Refining the Script with a Reading

My good friend and our Art Director for the film, Mark McQuown, came up with the idea of doing a table read for the screenplay. Between he, Debra McCarthy, our casting director and myself and producer, Mark Cardone, we arranged it at the Complex in Hollywood.

Mark cast several of his students from the American Music and Dramatic Academy, Debra brought in several professional actors she thought would be great in the roles, and I brought a few of my actor friends from previous projects. About 25 actors read over 50 roles and Ashley McCarthy narrated.

For Laree' and I, it was a great experience to hear our words come to life and see what scenes really worked and which could use some refining. I created a critique form that really helped us narrow down and focus on the best characters, weak characters, emotional moments, confusing area etc.

We found some of our sub characters were hilarious and will probably beef them up a bit more and some characters could be combined or taken out. Our lead characters were the strongest and most developed and really had heart for this audience. One thing that stood out the most was the amount of laughter throughout, which is great for a comedy!

At the end of the day, wrapping everything up at The Ruby theater, we found our film is reminiscent of AFTER HOURS, AMERICAN PIE and HANGOVER. Now we are off to a quick week of rewriting and tightening so we can move into casting!

Thank you to all of you that made this possible and for those of our friends who came to the reading for the first time to give us a fresh perspective. All of your input has been very helpful and is much appreciated!