JF – Screenwriter
I started out in musical theater. I wrote the scores to 2 amateur musicals before deciding to write both a story and a score. My first full length musical was Time Travelers In The Celestial Age. It was first copyrighted in 1980.
It was based on H.G. Well’s, The Time Machine, and I had my first vision of the future. Outside of the Eloi and Morlock, H.G. Wells didn’t create much of a future, at least not one that had any kind of plausibility to it.
It was my first challenge in realizing writing isn’t just a manipulation of words but an expression of a vision.
My chronology is a bit hazy, but the bulk of the story was written while working at CBS. I had sent dozens of resumes via inter-office mail with hopes of getting out of Personnel Benefits and Teicher was the only one who responded. To say this man set me up is an understatement. He put me in Music Operations and in spite of having my own office overlooking the Hudson River, I had virtually nothing to do.
Music Operations had moved out to the west coast, and all that remained were 2 “music pickers” who did the occasional odd job for CBS News. I was right across the hall from the Production Music Library. I’ll never forget that library. Up till then I had no idea musicians and composers were creating such music to be used in film, TV, news, etc. If I remember right, there were something like 20,000 albums, mostly collections from individual production houses.
Meanwhile I had all day everyday to write Time Travelers.
When it was finished I immediately started shopping it. Louis Teicher, turned me on to one of the top execs at Columbia Records.
The script was submitted via his secretary, so I never met the man. And what happened is a lost memory other than knowing both the secretary and the exec liked it.
The next thing I remember was submitting it to a handful of major movie companies. It might’ve been Paramount or 20th Century, but one of them responded and told me they thought it was a viable script but questioned the world rights.
This was alarming since I had written the script on the assumption The Time Machine was in public domain. Sure enough, it was in public domain in the US, but not Wells’s home country, England.
The next step was to find out who owned the rights. I found out, somehow, that it was George Pal, the director and creator of the classicTime Machine movie, starring Yvette Mimmeux and Rod Taylor.
I found Pal’s address in the NY Public Library and sent him a letter. To my amazement, he loved the idea and told me to send him the script.
Two weeks later…George Pal died.
My life is an uncanny stream of close calls. Just before CBS I had worked for an independent film company in NY called Total Impact. It was my introduction to the world of filmmaking and I did everything from office manager to playing the organ in one of the scenes in the movie.
An entire tenement building on the corner of 2nd Ave. and 14th St. was used to house the bunch of us. Nearly every prop and all our food was acquired through promotional credit in the film and man did I learn about what a company will do to have its name in movie credits.
Without remembering its purpose, there was a scene that that involved dozens–or was it 100s–of Frisbees. I don’t remember the name of the sports company but it was a big one. I do remember the day boxes of Frisbees arrived and I had the job of stacking them on the shelves of the prop room.
All our food was promoted too. There must have been about 40 of us, and with no income, we ate like kings and queens.
I wrote a theme song for the movie, called “Get It Together.” Both song and movie were the same title. I’ll never forget the day because I performed it on an electric piano in front of the entire cast and crew. The response was so positive, I thought for sure I had written my first theme song for a movie.
Months later the song was rejected in favor of the director going with some other songwriter. I left the company because of that.
I moved on to Samuel French Play Publishers, working as a clerk/typist in the accounting dept. Not much of a job, but there was tremendous comfort in being surrounded by shelves full of 1000s of plays and musicals.
There’s no question this had a profound effect on my writing my own stories.
Somewhere within that timeline I had met Alan Dietch, who wrote the book and lyrics for an original musical called Homeseekers, about abandoned and abused kids moving from one foster home to another. I signed on to do the score.
We auditioned a cast and I met my first x-wife, Rhea. Mike Russel, who later became a friend, was brought on to rewrite the book.
The musical opened at the Nat Horne Theater on 42nd St. and ran for 3 weeks. The choreography and staging was handled by Dennis, whose last name I don’t remember. He had worked on Broadway and was a well known dance teacher in NY.
Rhea knew Clive Davis’s right hand man, Dave Winshaw. She invited him to see the show and he loved it. The problem was, he was scheduled to go to prison or some such facility as the fall guy for a Clive Davis scandal at CBS at the time.
To this day I never understood why, but Alan Dietch refused to rewrite the lyrics. It was a choice that destroyed the entire production.
The first batch of tunes I ever wrote were for a musical based on Alice In Wonderland. Obviously not a very original musical adaptation, but it was my introduction to merging Songs with Story. Not one song remains.
I was in Minneapolis, Minnesota at the time and it was music, dance and theater that sent me off to New York in 1973. Actually, it was 30 plus very successful performances of Sweet Charity at the Chimera Theater in St. Paul that gave me a hands-on experience with Songs and Story.
Chris ZeVan, married to Barry ZeVan “the weatherman,” was the star of the show. We rediscovered each other through Facebook in 2010.
After both Homeseekers and Time Travelers bit the dust, I ended up performing as a singer/keyboardist and 1/2 of a duo and sometimes trio in numerous clubs throughout the New York metro area throughout the 80s.
The other 1/2 was Rhea, my x-wife. We missed the brass ring by nearly scoring a recording contract with Chrysalis Records. Sid Bernstein, the man who brought the Beatles to America, was our business manager. It was during the recording of our first demo Rhea decided it was a good time to get divorced.
After the divorce, with dreams shattered, I ended up at the Harry Fox Agency/National Music Publishers Association. After a year as a database administrator and getting fired for blowing the whistle on my boss, I returned to Minneapolis with my tail between my legs.
I earned a self-designed BS in Songwriting and a Masters in Liberal Studies from the University of Minnesota. The Masters was finished in 2001, when I was in Vegas. During my educational quest I played in a variety of coverbands and started freelance writing. The most notable bands were Hitz and Jonah and the Whales (See Performer/Songwriter History)
After my second divorce it was off to Las Vegas. I arrived in Vegas 2 weeks after 9/11. Talk about timing. Vegas was convinced it was the next target. Less than a year later the town was back to its usual sinful nature with Homeland Security the new defense against terrorism.
Later the experience did inspire the idea for a sci-fi action/adventure, The Acrobat, about an out-of-work acrobat in Vegas who gets shipped off to the new “Vegas On The Moon” and saves Vegas from a terrorist attack.
My second screenplay was 7/11 Pair O’ Dice Road.
I was covering the Las Vegas film scene (and that’s a bit overblown, since in 2001-2005 some questioned if there even was a “Las Vegas film scene”) for a couple of publications when I got hired by Marilee Lear to write a full length comedy.
I had written freelance articles for Callback, a well-known entertainment publication in Vegas, eVegas, an entertainment-based website now disapeared, and Script Magazine, my first shot at a national publication.
I interviewed behind-the-scenes people working in the film scene, covered shows on the Strip, and attended and wrote about my first Screenwriter’s Conference.
Script Magazine hired me to interview G. Marq Roswell, my introduction to Music Supervisors.
Marilee Lear ran a top casting agency in Vegas and for years had tried to launch a movie production company. I wanted to interview her for Callback. We hit it off and started tossing ideas around for movies. She had several scripts sitting on her shelves but the one she really wanted to do was 7-11 Pair O’ Dice Road. The first draft was scant at best.
It was a thrill of a lifetime for me. I wasn’t getting paid Hollywood/WGA rates, but I did get paid $7500.
I wrote it in an amazing 3 weeks, at exactly 120 pages, a speed record I doubt will ever happen again, to be sure. But then, no one’s offered me 6 figures and if they do, I just might write the damn thing in overnight.
It wasn’t a great script, but definitely serviceable. Considering it was a draft prior to production, I knew revisions would come once production began. Sadly, it never got the chance to grow. The very day I handed it in, Marilee told me her daughter was going to rewrite it. I knew right then, the script was dead.
But the experience launched a 1000 scripts. Since then, I have numerous scripts-in-progress.
I read every book I could find and downloaded tons of scripts from the Internet for analysis. I started tearing movies apart act by act, scene by scene, shot by shot and beat by beat.
And of course, I discovered Robert McKee, whose probably changed the lives of every screenwriter every born.
I am first and foremost a songwriter. In fact, I wasn’t so much interested in writing Marilee’s script as I was having the chance to submit songs to Hollywood.
Converted into a screenplay in 2000, Time Travelers In The Celestial Age became the major project for my Masters thesis.
In 2011, it was revamped again with an entirely new story twist during a Screenwriting course through the Academy of Art, San Francisco. It’s now called Celestial Age and the treatment is available on JerryFlattum.com in the Screenplays section under Writer.
Such is my history to date in becoming a songwriter, freelance writer and screenwriter. Well, performer, singer and keyboardist too. Plus I danced a lot. I had earned a scholarship to the Minnesota Dance Theater and School back in the early 70s, and took many dance classes while living in New York.
In November 2006, I launched JerryFlattum.com, a site featuring original songs, FerretDance, a library of production music, all my published work, and a handful of unfinished screenplays and eBooks. My target market? Hollywood.
For the next few years I devoted all my time to working on re-recording my entire catalog of original songs and production music at master quality level, ready for commercial release.
Sure enough, as fate would have it, the project was shattered after my father had a stroke and lost his mind. I lost my father, my home and my financing.
The next reiteration of the site was 2010. Now, plans are to splinter the single site into multiple sites.
Of notable interest is a column I wrote for many years called Adventures of a Songwriter on the Musesmuse.com website. Thanks to the webmistress, Jodi Krangle, the column remains alive although I stopped writing a few years back, circa 2006.
It was my intentions in the column to cover all the areas of entertainment and not just songwriting. From this was born the Entertainment Cyberscope, a portal for all things behind-the-scenes in entertainment.
The Entertainment Cyberscope started to gain a life of its own and in January 2011 I incorporated, Entertainment Cyberscope, Inc.
Clearly my life is up for grabs as I scramble to earn an income, either from investment in the company, or the sale of a song, eBook or screenplay.
It’s 2011 and now I want to act!
Most importantly, whatever happens, I sure hope the Universe smiles on me and brings an end to this life of “Close Calls.”
Writing is certainly a way to find and give meaning to life. A few months in therapy helped as well, as I quest to find out what the Universe has in store for this incredible journey without an ending.
