The Motion Picture Academy chose a guy known primarily as a writer to host the Academy Awards show this year? Yay, God!
Seven Burning Questions About Seth MacFarlane Hosting the Oscars – by Kyle Buchanan
Tag: TVWriter.Com
YouTube Really, Really Wants to be Your TV Channel
…And why the hell not?
Jennifer Beals Debuts in YouTube Series ‘Lauren’ – by Cherie Saunders
Speaking of Gender Inequality in Showbiz
Love & Money: Recent TV Writing Deals 10/2/12
- Evan Daugherty (SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN) is re-tooling a drama pilot based on the comic Midnight Mass for NBC. (because feature credits are the best way to break into TV…but if you have a solid feature film career why would you want to?)
- Michael Cooney (IDENTITY) is writing the pilot for GASLIGHT, a soft, steampunk (!) drama, for ABC. (Um, yes, another feature writer type. Getting the pattern here?)
- Dana Stevens (CITY OF ANGELS) is writing the pilot for RECKLESS, a drama about the complicated relationship between two opposing lawyers for CBS. (Yes, Ms. Stevens is a feature writer.)
- Matthew Carlson (MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE, THE WONDER YEARS) is adapting the feature film, ABOUT A BOY, into a series for ABC. (Okay, so he isn’t a feature guy – but would this be in development if it hadn’t been a popular film?)
Lotsa writing deals were announced over the past week. We’ll be back soonish with more of them. (And our groovy “love/money” pic. Well, we think it’s groovy anyway. But then, we’re the kind who think the word “groovy” is groovy so what do we know?)
Peggy Bechko: Big Moments In Writing!
Yes, there are many of those in a writer’s life and they come in a wide variety of very good, very bad and lots of in-betweens. When I look back on the twisting path that brought me to where I am, it never ceases to amaze me. True, there are lots of quiet times tucked in throughout the ‘biggies’ but it’s the bigges we remember most clearly.
My first big moment came when I was about 20. I’d been writing since I was 14, full length novels. And I’d begun submitting to publishers. Back in the typewriter and carbon copy days. Before computers, before copy machines could even made decent copies (scary, huh?). I’d connected with an agency that had taken me on (that was a pretty big moment), things got rolling – then I found out the agency had gone belly-up. Really bad news because in that moment I realized a number of things; agent search would have to be initiated again, time was lost, and worst of all I’d have to retype the entire novel to have it ready for presentation (remember the carbon copy and no computers?)…. Ahhhhhhh!
Next big moment – I got a phone call a few days after the above first big moment. This was a much better big moment. A agent from the defunct agency was calling. He was starting his own agency, liked my work, had an offer from Doubleday and was I interested? Welllll……saved by the weird finger of fate! First novel sold, published when I was 22, a western by genre, Night Of The Flaming Guns. Followed by secondary smaller big moment – told by editor (did I mention that book was written by a 22 year old female in the first person as a 45 year old male?) “women don’t write westerns”; would I be willing to use my initials on the cover – P. A. Bechko? Okey dokey, but only ‘cause ‘women don’t write westerns’. You have to remember this was a few years back…ahem, quite a few as a matter of fact – but sadly probably not as many as you might think.