Yesterday I brainstormed with my friend & co-writer on ideas for the new draft of our feature screenplay Like all such things, it's taking longer than we'd like to get it where we want it to be, but we'll get there, one revision at a time.
Even though streaming dominates the movie market, I'm still tickled that my movie Detours is now available on DVD through Walmart on line & Amazon, & coming soon to Barnes and Noble & FYE.
The little things that make me (very) happy:
a follower on Threads (aka the new Twitter?) who I don't otherwise know said the following to me after watching Detours:
"I enjoyed it tremendously. I laughed and cried, but most importantly I felt better after watching than I did when I started."
We all know what a slog it is to make a feature, so any time I get positive feedback, it helps. A lot.
I appreciate the mentions by friend/collaborator Tara Westwood. Her description of our project is perfect: "Mara and I are now co-writing a feature about medically assisted death (trust me it’s a lighter story than it sounds)"
We've discussed (many times) the importance & difficulty of promoting our work with minimal budget. I had the pleasure of being interviewed recently by Canvas Rebel about the joys & challenges of being an indie screenwriter & making my 2 features. You can check out the article here: https://canvasrebel.com/meet-mara-lesemann/
I'm working on a new project with my friend Tara Westwood. She plays the daughter in my movie Detours, produced with me, & brought in much of the great cast. She played the older sister in Surviving Family. Her directorial debut, the amazing short "Triggered," has qualified for the Best Live Action Short Oscar competition. You can see it here:
Happiness is great client feedback on a screenplay consulting gig. "Mara provided me with exactly the scale and type of feedback I needed on an emerging screenplay. Unquestionably, the quality of my final version will be greater b/c of Mara's input"
We watched episode 7 of The Offer last night, "The Producer." I LOVED the fight between the DP character (Gordon Willis) and director Francis Ford Coppola. The director was screaming that the DP was ruining everything by not leaving enough room for the actors to move around. The DP screamed that he could just put up a single floodlight, if that would make him happy.
We watched "Barry" season 3, episode 3 ("All the Sauce") last night and the scene with the detonator & tech support was one of my favorite things in a long time. Absolutely hysterical and totally relatable.
Happiness is finding out that one of your actors got nominated for a TONY award this week! One of the great things about making indie movies in the NYC area is the access to wonderful theater actors, Deirdre O'Connell was in our DETOURS cast & was nominated for Best Actress for her one woman show Dana H. She also was truly a pleasure to work with.
Both of my features - DETOURS and Surviving Family - are now available to stream free worldwide (except People's Republic of China, apparently) on Plex. And that makes me happy