Chronic Psycho Qu'est Que C'est

The Chronic Psycho reading was last night. Had a good turn out. Sweetie and me were the only ones not to read. The script has come a long way since I batted it around with the other CP, our friend in Singapore. The script is, in descending order, a stoner-comedy-horror-sex film, although it’s clearer to say stoner-horror comedy with a couple short episodes of explicit sex, nudity and phantasmal genitalia.

All the readers were exceptional. People were laughing throughout the reading. Sweetie and I worked hard to set the right tone for the evening. If I had had my druthers it would have been in the afternoon, but it was difficult to find an afternoon that was good for everyone. The trick is that it seemed like it would be a party because it was at night, but really it needed to be more like work, because it is my work. I debated getting some weed for the reading, but ultimately didn’t. I didn’t want to put out alcohol either at first, but we put out some beers and a bottle of wine and it all worked out fine. My big worry was that people would get drunk or high and not have good feedback or not read their parts well. That turned out not to be an issue.

The most gratifying thing was, and this is corny, I know, was that people seemed to be genuinely entertained by the script and to enjoy it.

The next step is to start getting some attention to it. I’ll show it to ME (a big time comedy writer), perhaps he’ll read it. My friend DS is very interested in it, and in fact, he has been a driving force behind its development. He read the first draft and encouraged me to continue to work on it when most of the other comments were ambiguous or reflected confusion with the script. The script had an uneasy birth. Anyway, I believe that DS wants to send it around with the intention of getting it produced. My goal is to get paying work. That’s my mantra: Chronic Psycho brings paying screenwriting jobs.