I started writing notes for my play Love and Communication after a prolonged battle to get our son Jimmy into a good school following his autism diagnosis. He was three. Yesterday he turned 16. And in six weeks I'm going to start shooting a film based on the experience. It's all very disorienting.
When I wrote the screenplay I went about trying to get this film made through traditional channels, with pitches and loglines and emails to friends of friends of friends trying to get them to read your script. The process was dispiriting. No, that's too elegant a word. It made me feel like I was a pimp. I was trying to pimp out this story, this highly-personal story based (loosely) on what happened to my family. This felt gross. But I was apparently not a very good pimp. My product was (unsurprisingly) not what the johns of Hollywood we're looking for.
So then I started the process of trying to make the film on my own. And while I was still pimping (this time to investors) I was in control of the process. And after connecting to indie wunderkind Rob Margolies, I had the confidence that if the funding was there we could make this happen.
The funding is now there, and we're going to make this happen. I'll be posting periodically as my time/sanity allows.
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