Producing New York Stage and Film Filmmakers' Workshop

June 21, 2018

I'm pleased to be returning for a second year as producer of NY Stage & Film Filmmakers' Workshop. Our 2018 writers for the Vassar residency have been selected. Looking forward to spending a week in July with these talented writers and our mentors up at Vassar.

2018 Writers

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Deadline-Gowanus

The Handy Maniac

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@Itookthispic

I worked at a bakery on weekends, selling cookies and cakes and running loaves of bread through the bread slicer. Usually people called ahead if they wanted something written on the cakes and the cake decorator did it. One day an older couple came in on a busy Sunday morning and asked if I could write “Happy Anniversary Jennifer and John” on a 9” cake. I headed to the back room with the cake and started writing with the bulky cake decorating icing tube but when “Happy” took up half the real estate I realized there was no way that would fit so I went out front and suggested I write just “Congratulations!” The line of customers was getting long and people were getting impatient. The couple reluctantly agreed. I went back and started over on a new cake. My cursive isn’t great. Especially with a big icing tube. I was able to fit “Congratulation.” I thought it would look bad to put the “s” below the “n.” So instead of showing them the result or starting over again I wrapped up the Congratulation cake in a cardboard box and tied it up and sold it to the couple. I hope Jennifer and John are still together and that saying Congratulation! became a family tradition. This is the cake case at Whole Foods that always reminds me of that story. I have a deep respect for cake decorators. #giglife #writerslife #manyjobsofmarin

I was a nurse at the state mental hospital in Oakdale. I was bringing Barbara Ryan her meds and she chloroformed me in order to escape. #giglife #writerslife #manyjobsofmarin #astheworldturns

I worked for a book packager and wrote the book proposal - and was going to ghostwrite the book - for a man named “Billy” who claimed he had been Elvis’s private detective and friend for years. He had great tales of things he had done for the King of Rock and Roll, and how he had been paid by the Colonel in secret. We met with many top publishers and got very close to selling the book. But the publisher’s lawyers got nervous when every bit of proof Billy claimed to have turned out to have been lost, destroyed, stolen or buried in the desert in Nevada in a spot he couldn’t find anymore. There was even a letter from Elvis but the certificate of authenticity was questionable. So the book did not sell. Maybe there is a better story to tell of a con man who went to such lengths to try and sell this story. Or maybe Billy was for real and there’s a guitar signed by Elvis buried outside Vegas. This is a picture my friend @lizamakowskihayes took at a recent trip to Graceland. Thank you to @ppopeson for reminding me about this job #giglife #writerslife #manyjobsofmarin

I worked the overnight shift on the assignment desk at NBC News. This was a two-person job: the assignment editor and me, the news assistant. We answered the phones and watched the newswires for breaking stories. Mostly we watched Honeymooners reruns and the Late Late Movie. If something newsworthy happened the editor would call a field crew to cover it. If something really big happened we had to wake up the senior staff to alert them. The editor I usually worked with was Steve Bogart, son of Humphrey and Lauren Bacall. I was working the desk the night Dan Rather was mugged by two guys, one of whom kept asking him “Kenneth, what’s the frequency?” The shift was midnight to 8am and as staff were starting to arrive for the day I answered the phone and it was Tom Brokaw who asked me to read him the wire story. (This was before Google.) I nervously located the latest update on the AP feed and read it to him. When I finished he said: “Huh. Weird.” “Yes,” I agreed. This is a picture of Dan Rather singing “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth” with R.E.M. at Madison Square Garden years later. #giglife #writerslife #manyjobsofmarin

I co-wrote a book about dowsing for the President of the American Society of Dowsers. Most people have heard of dowsing (if you’ve heard of it) from water dowsing or water “witching” — which is using a dowsing rod to find spots where there is water underground in order to drill wells. Most scientists don’t believe in dowsing. The society was founded by 11 men in 1961 to support the development of dowsing and their organization includes water dowsers, seekers of minerals and lost objects, energetic dowsers, esoteric dowsers, and others. I went to their national conference in New Hampshire with my editor and met their President, my co-author. At dinner I mentioned that I had recently been diagnosed with Lyme’s Disease. He took out his pendulum (it looks like a plumb bob) and started spinning it in one direction and then the other several times in front of me. He said I was cured. After dinner my editor couldn’t find her car keys. Dowsers are supposed to be able to find lost things. He dowsed a little to try and locate them. She emptied her purse on the table multiple times. Searched her coat pockets. We scoured the route from her car to our table. Finally I noticed that they were still in the ignition in her car and we had to call AAA to jimmy the lock. This story didn’t go in the book. And I took antibiotics for my Lyme’s. This is a pic of a labyrinth in Arizona. There was a chapter on walking labyrinths in the book. I think it’s under the category of esoteric dowsing. #giglife #writerslife #manyjobsofmarin

I worked the snack bar on the ferry to Martha’s Vineyard one summer. It was run by twin sisters Hazel and Helga who had lots of sayings and heavy Cape Cod accents. We sold hotdogs, chips, soda and beer. But as Hazel always reminded us the law was: “No booze til ya cruise!” Meaning we couldn’t sell beer til we had pulled away from the dock. I ended up bailing on the summer gig to return to NYC and am lucky that @sissisabp is still my BFF in spite of leaving her to brave the Brothers 4 rooming house on her own. This is also the summer I wrapped a cantaloupe in a blanket and pretended it was a baby in order to buy beer because we were underage. We figured who was going to dare say “that’s not a baby, that’s a melon.” Especially when I sighed with exasperation when they asked me for my ID and indicated we didn’t want to wake my sleeping baby. It worked. But that’s a story for another insta series. #giglife #writerslife #manyjobsofmarin