Hi Becke. Ed here. Movies! That's an interesting topic!
Suz and I recently wrote a screenplay based on an idea that Suz and our son, Jason, had. They thought it would be a great to make a romantic comedy featuring a gay couple where the comedy did not come from the fact that the romantic leads were gay, and which did not use stereotypes in depicting the characters. (It called to mind "The Cosby Show" -- the sitcom from the 1980s about a black family where none of the humor came from the race of the characters, and no stereotypes were used.)
I was really taken with the idea, and wrote a draft of a screenplay called "The Perfect Wedding," in which a young woman, Alana, invites her two closest friends, Vicki and Roy, to spend the Christmas holidays with her and her family, to help plan Alana's spring wedding. Roy wants to come, but he's nervous about it, because two years ago, Alana's brother, Paul, cheated on him, and broke his heart. Paul still lives with his parents, and he'll be there for the holidays, too. So Roy asks his (platonic) friend Gavin to come along, to pretend to be Roy's boyfriend, so Roy won't feel so vulnerable in front of Paul.
Paul is a recovering alcoholic, 18 months sober. He is looking forward to seeing Roy again, so he can apologize for hurting him so badly when he was drinking. Paul is genuinely happy that Roy has a new guy in his life, but when Paul and Gavin meet, Paul finds himself, to his horror, romantically drawn to Gavin -- the man he believes to be Roy's new boyfriend.
There's a touching subplot involving Alana and Paul's parents, Richard and Meryl (we're hoping to cast those roles with actors you might recognize from tv or the movies -- we've had a very positive response from an actress we are very much looking forward to working with --we'll keep you posted!), and since it's a romantic comedy, everything works out in the end.
We're planning to shoot down here in Florida in June, and this coming weekend, we'll be in Miami and Orlando doing some casting. We hope to have all the roles set in March. We know that Jason will be playing Gavin, and two of the actresses from Looking for Billy Haines will also be in the cast: Apolonia Davalos will be Alana, and Annie Kerins will be Vicki.
There's lots to producing a movie though, and we've been busy scouting locations, getting quotes for equipment, meeting with investors, etc. We're hoping that by the fall, we can shop it around to distributors, and begin to enter it into film festivals. It's all very exciting!
Thanks for asking!
-ed
