cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I just need a yes responding to my pitch update I sent off the UJ pitch last night I haven't heard back. It was a new email chain. That can't be something that you say no to, right? I have held on to that story for seven years because I would not give it to any chicken shit outlet. The NY Times Magazine asked me to get witnesses and they were all dead. I could have sold it to a local weekly. I could have pitched it to the Atlantic. No, I held on to that and wouldn't give it to anyone who wasn't a blue chip, first-rate, national publication. Now, TAL comes to me and asks me to pitch then stuff. Ok, that's the biggest thing that I have here in the hopper. When I moved back to Ch@rlottesville, I tried to raise money to make a documentary film about UJ. And that went nowhere, fast. Then Covid happened, and there was no way that any film was getting funded. I determined that the Everglades story would take too much work to substantiate. I'd need to spend days at the federal courthouse confirming that most of the victims of that 1989 bust were let off with a slap on the wrist, and then it could take weeks after that to absolutely confirm that this happened because there was an inadequate jury pool after 80% of the adult population of the Everglades was arrested in Operation Peacemaker. Fuck that. Bringing back the UJ story is the way forward. If I can make this happen as an episode of Th1s American L1fe, then I can get the money to make the film. I could get funding to spend two years making a film about UJ, and be a real person meanwhile with a place where I live and a kitchen and a dining room and a couch and the things that a real person has to know that they are a real person. I was so invested in this quantum shit. So sold on just writing marketing bullshit and inventing that whole universe. No part of me was going to try to pitch the mass-market media world. I was done. Honestly, that world was probably better. But then this producer from Th1s Am3rican Life showed up, and asked me to pitch to her, and now I'm fucking everything up just to get my platform back with TAL. Reality check -- I still need a yes from TAL and then have to go back to UJ after 7 years without talking and ask him to drill down into the most painful and personal part of his life to talk about his split with Dr. M@rtin Luther K1ng on the record for public radio. But if I pull it off, I think that I can make a really great film about it. 2:55 a.m. - 2022-10-22 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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