Film Courage: Your new comedy Jay OFF THE MENU, it's a romantic comedy set in New Mexico based
on food love different things I want to hear more about that in a little bit but
I'm so curious about how you met this screenwriter think you said off-camera
it was that script pipeline? Jay Silverman: Yes it's like a screenplay sort of meet-and-greet
or something right can we talk about like what it was like to go there what
your expectations were and how it was to sit down with these different
screenwriters I'm gonna I'm gonna help you here okay when I set out to make my
next movie Bethenny my producer suggested we go to screen a
screenwriters pipeline kind of day in Hollywood where producers are invited to
meet screenwriters and it's you know it's sounds to me a little bit like an
overwhelming joke but it turned out to be pretty fascinating as a producer as
well as a director to sit face-to-face with screenwriters that have busted
their butts to you know actually meet people and share their hard work that
actually could actually make a decision on taking this project to market I can
tell you honestly the screenwriters and no different than the filmmakers you
know finding your next project is is hugely challenging but we made a
decision right out the gate that we really didn't want to take pitches from
anybody unless they were within the framework of something that we wanted
which was a story that was going to do the opposite of my last movie my last
movie girl on the edge it's a very serious drama about a real life event
and we didn't care about whether it was real life now or not all we cared about
was we wanted to do something that was inspirational entertaining and we were
lucky enough to meet Jen Goldson the screenwriter of off the menu at a
writer's fest so to speak in Hollywood where you meet writers and you meet
producers and you have an ability to be able to be pitched these properties and
what's really cool about it is you hear the person who actually wrote the
material and you hear it very quickly I think they gave each creative writer
three minutes to pitch their the screenplay and you know it was one of
the ones that Bethenny brought to my attention and we read it and we liked it
we thought we could make this you know cool I mean one of the big challenges of
any type of purchase of a screenplay besides negotiating it is always going
to be is it even affordable to make because these are independent movies and
you know maybe they're eighteen to twenty days shoots so you have to have a
screenwriter that's not only willing to sell their property but is also willing
to modify it or allow me to modify it into something that is actually
something we can make because ultimately in my movie off the menu
the screenwriter had written in a finale where it was a hot-air balloon being
chased by a truck and that itself might have costed half of what the movie cost
although it was great writing it was something that was unaffordable so we
were able to come to some you know favorable solution yeah that was curious
about that so it's not only do you like the material but also how much of a you
know marriage is it really for that that time how agreeable is the other person
going to be and vice versa you know it's a it's a very important thing for me you
know filmmaking is a collaborative medium I'm not a screenwriter although
I'm collaborating on screenplays all the time that I'm trying to take the market
for myself but ultimately you wake up in the morning and you really do come to
some real physical realities and that is you know I don't think screenwriters
generally sit down and go this is a 1 million dollar movie this is a 50
million dollar movie they just write from their heart and and I think it's
somewhat critical that in my life that I have a good relationship with these
people because the last thing I want to do is a ruin their movie
and be you know turn it into something that never was supposed to be I mean I
have a good friend right now that bought a really motivational big time movie you
know 3040 million dollar movie and they shot the movie and the editor started
cutting it to emphasize something that was never intended and that's the way
the movie was finished so from my standpoint if it's better that's great
but if I was the screenwriter I would be horrified right and I want to go into
that later about any types of revisions while you're on set and things like that
but what did Jennifer do right in her pitch to you I think I think Jennifer
did a nice pitch enough to get Bethany to read the script and then Bethany give
me the script but she writes with a really believable pitch in her dialogue
that instantly found all of us engaged with versus you know when I read scripts
sometimes it's painful because they're writing in a zone that requires you to
get through ten pages before you start to feel a sense of being a part to the
tone of the screenplay and from from page one I knew that it was going to be
a quick read and I think a lot of directors that will say the same thing
about properties that they've taken they just couldn't put it down and this was
you know that kind of an experience
you