SLAP&TICKLE READING

Twenty actors met us at the Atlantic Theatre studios yesterday for the first reading of "Slap&Tickle" our next project, Sophia's and mine. It was awesome! We invited members of our Racing Daylight crew who have already signed on for the next round, Stephen Harris, our d.p., Jamie Kirkpatrick, editor, and Michelle Baker, locations and on the producing staff, and of course Donn Gobin who is the best cheerleader exec. producer in the world! Ingrid Price will be returning as costume designer, Melanie Dimitri as key in makeup ... so reassuring to us, that so many have wanted to work with us again. Quality of life as hallmark.

The performers were so supportive of the quirky way we devise a screenplay reading which eschews the narrator and has the characters reading their own actions. Melissa Leo told me that the staged readings of Racing Daylight we did this way helped her get the charcter deeper into her bones. With small budget films rehearsal is all but nil so this method of reading seems to give us a bit of rehearsal we hadn't anticipated.

Slap&Tickle, unlike Racing Daylight, is a more traditional narrative in construct, and content, though there is a twist. The multi-generational and multi-racial nature of this depression era story surprised the cast and the small invited audience. They have never seen this movie before, with a family that looks less like the segregated stereotype of the Hollywood renderings, and more like America. This is the American family I know from the inside out.

Our potential investors and partners were smitten. YES!!! They laughed, they cried.

Racing Daylight has opened many doors. One in the can proves you can get it there I expect. I also suspect that moving on to the next project frees up the first from over-mothering. But lest you think I have forgotten this first in the excitement of the second, fear not, we are looking at some very interesting and cutting edge methods of distribution for our first love-child, RACING DAYLIGHT.