High Heels, Low Tide (Weekend aan Zee) at Broad Humor

The Belgian dramedy, High Heels, Low Tide (Weekend aan Zee), screens at 9pm on Saturday, September 29 at the 2012 Broad Humor Film Festival in Venice, CA. This sassy, poignant film is another great girlfriends movie about four BFFs who gather every year for a weekend of letting loose and letting by the sea. Watch the trailer and then go buy your tickets online at Eventbrite.
  Check out the rest of the festival at broadhumor.com

Casting Director Caroline Liem joins panel for DIY DAY

Casting Director CAROLINE LIEM is on board for Broad Humor's all-day workshop for independent filmmakers, DIY DAY: Production for The New Paradigm. A pro with a feel for comedy, Caroline will be sharing some insights on how to set your project up to succeed by getting the right talent in place.The workshop will take place on Friday, September 28th from 11 - 5 pm. 

CAROLINE LIEM has been discovering new talent and has worked with some of the top directors and producers on over 50 feature films and television shows and pilots. Her credits include Beverly Hills Chihuahua 3, Anomaly, X2, The Perfect Sleep, Devour, Blade Trinity, When Do We Eat?, Boogeyman, Auto Focus,  Silent Witness, Life With Bonnie, Two Guys and a Girl, Popular and VIP.

At Disney Studios she has enjoyed working in both their feature and television casting departments overseeing such projects as Gone In Sixty Seconds, Pearl Harbor, 102 Dalmatians, Gangs of New York, Annie, and Geppetto. She most recently served as the Casting Executive for the award winning late night show Jimmy Kimmel Live! and is currently casting a Nickelodeon series.

WGA to Reprise Brunch Discussion Session

Just spoke with Kimberly Meyers over at the WGA Diversity department, and she has agreed to  reprise their fabulous conversation about opportunities for women, minorities and, actually, all independent filmmakers at this year's festival on Sunday morning, Sept. 30. This event will be for badge holders and broads only. 

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Announcing The Unwritten Rules panel with creator Kim Williams

It’s 2012, and the most popular portrait of a funny Black female is Tyler Perry’s Medea. What’s that about? Now, from the realm of New Media, authentic African American voices rise in a new comedy web series with a distinctly feminine point of view. Join the creator, cast and crew of the Unwritten Rules, a new comedy about being the only Black person in the workplace.  The panel will be moderated by OBS instructor and screenwriter Hilliard Guess (The Baby Writer's Cheat Sheet).

Based on her celebrated novel 40 Hours and an Unwritten Rule: The Diary of a Nigger, Negro, Colored, Black, African-American Woman, creator/executive producer Kim Williams explores the comical situations and misunderstanding that persistently complicate race relations in the twenty-first century workplace. Panelists for the Unwritten Rules includes: actress/producer Aasha Davis (Friday Night Lights, Pariah), director Natasha TASH Gray (Let’s Stay Together) and writer/director Angie Comer, winner of Broad Humor’s 2010 Award for Best Short with Career Virgin. 

“the Unwritten Rules is a comic look at the fact that we all still have a lot to learn from one another; but are we willing to do the work to get there?”

the Unwritten Rules Panel is just one of many great workshops, parties, screenings, readings, and networking opportunities happening during the four-day Broad Humor Film Festival, which promises to have something for everyone. Detailed information on each day’s offerings is available at www.broadhumor.com

This panel will take place on Saturday, September 29 at 5pm. Tickets - $10 advance purchase / $15 at the door

The 7^th Annual Broad Humor Film Festival tales place September 27-30 at the Electric Lodge in Venice, CA. Broad Humor is the only film festival dedicated to women-created comic content. 

Scripts Needs an Audience

Today, I'm thinking about the difference between playwrights and screenwriters, and in particular what screenwriters can learn from their theater counterparts.  It's a jumble, so this may or may not coalesce into lucid ideas.  I'll give it a go.

Playwrights exercise absolute control over material, screenwriters do not.  Part of the reason is that the playwright controls timing while in movies, the director and editor control timing. If you write comedy, timing can make or break a  laugh, but drama is also about the building and delivering of emotionally triggering moments. Screenplays just are not as complete as play scripts. Screenwriters don't know if their story works so long as it is only on the page, which makes it hard to grow and get better. 

Playwrights also can't know from the page either if their play works as theater, only if it works as literature the way Shakespeare does. Text on the page doesn't tell you if a joke will work as dialogue.  Reading Moliere, I don't laugh. Yet almost any production of Moliere delivers one belly laugh after another.  Playwrights have opportunities to get a read from real audiences on their work at every stage of their development. They get plays produced by small theaters and hear their words come out of the mouths of various performers. They cannot blame the director or actors if the same scene falls flat in two different productions. They learn how to write scenes that actors can act and that audiences will respond to.  Staged readings will draw an audience and allow playwrights to test their work in a theater with live actors.  But readings of scripts are not the same as readings of plays because the screen is not a stage.  What is a screenwriter to do?

Storytelling Our Way to Happiness

I'm still thinking about the question of women's happiness which I have blogged about before. While I was cleaning today, I accidentally ripped an old, graying newspaper clipping stuck on the side of my refrigerator. Before throwing it away, I read it over again and realized why I've kept it all these years.  I love the ideas of the philosopher, Richard Rorty, about storytelling and self-creation. We can make and remake ourselves through the stories we tell. If you have a philosophical bent, read on.

In his ideal of self-creation ... Rorty's new twist is to stress language and literature. The task, as he sees it is to replace the descriptions and labels imposed on us by others – family, professions, culture – with our own descriptions, our own language.  We create ourselves by telling our own story.