In June 2024, I was folding a mountain of laundry on my couch, preparing for a road trip to Idaho, which I was beginning to doubt we'd be prepared to take. My two kids (8 and 13 years-old) were on summer vacation, running around the house like crazed banshees and acting as though, during the school year, they'd somehow forgotten where to find food in the house and how to feed, care for, and clean-up after themselves.
I was running on adrenaline and very little sleep, filling out an endless amount of paperwork for my son's upcoming week-long Civil Air Patrol Encampment (the longest he'd ever been away from home), having meetings with CAP staff, navigating tutoring sessions for my daughter, going to doctor's appointments, and trying to coordinate when the kids were going to make up the "mandatory" activity classes the kids were going to miss while were out of town, etc.
I was so frazzled that I could literally feel gray hairs popping out of my scalp and the worry lines on my forehead morphing into permanent canyons in my skin. And, after two hours of dealing with the Mt. Everest of laundry, I had convinced myself that while I was folding the laundry, it was happily breeding and hatching exponential numbers of shirts, socks, pants, underwear, rocks, pebbles, paperclips, torn up tissues, paper airplanes, computer keyboard letters, and other random and odd treasures that had found their way into my kids' pockets.
During this time, I was feeling incredibly sorry for myself. I was lamenting daily about the fact that I hadn't heard from anyone on THE ONLY WAY OUT's team in several weeks. It really felt like the script (and my lifelong dream) was dead.
I was so grateful that we were heading to Boise. Even though my son would be in camp all week and I knew I'd be a bit of an anxious mess with him being gone a full week, my husband, daughter and I were excited to explore a new city, and I was more than ready for to get out of town and get out of my head.
We had parked at Gowen Field Joint Air National Guard Field to drop my son off at his encampment when, out of the blue, Marty called. He said that he'd been invited to the Mediterrane Film Festival in Malta to be part of a panel. He'd been to this festival before and thought it provided a fantastic opportunity to pitch THE ONLY WAY OUT. Thank goodness, I thought. There is hope! Marty then asked if I could prepare a marketing package for the script.
"Hell yes!" I exclaimed in my head knowing this is exactly the kind of task I needed to lift my spirits.
Marty went on to explain how he planned to put the marketing package on jump drives and give those drives to various financiers, producers, and perhaps even certain A-list actresses who'd be in attendance.
"There's a lot of money and talent at the festival in Malta," he said enthusiastically. "Hopefully, we can get some traction for THE ONLY WAY OUT."
As soon as I hung up the phone, I wondered how I was going to accomplish getting a marketing package out the door in just a few days while on vacation in Boise. My husband and I had planned to spend a lot of quality time with our daughter while our son was at camp. We wanted to explore and do really fun things, but now we realized we were going to have to figure out how to make that happen while both of us also found time to work. We knew we were going to have no choice but to divide and conquer some days, which wasn't part of our original plan.
Fortunately, I had brought my laptop on the trip. At the time, we were still working with B, so I was still reviewing brands for integration. My husband had also brought his laptop because he needed to work. As soon as we got back to the hotel, Justin took our daughter downstairs to play pool so I could work.
While setting up my laptop, I somehow fried my USB hub (almost started a fire in the hotel room) and discovered that I had packed everything in my office EXCEPT for my laptop's charger. No problem, I thought, Justin had his laptop and surely, he'd have his charger, right??? Nope, he, too had forgotten his charger, so, we hopped in the truck, found a Best Buy and spent $90 or so on a laptop charger that both of us could use.
I pulled an all-nighter, slept for about an hour in the morning, got breakfast, took an amazing walk along the Boise River with my husband and daughter, then went back to work. I managed to put together a killer marketing package in a very short amount of time. To my pitch deck, I added financials that included the gross revenue each of our wish-list actresses had earned at the box office and how much money comparable movies had made (this is a number that's X times over the film's budget).
I sent the marketing package which included the revised pitch deck, script, and synopsis and logline. Marty, Steve, and Eric thought it was fabulous. From then on, it was in Marty's hands, and I was free to enjoy my vacation, so the first thing my husband and I did was to reward our daughter for being so amazing and keeping herself occupied while Justin and I worked.
We went to see INSIDE OUT 2, written by my online friend, Meg LeFauve (and co-written by David Holstein). For fun, and to show our support for Meg and the film, my daughter and I had a blast taking goofy pictures of ourselves in front of the huge cardboard movie poster, acting like each of the characters. We then posted our pictures in our private screenwriting group for Meg to see.
Meg was so grateful! It was awesome! My daughter was over-the-moon excited that I knew Meg because she LOVED the film. I did, too. It was the right movie at the exact right time! If you haven't seen it, go see it now! It's incredible! I also found it very inspirational to see a major film written by someone I know. It was a reminder that movies do indeed get made and that gave me hope for THE ONLY WAY OUT.
As an aside, every writer and filmmaker should check out Meg and Lorien McKenna's podcast, "The Screenwriting Life." You can check out their incredible website, The Screenwriting Life, as well.
Moving on, a week later, Marty called and said he had gotten the script to the head of a British production company who seemed very interested in it. Our fingers were crossed.
During that call, we had a chat about Scarlett Johansson. I'd written Mrs. Johansson a letter and the original plan was for Marty to call Bryan Lourd, her agent at CAA and mention that Kate Foster-Lengyel, Ms. Johansson's business partner at The Outset, said we should contact him and see if he would pass along my letter that offered Mrs. Johnsson the lead role and a fabulous product integration deal for The Outset's products. It was my hope, and the hope of everyone on the team, that Bryan would pass the letter to Mrs. Johansson and Mrs. Johansson would request to read the script.
But as luck would have it, Scarlett announced she was producing JURASSIC WORLD 4 and doing another AVENGERS movie.
"She'll be tied up for at least two years with these films," Marty said. "She's also the highest paid actress in Hollywood, so I doubt we'll be able to get your letter or the script to her through her agent (one of the biggest Hollywood agents in existence) without having financing in place." Contacting Bryan Lourd about anything without financing in place just wasn't a good idea from a business or social capital perspective.
And so, the only thing we had going was the fact that the script was out at the British production company. To date, as far as I know, we haven't heard back and so it's probably safe to assume they passed on the script.
And, as if my guts hadn't been torn apart enough, I received word that the rewritten version of the script, the one in which I had incorporated the team's notes along with notes from other A-list producers, didn't even finish as a Quarterfinalist in the Nicholl Fellowship Screenwriting Competition, a competition in which the original version of the script had placed as a Semifinalist.
I was reeling. Once again, everything was going up in smoke and I felt like I had some very difficult decisions to make in terms of how to proceed.
To be continued...
P.S. Be sure to check out my heart-warming post about our trip home from ID, "Our Car Crash and the Kindness of Strangers in Clearfield, UT." It will make your day!
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Ah, what's your decision going to be? You're killing me here!
Keep the faith! Good things are coming. I feel it!