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Cabot O'Callaghan's avatar

A shared reality: my mother was a professional singer before I was born (I'm the product of the a fling of two jazz musicians). She would sing in the house all the time. Your memories of your dad talk-singing poked my heart. Mom did that. Dad was absent.

I first had the dream-urge to write screenplays after reading an article of an outsider who ended up writing screenplays for Star Trek the Next Generation. It was another layer to my uneaten writer sandwich. I've got a lot of regret for not choosing that path when I was young. I bought Final Draft with gift money at the beginning of the pandemic...now it's a peering shadow in my mind now saying "You bought it, are you going to learn how to use it?"

This slapped me in the face: "At what feels like the end of the world, do I have it in me to make expensive, time-consuming art for art’s sake?" Uh, yeah. I think this A LOT.

I have a hand-written quote from the illustrator Christoph Niemann taped to my refrigerator: "It's about showing up and getting started and then something happens or it doesn't. All that matters is enabling the chance for something to happen."

The future we were taught to expect and plan for isn't the future we're getting. Maybe the most radical thing we can do as creators is keep showing up in the midst of the the chaos of our collective metationa.

We need new stories now more than ever.

ps, I ordered your book. I'm sure I'll see myself reflected in the pages.

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Charlotte Dune's avatar

Wow! So cool. And I didn’t even know Geena Davis had a film festival! Awesome too! Don’t write a whole screenplay. Just find someone good at treatments to help you or do a convincing verbal pitch to someone who knows someone. But yes, it may never get made.

I co-produced a film at age 35 that got into big film festivals. Slut or Nut: the Diary of a Rape Trial, then Amazon bought it and called it Diary of a Rape Trial. My friend and I did an indiegogo to fund it so it did break even.

It’s not too hard to learn how to make a treatment and there are many free ones and free scripts online.

Follow your heart! And your creative inspiration!

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