The Significance of Film…

Alas, the Academy Awards have rolled around again.

When I was a fledgling development executive at Predawn Productions (Academy Award Winner Ron Bass’ prolific production unit), it was almost required viewing to tune in on a Sunday afternoon for the entire ceremony. I relished the occasion and paid attention to all of the categories, even the ones I wasn’t so interested in. I mean, how would I have anything to talk about all week at work if I didn’t?

When I was young and attended Palisades High School, I was floored when my classmate, Greg, casually mentioned that his mother was nominated for an Academy Award. The movie was called Gorillas In The Mist, and even though I could look it up, I can’t remember if that nomination was for best original or best adapted screenplay. This was the late 80s, when I was toying with the idea of becoming a professional screenwriter. I had never heard of another woman doing it or being validated for her creation and construction of an entire script before, so to say that I was intrigued, realizing I knew somebody whose parent was a professional writer, would be an understatement. The first movie that really made me think I could have a credible career as a writer would have to be Dead Poets’ Society, which left an indelible mark on my teenage psyche. To this day, I still watch the ending on YouTube for inspiration when I have writer’s block. With that movie, I began understanding the importance of character development, plot construction, and a satisfying, credible ending, especially one that reminds the viewer of important and pivotal details woven within the story.

I never actually saw Ron’s Oscar statue for Rain Man, even though I frequented his home numerous times over the years I worked with him, and even after I left his employ. Strangely, it has taken until now, and only after several decades of my movie-making moxie, to actually hold an Oscar in my hands. I moved back to the post-fire Palisades less than six months ago, but invited all of my friends at different times to share a meal in my new digs. I didn’t have enough pasta one fateful evening, and, far too lazy to drive to our only open grocery store, Vons, for Barilla, I hit up my neighbor, who was generous enough to say she had plenty. Heading over there, I took a quick tour of her lovely place and couldn’t believe I would be meeting Oscar in those brief minutes. Like most industry folk, she not only kept her father’s acting accolade in the powder bath, but she was more than happy to let me hold it. I didn’t have time to pretend I was the winner or to deliver a faux weepy speech as I always imagined I would when I finally had an Oscar nearby, but holding it was the real honor, even though it was far heavier than I had anticipated.

My father’s cousin, Natascha, pored over several scripts before deciding the first one she was going to produce when Working Title principals, Eric Fellner and Tim Bevan, gave her her own division of their UK-based production company, Working Title 2. She decided on a small script about a young boy who wants to be a ballet dancer. The movie she produced, Billy Elliot, was nominated for several Oscars before becoming a stage play, which launched the career of a young Tom Holland before he donned the Spider suit to join the other Avengers.

The Academy Award double-winner, Hilary Swank, had an email address that included a spin on the phrase, SwankyPants. I know this because I was fortunate enough to work on her movie, Amelia, with Ron at Predawn.

She won her first Oscar in the 2000s for a movie called “Boys Don’t Cry”. She mastered the transformation from woman into a transgender man named Brandon Teena to portray harrowing details from his true life. She followed that up with another gritty performance as boxer Maggie Fitzgerald in Million Dollar Baby. An interesting, fun fact about ol’ Swankypants is that she has been nominated twice for Best Actress and won both times, affording her a rare one-hundred percent win rate at The Oscars.

In 2005, after Ron and I had sold an original pitch to Donna Langley at Universal (who might have come up in the film industry in the UK with dad’s cousin, Natascha Wharton), the company set to work on adapting Amelia Earhart’s life story into a screenplay. Originally, we were developing it for Hilary Swank with no other attachments. This part of my professional life is a little murky because my mother was dying from cancer at the same time the project was progressing. I do remember when Mom was sick, watching the Oscars with her in her bedroom in March 2006. I was interested to see if Reese Witherspoon was going to win, as her production company had expressed interest in my project with Ron at Universal, which was titled The Other Woman. I don’t remember watching another telecast for years after my mother died. Much of my love of film had grown out of her passion for my writing. A lot of that zeal left me after her death, as I wasn’t as interested in the movies quite the way I was when she was there to contribute to the development of my scripts.

There were other Oscar adjacent moments over the years. Ron was replaced on the Amelia script coincidentally by Greg from Pali High’s mother, Anna Hamilton Phelan, 17 years after her career inspired my chosen vocation. Additionally, nobody could have anticipated that the director, Mira Nair’s son, would become the mayor of New York City, but, lo and behold, he is now responsible for things in The Big Apple. That’s a story in itself, I’m sure. Jimmy Kimmel hosted the ceremony on numerous occasions, and he, like me, spent part of his youth in Las Vegas. I was lucky enough to be approached by his younger sister, Jill, a friend from childhood, to write her pilot, but I kinda flubbed that gig the same way I did when producer Elaine Goldsmith Thomas offered me her pet project (literally, it was about dogs) in 2009.

The Oscars was once an important engagement when I had stars in my eyes and was vying for one myself. For a long time, I wanted to write something as memorable and as important as Dead Poets’ Society. Carpe Diem became a catchphrase for me as a result of that movie.

Looking back, it was my golden time in Hollywood, and those memories are enough to continue to make me smile when reminiscing.

Like the time I was jumping off the walls because I got my first option from the producer, Mark Morgan, who went on to bring the wildly popular novel, Twilight, to screens across the globe. Or when I was so elated in my 20s and fresh out of film school to be offered representation at Renaissance, which was uber agent, Swifty Lazar’s company, a man infamous for his Oscar parties. Or, weeks ago, when a dear friend and producing partner shared that his film is moving forward with Chuck Roven, a seasoned and celebrated producer whom I have long admired, particularly because I am a huge fan of the Christian Bale Batman trilogy he produced.

I hope, one day, people will go back to seeing movies in theaters. I know I will be the second Rick Caruso opens up his shopping area to usher back in The Palisades’ only movie theater. Movies are an escape and a necessary art form, much like ballet and opera, even though some movie stars think otherwise.

At the very least, and in my humble opinion, everybody experienced a little magic in their lives through a movie…whether it was on the page or on the screen. We should watch more and maybe I should write another one soon…