THE INTERNET/WGA/TEASER

We have been counseled to cut a new teaser. One which features the quirky funny side of the film. Jamie Kirkpatrick, beloved cutting genius, is fitting this into the schedule of his new feature.

Our present teaser is running on a couple of websites now besides our own:

There's YouTube, where we posted ourselves, and In The Trenches, a site by and for women over 40. We met them on the internet and Melissa Leo and I met up with COO, Debbie Zipp, and members of her team over lunch in Los Angeles. Debbie liked the film enough to support it with a teaser of it on her site. She also helped us get a script of Slap&Tickle, our next project, to the legendary Ruby Dee.

Thanks, Debbie.

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MotheringHeights.net
GriefBecomesMe.com
ChristineFugate.com

I met Christine Fugate at a Sundance producers weekend. She and Suzanne Jurva were my housemates there. Such a supportive pair ... of each other, of me, whom they'd only met the second before. So happy. Very motivating women. And now Chrisitine has posted us on her blog MotheringHeights which is witty, sage, and insightful advice irreverently proffered. I wish she'd been writing it when my kids were of an age. I have passed it on to those in need.

Visit her other sites as well to learn about christine the filmmaker. Thank you, Christine.

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It's propaganda, the notion that 'the internet as new frontier' is so far away in producer spin, with regard to their position in the WGA strike. Ten years ago I got a script (Pretty Bird) to the American Zoetrope inner sanctum from an upload to the AZ website. I followed due process; reviewed four scripts on the site then I was eligible to post one of mine own for review. I posted one an agent had told me was "an embarassment" to me, and which at the time was my love child.

The script of Pretty Bird worked it's way up the food chain with good reviews, then it was read in house, and we exchanged several phone calls with regard to an option which was tanked when my then agent got into the picture and loaded my deal with a director and producer she represented, people I had never met but who liked the script but had not optioned it and ... you've got to love the way this system works, huh? Or run mad...

That was ten years ago. Levels of protected access have changed. It's easier then ever to reach people. I wrote to Mark Cuban directly. He got his company, HDNet, to read the script of Racing Daylight with an eye to finance. And if I had emailed them a pdf with something they felt they could market I would have sold it direct. That's my point. That's not what has happened for me, but then I know I'm not making films for mass consumption.

But please, make no mistake, I KNOW there is an audience for this film. They are not a small group, but diverse and hungry for product which makes them think, both morally and spiritually. They are men and women who are looking for a bit of whimsy in their everydays. I have sat in those audiences and listened to the women laughing at the foibles of Sadie, at themselves, and that awkward feeling which floods your body when near the person who gets your motor running. I have heard the pious moan, and seen them nod at Edmund and his karmic dilemmas. I have watched men, who are already surprised that it's not a 'chick flick', guffaw at the antics of Henry, as us, watching the strange woman discover herself, and him.

In this new digital age I can find people with whom to do business with greater ease and provide them with a product they want at a reasonable, no middle person, rate of return. And until the walls of protected access go up in this medium, opportunity is rife for the maverick who likes to pioneer.

We're arguing over the internet, the writers and the studios, as if it were an entity way in the distant future, when it's here now.