Writing Teenage Bodyguard - A Screenplay

The Writing Process - Correspondence - Part 16

I'm including here my emails to the producer after submitting the screenplay. He shall remain anonymous for now, so I’m using “A” for his name. They already have another screenplay of mine that I adapted from Kelly Abell's spy romance novel, Sealed in Lies, which started this whole thing when the producer contacted me from seeing it in my listing on MovieBytes.com. So I also sent Kelly a copy of the screenplay. She may not be interested, or may not be into reading a screenplay, but under the circumstances I thought it only appropriate. 

This first email went with the attached screenplay.

My email of 2/3/2015:

Hi A,

Well, I finished the Teenage Bodyguard screenplay and retitled it “Slipping The Enterprise”, because that is what we did, slipped by them and they called themselves, The Enterprise.

This is about the fastest and hardest I’ve worked on a project. Getting all the dates straight and trying to fathom what happened in reality from newspaper articles, court documents, people’s recollections and then making it a cohesive whole and hopefully an entertaining story on top of that, wasn’t easy.

It seemed odd there was no police report of the murder (I asked for one twice) but it was reported in the newspaper. The police homicide report was originally taken by a Sherriff’s Deputy and the Sherriff was involved with the crime family and he also ended up in jail.

Anyway, here it is.

All the best!

Cheers!

His response 2/4/2015:

Hey JZ,

Thanks for the email if you want my opinion I liked the Teenage Bodyguard more and being it more about your personal / emotional story. But anyway as I said I can’t tell you anything before you have finished it and we have evaluated it.

Good luck with the writing!

Thanks,

A.

My Reply 2/4/2015:

Hi A.

I do appreciate your opinion. The title is still tentative, as I see this as a collaborative effort working toward the best final product possible. So I’m somewhat flexible as in the end I see it as a team effort.

My concern was that the original title might sound too much like a Disney teenage film and I liked what they did with titling, “The Place Beyond the Pines”. I did like the original title, as it’s so clear and to the point. Although the newer title does more so exemplify in many ways my character as the main character.

I told the story in the best way I could tell it and I did it the way I did because at the time I didn’t know half the story of what I was involved in. Knowing that other half of the story, about who we were up against, really makes it all the more interesting.

This process has shown me now what I was involved in back then and has been an interesting journey, even over these past few weeks. For one, I’ve come to realize that someone I thought was a friend had basically thrown me to organized crime to protect himself. I should have seen that coming but who could foresee such a thing as this story happening to them?

I look forward to hearing the results of evaluation and decision on the screenplay.

All the best.

---

By the way, after March 25th, 2015 I will start looking for their email on what their decision is.

I await his reply….

UPDATE: Today is 2/9/2015 and the date after which at some point we should hear about my "Sealed in Lies" adaptation and if the production company is interested in pursuing that project. They said it takes about seven weeks and we're no past that. I'm wishing luck to the novelist, Kelly Abell (and myself) good luck on what could be a fun film. This will also be useful in telling how the timeline will go with Teenage Bodyguard\Slipping The Enterprise. A beta reader just finished reading that screenplay and really seemed to like it a lot, so high hopes. 

NOTE: I wish Wattpad had spell checker.

UPDATE: Today is 2/18/2015. I got an email on Monday from the producer. When I had submitted, I got the feeling from his response that he didn't understand I was submitting the screenplay, that maybe he just thought I was showing him my progress since it was just too soon to have finished a screenplay already. So I wrote back. He finally read that email and said he was surprised how quickly I wrote it (19 days) and he would now submit it into their evaluation process. So the date of expecting it back has changed now, being delayed by a week. Still waiting to hear on Sealed in Lies, which he said is in the next batch to go through for evaluations.

UPDATE: Today is 3/31/2015. A week ago, having waited way beyond seven weeks for the reading queue and time, and then even a couple of weeks and only then emailing the producer, I sent another email asking for an update. Nothing. No response. Well, maybe he's out of town. Or annoyed. Kelly Abell, the author of Sealed in Lies, which I adapted and the producer also has and was the focus of recent email my queries, emailed me last Friday looking for an update.

So I emailed the producer again. And again, there was no response. So I emailed her back late on Monday to say still no response and for my own original screenplay (detailed in these pages), I was just going to wait for a response and continue to peddle it elsewhere. If someone else wants it first, they may win out. It's really all about who will take it and the best offer and deal, in the end. I did give the producer first look as I said I would, right? Not nowever, first sale, necessarily and not, if it takes too long. But if there is a way and they want it, I'd be happy to work with them.

I just went through this with The New Yorker magazine with a poem I submitted titled "Pvt Ravel's Bolero Flashmob". I went past their timeline on it getting read. Then, waited. Then contacted them on Facebook, then email, then Facebook, then email, then gave up and submitted to Zymbol (also sent them my Men in the City story, inspired by Clive Barker's painting of the same name which he had a contest for and I didn't win). Finally I got an email rejecting my poem from TNY magazine. 

It's a waiting game.