“Quiet Reading” at Barnsdall Art Park
Speakeasy Bookmark by Esther Pearl Watson
Smart Gals will also be showing off their awesome collection of bookmark art and hand-made pillows with writing excerpts (including one by yours truly). You can get some more details from my blog post on the event.
RIDE THE NINE feature film in pre-production
A feature film I wrote recently (in story collaboration with the producers) is now going into financing and pre-production.
The film’s called RIDE THE NINE, and it’s an unusual take on a pool hustling story. Very intimate, noirish, and doing a good job of both satisfying and subverting the conventions one might expect of the genre. I’m proud of the script and really looking forward to going into shooting.
We’ve just recently put together a site at ride-the-nine.com to be a home for news and updates about the picture.
TEXAS 1960 selected for three more festivals!
In the past week, we’ve gotten word that TEXAS 1960 has been accepted in three great festivals:
1. The Lone Star International Film Festival is held in Fort Worth, Texas. I can’t tell you how excited we are to screen in the state after using it as our fictional setting. We’d come close with the Dallas Video Fest, but there was some confusion, as you can read about here. The cool thing is: it’s the Lone Star organizers who had recommended us to the Dallas fest, and now have invited us to screen in Fort Worth.
2. The Zero Film Festival is designed to support “authentically” independent movies. If you’re wondering “authentic” means in this context, it’s really no puzzle: the key is that all films are self-financed by the filmmakers. Based in Brooklyn, but they’re putting together tours of the fest’s films to other cities.
3. NewFilmmakers NY doesn’t have a typical “fest” structure—rather, they put on ongoing film programs at the Anthology Film Archives in Manhattan. TEXAS 1960 was chosen for the winter series and will screen in February.
TEXAS 1960 selected for Olympia Film Festival!
We’ve heard back from our first festival submission, and it was a yes! Texas 1960 will be screened at the Olympia Film Festival in a program scheduled for Monday, November 9th. I’m going to try to be there… it’s a great excuse to see Olympia again, home to great music and art… I grew up listening to K records releases non-stop… Anyway, it’s fantastic news.
Early Sketches
Doing a hard-drive cleanup, I found the sketches I did a couple years ago that wound up being the seed of the script for TEXAS 1960.
They look pretty mean… The fellas in TEXAS 1960 aren’t nearly so tough.
