“I believe as long as you have a compelling story and talent, you could be on a farm in Iowa and start your screenwriting career. Although I now live and work in New York City, I originally got my start in Orlando, Florida.” Amanda Caswell How I Started My Screenwriting Career From Outside LA
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Outsider Paul Haggis & Your VoiceI think it’s good for a writer to always be an outsider of some sort.”—Canadian-born screenwriter Paul Haggis The Outsider Advantage The World Outside of Hollywood Fine quote by The Graduate screenwriter Buck Henry One Benefit of Being Outside Hollywood “(In Texas) you’re so removed you get to examine (how films are made) and say, ‘That doesn’t really make sense for us out here. Let’s do what makes sense.’ Filmmaker Robert Rodriguez Why You Shouldn’t Move to L.A. Screenwriting Outside L.A. 101“I think that the Internet is going to effect the most profound change on the entertainment industries combined. And we’re all gonna be tuning into the most popular Internet show in the world, which will be coming from some place in Des Moines.” Steven Spielberg in 1991
“It seems to me that the earth may be borrowed, but not bought. It may be used, but not owned. It gives itself in response to love and tending, offers its sesonal flowering and fruiting. But we are tenants and not possessors, lovers, and not masters.” Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Cross Creek
Since my last post had a shout-out to Lake Howell High School I thought it fitting to show Lake Howell the lake. The lake actually sits just 100 yards off one of the busiest roads in Central Florida (State Road 436). In fact, if you cross eight lanes of traffic from where this picture was taken you’ll be at the parking lot of a Super Wall Mart.
But as you watch a sunrise though the Spanish moss hanging on the trees, the Wall Mart seems not only 100 miles away, but 100 years away. A remnant of old Florida that was captured so well in the The Yearling, the 1939 Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. In 1939 the book was actually the best selling novel in the United States.
The 1946 film version of The Yearling won two Oscars (Cinematography and Art Direction) and a Best Motion Picture Actor Golden Globe for Gregory Peck.
“Every man wants life to be a fine thing, and easy. And it tis fine, son, powerful fine— but t’aint easy.” Penny Baxter (Gregory Peck) in The Yearling
“In the late 1920s, it took a lot of guts for a woman to pack up her typewriter and move off to the wilds of Florida like that. This is the story of a woman finding herself.” Director Martin Ritt on Rawlings
P.S. The Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings home in Florida is now part of the Florida State Parks system and can be toured at various times of the year. Though Rawlings is connected to Florida through he life and writings in the state, she was born in Washington, D.C., received an English degree from the University of Wisconsin—Madison, worked as a reporter in Louisville, Kentucky and was living in New York when she received an inheritance from her mother and decided to move to rural Florida.Later she would move to Crescent Beach, Florida and died in nearby St. Augustine in 1953.
I started this postcard thing on the blog years ago to give myself a break from writing and researching posts when I was on the road working on various productions. Hard to believe today is the 80th postcard. I’m posting this on the tail end of a long video production day and drive home. One of the perks of a 14+ hour day on the road was the crew was able to eat breakfast at the Over Easy Cafe on Sanibel Island, Florida and dinner at Pinchers Crab Shack in Ft. Myers where I took the above picture overlooking the Caloosahatchee River.
The restaurant is next door to the historic winter estates of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison, but that’s not the only history tied to the area.
According to Kimberly Ripley’s blog, “Caloosahatchee means ‘River of the Calusa.’ It searved as the main highway inland to the Calusa Indians…Also known as ‘Shell People’ the later Calusas, from approximately the 1500’s to their demise in the early 1800’s, used seashells as foundations. They built their cities on them.”
P.S. My first postcard (Downtown Kansas City) was August 11, 201. And for what it’s worth, my 28th postcard (Prime Time) was on a shoot I did with Deion Sanders at his Dallas-area home . The great Pro Football Hall-of-Fame football player was born and raised in Ft. Myers, Florida. To read an interesting article about Sanders’ ties to the area read the Sam Cook article about where “Prime Time” developed his personality. And to come full circle Cook was the sports editor who hired me as a 19-year-old photojournalist when he was the sports editor with the Sanford Herald Evening Herald.
Yesterday I visited DeLand, Florida not knowing that it was just listed by Parade Magazine as one of 16 cities in their Best’s American Main Street competition. I took the above photo of the restore Athens Theatre just a block off the main drag in DeLand. The historic theatre first opened on January 6, 1922. (Anyone know what movie played when it first opened?) The theatre’s name came from the town’s founder Henry DeLand who envisioned DeLand as the Athens of Florida.
DeLand is home to Stetson University which was named after the Philadelphia hat maker John B. Stetson who died in DeLand in 1906. The stadium where Stetson University plays its football games is the same stadium featured in the Adam Sandler movie The Waterboy (1999). Both Ghost Story(1981) with Fred Astaire and Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and the HBO program From the Earth to the Moon filmed on the Stetson campus.
DeLand is also a major area for skydiving. If I recall correctly, when Tom Cruise was shooting Days of Thunder in nearby Daytona Beach (and I think even a few scenes in DeLand) he went skydiving with Skydive DeLand. (Remember reading that the producers weren’t too happen to hear about that.)
Singer/songwriter Terence Trent D’Arby who won a Grammy in 1988 for Best R&B Vocal Performance Male was raised in DeLand. In 1995 D’Arby adopted the name Sananda Maitreya and legally changed it in 2001. His song Sign Your Name was featured in the movies Up in the Air and Knocked Up.
P.S. A couple of fun connections here; I played high school against DeLand High School on the football field that was used in The Waterboy. That film was directed by Frank Coraci who directed Blended (2014) which was co-written by screenwriter friend Clare Sara. And, of course, there’s always that nice shout-out this blog received a few years ago from the official blog of TomCruise.com.
“When I look out and I see people, who most likely have no idea who we are, responding to our music, it’s pretty damn rewarding.” Roadkill Ghost Choir frontman Andrew Shepard Band on the Rise article by Donovan Farley
For the past year or so I’ve been using Saturday’s to repost some of the screenwriting posts going back as far as 2008—the start date of this blog. But because music is such a major part of films, I think from time to time I’ll mention more musicians, bands and composers—so for the first time in a long time I’m starting a new category simply called music.
And today’s band is the Roadkill Ghost Choir (@RoadkillGhosts). They’re from Central Florida and made their national TV debut earlier this year on the Late Show with David Letterman. I don’t think their music has been featured in any movies yet, but it’s just a matter of time.
Having a banjo and a trumpet mixed in with guitars, keyboards, and drums puts a little extra independence into this indie band.
The band formed in 2011 in DeLand, Florida and profiled this month in the Orlando Weekly and interviewed on WPRK.
P.S. Roadkill Ghost Choir’s folk-rock music has been called neo-Americana, and for whatever reason their song Beggars’ Guild reminds me of the Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash duet of Girl from the North County from The Johnny Cash Show in 1969. (A TV show, by the way that U2’s Bono watched as a kid. Bono later helped Cash have a musical resurgence in his later years.)
P.P.S . A nice tie-in to a blog called Screenwriting from Iowa is Roadkill Ghost Choir played last year in Iowa City. Screenwriter Diablo Cody (Juno) —an inspiration for starting this blog went to college at the University of Iowa in Iowa City.
Today I went to the last ’14 Spring Training baseball game in Lakeland, Florida where the Detroit Tigers defeated the Tampa Bay Rays 6-3. I took this photo of a couple Tiger mopeds in front of Joker Marchant Stadium at the complex known as Tiger Town. It’s a jungle out there…
Here’s the micro documentary personal project I’ve been working on this month about the Tinker Field baseball park where the Minnesota Twins held spring training until 1990. It may not be the Polo Grounds or Ebbets Field—but for many people this place holds a lot of memories.
In my last post I wrote about Missouri’s influence on Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lanford Wilson, and how he wrote his first play during lunchtime while working at an ad agency in Chicago. But those weren’t the only things that shaped him as a writer. When Wilson was 26-years-old he moved to New York City in […]
