The Brass Ring's Romantic Workout

When we set sail on this journey to get our adaptation written and  produced, we knew full well that it was going to take time. Are we not dealing with swamped professionals who get tens of thousands of queries every year? I know I wouldn’t want to be in their boat. But our dinghy is pitching as well (pardon the pun).

The creative urge doesn’t stop when you’re in 'waiting-mode', it just sloshes around in your brain every waking hour and makes you irritable and not fun to be around. It’s not as if anything else even comes close in interest, except family, maybe. And it’s enough to make you give you a migraine from the keel up!

I can now fully understand why our mentor, Hal Croasmun, always said, “Forget the small talk. There’s nothing more interesting than the biz.” On the other hand, he also said we should try to find some shared interest with people in the biz. Sigh. Another conundrum to contemplate as I’m swatting the sheep popping over the fence—aka falling asleep.

What we realized, but chose not to think so much about, was how much luck would have to do with it. If we had, we’d never have begun and would not then be more than halfway to our goal! One of our query letters was refused because the manager had another client with a very similar project and he felt taking ours on would create a conflict of interest. Now that’s hopeful. The idea of past lives is certainly out there in the mainstream by now, and someone is capitalizing on it. Bravo!

Our goal is to find a producer (at least one) who likes our query enough to request the script and then has a reader with the same sensibilities (one would hope that’s the case anyhow) who loves our script enough to champion it. And that this producer will also then read and love our script and champion it to his bosses and financiers, who will in turn also adore the concept enough to invest their money. A lot of things have to fall in place just to make the deal.

Fingers crossed for the next wave, we sail onward toward the brass ring!! Even if, at times, we have to blow in our own sails to move an inch!

And so it goes~~

Til next time
Angela

Going For The Passion!

It’s been a long week of waiting and moving on. Our GREEN DARKNESS adaptation is in the hands of many producers at this point. Help us visualize multiple positive responses.

We've had one response so far, a positive-negative, from a producer who said, "All in all, this was a well crafted and strongly written project." He just didn’t feel “passionate” enough about the material.

We’re not disheartened. After all, not everyone liked GREEN DARKNESS the novel—only those who read and re-read it! It’s all a matter of taste…and we need someone who feels the same way as we do about this story.

Meanwhile, we’re both looking for a new project that we can be just as passionate about!

Life is all about the passion. You get out of it what you put into it, she typed passionately.

Feel it, live it! Til next time~~

Angela 

Mother Hen and The Roosterlady Are Not Chicken!

Brooding mothers unite! We are so well matched, Marla and I, like sisters who were separated at birth. But I’m taller than she is and she’s younger than I am.

People call Marla “Mother Marla” and just for the record, I have been dubbed a mother hen on many an occasion, but I am far better known as the “Roosterlady”, because of all the rooster paintings I did before I discovered screenwriting.

Through our combined valiant querying efforts, Marla and I have pushed 10 eggs (our script, 10 times, ouch!) out into the world to be incubated by 10 companies, mostly producers but a couple of managers too. We hope they will help hatch out many viable chicks by their “yes” responses to our script.

There are too many fowl puns we could use to describe the torturous process of sending out queries to companies. Those stomach butterflies pale in comparison to querying our preferred actors’ managers, however! Let’s just say we’re not chicken….  

I admit it, yes, we’ve cracked (each other) up! 

My apologies to those who aren't up to a blog of puns, blame it on the stress if you must.

Later~~

Angela

Saints, Digits And Paws, I Swear!

It’s been some week. “Hellish” sprang to mind -- just like “that”-- without even trying!

We hear wonderful words of encouragement from GREEN DARKNESS fans, who swear to cross their digits, paws (!) and even pray to the saints if only that will help us get this film made! We are so very grateful!

Seems like we may need some heavy-duty prayers—because we’re providing a good deal of our own swearing. Half kidding. LOL

Our initial foray into marketing hasn’t achieved the projected targets. We had planned on a far higher (perhaps unrealistic?--we are only human after all) rate of “Yes, send it. We’d love to read it” than we got.

Sigh. Back to the keyboard, to tap, tap, tap our brains for more persuasive pitching materials and then we’re off again, at a more modest pace.

Dang, if this marketing stuff isn’t enough to make a person mosey up to a bar and ask for a bottle! Sure, we've marketed scripts before, but this time we're doing it semi-publicly...

Hooray! We’re now getting  more script requests with our amended synopsis and query letter. Whew!

As those of you who are screenwriters know, "just" getting the script into the hands of a producer, agent or manager doesn’t guarantee a sale, nor a speedy response. It can take a year and occasionally even longer for busy execs to get to their pile of scripts.

What’s a person to do? We hang in, we keep our heads and stay away from those bars!

Never wait. Thus we start on the next project. I’m turning one of my comedy scripts into a novel; Marla’s working on her rewrite of a comedy.

If you hear of any sanity for sale, think of us, would you? And pray, pray, pray….:)

Till next time~~

Angela

When Is A Script Like A Fat Lady?

When it sings, Baby! LOL

We know we’re finished at last-- because our script is “singing”. What does that mean exactly? It’s hard to explain, but it’s akin to the difference between a hothouse tomato and one that’s ripened on the vine. You can just taste it! One looks like a tomato and even tastes like a tomato, but the other one explodes in your mouth and makes all other tomatoes a dim memory.

Our script was OK before. Heck, we thought it was damn good! :) but we made a few tweaks after we got the final critique and WOW what a difference! The changes were really very minor. It was what I would call a Fast Polish.

We are now both really excited and ready to market with no reservations.

On to the next phase—Pitching.

We’ve had so much fun, we’re already wondering what to work on next! But we’ll wait on that for a bit and let our minds and bodies recover from this stress first.

Stay tuned for the responses! Fingers and all other appendages crossed, please!

Hurray!

Angela and Marla

Name That Writer!

We give up! We'll never solve this mystery...

Excerpt from a recent phone conversation while fine-tuning the latest draft of our adaptation of GREEN DARKNESS:

Angela:  I don't know where you got that quote, but I like it there.

Marla:  Me?  You should know where it came from, you put it in.

Angela:  No I didn’t! You did!

Marla:  No I didn’t!

Angela:  Yes you did. 

Marla:  Well, I didn't write it.

Angela:  I thought you did.

                                                      Marla:  I thought you did.

                                                      Angela:  Oh my God, we don't know who wrote what anymore!

                                                      Marla:  And we're arguing about it!

   

No, we weren't unintentionally performing our own spontaneous version of Abbot & Costello's 'who's on first' routine. It seems we've created a screenwriting version of the Vulcan mind meld: Scriptwriters' Synchronicity – or maybe great minds really do think alike? And please don’t go to the corollary of that statement! LOL

Marla tells me that sometimes she'll read sections of her own screenplays and not remember writing it. Maybe psychic Sylvia Browne was right when she told Marla that Marla's late father was always helping her write. Psychic writing? Channelling from the afterlife? Hey, did her Dad know my Mom? I’ve had the same experience, time and again.

But now we’re having that subconscious experience simultaneously while we’re supposed to be collaborating. Did I mention that we changed the first scene and I suggested to Marla that we should add a certain detail-- and she’d already done it? 

So who’s going to take the final bow?

Angela: Not me!

Marla: Okay, not you.

Angela: You don’t always have to agree with me.

Marla: Right. Just eventually…

Angela: We’ll bow together. 

Bowing out until the next time!

Angela and Marla 

Gimme A Cold One! -- Script, That Is!

Who knew the present could meet up with the 1500s? Angela and I did, or at least we hoped it was possible. We were right!

    

It happened April 2nd when nine actors, ranging in age from 10 to 60-ish, met at Angela's house.

    

Their mission? They thought it was to participate in a cold reading of a new stage play, but were pleased to learn it was a table reading of our screenplay adaptation of GREEN DARKNESS - at first glance, they liked our revised title. Good sign...

    

Angela delegated the major rolls - she chose well by having professional actor Derek McGrath read the dual role of our protagonist in present and in past.

    

Minor roles fell where they may - the 10-year-old boy read well, including one word ("whore") his father was going to explain to him on the drive home. Many of the minor parts were doubled up. Angela even marked all the scripts, highliting the appropriate role for each actor. That really helped to decrease the confusion.

    

With all the action/description being read aloud, too, the event took almost two and a half hours to complete. (That included the failure of the camera, crash of my Skype connection, leaving me looking at a blue screen of warnings! Time to get my CPU worked on. From then on, I listened in via speaker phone.) Through it all, Angela did well - she resisted both speaking and adding sound effects.

    

At times the one actress mixed up an American southern accent with an English accent - and made it work! That character may now become an American from the south in our script.

    

Angela got a little teary-eyed at the climax. That's a very good thing. Other positive comments overheard included experiencing goosebumps at various stages as well as the climax and needing to resist turning the page, before everyone else, to see what would happen next.

    

Spontaneous applause signalled the end of the reading - praise for the people and the material. And the pizza's arrival.

    

Yes, we have a few things to consider as we tweak the script just a 'little' more. The decision was unanimous that we had hit the genre bull's-eye. McGrath took his copy home to read again, promising to email further feedback.

    

Was the reading worth the hostess' jitters? Definitely.

 

Now on to the next step~~

Marla