Just like in the movies
Vancouver screenwriter John Meadows wrote Wise Girls between June of 1997 and September of 1998, where it premiered as a full read at the Spin Cycle Cold Reading Series at the Anza Club in Vancouver. It was made into a movie in 2001 with a cast of stars and a Hollywood budget. Here is his story:
I sent a synopsis of the script down to 300 agents in LA that fall. I received no response from 297 of the agents, I received two rejection letters and one response which led to me getting a shady agent. Robin Wright Penn was attached and production was supposed to start in the spring of 1999. My agent sabotaged the deal by demanding huge fees and a producer credit for herself. By summer, I had fired her and by fall I had signed a cosy option with producer Jack Sojka. Robin Wright Penn backed out, but, in January 2000, Mira Sorvino entered the picture.
Mira championed the script while the producers struggled to raise funds. Directors came and went and the project was delayed until September 2000, when I went crazy and fled to Australia to attend the Olympics and write articles on the games. I stayed in Sydney, ran a Cold Reading Series and interned at the writing center at Fox Studios Australia. Then I got the call - get on a plane to LA.
So, on April 17, 2001, I flew down to LA where Wisegirls Productions put me up at the Comfort Inn in Santa Monica. Not so fancy shmancy, but hey, I'm just the writer (I only created the friggin thing from scratch) and there is absolutely no Sheryl Crow song that goes "Until the sun came up over Santa Monica Boulevard at the Comfort Inn..."
On Tuesday morning I meet up with Jack Sojka. Breakfast goes well. Jack will still get a producer credit on Wise Girls, a big whack of cash, and gets the rights to the project back if we don't go into production by the fall. From there it's off to Lions Share/Leading Pictures where I meet Anthony Esposito, the now defacto producer of the project. Anthony shakes my hand and says, "Hey, ya wanna slice of pizza?" Picture Joey Soprano, only with lots more hair. I decline the pizza. We hop into his champagne-coloured Corvette convertible and zoom off down Sunset Boulevard.
We arrive at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel to meet the girls. My cast. The wise girls. The director, David Anspaugh, meets us in the lobby along with a bodyguard. Up we go in the elevator. Suddenly, I am completely nervous. All those years of typing away in my shitty little bachelor apartment on Barclay street and now, here I am, on my way up to the penthouse of the Beverly Wilshire. With the director. To meet the cast.
To cover my nervousness I ask David how his hockey team is doing. David is a huge LA Kings fan. Talking hockey soothes my nerves. We knock on the door of the penthouse and one of the assistants opens the door. Inside, I find a room big enough to land a plane with a magnificent view.
Lunch is being served by a room service waiter. As a former room service waiter myself, I think back to all those times I served celebrities at the Four Seasons in David introduces me to the assistant. "John Meadows, Mira Sorvino." I blink. I look at the assistant, who is in fact, not the assistant, but the lead of my movie. I've been in the room all of five seconds and I have already mistaken the lead of my movie for the assistant. Dude, where's my star? I do a silent "do-oh" in my head as Mira and I shake hands. "Great script", she says.
David next introduces me to Melora Walters, who was so good in Magnolia as the coke addict. Melora has a squeaky, Marilyn-Monroe-ish voice and is quite tiny. The odd thing is that Melora is ripped. Her arms put Linda Hamilton's Terminator 2 phase to shame. When she shakes my hand, I wince like the poopy-wimpy little writer that I am.
Then it's on to Mariah, who bounces about the room like the bundle of energy that she is. A confession: I don't know who Mariah Carrey is. I know none of her albums. None of her songs. I don't even know what she looks like. I know her name and that's about it. But it is her penthouse and she did just sign an $80 million record deal, so I'll be nice to her. No need for me to act though. Mariah is awesome. She has the ability to make everyone in the room feel relaxed and welcome. She just kicks back and hangs like she is one of the gals from Brooklyn. Except she has her own jet.
We sit down at the huge dining table and start to go over the script, page by page. And do you know what? It is the best feeling. After all those years and years of schlepping the script around Hollywood, with so many false starts and empty promises, to actually be sitting here listening to my stars.
It's here where Mira really starts to shine. The level of integrity and professionalism she brings to the table is amazing. She not only has her part memorized, but everyone else's as well. She knows the script backwards and forwards, not just this draft, but all the drafts from the last year or so. She has pages of notes typed up on her laptop. She has countless smart and funny suggestions. The woman is Harvard educated and she has an Academy Award at home. Enough said.
At one point, Mira calls me on a point of dialogue: "What the hell is a whack?" Her character has just said that she is going to take a big whack of valium. "What's a whack? Is that a Canadianism?" A big discussion ensues about the meaning of whack. Mariah says that to her, a whack is, "Y'know, when your girlfriend has on an outfit and you say, girl, that outfit is whack." Anthony says that a whack is the same as putting a cap in someone's head, to whack them. We spend five minutes on the topic of whack and decide that, yes, in this context it is a Canadianism, possibly derived from a British dialect. This is the sort of behind-the-scenes rigmarole they just don't show on Entertainment Tonight.
We push on to well past 8pm before we call it a day. David, our intrepid director, is about to collapse from exhaustion. As I say goodbye to the girls, I use their character names. When I say goodbye to Mira, I call her Meg. She races over to me, "No one's ever called me that before! I've been waiting over a year to play this part. I'm so excited." I am bowled over by Mira's enthusiasm. As a screenwriter to hear those words from your lead is like manna from heaven.
I get back to the Comfort Inn and flop on my bed. I congratulate myself on hardly saying anything stupid all day, a real feat for me. The next day I'm in the parking lot of the Best Buy in my rented Ford Focus, surrounded by all the BMWs, Range Rovers, and luxury cars. Look, it's a Ford Focus, he must be a screenwriter!
I click on my radio and listen to the DJs on one of LA's top 40 stations. This is what I hear: "...and we'll see Mariah Carey this summer in All That Glitters, her first movie. We've also just heard that Mariah will be co-starring with Mira Sorvino in Wise Grils, a sort of female version of Good Fellas. Yeah right. Somehow I can't see Mariah and Mira out there in the desert digging a grave. I don't think Mariah's ever even lifted a shovel..." At this point, I'm laughing my head off. My film is being dissed on the radio by snarky DJ's. How cool is that?
Wise Girls opened at the Sundance Film Fest in January 2001. (Praxis Film)
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