"ANNIE"

The call comes in from Kent!!! "Annie" is mine! I'm over the moon. So is Kent; I'm not the only talent from the agency to get this gig. A part is even created for one of his actors. It's been a good day.


THANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOU!!!


"The Sensei" will come first, and then two films to follow in consecutive months. Research begins now.

Get the call from Diana, she suggests a book Now That You Know and we talk about how she came to write the script. I begin to wrap my brain around the fact that the woman I am talking to refers to Bruce Lee as "Uncle Bruce". She is meeting with investors. Finding locations. My script is on the way. A woman on a serious journey.

I email PFLAG chapters in LA, NY, San Francisco, Boulder, Denver, and Colorado Springs, Colorado (in the vacinity of the films location), asking for interviews with mothers of men who came out in the 1980s, suffered or were lost to AIDS or violence. I also call some of the people in my life who can offer perspective.

Days later I've read the book, the script, and start getting calls from the Moms and I am AMAZED that so many strangers are actually willing to come forward and talk.

What particularly amazes me is that this book talks about issues I didn't realize the extremity of. Particularly the devastatingly high rate of suicide in gay teens. I was lucky enough to be raised in an environment of relative tolerance and acceptance. We had come farther by the time I realized the people around me were, well, having sex at all, much less were gay or straight or bi. When I was dancing in NYC, I lived for a season in Greenwich Village, and didn't think twice about the couples on the street or in the studio. I ate lunch most days in college with a man who is, perhaps, THE sexiest gay man, vocal performance major in history. There were things, being lucky enough to have been too young in the 1980s, raised in a culture of diversity, I was protected from. Realizations were ahead of me.