THE ART OF STORY, THE CRAFT OF SCREENWRITING AND MORE

So it has been far too long since I last posted on this blog, but my analytics reports show that a faithful hundred or so of you check in daily to see if I’m still breathing.  Well, I am, but I’m finding it very difficult to maintain a robust blog while Tweeting and Facebooking and Google-Plussing. Thanks for being patient with me. It’s just tough to drive content onto all these platforms while I’m still trying to make a living creating content for film and TV.

Speaking of which… today’s post is some shameless self-promotion about my latest film endeavor, Gametime: Tackling the Past, airing Saturday, September 3, at 8 p.m. on NBC.

The film — starring Ryan McPartin from Chuck, Beau Bridges and Catherine Hicks of Seventh Heaven fame — follows the story of pro football star Jake Walker (McPartin) who returns home to his small North Carolina boyhood town he has avoided for 15 years when his father (Bridges) has a heart attack. While there, Jake learns he is being cut by his team. The double-whammy gives Jake an opportunity to reflect on his life and to come to grips with the kind of man he is supposed to be, while healing the broken relationships he left behind.  It’s a family drama appropriate for viewers of all ages, has some nice football action, a little romance, and poses the important question about the difference between looking like a good man… and actually being one.

This project is part of the Walmart and Procter & Gamble Family Movie Night franchise that has aired original movies on both NBC and Fox for the last year or so.  It was a fascinating process to work with the Walmart and P & G folks overseeing this project.  The films are all born as loglines in an “idea lab” and are thoroughly researched in focus-groups to determine which ideas seem to push the most buttons in the research sample.  Then those ideas are given to writers like to me to turn into movies.

I hope you’ll tune in and let me know what you think.