The same woman who asked me yesterday if I knew any agents who specialized in "jewish psychic detectives" approached me again today as I was signing books after my screenwriting panel with April Smith, George Mastras, Donald Bain, and Derek Haas.
"Do you know of any agents or producers who are looking for screenplays about a university called Griffin University — but I have to change the name to a different university because there is a Griffin University — that lures in the most creative students only to kill them because they are on a secret mission to eradicate creativity in the year 2310?"
"Yes, I do," I said. "Unfortunately, the agents and producers who specialize in scripts about universities with secret plans to eradicate creativity already have so many scripts about universities with secret plans to eradicate creativity that they just aren't taking any more."
"Are they set in 2310?"
"A lot of them are," I said.
"Oh, that's a shame," she said and looked over at screenwriter Derek Haas, sitting a few seats down from me, signing books. He co-wrote WANTED (the movie with Angelina Jolie), 3:10 TO YUMA, and DECEIT. I am very jealous of him.
"Do you think that he might know of producers who are still looking for screenplays about a university with a secret plan to eradicate creativity in 2310?" she asked.
"He definitely would," I said. "You should go ask him."
When I left the conference a few minutes later, she was talking to him and he looked as if he was in pain. I won't say that I ran out of the hotel, but I was moving very quickly.
LOL that is the funniest thing I’ve heard all week!
That was one of the funniest things I’ve heard all day!
From Lawrence Block, who sent me this on Facebook:
“Lee, this reminds me of a story I heard fifty-plus years ago. A woman somehow got past everybody at Random House and walked into Bennett Cerf’s office with a manuscript that he just HAD to read. He opened the box and found a ream of blank typing paper. Cerf leafed through the empty pages,looked up, said, “You know, this is wonderful, but it’s really not for us. What I want you to do is take this to Ken McCormick at Doubleday. Just tell him I sent you. He’ll love it.” And off she went.”
paybacks are hell
Oh, that poor woman. I can only imagine the folks in her writing group simultaneously sympathizing and relishing in Schadenfreude that her %#*& “2310 screenplay” has been done.
That was a fun panel… you kept us laughing the whole time.
Check the trades tomorrow. We set up “2310” at Paramount with Meryl Streep playing the Dean of Dystopia and Joey Gordon Leavitt playing Art Libertad, the budding student/painter.
But, is Griffin University a Jewish university for creative psychics?
Maybe she’s just a time-traveler from 2314. She’s the only surviving graduate of Griffin University. The first not considered a threat to creativity by the faculty.
“Eradicate creativity in the year 2310?” This story is ahead of its time.
Lee, you get the best questioners… usually when I’m doing a signing, I’m asked where the vampire books are, or the nearest restroom…
I get this one as I sit behind my books: “You look like an author. What do you write?”
These are hysterical. The one I get is, “have I ever read anything you’ve written?” The answer: “Yes, and you loved it.”