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
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SO EXCITING!!!!!
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