Habit forming

Just had a long phone chat with Mary McGuckian, the writer/producer/director of The Making Of Plus One…

Here’s the latest scoop. It will be properly premiered at the American Film Market early November, located very conveniently just up the road from me in Santa Monica, followed by a BAFTA/LA screening later in the month. Then WIFTS (Women in Film and Television Society) will honor Mary and her brilliant film-making skills and screen the movie in Los Angeles at the end of November.

Mary has just returned to France, after spending two weeks in the Italian monastery where St. Benedict once lived, writing a sequel to The Making Of… (I just re-read this line and want to make it clear that it is Mary, not St. Benedict, who has written the sequel). It wasn’t so long ago, while she was going through the hell of financing, filming, editing, refinancing and trying to sell The Making Of… while coping with the ensuing mental and physical debilitation, that Mary told she would never make another film. Now she wants to go through the whole process again. That woman has metaphorical balls of steel.

Before finalizing distribution for The Making Of Plus One Starring Cate, Kate and George, The Story Of A Hollywood Nobody and reimbursing those financiers, Mary is now working on another ‘mockumentary’ featuring the same stellar cast (including, ahem, Julia and me). This time it’s about trying to get a distribution deal for Plus One... The opening scene will be a bunch of industry types yawning at the end credits of the three-and-a-half-hour director’s cut of a (pretend) movie based on my book. It will be shot entirely in Los Angeles.

I am not going to even try explaining this to my parents.