Christmas Ride Goes through Writer's Table Read

The screenplay Christmas Ride was read aloud and critiqued by those attending the Memphis writer's group, Script Write, on Tuesday July 24 at Republic Coffee.  The process was filmed and recorded.  I am revisiting the script to consider adjusting it based on the suggestions made and fine-tuning the the dialogue.

A big thank you to the financial supporters on the indiegogo campaign and Script Write participants for making this step in the making of Christmas Ride possible.   While the campaign did not reach its goal, your encouragement gives me feedback about what to do next.

ART PROMOTIONS is all about prints, paintings, and productions. On the Production side:

I participated in  the 48 Hour film project  in a group named By Faith Films and we created "Blind Date" in the category we drew  by chance, Dark Comedy.  In this team effort of mostly strangers, with no pay, we produced a short  film limited to 8 mins or less within the 48 hours.  The logline for Blind Date is--  A man widowed for a year goes on a blind date.   We filmed at the Memphis landmarks of Elmwood Cemetery and The Edge coffee house at its S. Cooper location which is going to have a drive through available soon.   There will be a screening of all the films (around 9 teams participated) which successfully met the criteria of the competition at the Malco Studio on the Square on Tuesday night, July 17.  Tickets are $10.  

Also, we are in the last 15 hours of the www. indiegogo.com/ChristmasRide campaign for funding a feature film.  There are seven videos in the Gallery section of the website plus the teaser at  http://igg.me/p/100795?a=462433

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY FOR ALL

    Wishing you all a Happy Fourth of July from Memphis on the big muddy Mississippi River, the city where music plays day and night and barbeque flows like waves on the ocean.

     Fireworks started on Sunday here at a big Baptist Church campus nearby.  Families gathered for picnics on the lawn, and shared their bread and the Word of God.  Last night a suburb shot off its fireworks.  Families gathered around the performing arts center and at homes eating hot dogs, and it's "pass the mustard, please, and have some more of this here sweet tea."

    Then dragging lawn chairs outside, they sat in front yards, in driveways, and even in the street watching as the fireworks burst forth in the sky, reminiscing over Fourth’s gone by and as the little ones saw their first, wondered if this one would be their last.

    I enjoy the patriotic music wafting through the broken window.  I hear Cohen, Sousa, Berlin, Howe, and wonder if I’m related to Samuel Francis Smith or Francis Scott Key.  I am reminded of all the sacrifices made by those before us and around us to bring freedom to this country and keep it.  Today I think of the great debate about Health Care in America.  When our country started out so long ago, there weren’t many people here, compared to today.  Science had not advanced so far in its healing measures.    Though our forefathers wrote words of unity, people were more self- reliant.  They grew their own food, made their own clothes.  Think about it.  Today most of us are more dependent on others for everything, electricity, water, food.  Our jobs (if we have one at all) are more specialized.    Our country was established by struggling immigrants to this new land.  We were poor in riches, but rich in spirit.  Today, we have a very wealthy nation, despite all the troubles we face. 

    Our government has the means to deliver health care to everyone.   And what greater service can a government provide to its people, than providing for the Health of its people?   Insurance for all, is NOT the same thing as health care for all.   If a man cannot afford health insurance now, making a law requiring   that man to buy it, does not make it possible.   Such a law is a guarantee that insurance companies are profitable and an assurance that the Health Care PACs, lobbies, are alive and well in DC.   On the web recently, one thoughtful person wrote, “the entire health care debate could be resolved by taking out two words from the Medicare Act.”  Those two words were “over sixty-five.”  

    Is that correct?   I don’t know.  But when I think about the purpose of government, I see it as working to achieve greater good for the people it governs.  Sometimes that comes in the form of checking on the quality of the food we buy, or building highways and dams to produce electricity.  But the sine qua non  of a strong, free country, with the exception of its spiritual focus, is the health and education of its people.  And from these its wealth derives.   Perhaps America can afford a Healthcare now for its people which it couldn’t when it began its great experiment in 1776 “of the people, FOR the people.”