So where was I? Ahh... well after telling me how wonderful a writer that I was, the head agent told me that she would be the one representing me and not Jared. Well, I didn't like that idea at all. You know she can tell me what a great writer that I was and all of that but I didn't know her, I didn't know if I could trust her. And I told her so. I said, "I don't know you as a person. I'm sure if we were to run into each other on the street and we didn't know each other you would be all polite and maybe even stike up a conversation but I don't know that for a fact. So I would feel more comfortable with Jared representing me. I don't want you to take it personally but if I don't feel comfortable with you I'm not sure that I would feel comfortable with my screenplay in your hands."
She was quiet for a moment and then she said, "He is only just starting out and inexperienced I know you don't want that for your career. I am only looking out for your best interests." Well this went on in a go around between us for like an hour and finally I said, "If you really want the screenplay to come from one of your agency's clients you are going to have to let Jared represent me, otherwise its not happening." Needless to say she refused. So I was back to where I started with it a jumble of ideas without a real story. However, Jared, still believing that this could be the next big thing helped me to go through all the proper channels and helped me copy right it. That set me back a few dollars but it was worth it. Apparently the head of the agency was trying to give out the idea to another writer who she represented and I was able to make sure that that didn't happen and she was not very happy at all.
In all of this Jared had to find another job because the head of the agency found out that he was helping me and fired him. You have no idea how bad I felt for it. I hated the fact that he lost his job for helping me when I was really a nobody. But he told me it was fine and that as long as I would recognize him and thank him in the credits of my movies and let him represent me he had no problem with it. So I knew in him I had found a true friend. Plus he got a better job, He wasn't happy before with his job and so this new place was a step up and that agency is actually the agency that represents me now.
So after all this had happened it was around Christmas time again. It was at this time that I started getting calls from colleges trying to get me to go to their schools. This was a difficult time because there were several colleges who wanted me and were willing to pay for me to go to their schools. However, me, being the stubborn person that I am, wanted to go to the school that wasn't willing to pay for me because I thought that they would put a better emphasis on what I wanted to do with my career choice. Yeah, they just screwed me over. I could've gone to Princeton, Yale, Harvard, NYU, Brown, Stanford or even elite colleges in the UK. They were willing to pay for all of my tuition and fees and I just went against all of that to go to school in San Francisco where I didn't even go for a full year and I had to take out major loans and I'm still trying to pay from my pocket the stuff the loans wouldn't cover, about $40,000. So I learned from that experience and I am still learning from it. Now through this I am still working on the screenplay and I am coming up with scenes and getting it worked into a full screenplay.
By this time its graduation time and I graduated in the top ten of my class and I graduated with honors because I had finished two years of college while going to high school. Plus since I did speech contests our school was the only school in the area to go to nationals and place and there were only two of us competing and we both placed in all of our categories. In the Individuals I got a Division 1 rating in Acting, Prose and Radio. I got the number one performance rating from all the judges and so I won that award as well. In the Large Groups it was just Kris and I because we were the only ones in our school interested and we got Division 1 ratings in Ensemble Acting (we can now never ride a Ferris Wheel because of this one but that's another story for another time), Improve (I don't know how we did it because he kept making me laugh), Radio, and Theatre. We also won number one performances from the judges as well. Since they were both during the same time as a school we had the most Division 1 rating than any other school throughout the U.S. and so we won the most coveted prize of the contests. Kris and I were the only ones in the history of our school to ever do that and our school was a small 1A school. We were competing against 4A schools and so to do this was amazing. The reason I bring this up is because who presented us with our awards. It was Cameron Crowe. Now he is one of my favorite directors ever. He has an amazing eye when it comes to film and I have admired his work since I was 10. Now Cameron Crowe comes in again later on in this story but that is why I brought him up now. I have that picture of him and Kris and I and it is one of my most prized possessions I kid you not.
Anyway, I graduated and less than a week after that I was moved out of my parents house and I moved in with my aunt for about 6 months as her nanny again in Indianapolis. So yes, I got be with Matt again for the summer. Now for my graduation my oldest brother couldn't be there because he was in Iraq for a second tour of duty and that hurt. Of all my siblings he and I are the closest even though there is a nine year age difference. He has always been the one who I tell everything to first, even before my parents. You know how a lot of girls are worried about their boyfriends meeting their dads? Well I wasn't worried about what my dad would think about my boyfriends I was worried about what Vincent would think. (Though lately I'm more worried about the current guy meeting my parents just because he's FBI and my parents have a problem with not liking law enforcement officials). Well, since Vincent couldn't be there his wife brought me the present that would help me with my career. A video camera (were talking professional 16mm camera with the works) and a computer. Now this was a big deal for me. This helped me to start my videos that I had originally planned this blog for.
So anyways, it was the middle of the summer and Matt and I flew out to LA for the weekend to chill and meet up with some of our friends who were living out there (Jared was one of them). While we were there Jared took me to meet the heads of the agency that was representing me and I knew the moment that I walked through the doors that it was a good choice because I felt at ease and there was no pressure from anyone. It was totally opposite from what I felt when I was talking to the other agency. I got to know the heads and I instantly felt like I had known them my whole life. Greg and Amy were amazing and it was as if they knew me. We were there for a couple of hours and the four of us went out for lunch and by the end of it we had set a date for another get together and they set me up with a meeting with the producers of a new T.V. show. I went to meet them later that afternoon and by the end of the day I was asked to help write one of the episodes. This short lived T.V. series was called 'Related'. This series lasted a whole 5 episodes and the two episodes that I wrote by myself were never aired but there was one episode that was aired that I helped to write and it was last one that was aired before the series was cut. This was an amazing time for me. I wasn't in LA full time at the time it was a lot of email and phone calls and faxes because I was still a nanny and I was barely getting paid for writing but it was worth it. So after this it was the middle of October and I was in the middle of my online classes (through San Francisco) and I went home for a couple of weeks because my brother had a three week leave from Iraq and he came home and so I wanted to go see my brother. So I left my aunt's for a couple of weeks and went back to Iowa. It was at this time that I was having trouble with the programs on my computer and so I was lucky enough to have friends who would let me use their computer to do some assignments in order to stay in school and get a good grade (Thank you Frisbies!).
So after those few weeks I went back to Indianapolis and it was at this time that I went to the nanny agency that my aunt used when she was a nanny before she was married and I knew that this job was close to an end because the boys were in school and I was needing a better paying job because I had a lot of things to pay off (school). After about a month nothing was coming of this and i was going to different places in Indianapolis looking for work. I was looking for anything; I would go to Burger King one day and Kroger the next putting in applications in. well it was close to Thanksgiving and one of my visiting teachers invited me to go to Niagara Falls with her and her kids for Thanksgiving because they were driving there and her youngest has Autism and whenever I would baby sit for them he and I got along great and he was always asking for me. So I said I would. I wasn't going to go to Iowa or Kansas so I figured it was something that I could do and a new place to visit; plus it was Niagara Falls. I mean come on who would pass that chance up?
We head up there the day before Thanksgiving and we get there and I immediately hit it off wonderfully with my visiting teacher's sisters and mother and their spouses. Abby was Susan's youngest sister and she's maybe 8 years older than me and she lives in New York City so since I visited there sometimes she gave me her address and number to call her the next time I was there. Anyway, we had a great time and it was during this time that I got a call about a nanny job in New Jersey and I got it. It was great because I had just about given up and was ready to accept a job as a custodian (I hate cleaning if you were wondering). So after that I had 1 week until I left and I had to pack up everything.
Now I could tell you what happens next but I like keeping people in suspense and also I am really tired and I have to work tomorrow so I will say good night and let you mull over all of this.
Nighty night!
Monday, June 21, 2010
Thursday, June 17, 2010
With Every Triumph There Is A Something To Bring You Down To The Place Where You Came From (Not always in the best places)
OK so by now you will probably have heard that I am in the process of having one of my screenplays made into an actual movie! That is amazing to me and I am still finding it hard to believe that it is happening. Of course there is always the chance that things won't fall into place and it won't be made at this time but I am trying to stay hopeful and trying not to get over excited about it. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me start at the beginning, and tell you how this is developing.
This started in 2006/2007. It was the winter of my Junior year in high school and I had a really really bad sprained ankle and I was bored out of my mind because I couldn't do anything. This was during Christmas break and so while my sisters got to go and visit everybody and go shopping I was stuck at my grandparents house. Now don't get me wrong, I love my grandparents and I enjoy their company and we can always get some good card games going; you know some Oh Shaw, B.S., Montana Rummy, Texas Hold 'Em, 5 Card Stud Poker, 21, Black Jack (yes I play poker with my grandparents), Rook, Phase 10, and even some high stakes games of Old Maid. (We are a pretty competitive family). And as much as I love them you can only play so much without getting bored out of my mind. So in order to go Christmas shopping I had to ride in the store wheel chairs and I refuse top ride in the motorized wheel chairs because I think that they should be used by those who actually have limited mobility in their arms. So in order to get the gifts for my parents they couldn't be around as I bought them and so as i struggled with trying to get items from the top shelves and asking for help from other customers and being totally embarrassed as these cute guys are helping me and saying how bad the other guy was and all that good stuff that would've been great to hear if only I weren't in a wheel chair. Well I was starting to form my ideas for this screenplay as I was wheeling around Wal Mart and then around Dillon's and then around Alco (there is only so many things you can get at certain stores).
Being in the wheel chair made me realize how people, who use wheel chairs for life, feel and act around others. This made me think about diseases and accidents that put people in these chairs (it was a very depressing Christmas for me with all the pain medication and limited mobility I was kind of out of it too). This lead me to having a strange dream that played out to be what my screenplay is now. You see the thought of a disease restraining a person gave me the idea for a movie. What if a disease just started in a random place or somewhere in Venice because of a strange wind that blew in from no where and only landed at certain places. This caused certain people to get really sick and while a few died from it most lived and left their faces and bodies covered in strange blemishes. This causing the people who didn't get sick to ostracize and cast out these people who were infected. In some places this caused the town's influential people to "erase" the effected ones. This would mean a variety of things, such as just killing to experimentation. During this there were those who fought against the city and if they tried to hide the effected ones they were thrown in prison or killed. It makes me think of the genocide that continues to go on in many countries to this day. Anyway, the town becomes isolated and no one is allowed to leave unless they have certain permits and if they tell anyone about the disease they will be found and thrown into prison. Well the FBI starts to notice that people keep disappearing from this town in Missouri and send someone to investigate and that leads to a discovery of where all these cases through out history have mysterious disappearances in many different countries and the FBI agent that was sent teams up with one of the people fighting to keep her family who was effected by the disease safe. They travel through many places and end up in Venice and find out that this was where it all started in the 5th century A.D..
So I won't give all the details of the storyline away, but it sure made the rest of my vacation go by faster.
So after Christmas break my ankle healed and so I got back to my life; school, chorus, speech contests and the screenplay went on the back burner. Well that summer of 2007 I was in Indianapolis as a nanny for my aunt's kids. Well I had a lot of free time on the weekends and so I went out met many new people. I started dating this guy (Matt) and he introduced me to his friends. Now there is something you should know about Matt, he comes from a wealthy prominent family in Indianapolis. So he had the money, the cars, the right connections,the everything you could ever want. Well one weekend we flew out to New York City to his place that he had for when he was in school (he was a med student when I met him). One night we went out he introduced me to his friend who is now my friend and agent. He is an agent for screenwriters'. Now I didn't tell him I wrote at the time but apparently Matt did because after that weekend Jared (my agent) wouldn't leave me alone. I kid you not about a week after I got back to Indianapolis I get a call from him and the first words out of his mouth were, "Why didn't you tell me you wrote screenplays?" Well I had several that I had finished and he said to send him one and he would tell me if I could send it around to movie producers or even Broadway. So to get him off my back I said, "Fine." Well I didn't give him one of my finished ones. I am very protective of my work. I had chosen one that was unfinished but with a title. It was "Avenging Sorrows". Well I was on the verge of sending it to him when my eye caught the edge of the screenplay that I had started at Christmas. That's right I the twisted one I was telling you about. I decided that you know even though this piece wasn't finished, mostly plot lines and only a couple of finished scenes, and without a title I would send it to him. I don't know why but I felt I should do that. So I sent it to him with this note:
"Jared,
You wanted a piece that tells you the real me and how I write well this is it. Its unfinsihed and without a title and only plot lines with a couple of finished scenes, but its one of my better ones and it shows who I am as a writer.
-Elizabeth"
Well I had emailed it to him and I didn't hear anything back from him for about a week. Then just the day before I left Indianapolis to go back to Iowa to finish my senior year of high school I miss a phone call from Jared and he left a message telling me to call him back. I didn't get that message until I was in Iowa two days later. And even then I put off calling him until I had finished unpacking and getting ready for school (I got there the day before classes started and I still had to choose all my classes plus register for college classes). During this I was talking to Matt and then he started telling me that Jared was calling him telling Matt to tell me to call him. So finally when I got a break long enough (about 2 weeks later) I called Jared and got his voicemail. He called again and it went back and forth until finally about the end of September we were finally able to get ahold of each other and talk. It turns out he was impressed with the scraps that were my screenplay. he said he was so impressed he took it to LA where his offices are and gave it to the head of the agency and she loved it so much she wanted to talk to me about it. So I get ahold of her and she is so nice and super supportive. She loved it so much that she wanted me to get it copy righted so that it wouldn't get stolen when they were passing it through the Hollywood and the Broadway scenes. At that I said, "What? Why are you going to send through Hollywood?" She said, "What you have is a rare gift, not many people can be so honest with words. What you have is not finished by any means, but a lot of directors love the ones that aren't finished because they can get a feel of the story and come up with their ideas for the movie. So what I want is for you to allow us to represent you and get this out into the hands who can make this into something big and get to the people to enjoy." So I said, "What?" I know I'm kind of slow that way, but I just couldn't believe that someone would rave over one of my pieces, especially an unfinished piece that was originally started on a napkin (I still have it). This was where the road block started but I will post the rest tomorrow because I am tired and I have top get up in a few hours for work.
Catch Ya on the Flip Side ;-P
This started in 2006/2007. It was the winter of my Junior year in high school and I had a really really bad sprained ankle and I was bored out of my mind because I couldn't do anything. This was during Christmas break and so while my sisters got to go and visit everybody and go shopping I was stuck at my grandparents house. Now don't get me wrong, I love my grandparents and I enjoy their company and we can always get some good card games going; you know some Oh Shaw, B.S., Montana Rummy, Texas Hold 'Em, 5 Card Stud Poker, 21, Black Jack (yes I play poker with my grandparents), Rook, Phase 10, and even some high stakes games of Old Maid. (We are a pretty competitive family). And as much as I love them you can only play so much without getting bored out of my mind. So in order to go Christmas shopping I had to ride in the store wheel chairs and I refuse top ride in the motorized wheel chairs because I think that they should be used by those who actually have limited mobility in their arms. So in order to get the gifts for my parents they couldn't be around as I bought them and so as i struggled with trying to get items from the top shelves and asking for help from other customers and being totally embarrassed as these cute guys are helping me and saying how bad the other guy was and all that good stuff that would've been great to hear if only I weren't in a wheel chair. Well I was starting to form my ideas for this screenplay as I was wheeling around Wal Mart and then around Dillon's and then around Alco (there is only so many things you can get at certain stores).
Being in the wheel chair made me realize how people, who use wheel chairs for life, feel and act around others. This made me think about diseases and accidents that put people in these chairs (it was a very depressing Christmas for me with all the pain medication and limited mobility I was kind of out of it too). This lead me to having a strange dream that played out to be what my screenplay is now. You see the thought of a disease restraining a person gave me the idea for a movie. What if a disease just started in a random place or somewhere in Venice because of a strange wind that blew in from no where and only landed at certain places. This caused certain people to get really sick and while a few died from it most lived and left their faces and bodies covered in strange blemishes. This causing the people who didn't get sick to ostracize and cast out these people who were infected. In some places this caused the town's influential people to "erase" the effected ones. This would mean a variety of things, such as just killing to experimentation. During this there were those who fought against the city and if they tried to hide the effected ones they were thrown in prison or killed. It makes me think of the genocide that continues to go on in many countries to this day. Anyway, the town becomes isolated and no one is allowed to leave unless they have certain permits and if they tell anyone about the disease they will be found and thrown into prison. Well the FBI starts to notice that people keep disappearing from this town in Missouri and send someone to investigate and that leads to a discovery of where all these cases through out history have mysterious disappearances in many different countries and the FBI agent that was sent teams up with one of the people fighting to keep her family who was effected by the disease safe. They travel through many places and end up in Venice and find out that this was where it all started in the 5th century A.D..
So I won't give all the details of the storyline away, but it sure made the rest of my vacation go by faster.
So after Christmas break my ankle healed and so I got back to my life; school, chorus, speech contests and the screenplay went on the back burner. Well that summer of 2007 I was in Indianapolis as a nanny for my aunt's kids. Well I had a lot of free time on the weekends and so I went out met many new people. I started dating this guy (Matt) and he introduced me to his friends. Now there is something you should know about Matt, he comes from a wealthy prominent family in Indianapolis. So he had the money, the cars, the right connections,the everything you could ever want. Well one weekend we flew out to New York City to his place that he had for when he was in school (he was a med student when I met him). One night we went out he introduced me to his friend who is now my friend and agent. He is an agent for screenwriters'. Now I didn't tell him I wrote at the time but apparently Matt did because after that weekend Jared (my agent) wouldn't leave me alone. I kid you not about a week after I got back to Indianapolis I get a call from him and the first words out of his mouth were, "Why didn't you tell me you wrote screenplays?" Well I had several that I had finished and he said to send him one and he would tell me if I could send it around to movie producers or even Broadway. So to get him off my back I said, "Fine." Well I didn't give him one of my finished ones. I am very protective of my work. I had chosen one that was unfinished but with a title. It was "Avenging Sorrows". Well I was on the verge of sending it to him when my eye caught the edge of the screenplay that I had started at Christmas. That's right I the twisted one I was telling you about. I decided that you know even though this piece wasn't finished, mostly plot lines and only a couple of finished scenes, and without a title I would send it to him. I don't know why but I felt I should do that. So I sent it to him with this note:
"Jared,
You wanted a piece that tells you the real me and how I write well this is it. Its unfinsihed and without a title and only plot lines with a couple of finished scenes, but its one of my better ones and it shows who I am as a writer.
-Elizabeth"
Well I had emailed it to him and I didn't hear anything back from him for about a week. Then just the day before I left Indianapolis to go back to Iowa to finish my senior year of high school I miss a phone call from Jared and he left a message telling me to call him back. I didn't get that message until I was in Iowa two days later. And even then I put off calling him until I had finished unpacking and getting ready for school (I got there the day before classes started and I still had to choose all my classes plus register for college classes). During this I was talking to Matt and then he started telling me that Jared was calling him telling Matt to tell me to call him. So finally when I got a break long enough (about 2 weeks later) I called Jared and got his voicemail. He called again and it went back and forth until finally about the end of September we were finally able to get ahold of each other and talk. It turns out he was impressed with the scraps that were my screenplay. he said he was so impressed he took it to LA where his offices are and gave it to the head of the agency and she loved it so much she wanted to talk to me about it. So I get ahold of her and she is so nice and super supportive. She loved it so much that she wanted me to get it copy righted so that it wouldn't get stolen when they were passing it through the Hollywood and the Broadway scenes. At that I said, "What? Why are you going to send through Hollywood?" She said, "What you have is a rare gift, not many people can be so honest with words. What you have is not finished by any means, but a lot of directors love the ones that aren't finished because they can get a feel of the story and come up with their ideas for the movie. So what I want is for you to allow us to represent you and get this out into the hands who can make this into something big and get to the people to enjoy." So I said, "What?" I know I'm kind of slow that way, but I just couldn't believe that someone would rave over one of my pieces, especially an unfinished piece that was originally started on a napkin (I still have it). This was where the road block started but I will post the rest tomorrow because I am tired and I have top get up in a few hours for work.
Catch Ya on the Flip Side ;-P
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