Keith Curran

Accenticities
Screenwriter, Playwright, Actor and Author

New York City, New York

Member Since:
October 2016

Last online:
> 2 weeks ago

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About Keith

I am a a freakishly tall ex-actor/singer/dancer and current award-winning and published playwright as well as a seasoned, busy screenwriter. I just became a Lifetime Member of The Writer's Guild. As a screenwriter, I have primarily made my living (a good one) via writing assignments; for Paramount/Imagine (Hugh Hefner biopic), Warner Brothers, Fox/Blossom (Nicole Kidman's company, an adaptation of the exceptional novel, "The Quality Of Life Report", with Kidman attached), New Line (two historical biopics), Sony/Columbia/Amy Pascal (biopic, Tom Dooley, "Dr. America", Oliver Stone's company (twice), New Regency (a serial killer extravaganza), HBO (three times, including "Sold", a black comic look at the Sotheby's/Christies price fixing scandals of the late 1990's), Showtime (Randy Shilt's "Conduct Unbecoming"), ABC TV (two produced MOW including "Trump Unauthorized"), Fox TV, ABC Family (one short-lived series), etc. Five years ago, I fired my appallingly ineffective agent (ICM), after having spent previous years with Helen Merrill (as a teen playwright in NYC, subsequently having three plays presented Off-Broadway, including "The Stand-In" and "Walking The Dead"), William Morris (NYC), Innovative Artists (LA) and Paradigm (LA). To say that I have had bad luck with particular agents would be a musical comedy of understatement. At the time I fired my agent at ICM, I also fired my manager (the wrong kind of psychopath) and made the mistake of not lining up new representation before I fired my old. Almost immediately, I became quite ill and, previously bi-coastal, had to return to NYC permanately for three years of tedious treatment (however, the lion's share of my writing assignments WERE secured when I was a past resident of New York). As soon as I regained my health, my mother became very ill, and I was her default, and willing, caregiver for two years. I am now free to return to my career and Hollywood is abuzz with excited anticipation (that, or no reaction at all). I have a new, VERY new, in subject matter and style, but still very commercial comedy spec script (I know) called "Bearding Lester Perry", and an utterly unique, breaks-new-ground, TV pilot (for cable), called "Birthmark". It is EXACTLY the kind of series the studios, as well as Netflix, Amazon, etc, are clammoring for. My talents as a screenwriter (and playwright) have always been highly praised (and awarded). I also have a number of backlog specs that did very well when first sent out (one made the Blacklist in 2010), garnering me an average of thirty meetings per script (some scripts even came close to selling, and one, with New Regency, was actually greenit,) but I have very few remaining illusions. Having been "out of the business" for five years, I have essentially ceased to exist. I had/have a number of producer "fans" who would happily read my new scripts, but feel that attaining a new agent should be my first line of attack. I am all set to dedicate myself to finding one, but in the last five years, Hollywood has changed a great deal. One no longer attracts an agent with "talent", but with available sellable "product". I do have my specs (I know), which, as I said, I consider very commercial, and the pilot for my series (written) is, I truly believe, EXACTLY what the new age of television content purchasers are begging for. My dilemma. What the hell to DO ABOUT IT? How do I begin? I have no confidence that query letters to agents will result in anything other than rolled eyes (despite my credits), and feel that far too much time has passed to ask my producer "fans" to take the time (though not the chance, really) of making any recommendations on my behalf. I now find myself a bit... paralyzed. I have never had to seek representation (they always found me), and though I have read articles and listened to podcasts suggesting that the use of Social Media is the new "way in", particularly Twitter, I still have no idea what they are talking about. So, Ladies and Germs, do I sign up for email/fax "blasts"? Enter contests? Toss scripts over security fences? In Hollywood, five years is a generation, and as I am still in New York, I am bound to other-than-in person contact. So, where can I go, who can I listen to, who can I perform minor Sec acts upon, what ACTION can I take to get my ass back into a profession at which I was hardly on the "A" list, but have numerous impressive credits? And, who might you/one suggest that I ask for advice,? Most quiveringly, Keith Curran

Unique traits: Tall. Eyes change color like a mood ring. Took a boy to the prom. I have had five scripts greenlit and none made. Juggling. Plate spinning. I make Bakelite Light Boxes. Good sailor. Bad timing. I'm "good in the room". Unicycle. Tap dance.

Gender:
Male

Height:
6' 5"

Weight:
230

Body type:
Average

Hair:
Short

Hair color:
Brown

Eyes:
Blue

Ethnicity:
Caucasian

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Doctor America Budget: $5M - $10M | Thriller A true story. Navy Doctor Tom Dooley, stationed in Japan in 1954, was perceived by his superiors to be an irritating, rule breaking, jackass. Yet, it is BECAUSE of this perception that, after the Geneva Agreements divided Vietnam, with the North under Communist rule and the South a Free Zone, he was made Military Supervisor to what the United States was calling “Operation Passage To Freedom”, tasked with moving 600,000 North Vietnamese, by sea, to the South. Secretly, the US wanted the mission to FAIL, but needed to APPEAR they’d made an ATTEMPT. Shockingly, within months of arriving in Vietnam Nam, Dooley, while courting foreign journalists, ACCOMPLISHED HIS MISSION! And, due to his self-promotion, became an American hero! He wrote a best seller, appeared on Jack Parr. The US Government, particularly its Military, was furious. They ordered the newly-formed CIA to have two spies “follow” Dooley,. And, by bugging Dooley’s hotel room, they discovered that this “American Hero” was actually a HOMOSEXUAL. The worst kind of pervert. The US Government’s pariah became, overnight, it’s PAWN.

Credits

"The Quality Of Life Report" (2013 - 2015)
Drama by Bllossom Films (Nicole Kidam), Fox (Comedy, Drama and Family) Writer/adapter Based on Meghan Daum's glorious novel of the same name, this comedic, socially satiric drama follows Twenty-Nine year old Lucinda Trout, who hates her job as an on-camera "correspondent" for a popular New York morning talk show called "Up Early, New York!", filing what are, collectively titled "Lucinda Trout's Quality Of Life Reports". Recent topics? "Yoghurt; What Happened?", "Why No One Wears Gold Anymore", "Is 37 The New 26?", and, "Are Clueless Men The Answer?". Oddly, and wonderfully, when the "Bummer News" correspondent is suddenly confined to a Mental Health Facility, Lucinda lands HIS next assignment, "Crystal Meth Use In America's Heatland". So, even though she's just lost her tiny, Upper Eastside apartment, and also broke up with her "boyfriend"; a tiny ex-Astronaut, she is nonetheless psyched as hell, and flies off to a small Midwestern farming town called "Prairie City", situated in either Missouri, Kansas or Iowa. Upon arriving, and she visits The "Women's Health Clinic and Agricultural Museum", and is surprised by how many skinny, hyper, stringy-haired, tooth-deficient women are waiting, over-eagerly, to horrify her. She interviews each woman, indeed horrified, and is often reduced to tears, something she'd thought her eyes had forgotten how to do. Her Prarie City "guide", an enormous, and enormously charming, lesbian, Sue Leginbeel -- Lucinda later discovers that this small, somewhere-in-the-Midwest town is home to a rather astonishing number of lesbians -- drives her and her crew around for a "look see". As Lucinda looks out over the waving fields of... crop, and witnesses the sky for the first time in several years, and passes by a lovely, two bedroom bungalow that rents for $400 a month, Lucinda, with unusual, confusing even to her, decisiveness, decides to move to Prairie City. She emails her batshit crazy boss, explaining that she can still continue to file her weekly reports, on tape, or even via Skype, thus expanding the geological reach of "Up Early, New York!" Amazingly her boss agrees, and Lucinda, the next day, moves into the bungalow and, from her new front porch, tapes her first "Prarie City Quality Of Life Report" wearing Martha Stewart separates and interviewing her favorite, most camera ready, addict. She lives blissfully in the bungalow, jogging every morning, where she meets, mid-trail, a tall, arrestingly handsome "Mountain Man" (Prairie City is as flat as a piece of particle bord), named Mason, who has huge hands, three children with three different women, works in a grainnery, drinks a great deal of beer and graces Lucinda with the best sex she's ever had. While fastidiously filing her weekly reports, "What, precisely IS a farm?", "Is lard really a vegetable?" and, visits a quilting bee, all of it's participants being lesbian. The theme of their "empowerment quilt"? "Batttered Women, Kill your Husbands!". Lucinda, now in love with Mason and his three delightful daughters, and tired of staying with Mason in what he proudly refers to as his "log tent", reads the "Prairie City Chronicle" one morning, and sees, up for sale, a large, rambling, "All it needs is some TLC" farmhouse. She convinces Mason to, after she buys it, move in with her. And, the very difficult life of overseeing a working farm supplies her with many a topic for her weakly reports. All seems to be going well-ish until she walks in on Mason, in the crumbling barn, smoking Crystal Meth. Somehow this results in HER being arrested, fired from "Up Early", and living in her sprawling, decaying farmhouse, alone. How Lucida's story resolves itself is quite surprising, deeply moving, profound, simple, and somehow... just right.