“So You Want To Make A Movie”

By Mort Laitner

So you have this wild dream about making a movie. Here is your first step in the process. Memorize the following two sentences. “I’m going to write, direct and produce a movie. I am going to see that film on a large silver screen in a 1926 art deco movie house and win an award for my film.”

Now close your eyes. Go ahead and do it. You can thank me later.

Well done, now open your eyes. That was one-hell-of-a day dream.

Everybody knows that, “Dreams do come true.”

Well mine did, most of it away and as a believer in sharing knowledge, here is a road map on how to make your dream into a reality.

Here it is my word map, AKA a checklist (But first, hit print, you have my permission, run-off a copy and post it on your assignment board):

MORT LAITNER’S 18 STEP MOVIE-MAKING CHECKLIST

1. Start saving you money;
2. Write a short story;
3. Keep saving;
4. Publish your story;
5. Keep saving;
6. Observe how readers respond to your story;
7. Keep saving;
8. Assuming a positive response, picture your story as a film;
9. Keep saving;
10. Turn your story into a screen play.
11. Remember all that money you saved, okay now we are going to start spending it.
12. Start studying and buying books on budgeting, legal issues, i.e. contracts, on film production, the art of movie making and how to hire a production copy. Buy three-ring binders and fill them with Googled information.
13. Hire a film production company. They bring together the actors, director and the crew. This ain’t cheap;
14. Attend the filming of your movie;
15. Wait for the final product;
16. Enter film festivals;
17. Attend film festivals and hopefully, win an award.
18. Rent that 1926 art deco house and premiere your film.

Now this process may seem complicated and hard to do but paraphrasing Bette Davis, film making ain’t for sissies.

Okay close your eyes again, but before you do, memorize the following mantra, “I think can, I think I can, I think I can.”

Mort Laitner is a short-story writer, a memoirist and the producer of the short independent film, “The Stairs.”

I had heard from a writer colleague, Connie Goodman Milone,  that Patrick ODougherty, a fellow  author friend from the South Florida Writers Association, had taken a selfie of “An Hebraic Obsession”  on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. The photo was taken on the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday. Connie was impressed  that Patrick had honored my book in such a fashion. So was I. But I surfed the net in vain. I never found the photo.

But my mind found the memories of the attack on the bridge, on the CBS Nightly News, as the family sat around the dinner table. As a sixteen-year-old, I and America tasted and smelled the tear gas on our plates and cried. We felt the blows of  billy clubs. My supper had lost its flavor.

My gut burned as I watched injustice in America and wondered if this protest would lead to any positive change. Would we cross that bridge?

My gut burned as I watched peaceful protestors beaten unconscious by armed policeman. Would Blacks in Alabama get the right to vote? Finally, I also wondered who Mr. Edmund Pettus was?

Now I watched the civil-rights protesters lead by President Obama and former President George W. Bush on CNN. Again the marchers were linked arm-in-arm as they crossed the same bridge. Again they asked for more tolerance, more civility and more justice in America. But now in the Wikipedian age with information at my finger tips. I learned that  Edmund Winston Pettus was a former Confederate brigadier general, Democratic Party U.S. Senator from Alabama and Grand Dragon of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan. Again my stomach burned.

Approximately one year after the anniversary march, I surfed the net. Below the “Twin Cities Business” column of Vance Opperman, I find Patrick’s words about his day on the iconic bridge:

“Bloody Sunday, Selma Al, March 8th, 2015 50th Anniversary, Our hands are up! Don’t shoot. Don’t support the role back of Voting Rights represented by the Shelby legislation. Support the ratification of Loretta Lynn as the first Afro-American woman Attorney General. Kneel and pray Hebrew 11. Stand up and continue the struggles for Justice and March across the Edmund Pettus bridge in solidarity with the Moses Generation led by MLK and RFK. Go Forward! Seek Jesus.

Dr. Patrick ODougherty had a triple academic book release on the Edmund Pettus bridge: (1) Artability Anthology (2) Hebraic Obsession by Mort Laitner and (3) Guantanamo Prisoner Release book.”

Today, I thank Patrick for honoring AHO. My book crossed an iconic bridge, on an important date, with two Presidents, one of them Black and fifty-thousand protestors. I am honored as I recall the words sung by Dionne Warwick, Stevie Wonder, Elton John and Gladys Knight, “That’s what friends are for.”