Incremental Progress

Well... now Missouri is in the hunt. Being clever, the Film Commission in Missouri went and found some more money to help incent us film makers to bring our crews and cameras there to produce. Also, our hungry mouths, vehicles, sleep-starved heads, and our constant need for something usually findable at Walmart. So, now there is a slight chance we will shoot a film that occurs in Missouri - IN Missouri. Unless the DoD cooperates, that seems less likely.

Texas passed and Governor Perry signed the increase in incentives for Film in Texas last week and it is now even more attractive to consider staying home.

We also got a relatively direct connection to a MAJOR young male star whose career hangs on his ability to find a bridging vehicle that will take him from teen heart-throb to young male leading man. This story would do PRECISELY that. Hollywood pundits say a role like Cruise's turn in TOP GUN is needed and this is certainly along that line but with much less of the brashness and bravado that marked the immaturity of that character. Gray has his head on straight - he is just trying to keep it DOWN when the universe puts him at the cross roads of WW-III.

The downside - if you consider it one - is his "people" might want it handled by a studio, which could affect the authenticity of the film and story that gets made and the honor - or not - which that filme would afford the men who served at that time. I would love to say men and WOMEN who served, but, unfortunately, this story occurs before the service wized up and realized that women would make EXCEPTIONAL Launch Officers. They have since the '80s when they took charge of the capsules in fully equal positions and are on alert as I type this.

On another front -funding is 50% committed by a Canadian group and there are more than sufficient investors ready to make up the other half awaiting confirmation of this young man, a box-office rich equivalent, and/or two or three committed names in the JCS or SAC HQ or Soviet Launch Control scenes. Once two or three of these names/faces join ranks we can close the financial chapter and move into prep.

And decide on - WHERE. :D

Later.

Steve

Better and Better

There are three general areas competing for us as the shooting location: Texas (Houston mainly), Louisiana (Shreveport), and Michigan (Oscoda - home of the former Wurtsmith Air Force Base).

Each have merits.

Houston: is home for the company and principals. Shooting here would be VERY easy and would allow most of us to sleep in our own beds every night. However, we still would have chores to do. :D Houston is a great place to shoot. Good crews (many of whom I know and have used), superb locations and a helpful Film Commission. The problem in Texas is that the current Film Incentives are only about 5%. We lobbied in Austin for the new regs but that won't get decided for another month or so.

Shreveport: has amazing facilities and some really helpful people. Everyone I talk to says crews are EAGER and helpful. PLUS - Louisiana has a 25-35% tax credit Film Incentive. That means that after all brokerage fees and so on - we get about 20% of our non-actor budget BACK in a check about 6 weeks after we finish shooting. Hard to ignore.

Oscoda, Michigan: This little community has a great location but no crews. We'd have to put everyone up for the entire time and move to Detroit for interiors. The 40% Film Incentive on non-actor expenses SHOULD net us about a 30% check back for our expenses - but, we hear that it is very difficult to comply with their regs and you can't fix it if you didn't do it right to begin with. That old air base will have to be a SUPERB location to compete with Texas and Louisiana.

Tomorrow, Susan and I will be putting together the offering paperwork. Our financial team is already beating the bushes and we expect financial action and commencement of Development very soon.

More later - Steve

Moving right along.

Monday, March 16, 2009

My Executive Producer, Susan Fowler, and I went to Austin to finalize the legal paperwork for the film. Along the way we scouted several locations for the Texas-as-Missouri outdoor sections of the picture and found a number of excellent candidates... including Smithville - the site of Hope Floats. VERY accommodating community and eager to have us there. Looks like Appleton City, Missouri without even squinting. :D

The paperwork only lacks a bank account number so we're very close to handing it all off to the financial guys.

Also had a long discussion with a source for Air Force Uniforms for the period. Things are looking promising there as well.

More as it 'goes live.'

Steve

Incremental Progress

Dateline - Los Angeles - February 13, 2009

My producer, Susan Fowler, my wife, Ruth, and I met in Los Angeles at 11 am on Friday the 13th to travel to Simi Valley and the Ronald Reagan Library and museum. We toured this amazing facility including its star exhibit - Air Force One! This is the VERY PLANE that Richard Nixon flew from Washington to San Clemente on the day of his resignation. For those of you familiar with the novel, this plane plays a role in the climax of the film.

We wanted to get this piece completely right. Touring it gave us a good sense of how the plane FINISHED its life with George W. But, it was different in the Nixon days. A book in the gift shop provided the photos of the appointments then.

One fascinating note. The interior of the plane does NOT smell like a commercial airplane - It smells EXACTLY like a Missile Launch Control Center! I had a major deja vu experience when I stepped in. Amazing.

Legal work on the structure of our production company - Kilo-11, LLC is done and we are only days from completing all the paperwork to begin raising funds. Summer is still in the production schedule.

Update on The Whiteman Scenario - The Film

It was not my intention to go this long without posting. I did, however, get pretty busy and then forgot the login for this blog - so, I've learned a few lessons here. Let's get up to date.

When I shot I FLUNKED SUNDAY SCHOOL in 2006 one of the key players in the success of that movie was Susan Fowler. Susan is a deeply experienced producer with credits longer than the list of banks that have asked for bailouts. There is not a job on-set she hasn't done or managed or both. I called her in early December to let her know that I was going to move the book to the screen and needed her input. She was driving past my house within an hour and came to get the book. The next morning at her office we talked about scope. By Hollywood standards this is a "small budget" film - but by indie film standards - it is BIG budget - Over $10 Million. She said she would have to think about how we might raise that.

That afternoon on her way home from work her lawyer called her to say, "Get to 'XYZ' restaurant NOW. There are investors asking about motion picture opportunities and they need to meet you." She did. She laid out all the projects she was pitching - all of them under half a million dollars - and they said, "That's nice - but we're serious." "Well," she said, "I did have a $10 Million cold-war thriller come in today." She showed them the book and the key executive took it home.

She called me the NEXT DAY to say - "I don't have a copy of your book." She'd only read the cover. I gave her more, learned about the prior meeting, and we waited a few days. The executive LOVED the book and we had a meeting. After explaining the scope and our options and plans he offered to introduce us to his principal. Note: We did not ASK to meet him - it was OFFERED.

I thought it might take me a month or so to get the screenplay adapted. Mark Haynes, a super-talented writer and friend - put me onto Chris Soth's eBook on scriptwriting structure. I knew I had to cut a LOT of the book but where to start was the challenge. From Chris's ebook I spent one whole Saturday outlining the book to movie dramatic curves on an 8 foot white board. From there I wrote the 8 mini-movie outlines that encompassed the plot. Including reading the eBook - this took about 7 hours. I started writing the next day and finished within 6 days - two of which I was out and didn't write a line. Essentially - four, ten-hour days and it was done. It almost wrote itself. Susan couldn't believe it. No one could believe it. I almost STILL don't believe how quickly it revealed itself to me. And it is a RIDE, let me tell you. A LOT of fun and very suspensful, exciting, and yet - with all the heart and spirit of the book.

Our 1st AD said, "This is about the best organized screenplay I've worked on. How long have you been working on this?" When I told him - a week - and this is the first draft - we almost lost him. He couldn't believe it wasn't a heavily workshopped script and wasn't sure he could "trust" me. Six hundred decisions and discussion points later - he knows how profound sitting with a story for over 30 years is in deepening ones understanding. He believes me now! My coach and mentor, David Neagle, says that when we open ourselves to Spirit - the truth flows. It surely did with these pages. The 30+ years of sweating it didn't hurt.

Christmas and prepping the budget postponed the meeting with the "decision maker" until this week but we DID meet with the financial executive. He is VERY interested in helping us raise this princely sum. Actually, he doesn't guarantee anything (these guys are VERY professional and NEVER say anything they can't back up) but, he DOES feel very confident he can help us meet this amount and our deadlines.

Within the next couple of weeks we will be contracting a Director of Photography, Production Manager, Production Designer, Set Designer, Costume Designer, Location Manager - and - the all important CASTING DIRECTOR.

Our hope is to be in principal photography by Mid-May to Early June :D.

Keep us in your thoughts... and if you want to support the project in ANY way (even as an extra!) let me know. Shoot us an email at info@TheWhitemanScenario.com

Steve McCurdy

Dateline - Hollywood:

I was in LA last week and visited with two different producers about Whiteman. While I would love to name names, the nature of a Blog is such that I can talk about what we talked about and share with you the progress of the project - but the individuals have rights of privacy that I don't want to violate. Also, the negotiations require that I keep details to a minimum while helping us all realize that this project is going to happen.

The first producer with whom I spoke was very gracious and though s/he hadn't read it yet, had looked at the jacket summary and website and found the whole thing VERY commercial. That is a good thing. The second producer had read about 100 pages and was into it and needed me to focus on what role I want to play in the production of the picture. Both asked that, actually. Hollywood would like to acquire a property and then exploit it without limitation. Sometimes that produces a better, more entertaining story without the biases and pet-notions of the author. Sometimes they gut the story AND miss the commercial opportunity. It is a tough business that is all perception driven. The point is that if the original writer is on-board it can be a big help or a royal pain in the rear.

I've produced shows with the author at my elbow twice. Once it was a nightmare. The other time it worked out very well. It is a crap shoot. That is why 97% of what I produce and direct - I write. So they were asking me this to - essentially - see if I came with the package. At that point I was not convinced one way or another. Would I take a check and walk away? Maybe. It depends somewhat on the number of zeroes on the check... I can see the story taken into very experienced hands and produced at a high level. But, I can also see it go into "turnaround" which is Hollywood jargon for a colorless, shapeless zone in which the script moves from director to director and studio to studio until it is perceived as dead. My gut said that I wanted the project DONE - not just dough.

Then, as is the case with every business - but particularly Hollywood - nothing happened for days. The spiritual discipline in which I am currently working instructs me to hold my desire in mind and keep moving. This week - A LOT has started to happen.

Producer 1 - (who had disappeared off the radar) emailed me out of the blue to apologize. A commercial blew up and deadlines were... well... s/he got busy. Now, though s/he assured me that the book would get read en route to New York. Good deal.

Producer 2 - emailed and text messaged me after finishing the book to INSIST on a teleconference that night. S/He called right on time and was... what is the right word??? EXCITED OUT OF HIS/HER MIND about the story and execution! We talked for over an hour about the story and I started back to the screenplay with the idea that we would start pitching it to production companies and talent after the holidays. The other thing we discussed was raising the money and shooting it ourselves. That is... if I wanted to co-produce/write/and maybe direct. Well. I've done THAT before! Not to this level of decimal places - but I've done it.

To know what we were facing I called my line producer from I FLUNKED SUNDAY SCHOOL and asked her about meeting to discuss budget. She was driving past my house within an hour, so she dropped in to get the book. The next morning I joined her in her office to flesh the idea out some. Good meeting. Her gut was that movies over $7mill have trouble making a sound profit, but that WHITEMAN looked more like $10mill with a couple of real NAMES and lots of powerful effects. By the same token, its power suggested it would do VERY well at the box office and in ALL markets globally.

I left with the same message from her that I'd gotten from the Hollywood Producer - GET IT IN SCREENPLAY FORMAT. She was, however, very encouraging about Texas special effects companies, NASA's eagerness to cooperate, idle sound stages - and the fact that the big production companies have bought into the recession fear and have cut production in half. But, that makes LOTS of room for a good indie to find screens.

NOTE: It will be important for readers and followers of this journal to understand that the discipline and mindset I have undertaken presumes that any desire and yearning we possess is given to us by God. Our purpose for being here is a mystery that we unravel but is only brought into the light by our dedicated, committed, confident, and faithful belief that once we ASK for something - It is sent to us. THEN. Now - we may not be ready to receive it. So it is sent to the place big enough to hold it and we are sent on a journey to grow to that size... but the fact remains - it was sent when we asked for it. So, remember that as you read.

I started layout and writing of the screenplay. Movie scripts differ from novels in many ways. I'll write on that later, but suffice it here to say that - while it helps to have all the parts, it still isn't an automatic thing. That's why they give Oscars for best adaptation from other media. So - I am writing like fury. I have three pages... Then... I get a call from my line producer.

On her way home the evening that I gave her the book she gets a call from HER lawyer to drop everything and meet him at a VERY upscale restaurant in the Galleria area of town and be prepared to pitch everything she has. She dolls up, scrounges around for some cash for valet parking, and arrives to find her lawyer and a group of doctors and lawyers who proceed to announce that they are sick of the market collapse - have pulled their money out - and now are looking for a better idea. Specifically - a good movie to back. Not knowing how serious they might be, she floats a couple of projects she's working on that have VERY small budgets. "That's interesting but we're looking for something more substantial," the lead guy responds. Now... it has been only 9 hours since I left her office. She has only read the jacket of my book...

"I do have a $10 million action/adventure/cold-war thriller. The book is in the car."

"Go get it."

Turns out some of them are ex-Air Force.

Next day, I rush more books to her (she needs to really read the darn thing before they call her back) and called Hollywood producer 2. "WHAT???" was the initial response. Then wheels started turning.

Will these lawyer/docs want to put their bucks into the movie? Very possibly. Its sitting in a money market account vaporizing right now. But, maybe not... The nugget of truth here is - there are LOTS of people with LOTS of money (less than they had 2 months ago!) who are looking for an opportunity they can UNDERSTAND. If not this group (although, I have a goooooood feeling) then we'll put the deal together for another group using the same drivers - The economy has created opportunity at the box office!

Point is - whatever it takes - The Whiteman Scenario will be onscreen at a multi-plex near you soon.

How soon? I am not ready to limit it to Hollywood's drag-butt 36 months. It could be 12. We did I FLUNKED SUNDAY SCHOOL from concept to premier in 53 weeks with NO MONEY. With a BUDGET we could FLY.

But I don't want to rush. I want to enjoy this journey - and make a spectacular motion picture that entertains at high levels and honors the men and women who have faced the indescribably horrible pressure of deciding what action they can take that will protect their homes without ending the world.

Thanksgiving dinner will be delayed a bit. This prayer of thanks may take a while.

More later.

Steve