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Lesson 7
Reply to post your assignment.
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17 Replies
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What I learned today: once you have your list of 10 things – it’s easier to play around and tailor make the letters.
Title: Red
Format/Genre: 1 hour serialized TV drama/ gangster
Can there be true love for a god-fearing Jewish gangster?
Samuel is hopeful and fearful. Together with his blood brother, he’s going to Coney Island on a double date with an astonishing woman who’s swept him off his feet.
Only one problem – to get the clams to treat the girls, they robbed the speakeasy of a blood thirsty local gang lord, who’s out for revenge!
Just when things are going Samuel’s way, the gang lord and his corrupt police henchmen crash the romantic dinner!
Samuel is badly beaten, abandoned by Jacob and arrested on a fake charge.
How can he win back his true love?
Request: If you’re happy with the concept, happy to share the pilot script.
Bio: Apart from placing in TV pilot contests, Camilla wrote her Law School graduation paper (cum laude) on the Italian gangster Lucky Luciano.
Contact Information:
Camilla Erlandsdotter
Email: XX
Mobile: XX
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David’s Query Letter
What I learned from this assignment is the importance of leading with your most marketable hook and keeping it short and sweet.
What if crazed sports nut stole the Stanley Cup?
Charlie’s beloved Flyers are on the verge of capturing the Stanley Cup when Roski, an ex-Flyer, scores the winning goal. Charlie’s so devastated he forgets his one year anniversary with Kate. She breaks up with him, tired of him choosing sports over her. What’s more, his dad- a former hockey player- is in desperate need of a surgery he can’t afford. His dying wish is to hold the Stanley Cup, just once. After Roski blasts Philly fans on TV, a vengeful Charlie hatches a plot that his swindling roommate Victor readily supports.
They’re going to steal the Stanley Cup!
And sure enough, they swipe it from an unsuspecting Roski at a nightclub. But his bodyguards- Russian mafia members- track down Charlie’s address. Charlie and Victor flee as a $1 million reward’s offered for the stolen Cup. Victor knows a sports collector who’ll pay $3 million for it. So the guys race to NYC as Roski’s bodyguards chase after them, guns blazing. Meanwhile, Roski’s assaulted in Central Park for losing the fabled Cup. When the collector hands him a $3 million check, Charlie faces the biggest dilemma of his life:
Cash the check or return the Cup?
If you like the concept, I’d be happy to send you the script.
BIO: David is a produced, multi-optioned writer who has been hired for several assignments. Born and raised outside of Philly- and having played ice hockey for UCLA, his alma mater- David has intimate knowledge of the fanaticism of Flyers fans.
David Agnew Penn
310-908-9726
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What I learned from this lesson is to use the components of Lesson 6 to compose my query letter.
QUERY LETTER
My romcom Kennel Club features a female Cesar Millan, an L.A. dog groomer who doesn’t trust men, only dogs. When she gets in financial trouble and is about to go out of business, she secretly rents out the dogs she grooms to socially-clueless members of her chess club so they can walk them to meet women, only to find out her dog wants her to be with her nemesis. He’s a fast-talking country-boy TV pitch man from Alabama who is a great chess player but falls apart trying to talk to women. She becomes his dating coach and tells him to learn from the dogs of the ladies he is interested in, because they will indicate the personality of the woman. When he uses her dog, however, he discovers the dog knows what is best for her, and him: for them to be together. Think Hitch meets Cheers at the dog park.
Combining the success of Queen’s Gambit and Beethoven with a target audience of ninety million American homes with pets, as well as those who love dogs around the world, this story brings a Hitch style dating coach who is the only female member of her chess club to give advice to a new chess player who is the only one who can beat her. He uses his fast-talking TV pitch voice to throw her off her game in their first match, but she later turns the tables on him with her own style of flirting to come back and win the second. Her dog decides their final match and they both realize they are meant for each other.
A quirky group of chess players change their chess club into Kennel Club, using the adorable dogs of cameo L.A. actors who drop them off for grooming as well as relationship advice from our protagonist groomer. In the end she realizes she must use her own advice to overcome her trust of men issues to allow her much-loved dog to not only bring her happiness, but also teach her how to love again.
I’ve produced four shows that aired on Discovery and have written a first-place award winning screenplay as well as three others that were finalists in well-known contests. My love of dogs shines through this script, and I’d like to send it over to you should you find my high concept interesting and marketable.
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George Schwimmer’s Query Letter
What I learned doing this assignment is to include very specific elements in a query letter.
Time Tracker by George Schwimmer
Back to the Future meets 48 Hrs. A delightfully violent action/comedy suited for an A-list actor like Matt Damon.
Why would an unjustly discharged CIA agent team up with time-traveling Merlin the Magician?
ADAM KINGSTON, 49, a former CIA operative living in Washington, D.C., wakes from a dream in which he is King Arthur fighting a fire-breathing dragon, foreshadowing that Adam soon will be confronted by human ‘dragons’ and by Death. Meanwhile, JACK MORDAIN, 70, a U.S. Senator, once a renegade CIA assassin and now a key member of a murderous cabal, is conspiring to assassinate a presidential candidate.
Although threatened by two CIA goons; visited by MERLIN the Magician, 28 (who arrives as a flamboyant young Black man and tells Adam he once was King Arthur); and recruited by the Secret Service, Adam strongly resists getting involved, until his friend LANCE, 50, is murdered and Adam is arrested for the death. Released, he promptly is captured and physically abused by rogue CIA agents—but escapes, with the help of three teenage street kids he has befriended.
Taught time travel by Merlin, Adam goes back six months, where he is shot and gravely wounded but journeys with Merlin to the year 3023 to be healed by a future—and even more frenetic—self of Merlin. A memory flickering in the back of Adam’s mind leads him back in time to meet his own orphaned five-year-old self, discover a secret letter from his father, meet a former Soviet spy and learn from him that his father also had been a CIA agent and had been murdered by Mordain forty-five years earlier.
Just after Adam returns to the present, his love interest, JENNY, 40—a Secret Service agent—is killed protecting him, but Adam takes her to the future Merlin, who revivifies and heals her. Throughout these turbulent events Mordain’s goons repeatedly try to kill Adam. After Adam and Jenny come back from a final trek to the past to prove Mordain killed Adam’s parents, they fall into a trap set by Mordain and are captured. However, using a momentary time trip back to the previous day, Adam summons the Secret Service, whose SWAT team swiftly takes Mordain and his men into custody.
Discovering hitherto unknown funds left him by his father in his letter, Adam begins the creation of the family he always has yearned for, with Jenny and the three street kids.
These events are often delightfully sprinkled with humor.
Adam is the Indiana Jones of time travel.
This is a four-quadrant tale, a potential franchise anchor.
Be glad to send you a copy of Time Tracker to evaluate.
Bio:
› Have written ten screenplays (five of them Magical Realism), four innovative stage plays.
› My adaptation, A Walk Into The Light, of Julius Lester’s novel Do Lord Remember Me, was optioned by TV film producer Lee Levinson.
› My screenplay Letting Go was a Finalist in a Texas Film Institute Competition, was optioned by producer/director Rachel Roy, who shot five minutes of the script, which later was a Finalist in The Writers Place Screenwriting Contest, Placed Third as an Independent Scenario at a Canadian International Annual Film Festival and was at The Los Angeles Film Festival. Ms. Roy later optioned another of my screenplays.
› Two of my screenplays won contests. Jeff Silverstein, President, Access & Development, NEHST Studios, wrote of my screenplay Mystic, the story of Edgar Cayce, “Extremely well-written.”
› Earned a two-year Certificate in Film from UCLA Extension, also took the nine-months-long ScreenwritingU ProSeries course and studied the mini-movie screenwriting method.
› Authored fifteen—mostly 5 star—narrative non-fiction books.
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What I learned: The structure (Hook, Act 1, turning point, conflict) that Hal spoke about on Saturday really hit home for me. That makes so much sense, and it works!
Genre: 30-minute Sci-Fi/Comedy
The universe is about to end. Now what?
Granted, the cosmos consists of a single grocery store—Eatam’s, “the store with everything and more!” But its parking lot is experiencing frequent extreme weather events; in the store, merchandise and people are losing tangibility.
At the center of the store is The Piano Bar from Hell, where Jackie Diamond goes out of his way to NOT entertain customers. But he and his music might be the key to saving the dying universe. It’s the only place unaffected by the unfolding catastrophe.
Jackie believes that his music shields him and his domain from the effects of the global meltdown. But radical cleaning lady Alice Brady is convinced that Jackie’s fawning patron, store owner Go D, protects him for some nefarious purpose—while letting everyone else fade into non-existence.
Jackie must decide: does he risk using his privileged position to help the inhabitants of Eatam’s escape oblivion? If he does, where will they go? If he doesn’t, where will HE go?
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SERIES ENGINE: As the series develops, Jackie and the crew must burst the bubbles of increasingly larger universes—each with bigger problems.
If you like the concept, I’d be happy to send you the pilot script.
Peter Saltzman
BIO: A world-class composer and pianist whose works have been published and played around the globe, Saltzman has also been a semi-finalist in a ScreenCraft TV pilot competition for an earlier version of The Bubble.
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This reply was modified 2 years ago by Peter Saltzman.
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This reply was modified 2 years ago by Peter Saltzman.
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This reply was modified 2 years ago by Peter Saltzman.
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Ian Patrick’s Query Letter
What I learned doing this assignment is to write a short and well written query letter with hooks.
Dear ____
Since you’ve expressed interest in Action films, I would like to present this one for your consideration:
The Coming Storm
How do you stop a terrorist threat when your superiors are telling you to stand down and follow protocol?
Newly-appointed African American detective MILES BROUSSARD determines to continue working on his own to identify the leaders of the white nationalist group American Storm Troupers who are committing crimes and blaming Jews and Black Americans.
Following evidence that another Oklahoma City bombing might be in the works, he convinces his Lieutenant and FBI supervisor to stop a truck driven by the AST leader that is speeding toward City Hall. When it’s found to be empty, Broussard is thrown off the case for raising a false alarm. But of course he refuses to take no for an answer.
After being captured by an AST sniper, he discovers that the real plan was always to frame him for an assassination which the AST will use as justification for their fellow terrorist groups to start The Storm, a race war that will engulf the entire country.
BIO: Ian Patrick Williams shares the Chicago Emmy award for co-authoring the teleplay BLEACHER BUMS for PBS-TV; the script was later adapted and produced as a M.O.W. by Showtime. In 2017 Status Media Entertainment released his Roaring 20’s piece GANGSTER LAND. Masterfilm International purchased his action screenplay THE BLACK SEA RAID; MJR Films has a current option on PROPHET OF THE THIRD REICH.
Please let me know if I may send you the full script for The Coming Storm.
Thank you,
Ian Patrick Williams
Address
Phone
Email
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Tom’s Query Letter
What I learned from this is the recent work on hooks and synopsis really helped.
OPENING STATEMENT STUFF.
A NEW YEARS WISH. Genre:
Drama – Inspirational
It’s New Years Eve, and young Rick, like most people, is certain this time next year his life will be better.
Ricks tells a Monk his life is meaningless for the next year and he’d rather skip over all the crap he has to go through.
This Monk, who speaks in parables and is obsessed with old episodes of Columbo, has the power to focus Rick’s obsession and make it a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Rick wakes up a year later and has money but he’s not happy. He seeks out the Monk who is no help, but Sere, the Monks granddaughter and caretaker provides him a path.
Rick must learn the four immeasurable virtues of life and find out what gives him true happiness, by the next New Years eve or is old programming will become permanent or his life, and everyone he loves will pass him by.
As the Monk tells him, “Or the wheel of the cart will forever follow the Ox.”
If you like the concept, I’ll send the script.
BIO: Tom Basham wrote, directed and produced a film that won Best Picture at the International Family Film Festival in Hollywood, and produced three other feature films in distribution.
Email: Tom@sapfilms.com
IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1722276/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_2
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Rita’s Query Letter
What I learned doing this assignment:
Cut, cut, cut. It was good to have another shot at the synopsis a few days later, makes it easier to cut.
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BLUE MOON
Genre: Romantic Comedy
True love only comes once in a Blue Moon… after you fake your way into owning a business you know nothing about.
When Dawn meets a handsome contractor she pretends to own a painting company and signs a contract to finish one of his projects.
The only problem is that she’s actually a psychology professor who just lectured her class about authenticity, so now she has to gather up some workers and get the job done.
Where else to find a paint crew but by plucking random losers from a parking lot?
After a few disastrous mishaps, Dawn and her colorful crew find their groove. They just might pull it off!
PLUS the contractor asked her out to dinner… but what if he finds out she lied? Does Dawn come clean or keep up the charade?
Either way, she loses at love… unless she finds a way to have it all.
If you like this concept, I’ll be happy to send you the script.
Sincerely,
Rita Doyle Roberts
BIO: Rita Roberts is a professional artist who inherited a painting company and had to bluff her way through commercial contracts as the lead on construction sites. Blue Moon Bay Painting is now a successful business… and a great way to get dates.
[Contact info]
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Jalynn’s Query Letter
What I learned doing this assignment is you’ve got a reliable process for putting a query together. Thank you!
Dear (Producer),
I loved the last western film you produced and thought you might be interested in a contemporary western with great roles for two bankable actors: A teenage heartthrob and an aging well-loved actor.
Title: Heart of a Mustang Genre: Drama/Contemporary Western
Hunter is a happy teen who plays violin and has a comfortable life until his “dead” father comes home. When Hunter learns this man is a drug-dealing ex-con instead of the military hero his mother painted him to be, Hunter jumps the rails. He skips school, makes a new friend, and learns what it takes to be a thief. Before the day’s end, Hunter gets caught robbing hotel guests, and a judge sends him to Promise Ranch for troubled boys.
But how does a juvie sidestep bullies, rattlesnakes, hungry coyotes and murder on the prairie? Hunter bonds with a wild horse and learns to train her from an old cowboy named Smokey who’s as good with troubled teens as he is with mustangs. Plus, Hunter meets Haylie and gets his first crush on a girl who’s a better cowboy than he is.
When Hunter confronts the man who murdered his mother, he must decide if he wants to be a killer like his father or the talented young man his mother raised him to be.
BIO: Jalynn Venis is an optioned screenwriter and former broadcast and non-fiction television producer who has completed several screenwriting assignments. She co-wrote Heart of a Mustang with M.J. Evans, the author of the young adult book In the Heart of a Mustang. Both women are equestrians.
If you like the concept, I’d be happy to send you the screenplay.
Best regards,
Jalynn Venis
303-524-4660 jalynnvenis@gmail.com
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<font color=”#343434″ face=”Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif”>Jon C. Scheide </font> Query Letter
<font color=”#343434″ face=”Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif”>What I learned doing this assignment is…how to tighten and tighten and tighten</font>
Title: OFF THE GRID
Written by: Jon C. Scheide
Genre: Detective / Thriller
No good deed goes unpunished.
Feeling good about himself after dropping a subpoena on a dead-beat-dad, Marty, a private investigator decides to help a stranger, which puts him on a collision course with a whip-smart former supermodel, her abusive pro-football player husband, his corrupt bookie partners and shady cops, some of which may be family.
Of course, Marty ultimately takes the case.
It’s a simple gig, safeguard Claire while she finalizes her celebrity divorce and sets up a new quiet life. But after the wife-beating husband gets physical, the goon squad puts pressure on Claire’s family, and Marty’s own Uncle tells him it’s better if he just walks away, (which is what cost him his career as a cop), Marty knows what he has to do.
Teach Claire how to truly disappear and live off the grid.
Before the ink dries on her divorce papers Claire and Marty make their move, switching cars, slipping on and off subways, confusing the husband and escaping the hitmen sent to make sure what Claire knows disappears with her. In the last moments Claire hopes that Marty will join her, but no…
<font color=”#343434″ face=”Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif”>Marty too, realizes he has fallen in love and to best protect her, Claire must disappear, even from him.</font>
Some time later a one way ticket arrives, a second chance, if Marty’s willing to take it.
There’s only one choice…
Thanks for your time, if you’d like to read Off The Grid, I’m happy to send over a copy.
BIO:
Jon is a produced indie filmmaker and screenwriter with over two decades of experience in features, television, journalism, fiction and new media. He currently has one optioned screenplay and a graphic novel series in publication.
<font face=”Arial”>Jon C. SCHEIDE</font>
jscheide@mac.com +1 323.314.1974
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Lindy Baker’s Query Letter
What I learned doing this assignment are amazing steps to make my query letter exciting enough for a producer to want to read it and ask for my script. I love how it is evolving.
Title: Rainbow’s Secret
Genre: Drama, Mystery – Inspired by a true story
Lauren was born having visions of events before they happened. She’s sick of it. What’s the purpose of a vision if you can’t change the outcome? She had visions of the bombing of the Twin Towers. No one of importance listened.Lauren, a professional psychic, going through a divorce, hates who she is. Needing to find some kind of purpose in having visions and to fill the holes in her empty life, she assists police departments in cases of missing children.
A recent case she worked on had a failed ending. Emotionally overwhelmed, her compassion takes over and she cannot resist the pleas of a woman whose 6-year-old great niece is missing and agrees to help.
Intently following rainbow clues from visions that she believes will lead her to the child, she is led to one suspect after another. She finally discovers the real meaning of the rainbows.
In her frantic search she accidentally finds evidence in what appears to be an abandoned trailer. The trailer disappears overnight.
A treacherous group of pedophiles, behind a series of disappearances of children, unleashes their intention to destroy her. It’s the power of these evil people against everything she is. Should she run in fear from these people or stay and fight them to save the missing girl?
If you like the concept, I’d be happy to send you the script.
BIO: Lindy’s 2-page column appeared in Las Vegas Fun & Fit Magazine for 10 years. She received a Public Service Award from the Stark County Prosecutor’s Office for her volunteer efforts as a rape and assault counselor and was named one of the “Top 10 Psychics in the US” by Globe Magazine. San Diego’s WB5 News did an expose on psychics and astrologers and found Lindy “best” and “credible.”
Lindy Baker
(858) 272-6463
Email: lindybaker007@gmail.com
xxxxx Drive
North Las Vegas, NV 89032 -
Kathy’s Query Letter
What I learned doing this assignment is writing a Query Letter and putting down my actual experience with this story.
Can a woman who once lived as a second- class citizen in a third world country survive again when her own country wants to turn back the clocks on women?
Synopsis:
A young naive woman meets and falls in love with an older and wiser man who works in Saudi Arabia. After a world wind courtship, they marry, and she quits her job, and leaves her family and friends to live with him there.
Being a young woman in love she discovers her world changes when he starts to play games by putting her down and using physical and emotional abuse to manipulate and control her through the culture there.
She finds the strength to leave him and come back home where she goes into marriage counseling where she divorces him. After building her self-esteem, self- worth and life back again she goes back to school and finishes her education.
Years later she discovers that her country is becoming like the third world country she once lived in when they want to start taking away women’s rights.
BIO
I actually lived in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia back in 1982 through the Bechtel Corporation where this actually happened. Through Counseling and volunteering at my local YWCA, I learned about domestic violence, and I’m concerned about the direction my country is heading over losing Women’s Rights in America.
At your Request, I will be happy to send you, my script.
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VIC VALLEAU QUERY LETTER #7
What I learned doing this assignment is: My Bio is unique and I am uniquely qualified.
TITLE “PERKS OF FATHERHOOD”
BIO: Writer and Stand Up comedy superstar at Comedy Story on Sunset, Improv in Santa Monica and also on Sunset and Ventura Blvd, IMDB, Truman show re-writes on teaser, published writer of medical-legal articles, optioned scripts.
In the world of women’s fertility treatments: “Are men really necessary?”
In this media inspired, unique search for true love, an unlucky guy stacks up enemies, is evicted from his donor job in a posh women’s fertility clinic, ultimately faces homelessness. Risking his job, Bob lurks in his clinics parking lot, offering flower bouquets to single unengaged women clients. He teases them:
No ring by Spring? What about me? Just list me as father on the birth certificate! You can even do it without me and the baby uses your last name.
“Áre men really necessary?” In today’s scientific world, human reproductive technology, ‘Perks of Fatherhood” humorously follows the ups and downs of one man’s plea for fatherhood. Independent single women are flocking to fertility services. Marriage is down, population is declining, Bridal shops are closing by the thousands as women cope with their already confused world of dating, love and marriage and babies. Bob must deal with all of that and a fractured penis. This is the first ever comedy treatment of this groundbreaking trend.
If you like the concept, I’d be happy to send you the script.
Cell: 310-985-3525, Office: 310-452-8877, 3435 Ocean Park Blvd. #107-508, Santa Monica, CA 90405
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Dave’s Query Letter
What I learned doing this assignment is the importance of being brief and to the point.
Fifty years from now, a young English lawyer must cross an America divided into independent states based on livelihood, identity or philosophy, to rescue his wife, a journalist sentenced to die in a military state.
Nigel and his friend, Roger, travel by bus, taxi, train and small plane across the continent to reach Shiloh, the military state where his wife, Livia, is imprisoned. They endure four assassination attempts, and Nigel, who has never been in a fist fight, survives being shot and learns to engage in hand-to-hand combat.
His love for Livia fuels his journey, and they reach Shiloh before she is executed. With the help of an underground movement, he and Roger free Livia and escape to England.
If the concept sounds interesting, I’ll be happy to send you the script.
BIO: David Holloway’s script, “Powers That Be” was selected a semifinalist in the Santa Barbara Screenplay Competition.
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LD’s query letter
What I learned: putting together the marketing approach helps forces you to rethink key aspects of the story.
Title: Everybody’s Phobic (and then there’s me)
By LD Janakos
Genre. RomCom
How long can a popular podcaster keep hidden his multiple social phobias when an outspoken public speaker pursues him?
While trying to find the right support animal to keep out of the wrong relationships. Jaxon meets popular activist Angela, who needs Jaxon and his support dog to help her expose a group of pet stores drugging animals for better sales.
But that’s not the worst of it to make him sweat.
Jaxon joins with Angela only to eventually get kidnapped by a ruthless network of illegal sellers of exotic animals. Now he must publicly do as the kidnappers say, or suffer the consequences.
When Angela too gets kidnapped, the two end up together and see each other in a new light. It’s either escape or die.
They have twenty-four hours.
If you like the concept, I’d be happy to send you the script.
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Title: OUTAGE
Genre: Dystopian Comedy
An annoying millennial must team up with his soon-to-be father-in-law, an extreme survivalist, to make a cross-country journey for his wedding after an apocalyptic solar storm darkens the country.
His friends holding a high-tech glamping bachelor party are cut short when a once-in-a-lifetime event takes down the power grid. In sheer panic, he turns to his future father-in-law, asking him if he can help him make it back for the wedding.
Unanticipated challenges litter the highways and by-ways, making it virtually impossible to get through.
With militias, doomsday cultists, and lynch mobs controlling the countryside, soccer moms and farmers once neighborly is no longer, but help can come from the least expected. Can these two survive each other and make it to the wedding?
Or will the bride be alone standing at the altar?
If you like the concept of OUTAGE, I’d be happy to send you the script.
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Jani’s Query Letter
What I Learned?
I learned you should always keep it simple when you deal with producers. I also learned if you don’t have any credibility in the industry, you can leave out your bio.
GENRE: DRAMA/ROMANCE
TITLE: LIVE FOREVER
Joe sees his father’s ghost and wonders, is he next?
Joe arrives in New York City to set up his Serpentarium Show in Central Park. He meets Becky, a mildly, autistic woman, falls in love, until Jet shows up and lets all the poisonous snakes loose.
Becky and Joe make a quick getaway to upstate New York. Becky decides to join him as a vigilante until…
… Jet winds up killing Joe with the same garrote that was given to Joe by his grandfather. Becky becomes Jet’s next victim. Instead, she winds up killing Jet with the same garrote. Becky escapes to Central Park where she first met Joe.
While crossing the street, Becky gets hit by a van. Will Becky die, only to reincarnate to meet Joe again in another lifetime, so they can live forever?
Sincerely,
Jani B. Siwek
(954)748-2042
Linked In: Jani B.
Email: jsiwek@bellsouth.net
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