Ladies Night

Mary McGuckian — the writer, director and producer of The Making Of Plus One... — has been honored by WIFTS (Women’s International Film & Television Showcase) with a Career Achievement award.

Actors Jennifer Tilly, Amanda Plummer, Donna D’Errico, Lothaire Bluteau and I were there to cheer her on. Mary’s big moment came at the very end, after more than three hours of award-giving. By that time, I confess, we were nearly losing the will to live. Mary received a roar of gratitude from the audience for promising to keep her acceptance speech short.

The event was held at the upscale Andaz hotel on Sunset Boulevard and, apart from going on way too long, it was an uplifting evening with some incredible women being lauded. Like Betty Markoni, who has helped tens of thousands of women in her native Zimbabwe fight back against sexual exploitation, poverty and violence. It’s a commonly held belief among Zimbabwean men with AIDS that they will be cured if they have sex with a virgin, usually against her will.

Betty helps these girls and women find their voice. She provides counseling, rehabilitation and somewhere safe to live. Betty rightly received the WIFTS Humanitarian award. There’s an amazing documentary about her work, Tapestries Of Hope.

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.