Morrace
Friday 3rd October 2008 12:54pm [Edited]
2,727 posts
On the other hand .....
Stel Pavlou
Writer, The 51st State
"I came up with the idea for the film in my final year at Liverpool University and started writing a year later. There are stories about me applying for 600 jobs in the media, which are absolutely true: I have 600 rejection letters to prove it. Out of frustration, I wrote a script in four weeks flat because I had nothing else to do. A friend heard that if you clearly marked your screenplay as an independent feature, Tim Roth would read it, so I marked it Independent Feature Films Inc and sent it to him in LA. Two weeks later I got a call from him asking me what I'd done. Well, nothing. So he said that he would direct.
Then he pulled out. We asked if we could use his name anyway - we told him that we couldn't give a f**k if he directed it or not, but his name would be useful. So we made a fictitious company stamp, carved out of a potato, and went to Cannes. That led to a deal with Focus Films in London, and through Tim Roth, we got Samuel L Jackson. After four years and no social life, three directors and 19 script rewrites, the film got made."
Full version HERE. Scroll down. Interestingly enough, he's last!
