A Screenplay Reading and I Came Out Alive!

Last week I endured something I haven't had to endure in about ten years.

I sat in the front row of a screenplay reading and listened as an audience responded to something I'd wrote. This is major because I hate screenplay readings. They're so not the ideal way to hear the work. I hate them even more when it's my work. It's like nails on chalkboard.

To make matters worse, the reading was an excerpt of the problem child romantic comedy screenplay. As such, I had this nightmare that we'd sit in the little theater and folks would listen and watch the actors in dead silence. Zero laughs. Maybe someone would cough. That's the problem with comedy. There's nowhere to hide when it's not working.

Luckily, though, this reading experience made up for every single other bad one I've had, and there have been some bad ones. (A student play that looked about ninety minutes on the page in Microsoft Word but that ran like two and a half hours comes to mind.) And I am always the most self-conscious person. I wear my heart on my face. Anything that doesn't work, a line that clunks, a confusing turn of phrase, I slouch in my chair until I disappear.

But not last week. Last week I was a normal person sitting in a chair. Why this transformation? First off, I had a great director who seemed to really get the piece and I don't know what casting gods smiled on me, but I lucked out with the most amazing talent, cobbled together from friends and friends of friends. They sold it. They made it work. Even secondary characters came to life vividly. I've always thought that "there are no small parts only small actors" was a sort of consolation cliche, but now I see its absolutely apt.

And it was great to work with people who were coming fresh to the script with good insights on how it could work better. And man, the reception we got. Like most writers, I'm tough on my own writing and it was nice, for just a night, to sit and listen and enjoy and have people receive it so warmly. We even got a surprise blog review that praised the writer, the actor and director.

"Where can I be updated about the project? What are you plans in terms of production?" this one woman asked me at the wine and cheese after. And I had no answer for her. Because I'm the crazy, juggling girl with prioritization paralysis and too many balls in the air.

Truth is this project goes back in the drawer for now while I concentrate on finishing sucky first draft of "rom-com I want to shoot" and rewrite of "crazy Bollywood comedy romance" (that I just got some pretty good coverage on so I'm feeling pretty jazzed.)

Yes, things are looking up. I'm proud to report I can now survive listening to my own work for fifteen minutes at least. What's more, I can actually like it.