Ciao from Venice
brb eating pasta
Hello everyone! While you read this I am currently attending the Venice Film Festival as the plus one to esteemed documentary producer / my wife Emma D. Miller for the world premiere of the film she produced "Mistress Dispeller." The documentary, directed by Elizabeth Lo, takes place in China, where a new industry has emerged devoted to helping couples stay married in the face of infidelity. Wang Zhenxi is part of this growing profession, a “mistress dispeller” who is hired to maintain the bonds of marriage — and break up affairs — by any means necessary.
It's been getting good pre-premiere buzz here, here, and here. And I’m excited to be at what is a truly wild experience — launching a film at Venice.
So, while I'm busy brushing up on my Italian I thought now might be a nice time to check in with YOU ALL. So I wanted to ask: what the heck do you guys want from this newsletter? Why are you here? What can I be doing to provide more for the Hollyweird community? Here is an entirely unscientific poll to try to get to the bottom of things.
You get ONE CHOICE. Hearing directly from you will be helpful to get a sense of what you’re craving!
Thanks for voting! The results will NOT be binding!
Last week's reading list sparked a lot of conversation, and I heard from a bunch of you recommending EVEN MORE GREAT BOOKS! I'd be remiss if I didn't include those here as a sort of extra credit level of the syllabus:
-- The Art of Dramatic Writing, by Lajoz Egri
-- Devil's Guide to Hollywood, by Joe Eszterhaus
-- Can't You Get Along With Everyone, by Allan Weisbecker
-- Born Standing Up, by Steve Martin
-- Into the Woods, by John Yorks
What have I been up to, you ask?
As for my own professional life (I can’t always be riding my wife’s coattails), in the last few weeks I was offered a gig based on an OWA I was pitching on (can’t say more about it now but it was included in the Halfway Through 2024 Roundup), and have been talking with some producers about coming on board to help me put together my Directorial Debut. Sounds like the plan will be to get them and me and my team all on the same page about next steps, come up with an attachment agreement between us all, and then continue the hunt for an actor and/or money. So we’re finally about to get to stage where you run into the age old bind of packaging a movie: you can’t get an actor without money but you can’t get money without an actor. More on how we plan to navigate that soon!
Heading into September ready to pitch a novella adaptation project with a director attached, so we’ll hopefully be setting meetings of that after Labor Day, and I’m personally gearing up to start rewriting an original spec of mine.
One more thing! Send me some questions!
I’ve been a longtime subscriber to George Saunders Story Club and love when he takes reader questions about the art of writing. It provides a great peek into his process which I find fascinating and so I thought maybe we could do that same thing about film and TV.
Have a question about Hollywood? The craft of writing? Something going on in your career? I’d love to hear about it! Feel free to ping me here in the comments below, or reply here with your email and I will do my best to pick a few to address next week. There’s nothing like helping someone else out of a bind, because it’s almost always easier than helping yourself out of the same one!
I promise I’ll check your questions out just the minute I’m off the gondola .
Here’s a little Venice ASMR for you.
Ciao for now!