My Screenplay

a funny idea...

It was 1993, I think. A group of us had had a Labor day campout at the hard-to-get-to Point Dume beach out in Malibu. We were driving home at the ungodly hour of 8:30am after being up half the night drinking, roasting hotdogs and whatever else it is that 20-somethings did for fun back in the 1990s.

Someone put the radio on. It was Sunday morning and we heard the words of a preacher who was delivering a sermon about Noah and the Ark. And… for some strange reason, that preacher - an imaginative Christian - made the story of Noah come to life for me - a good Jew. Somehow, as he spoke, I heard the story of Noah happening for the first time and as if it were happening right now, in the present day!

WHAMO!

The idea for a movie was born. I pitched my friend — the author, Stuart Gibbs — on writing it with me. He agreed and so it went. We collaborated by each writing a bunch of funny scenes that we thought would be hilarious, slapped them all together and, about a month later, we had a screenplay.

Of course, we weren’t finished. Not by a long shot. A hotshot manager got a hold of Stuart, loved our screenplay, and we immediately began getting notes for re-writes. We re-wrote the script another 15-20 times before, suddenly, Fox Family Films came calling and made us a rather kind offer.

While the film was never made, it was a huge honor to have my first screenplay, co-written with a friend, sold to a major studio.