Your Script Produced

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by Quendrith Johnson, Los Angeles filmfestivals.com Correspondent

She publishes SCREENMANCER TV.

Okay so Friday night, and yes, now it’s Tuesday, the Other Bacall, Doval Bacall threw such a party for the winners of Your Script Produced, that everybody is just getting their bearings now. Alright, that’s an exaggeration, but let’s put it this way, Award Winner Iris May just emailed a party photo from Bavaria as her flight just arrived back in her home country.

May, with her writing partner and filmmaker-in-arms Leia Vogelle from the UK, were at the Bombay Palace to received their hip clapper board trophies along with writer Jodi Lynn Thomas, also an actor, and Fernando Perez, along with his writing companion in her own right, Susan Stein. Suzy, who is a medical profession, does not have time for parties – so you can imagine how great this one was, that she actually had wine and Indian food, and lived to tell about it.

So who is Doval Bacall? And what is this Your Script Produced! (yes, there is an exclamation point in the title) competition? Good questions, and even better answers coming your way right now. Doval Bacall is not actually related to Lauren and Bogart Dynasty so far as we know, but he did, with his brothers (“The Bacall Bros”) amass a real estate mogul-worthy sum that has seed-funded Doval Bacall Films. Much like Larry Ellison’s daughter Megan, Ellison spun off Annapurna, and son David, who created Skydance from tech money; Doval did the same, but with his brothers.

So there is a precedent for family money making a successful leap from one industry to show business.

Next, he founded Your Script Produced! as a golden retriever-style contest to vet writers for whom he and the panel of judges believe are ready for their close-up. But enough Hollywood cliches and buzzwords, the raw facts are that every single one of the winners on Friday not only deserved to be there, they are ready for a green light. (In fact, as of Monday morning, just yesterday, at least four to five of them had already secured an outside assignment.)
Now here’s how FilmFestivals fits into the picture. Co-Founder Bruno Chatelin was also in attendance with Doval Bacall, and the YSP crew, in support of the award winners. And then something truly wonderful happened.

Justice Singleton, one of the late director John Singleton’s five children, showed up for a tribute to one of the most groundbreaking filmmakers to come on the American cinema scene.

John Singleton, who died of a stroke on April 28 of this year at Cedars-Sinai, is a native Angeleno who was born on Jan. 6, 1968. To put this is in context, the Watts Riots of 1965 had lit the city on fire with literally 34,000 people in the streets calling for racial justice. By 1968, social unrest swept worldwide as the counter-culture smashed through establishment barriers. In America, by the time John Singleton was a 22-year-old USC film school student, an African-American had not yet won an Oscar for Directing. In fact, Spike Lee, who only recently won a Best Adapted Screenplay Award for BLACKKKLANSMAN in a shared credit with other writers, was so seminal in Singleton’s life that SHE’S GOTTA HAVE IT literally informed his own work, his own seminal film: 1991’s BOYZ N THE HOOD.
So that’s a 20 second education on Singleton, and how at 22, with this completed film starring Cuba Gooding, Jr., Ice Cube, and Morris Chestnut, John Singleton was the first African-American to receive a Best Directing nomination. He only lost to Jonathan Demme for SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, and in the Best Screenplay category, for which Singleton was also nominated, he lost to THELMA & LOUISE, by Callie Khouri.

Both matchups of the nominees in directing and screenwriting were worthy and valid opponents, but Singleton signaled he was here, in Hollywood, to stay.
Justice Singleton, for whom her father’s death is still raw, stood up to the packed award show crowd at Bombay Palance on Friday night; then she began an impromptu speech about being a writer and a daughter. The second-generation Singleton said she had traveled to the Cannes Film Festival to “trace his footsteps,” and marveled at his progress. This was a time when her father had no real guideposts ahead of him other than contemporaries like Spike Lee, the Hudlin Bros, even Julie Dash. Frankly, it is a time long-changed, if you listen to the force of Justice Singleton’s resolve to honor and continue that out-of-the-brash thinking that informed her father’s art.
Meanwhile, back to the party, specifically The Writer’s Table (Bombay Palace is great, ps).

This is a spontaneous title somebody gives the spot where Fernando Perez, Susan Stein, Jodi Lynn Thomas, Iris May, Leia, and then Tyler True, the award-winner from Vancouver, Canada, have all congregated. Tyler looks like a walking fireman’s charity calendar waiting to happen, as he recounts someone saying “She said I should do a Calendar, it would be me every month.” Tyler snorts like a writer, dismissing this idea. Then Jodi Lynn Thomas is targeted by a casting director, as if this is Schwab’s and she is Lana Turner. And Iris and Leia listen to a pitch about a start-up that’s now funding screenwriters for content.

On the other side of the room, Doval Bacall holds court, and everyone gets a chance to “talk to the money,” as they say in Hollywood. Variety and The Hollywood Reporter logos are on the step-and-repeat (that’s that insider name for the fancy backdrop thing you always see stars photoed in front of at events). Variety, THR, FilmFestivals, and DB for the Bacall Brothers most visible member right now, making Jack Warner, of the Warner Bros proud, because hey, in this era in Hollywood right now, even using the word “brothers” gets people heated, lol. None of this matters though, because there is another truism that outweighs the current backlash, and that is? ‘Money talks, and ___  (hint: what cows leave behind) walks.’ You can fill in the blank.

And here’s how to enter the next round, Season Two of Your Script Produced! from Doval Bacall Films. It’s exciting to think that this is actually one of those “good guys” (see Doval Bacall ) in Hollywood who remembers what we are here for… Telling stories and making movies. To enter and find out the details, visit right here, right now.