A few days ago I got an email from a French producer about a screenplay I wrote way back around 2008 and pushed it around the studios but nobody seemed to like it. It was called The Chase.
The story is built on an ordinary man who was driving his car in L.A. until he saw a girl being grabbed by a rough-looking guy and threw her into his van. My guy noticed it so much that he wondered if he should follow the rough guy.
Our guy continued to follow the van, getting more interest as he begins to think that the rough guy is trying to elude him. And we begin to think also as the rough guy begins to attempt to elude our guy.
And so the chase begins between two strangers and a girl.
The script hung around, some people read it, some weren't sure and finally nobody wanted to make it, at least for now.
Then two people from France called me, I'm not sure how or when, it was somewhere around 2011, again, I think. And then they read The Chase enough to want to make it. We talked about it for awhile and finally made up a contract. We had a director, a friend and me.
There were a lot of ideas and hopes, but ultimately we couldn't find enough money to finance it. Something that always happens with people with no money. And then there was financing, and since I was in WGA and WGC both Writers Guild's.
We talked about the project but not much was happening. Then we decided to write the story either in Canada or the U.S. But there was still not enough money and finally the contract slowly slipped away.
In 2017 we felt it was falling apartI lost track of my producer and director and slowly it the idea was slipping away.
And then, last week, The Chase came back.
With a new French producer, I think, with a friendly way of his manner. It was quite nice but I was at my cousin's mother's home in Canada and I asked if he could call after a week.
He did this and we had a nice talk, mostly about money of course. I thought about the WGA/WGC rules, but these guys don't have that much money. And the director wanted credit for writing as I remember.
But the new guy knows his work and he spelled out a lot of things that Canada and US do that we can't. Simply because that's how it does in French.
So, we have spoken, I got an email explaining financing in France. And I don't know what the screenplay costs. In Canada it would be around 45,000, WGA higher. But financing movies in France is different.
Piece by piece.
I worked in Luxembourg in 1998 and my high school French made enough to carry on as well as I could use my French far enough.
So here we are, 2019, I might actually get Chase done. Maybe not with as much as I wanted, but a movie is a movie and I haven't had one for 4 years.
Oh, yeah, it'll all be in French. Good thing, I learned French in high school.
And I get a trip to hang out for a few days
