Success Stories

In late 2013 I had started working on the script of my short film In Loving Memory. I had already made my first independent short film Disarray in 2012 at the age of 22 and had been working in the business with my father. He was an acclaimed Bengali filmmaker, Anjan Das, who I assisted in his last 3 international award winning features Achin Pakhi, Bedeni and Banshiwala. I was an Associate Director in my dad's last film Ajana Batas.   My father, Anjan Das, critically acclaimed filmmaker &...

In my screenplay, "Neon Cactus", the lead character states while leading a corporate discussion regarding creativity that sometimes the most creative thing a person can do is nothing - meaning, give creative forces, the muses, the furies and the fates the space to work and a chance to do their thing.  About three months ago, I was doing a daily patrol of the goings on with Stage32 and reached out to a few new folks, including Rutger Oosterhoff, from Blaricum, Netherlands. Blaricum sounds like...

The subject line of the email read "I’m so sorry”. It was from one of the Emmy-winning producers I had been working with for several years on my award-wining true crime drama, CONFESSIONS. After multiple rewrites and the involvement of two notable directors, the latest option was expiring and the project had hit a wall. I had been here before – a rocket ride to the one-yard line and the brink of a “go picture” that suddenly gets stalled. October, 2013. I met Joe Burke over a drink, a friend...

Hello 2017!  The New Year is always an exciting time for you as a creative because it's a fresh start and a blank slate to achieve whatever creative goals you have for yourself. For the past four years, one of my favorite things that I get to do is put together our Stage 32 New Years Resolution Series to assist you in achieving your goals.  To help you on your journey, I have brought in some incredibly talented Stage 32 educators to teach about a variety of above the line and below the line...

Hello friends and fellow creatives! First, allow me to apologize for not getting October's progress report out sooner. I will endeavor to do get these out consistently and on time so that you can get a better grasp on how your fellow writers are progressing using our pitching services. The 30-day progress report is a run-down of the amount of pitch sessions, script reads, and meetings writers attained during the 30-day period using our online pitching and coverage/consult services. As with S...

I’ve been providing advice here on Stage32 for a couple of years now, but that advice is hard to trace, as it has been individualized regarding several postings I have read in The Lounge. Richard (RB) Botto, Stage32’s founder, had mentioned to me I should put together agent-seeking advice, that I have developed through my own experience, and share that advice in a Guest Blog. The Uninformed Approach So, you’re hard at work, toiling away at your desk in a building of many floors with cubicles...

“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” ― John F. Kennedy, Address at Rice University, September 12, 1962   Filmmaking is never easy and it’s rarely fun, but I love it anyway. I have been making films since I was a child and growing up in LA. My high-school, of course, had a film program with a wind-up 16mm Bolex. My 11th-grade film teacher actually wrote on my report card that I was a “cinematic genius”....

Hello friends and fellow creatives! Erik here from the Stage 32 Happy Writers. We at the Happy Writers want to strive to give writers some insight into how our system works and how well it's working. In the past, we opted to respect the absolute privacy of those who were requested and landed meetings with executives through our pitch sessions. We wouldn't share their success without their permission (not everyone wants to be rich and famous, most would just settle for being rich... until the...

As filmmakers, we all try to move forward and create our films with the talent, materials and tools at our disposal. Some of these we may have in or arsenal and others we acquire through purchasing, hiring, renting, borrowing or simply putting the “arm” on colleagues. However, apart from a great story and script, some of the most important components of our productions are those resources called humans. Whether above the line or below, these critical creative team members are not inanimate objec...

A year and a half ago I wrote a new script, a comedic pilot called "The Other F Word." I had previously written four-produced indie features, but this story was episodic in nature, so it was a whole new world, as none of my relationships were in television. "The Other F Word" is a comedic coming of age series about four women who deal with the hights and lows of mid-life as they reinvent themselves now that their kids are grown. I discovered Stage 32 and after joining Happy Writers, I perfecte...