I lived in NYC.
Exactly, what is “micro-tuning”? As I understand it, it’s an alternate tuning system of in-between notes rather than the standard system used in Western music, and thus sometimes the notes sound unusual and interesting and sometimes, to my ears at least, flat and unpleasantly “out-of-tune”. So, most of the concert was interesting, but too alienating, and for over an hour, just an intellectual curiosity to me.
And then at the very end, Alex Wand came out with a large ensemble of musicians to perform his song cycle “The Great Hunt” using Carl Sandburg poems as lyrics.
Immediately it was a different experience. I was hearing something both tuneful AND unconventionally micro-tuned, with rhythms that sometimes were smooth and sometimes deliberately jerky and syncopated.
I literally felt the excitement coursing through my body and brain. It was new classical music with inflections of folk, blues and rock lurking in the background that suddenly thrusting forward. I was having the rare experience of a true musical discovery, where I wasn’t just hearing a new song, but a new sound… familiar yet utterly unfamiliar. Alex Wand (right) composer of Sandburg song cycle at Monk’s Place 5-5-15 photo by Erin Barnes
And also, what I was hearing was so, so close to what I imagined the music major character, Marcus (played by Matt Mercer) in my script would be composing, In the screenplay, I have him performing Bach for Amandine, but also later composing a new classical concerto for marimba, violin and guitar, as a way of expressing his feelings for her. Matt Mercer as Marcus and Karen Sours as Amandine
So after the Monk’s Space concert, I bee-lined over to Alex. My enthusiasm and praise must have made enough of a positive impact that when I invited him about a month and half later to sit in on the first full reading of the LIMPING TOWARDS BABYLON script, he not only came by on a Sunday summer afternoon but also was impressed enough by the actors and the script to get on board with the project.
