I now have a producer to help me get Maconie's List from page to screen. Her name is Lesley and even though she lives in Santa Fe, she used to work for the Beeb, is Jewish and comes from Essex.
It's like the people at Duke City put my details into the film equivalent of Match.com and out popped Les.
She's totally organised, straight-talking and laughs like Sid James, which is just perfect for breaking the tension. I was worried for a while because the guy they originally earmarked as my producer was slightly scary. Well he was scary looking. The publicity shot on his website showed him standing in a cornfield wielding an axe. Gulp. Fortunately Les stepped in and we've gotten off to a flying start.
Thanks to the wonder of Skype, we can talk for hours for free and boy, is there a lot to talk about. As well as extensive script rewrites, which have seen me sobbing into my pillow at 3am, I've been choosing actors to audition. Who would be an actor? You get judged on your looks before everything else and that can't be fun unless you're Brangelina, TomKat or Wilfman (that's my own personal shorthand for William H Macy and Felicity Huffman).
However, when you're on the other side of the table, casting is most definitely enormous fun. This week I've pored over endless headshots of gorgeous men, tried to be objective about the women and finally made decisions as to who I want to see perform for me. Brilliant!
Getting the casting right is as crucial to the success of the film as getting the script right. In my head, Maconie, my ageing obsessive compulsive hitman, was a knackered-looking version of Bruce Willis (insert your own jokes here) but I've seen a hulking black actor who I think might be perfect for the role, and that's certainly not what I had written down on the page.
It'll be interesting to see what kind of energy the actors bring with them on Sunday. That sounded a bit poncey didn't it? Slippery slope here I come. In the meantime, I'm practising my serious face because I figure that if I sit in the audition room with a cheshire cat grin for the entire process, I might not give off the air of authority I think the occasion calls for.
