Sugar merchant takes stand against slave trading

Amazing bit of history via Slate: an English merchant publishes his reasons for refusing to sell sugar from the West Indies:

Merchant James Wright recounts his reasons: the “extreme Cruelties” of the slave trade, the changes the trade had wrought in African societies, and the dire conditions of the plantations of the “West-India Islands.” Wright had become convinced of his own complicity: “While I am a Dealer in that Article, which appears to be a principal Support of the Slave-Trade, I am encouraging Slavery.”

Read more: Sugar boycott

Cold Reading Series

A short script I recently wrote (Yummy Mummies) is going to be performed at tonight's edition of the Cold Reading Series - for more info, see: http://coldreadingseries.com .

Cold Reading Series

Last Thursday, the first 30 pages of my feature script ME AND BRUCE LEE were performed as part of the Cold Reading Series. Big props to this weekly summer event put on by the Evolving Arts Collective and an army of volunteers headed up by Lori Triolo and Colin Speir.

It was great - the actors did an incredible job reading and the narrator kept the stage directions crackling along. It's really a wonderful service for the writer - to hear your words come up off the page and out of the mouths of people as your characters is amazing. I noted some slow spots and a few lines where the actors swapped words around to make the lines sound more natural. The only excruciating part was when I had to get up before the reading and answer a few questions - ack! Painful but thankfully brief. If I ever do it again, I'm going to write a scene where I'm interviewed and just hand the page over to be acted out by the appropriate personnel.

I highly recommend submitting your work-in-progress (play, screenplay, radio play, etc.) to coldreadingseries@gmail.com. After the reading, hang out in the pub at the Billy Bishop Legion and ask the actors for feedback.

Finalisting

Two bits of good news the last few days - I'm a finalist in both the LA Comedy Fest and the Bluecat Fellini screenplay competitions.

The LA Comedy Fest is the largest comedy festival in the United States featuring film, live acts and a screenplay competition. The contest blurb is here. Congrats to my friend Deb Peraya who is a finalist in the TV Pilot category with Mommy Mafia.

The Bluecat Screenplay Competition is run by Gordy Hoffman (bro to Phillip Seymour). This version of the contest had 1600 entries - the finalists are listed here.

W2 Reading: May 30, 2011

I'm doing a reading! May 30th, 2011 at the Woodwards space on Hastings. Asked for advice from a writer acquaintance, and she said to either read something funny or sexy. Aiming to please...

Mimi Smartypants

My all-time favourite blogger in the category of blogs-I-read-by-people-I-don't-personally-know.

Excerpt from her latest post illustrates why:

In another of a long line of business-oriented dreams, yesterday I woke up from a very detailed dream in which I was showing LT a huge binder for a fast-food franchise. I had attended one of those buy-your-own-franchise seminars and I was trying to convince him to invest ten thousand dollars in a restaurant franchise called GAIA WALRUS, which sold “sustainably farmed walrus meat,” presumably made into sandwiches or burgers or something.

I remember the logo, which was a sort of hippie mandala incorporating a cartoon walrus, and I remember some of the details about structure and pricing from the franchise informational materials, but not much else.

Ever since I told LT this dream he has been trying to work out the details, such as how walrus meat can ever be “sustainable,” or even the logistics of “farming” something that lives in water and weighs three thousand pounds, and then I patiently explain that all those issues are upstream, man, all we have to do is run the place. Order the supplies from headquarters, hire the employees to wear the little paper hats with the little paper tusks, rake in the money.

Golden Age of Television - Results

Just found out on Monday that my screenplay 'Jennifer: A Field Guide' won first place in the short script category of the Golden Age of Television competition!   Announcement here.

Working on finishing the first draft of a horror/comedy (mutant ticks, hunters gone mad) and right in the midst of that 'this totally sucks/what was I thinking?' phase. I'm reading zombie scripts for inspiration.