Winning!
Hello, everybody! I’ve been busy the last few days spending time with the wonderful, talented and dare I say, handsome Jared Kelly, the winner of the 2011 Just Effing Entertain Me Screenplay Competition with his script, Descendant. Jared will be blogging about his experiences later this week – I think I’m exhausting him! However, he did remark to me yesterday, as we were on our way to another meeting that this is the only competition that picks you up at the airport and takes you directly to a bar. Lol! True enough, I do pick you up, and, well, Jared looked like he needed a drink. Plus he’s British, so I just figured….(that’s him at one of my favorite bars in LA, the St. Felix.)
So far, Jared has had a meeting at Gersh, Voyage Media and with Andrew Kersey. In coming days, he has meetings with Gold Circle, APA, Circle of Confusion and Intrigue! On Wednesday evening, we had a lovely time at the Roosevelt Hotel with the inimitable Dan McGrath (SNL, the Simpsons, King of the Hill) where Jared and Dan discussed the similarities between comedy and horror and some of their favorite black comedies. We had a lovely evening in this venerable old Hollywood institution (site of the very first Academy Award ceremony) and even went on to get after dinner drinks at my favorite haunt, Jones.
Speaking of Intrigue Entertainment – the JFEME winner last year, Ian Simpson, who got repped through the competition by Andrew Kersey, is submitting a very big, fun action script to Intrigue soon and Andrew says everybody is very excited about the material! I was SO excited to hear this news from Andrew and Ian, if you’re reading this, you are in BIG trouble for not telling me what you were working on!! 
Another of Jared’s prizes was that I was able to introduce him to Stephen Susco, who has bent over backwards and has been mentoring Jared, reading two of his treatments, giving him advice, etc. Stephen, for the guy who wrote Leatherface: 3D, you are an angel!
Today, Jared and I are going to meet Conrad Vernon (Madagascar, Monsters v. Aliens, Shrek, Shrek 2) and tour the Dreamworks campus and then this afternoon, it’s a VIP tour of the Warner Bros. lot.
For me, one of the most interesting take-aways so far was the conversation Jared had with Nat Mundel at Voyage Media. Nat discussed how the landscape today requires writers to really brand and market themselves. Something I think that we suspected, but Nat confirmed that a writer has to SERIOUSLY create a package of who they are as a person and as a writer. He talked about how Voyage helps a writer really be clear about his or her goals as a writer (also direct? produce?) and helps that writer connect the dots to make it happen – almost like the old-fashioned publishing houses of days gone by (and I do mean GONE daddy GONE) who worked very closely with their writers in terms of strategy, buzz building, goal setting, etc. I found the whole conversation super exciting and I know that Jared and I had quite a conversation about just what the Jared Kelly package and story are as we left. Something to be thinking about, you readers – what is your story? What are your goals? What does the package of YOU really look like?
At any rate, Jared is here for several more days and we are having a hoot. You’ll hear from Jared soon as I give him a chance to catch his breath!
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The congenial host, obviously; I’m sure Jared has been having a blast and I’ll look forward to what he has to say about it all… that is if he’s not spending all his free time up the pub drinking Guinness (and you were dead right about that, take it from (another) Brit; obviously you went to finishing school in Switzerland).
I especially liked the comment on Jared’s package (although a full length picture may have demonstrated your point better) but yes, interesting; it’s been on my mind since my last visit here to your blog (letting off steam about self promotion) even researching and implementing some techniques on that very subject matter since; pontificating them even before I know what I’m talking about really (but I was always good at that; pretending I know it all – at least until the day I do and then getting embarrassed when I realised how stupid I might’ve sounded. But then that’s how I became me; got an education about the stuff they don’t teach you down there in the murky lower echelons of the socioeconomic ladder (pretentious? Nah… despite what they said; I was just in training to become obnoxiously but authentically insufferable, I always argued).
But yes, good point; how SHOULD I present MY story, just which one of my personalities would better serve my goals? Humph, you got me thinking. How should I present whom and not who I am when I seem to be stuck in a vortex that always arrives me on a planet, population me and which I have named Prolifica? Recently I took two weeks to decide whether to publish an anthology of complete and utter madness, not by any means for a discerning reader because its removed from my more serious titles, but presenting a side of me that most would keep hidden even if it did lurk within them; but in the end I decided that those stories were are a large part of me too; that I’m not like many; can’t stick to one genre, one style, and so ultimately, I have to listen to the voices; I’m strange, but I can market that… can’t I?
So after a big argument and many a strange face materializing in my looking glass (where my own package was all too evident and reminding me to put on pants but better than a table for seven… especially without the proper attire) I realised ALL of them were valid; all vying for attention, screaming and scratching, clawing behind that tempered glass actually (they don’t call me Sybil for nuttin’) yeah, me, multifaceted weirdo, that’ll work, SURELY, for if Amazon can put irregular shaped items in a gift bag then so the hell can I… but hopefully I’ll be able to deliver in time for Christmas (and that’s another, much less interesting story that nonetheless disappointed a one-yr-old in Italy). But will mainstream accept delivery? I dunno. With conviction, staying true to whom I am, perhaps my gift, wrapped with an unwavering ribbon of cunning manipulation, eventually, maybe, they will, I have to believe it. Failing that I’ll just have to save up to pay someone who knows what the eff they’re doing. LOL.
But your blog here has certainly given me pause for reflection in my full-length mirror where, strangely enough, that bitch, you know the one… full of self doubt… was conspicuously absent (probably up the pub getting sloshed… ‘cos she’s British an’ all.. or then again, maybe she just croaked it; haven’t seen her for a long while).
Enjoy the rest of your visit guys, and congratulations Jared.
(ps; Julie, I bumped into an old screen writing/actor friend the other day who says he knows you… he had an interesting opinion on marketing oneself too).