Jefe's House

Thrilled to have been voted the winner of the IFP pitch presentation today by the panelists at the Internet Week Cross-Media seminar (my pitch, PATRIOTS FIGHT TOMORROW,  included a screenplay with videogame tie-in).  Panelists included acclaimed indie producer Jason Kliot, MyDamnChannel’s Director of Content Jesse Cowell, New York Television Festival head Terence Gray and The Gersh Agency’s Mira Young. The panel was moderated by ShootingPeople’s Editor-in-Chief Ingrid Kopp and introduced by IFP Deputy Director Amy Dotson.

Great fun, nice prizes bestowed upon me as the winner, I got sound advice on how to improve my pitch in the future, and made a few new friends. All around a terrific experience.

My 8-week summer course for adults, Playwriting I: The Fundamentals at NYU School of Continuing & Professional Studies begins on Tuesday 6/5. This noncredit, ungraded, evening lecture and writing workshop covers the exact same dramatic writing and theatre history content I teach to matriculated undergrad students in my similar 3-credit, full semester courses at NYU Tisch School of the Arts and Drexel University Westphal College of Media Arts & Design in Philadelphia, only it’s much more affordable. You will write a lot, you will learn a lot, you will have fun. Learn more and enroll.

Come hear me pitch a new screenplay & videogame in NYC this Thursday 5/17 at 1pm at the Tribeca Grand Hotel. I was just chosen as 1 of 5 IFP members who get to pitch to an industry panel at the Cross-Media Mixer, a networking event for professionals from the television, advertising, new media, and independent film worlds.  Presented in collaboration with the New York Television Festival, and NY Internet Week.  Come cheer me to victory or ply me with drinks if I crash and burn.

Wish I could tell you the logline but that would be spoiling it. Come find out.

Panelists include producer Jason Kliot, Rob Barnett (founder and CEO of mydamnchannel.com), Terence Gray (New York Television Festival), Ingrid Kopp (Shooting  People), and Mira Young (The Gersh Agency).

Full info and tickets here.

[image via yourkillinmesmalls.files.wordpress.com]

Philadelphia’s arbiter of good taste, the South Philly Review, sez don’t miss the 2012 Philadelphia Playwright Showcase April 25-28 @7pm.   Buy your tickets here.

Plays & Players Resident Plots Future

A New York transplant, now residing in East Passyunk Crossing, presents his work to Philly crowds

by Jess Fuerst

On March 27, Jeffrey Stanley workshopped his play “UFOs Over Brooklyn,” which has been in development since 2001.

“The intention is a little more of a showcase, for who in Philly might be interested in producing it,” Stanley said.

Stanley is a resident at Plays & Players Theater, along with Jeremy Gable and Brian Grace-Duff, until September. As such, the writer has access to stages and actors, as well as exposure within the local community.

“Promotion is also part of their agenda. They are not necessarily going to produce all plays residents write,” Stanley said. “It’s an introduction to other professionals in the Philly theater world, so there is a publicity component involved when they showcase us and Plays & Players gets to showcase itself.”

A New York transplant Stanley has spent the past year diving head first into the local community. His debut was a one-man show he wrote and starred in for last year’s Fringe Festival, entitled “Beautiful Zion: A Book of the Dead.”

“Why I did the Fringe was to announce my presence. It worked.  Well, it made them more aware. The decision makers … put me on the radar. They all came and saw,” the 44-year-old said. “It’s a dark comedy and autobiographical. A close relative of mine died of acute alcoholism, drank himself to death, and it’s about my year spent dealing with that.”

The show, which Stanley performed in a basement in West Philly, involved monologue pieces, as well as audience participation. Stanley asked for viewers to help him reach out to his dead relative through the use of a Ouija board, the result of which is the show’s grand finale.

“It culminates with starting them in another room, trying to make contact with the spirit world on my CONT’D at southphillyreview.com>>

Katherine Russell Rich was already an acclaimed author for her cancer survival memoir The Red Devil when she  was my playwriting student for a semester at NYU in ’08. She was toying with writing a one woman show based on her new memoir Dreaming in Hindi which hadn’t been released yet. My fiancee (now wife)  is Indian-American and we wound up getting married in India, so Kathy and I had some amusing cross-cultural stories to swap.

She was also kind enough to introduce me around at the Moth, and I wrote a screen treatment for Dreaming in Hindi but we never could get the ending right…All of these were terrific experiences.

I’ve now more or less relocated to her old stomping grounds in and around Philadelphia so I think of her often. She passed away this week. She once told me she had prayed to Ram for me. Rest in Peace and perhaps we’ll cross paths again next time around.

My 10-week spring semester course for adults, Playwriting I: The Fundamentals at NYU School of Continuing & Professional Studies begins on Wednesday 2/8. This noncredit, ungraded lecture and playwriting workshop covers the exact same dramatic writing and theatre history content I teach to matriculated undergrad students in my similar 3-credit, full semester courses at NYU Tisch School of the Arts and now also at Drexel University Westphal College of Media Arts & Design in Philadelphia, only it’s much more affordable. You will write a lot, you will learn a lot, you will have fun. Learn more and enroll.

See you there.

Can’t wait to see Vincent D’Onofrio‘s directorial debut, the horror musical DON’T GO IN THE WOODS with screenplay by my good friend Joe Vinciguerra and music by the one and only Sam Bisbee. ABC news clip here.

[images via facebook and zimbo.com]

I speak from first-hand experience when I highly recommend Daniel Student’s Superheroes Who Are Super! show dropping into Brooklyn from Philly on 12/17-18. It’s hilarious, it’s smart, you’ll have a blast. Dan is also the artistic director of Plays & Players Theatre in Philly where I’m currently a playwright-in-residence, and he directed my Philly Fringe show Beautiful Zion: A Book of the Dead which got raves. If you make it to Superheroes be sure to say hi to Dan; he’s a gem and a real talent.

Oh yeah? Well you tell James Franco for me that I’ve ALREADY contacted Tennessee Williams on a Ouija board and he told me to tell him to step off.

James Franco Will Conduct a Séance to Speak to Tennessee Williams

by Kyle Buchanan, NYmag.com

James Franco’s obsession with dead queer icons shows no signs of abating. Now the actor-artist (who previously played Allen Ginsberg in Howl, directed a movie about Sal Mineo, and recut River Phoenix’s performance in My Own Private Idaho) has announced  that as part of Performa, the biannual NYC performance art festival, he’ll be co-conducting a séance to get in touch with playwright Tennessee Williams via Ouija board. CONT’D>>

Beautiful Zion: A Book of the Dead

Dig the Om lapels.

Go, iTunes for showing the Concert for Bangladesh free this past weekend to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the concert held on August 1, 1971 at Madison Square Garden in New York.  I’ve had the triple album on vinyl for years but had never seen the movie.

Highlights include George Harrison having to explain up front what a sitar is, and for the audience to behave during the Indian music part led by Ravi Shankar, Ali Akbar Khan and Alla Rakha. Just shows how culturally far the US has come musically since 1971.  Today instruments like the sitar and the sarod are commonplace in American rock and folk music.

Then there are the ubiquitous Coke cans (I’m guessing Coke donated refreshments backstage or footed part of the bill for the MSG rental?). It’s hard to believe the product placement is accidental. Billy Preston’s seen with one just before hopping up from his keyboard to go into a dance frenzy (must have been the caffeine), then Leon Russell’s seen with one at his keyboard just before belting Jumpin’ Jack Flash.  There are just these Coke cans sitting around on the stage everywhere that get nicely framed by the cameras when they go in for closeups of the artists.

Also amazing is how many of them are smoking (tobacco) cigarettes. Today they’d probably have to hide that from the cameras to keep the film from getting an NC-17 rating.

Eric Clapton is humble as usual.  For the most part the musical performances aren’t stellar (the simplest and most polished-sounding was George and Eric’s duet on Here Comes the Sun) but that wasn’t the point.  The concert was quickly thrown together and they all did it for free to raise money to aid the grim humanitarian crisis in Bangladesh brought about by their war to break away from Pakistan (who can blame them?) and by the world’s largest tropical cyclone hitting them at the worst possible time.

If you download the concert (the album, not the movie) from iTunes they’ll make a donation to the George Harrison Fund for UNICEF.  Or just go to concertforbangladesh.com and donate any amount there. For the month of August all funds raised will go toward famine relief in the Horn of Africa. That’s the famine in Somalia you’ve been seeing on the TV news every night for days.  Why not chip in a little and help them out?  It’s what George and Ravi and Eric and Billy and Leon and Ringo Starr and Bob Dylan and Badfinger would want you to do.

[image via concertforbangladesh.com]