Introduce Yourself : John M. Light by John M. Light

Part Three: Life after Dino De Laurentiis After leaving the DeLaurentiis Entertainment Group, I returned to Michigan to recharge my batteries. That had been a life-changing experience and I wasn’t really sure I liked the changes. But it wasn’t long before a friend of mine noticed and said that “when I was there I wanted to here and when I was here I wanted to be there”. And I decided I wanted to be there again. So I packed up what little I had and returned to L.A.. this time without a contact or plan in sight. A buddy of mine had an apartment so I moved in with him and since I had my development background with DEG, I sent out a series of letters of introduction. As many of you know, that is a frustrating and often pointless activity but it really wasn’t long before I got a nibble from Celeste Yarnall. While I was with Dino, I had an idea for what was basically a giallo in space. At the urging of my good friend Sergio Altieri I turned it into a script and while it was turned down by Dino, Sergio secretly shopped it around. A few weeks later, an associate of Ms. Yarnall’s got in touch and said that Sylvester Stallone was looking for a sci-fi script and so he met with me over lunch to discuss the project. Nothing came of it and so I’d basically forgotten all about it until she got in touch with me about my resume. During my first stint in L.A., I had seen her signs everywhere and so I knew that she was a successful real estate businesswoman yet somehow I was completely unaware that she had also been a successful actress in the 60s and 70s. When I first met her, I found that she was a beautiful woman (with a penchant for odd but stylish outfits) and while I wasn’t sure if she even remembered my own script, she told me that as a manager she had found herself swamped with them and wanted to know if I would do her reading for her. I agreed and over the course of a few months went through dozens of scripts, some good, mostly not and since she paid well and on time, I decided that I could now afford a place of my own. I moved to a high-rise off Hollywood Boulevard and as luck would have it, that’s when the scripts dried up. She had caught up with her workload and not having secured another source of income, I found myself going back to Michigan. I again set my sights on writing full time and after a couple of months, I decided that I had nothing to lose and contacted Celeste. She agreed to read my work and it wasn’t long before she not only signed on as my manager but also found me an agent. In the months to follow, Celeste proved to be nothing such of a phenomenon. She called constantly, urging and encouraging me to work and could get a meeting with just about anyone. There was always some deal in the works and it was actually Celeste that got me to finally start work on my novel ‘The Magic Man’. But as was often the case in my youth, I couldn’t see what a good thing I had and with my personal life falling apart, so did my relationship with Celeste. She tried her best – bless her heart – but she couldn’t get me to do the necessary work and so she eventually cut her losses. I remained with my agent and the best that can be said is we rarely saw eye-to- eye. While he did pitch my work to some big names, there was little movement and just when I felt like giving up, I was offered a deal with a company ironically called Abandon Entertainment. I had written a small comedy and one of the executives (I won’t mention her name but she is a truly wonderful person) threw herself into the project. Now it’s true of most writers – and especially me – that they don’t like to make changes to their work but she had the amazing ability to make me think that it was my idea to make the changes she wanted! It wasn’t until I had written a third draft that I finally noticed how considerably the script had changed and for the better. Though the script didn’t sell, I did make a tidy sum while I worked on it and have always felt that if her current job every fell apart, she could make a fortune teaching others how to be script doctors. I eventually moved to Florida where I live now and continued to write scripts. After some time, I contacted a management firm in New York and after reading my work, they eagerly signed me on. Initially they were almost giddy about my writing and requested more and more, referring to me as a ‘cottage industry’ for their firm. And then came the fateful day when I delivered my latest script. For months I had been touting that it was a high-concept comedy, something that had never been done before. And it was exactly that. But to say they were horrified by what they deemed it’s “politically incorrect” story be the understatement of the century and literally overnight I was persona-non-grata. I even received a phone call from one of the agency heads berating me for having written it! And with that, my New York connection was gone. Despite all of their past raves, they refused to represent any of my work after that. I shrugged it off – fuck ‘em if they literally can’t take a joke – and my next script was a fun little monster movie called ‘Things That Go Bump’. I shopped this one around myself and while several major production houses were interested in it, they mostly wanted me to do unpaid rewrites with what I refer to as ‘The Pink Unicorn’ element. This is where the producer thinks your script is absolutely great – except that it needs a pink unicorn. And so you do draft after draft until your script is no longer anything like you originally envisioned – but it does have a pink unicorn. I’d had enough of that (One of my favorite scripts, a gentle rom/com fantasy, went through the P.U. process and I have hated myself for destroying that marvelous work ever since), and so while I was willing to make changes, they had to better the script. I held out and I’m glad I did. The film is now being made – with a title change to ‘When Darkness Falls’ – and with the book Celeste got moving ‘ ‘The Magic Man’ – now published, things are looking better. So remember, the world needs your stories and only you can write them. If I have any advice to give, it’s this: Keep your act clean, hold your ground, work from the heart and hang in there.