Screen

Like many screenwriters, I've got
material that has seen the screen and
some that hasn't. The clips to the left are
from the movie Hellcab, which was based
on my play of the same name. It came
out in 1998 and was a total bomb at the
box office but some critics liked it (read
Roger Ebert's review here).

Hopefully soon I'm also going to be
posting a film called Lost, a shortie I
wrote many years ago (long before the
now popular television series) that was
recently made into a film by a Croatian
director named Slaven Rogosic; and
another short called Pain Chain, directed
by Jeff Markowitz.

Markowitz I knew from Hellcab, because
his sister Jennifer directed the original
Chicago production of the play. He
called me up one day out of the blue and
said he was a film student at AFI, the
American Film Institute in Los Angeles.
He asked me if I had "anything in a
drawer" like a one-act play or a short film
script that he could shoot as his graduate
project. I gave him Pain Chain, and he
made it into an excellent little film. I'll post
it here once Jeff gives it to me on DVD.

About six years later I got an email from
Rogosic. He was a graduate student at
Scuola Nazionale di Cinema (Italian
National Film School) and he said he was
a big fan of the movie Hellcab. Like Jeff
Markowitz, he wanted to know if I had
anything lying around he could shoot as
his graduate film. I gave him Holly's
Heart, which is an unproduced
independent film I wrote based on my
friend Holly Wantuch, but he read and
said, "I love this movie. I think it's
brilliant. But I'm not good enough to
direct it yet."

That's what I love about this guy. He's got
balls, and he's smart!

Anyway, I gave him Lost, which was
based on a short play I wrote about a guy
wandering around Chicago after his
divorce. He turned it Italian and made it
into a beautiful little film.

I hope to see a lot from this fellow. And
as soon as I get the movie in a format I
can post, I'll put it on here too.