One Montclair Artist Writing About Another

Okay, I'll bite before the Kansas game starts: What are Lemire's qualifications to write such a screenplay? Or is this just an amazing sinecure courtesy of NJ taxpayers? Because it sure sounds like one.

More to the point, is there any real chance such a screenplay could ever be made into a movie suitable for general release? Is Miller's life really worth such treatment beyond the emotional boundaries of Baristaville?

Of course, one might have expected Melissa Rayworth to have gotten answers to these questions and others before posting such an item as above. But lately, that would of course be a case of expecting too much.

hi there. i must respectfully disagree with you. i would imagine that a project on don miller's life would be a fascinating research project, considering the historical and cultural landscape against which it plays out.
regarding your other point, i don't see how someone can project whether a project such as this will get made into a screenplay for general release or not. is there anything wrong with trying? it is a subject with both scholarly and popular appeal, at least it is to me. frankly, if charlie's angels 2 and 8 crazy nights were made into movies for widespread circulation, a movie about a devoted artist and civil rights participant would be a breath of fresh air. good luck to all involved in the project!

Baristaville,

I would like to introduce myself as Jason Lemire, the Artist-In-Resident of The Don Miller Project. Fran, thank you for expressing your enthusiasm for the project, I hope you plan to join us all at the Van Vleck on Monday (we are already expecting 100+!)

Cather, I certainly appreciate your post as well. You raise a number of perfectly legitimate concerns and do we look forward to addressing all of them and more at the gathering, which I hope you will attend as well.

My connection to the Miller family is very personal, having lived across the street from the Miller's from age four until my graduation from MHS in 1997. Although I did not have the opportunity to form a mature relationship with Don before his passing in 1993, I am proud to say that I have since formed a close bond with his wife, the esteemed Dr. Judy Miller.

With regards to my qualifications as a writer, though I admit I have yet to see my name five feet long and luminous in the multiplexes of America, I am confident that that day will come soon enough. After graduating with a degree in theatre from Middlebury College, I performed my critically acclaimed one-man-show "Pockets" in theaters throughout NY/NJ. I then moved to pursue theatre in Washington, DC where my play "As We Are, As We Ain't" was selected to be a part of The Kennedy Center's New Play Festival.

In 2005 I moved to Los Angeles to pursue my aspirations as a screenwriter, and in the two years that followed I have been fortunate enough to have a number of my screenplays attract development interest.

It was during a discussion with one such interested industry executive that the subject of films "based on a true story" came up and he asked whether or not I had any such stories. The first story that came to mind was that of The Millers. I got about thirty seconds into the story and he said "That's the one I want. That's the one I'd like to see." Over the next month I had virtually identical conversations with nearly every industry professional with whom I "pitched" The Don Miller Story. Finally, I called Judy and she said "come on home."

So, after months and months of work I am very proud to say that The Don Miller Project is about to get off the ground, not with money culled from taxes, but with funding from the generous (and tax-deductible) contributions of local residents.

For anyone interested in learning more about me, Don Miller or the foundations and institutes supporting The Don Miller Project I encourage you to visit www.donmillerproject.com.

Hope to see everyone Monday night.

Regards,

Jason Lemire

I expect cases of special pleading in posts on Baristanet. That noted, the earnest-sounding post above from the aspiring screenwriter is on a par with memoirs from disgruntled Provisional IRA and Ulster Volunteer Force members. Meaning he perhaps "protests too much."

I'm also still curious about the funding for the project, since the Rutgers Institute involved is in fact taxpayer-funded. It is ever so Baristaville, you betcha, to have a project like this one. But the website Jason Lemire recommends the curious go to for enlightenment is still plainly short on details, including on whether Don Miller's life could justifiably ever be made into a movie folks outside of the narrow emotional range of Baristaville might want to see. (But then, long ago I was one of the very few who actually saw the movie version of "The Education of Sonny Carson," speaking of someone a localized few might view as a "civil rights leader" but others see today as merely a downright anti-Semitic pest based in Brooklyn.)

And, fran liscio, my core skepticism is not exactly with regard to whether a biopic could be made about Don Miller. (Sure it could, especially if it plays fast and loose with the "truth" as most successful biopics do and has a star who can put fannies into the seats.) It is, instead, about the propriety of a situation whereby a tax-supported institute seemingly creates a sinecure for an aspiring screenwriter. (Albeit one he says is based on donations.) And during a screenwriters strike, oddly enough.

Again, this is all "so Baristaville," a modest, local opportunity for others to feel good about themselves, and definitely provides tonight a social occasion at which some might even wear their new Darfur necklaces. Nonetheless, I'll wait for more substantive coverage farther along (if there is a "farther along" someplace more interested in journalistic digging than in mere area feel-goodism. Variety, say. I also remain available myself for a grant if any academic institute wishes to bankroll a screenplay on, say, the epic struggle of lasermikey to alert Baristaville and beyond about global warming.

Ugh. So much wasted time on negative comments about relatively trivial local events. There are times when I recall the old adage even my own mother taught me. "If you don't have anything positive to say about someone, don't say anything".

It's a community billboard, some people actually enjoy being part of the community.

cathar,

Please go away and haunt some other deserving community.

Come on, we all know you don't even live here.

cathar cathar please go away
don't come back to darken my day

Thanks BOE_maven. These long, boring, self serving posts are so pathetic and so antithetical to the whole idea of a community billboard. I totally agree. It's "baristanet" not the NY Times or the Washington Post.

>>>"I also remain available myself for a grant if any academic institute wishes to bankroll a screenplay on, say, the epic struggle of lasermikey to alert Baristaville and beyond about global warming."

i'd enjoy reading such a screenplay.