Chevy and Nature's Way

We recently entered my script, Nature's Way, in The “Writer-Driven Shorts” program, presented by the Black List x General Motors Marketing and Media Incubator Fund, which will grant two emerging filmmakers with $100,000 in production funds to shoot a short film based on their feature scripts. 

My script is about a passionate wildlife biologist who drives an old Chevy Blazer, and is determined to marry the right guy (who wants her to get a new BMW) and then falls for a minister posing as a car salesman.  I think it is pretty "Hallmark-like," but if we win, I can write it into a short that discusses why she wants to get a Chevrolet EV - like I do.  The actual applicant and filmmaker is my cohort in the Native American Medial Alliance fellowship - Derek Quick - who is an aspiring filmmaker. He has an award-winning short, Camping, that is making the festival circuit, and I'll see it next month at LASkinsFest. 

I love Chevrolet.  Next year, I hope to trade in my Equinox for a new Equinox EV.  My first new car was a 1973 Chevrolet Vega we bought during the oil crisis. My dad's first new car was a 1960 Chevrolet Bel Air. My first job was at a Chevrolet dealership in San Diego.

I met my husband at the new Farrell's Ice Cream opening in Escondido while I was in high school.  After being forced to quit Farrell’s, which had a policy against managers (Keith) dating employees (a lowly server like me), I went to an employment agency to find full-time work while attending college.  I aced a “Wonderlic” intelligence test and was quickly sent out on two job interviews, one at a mortuary and another at a car dealership.  The mortuary was wonderful: plush carpets, polished rich mahogany desks, and everyone spoke so softly.  The car dealership was horrible: loud overhead paging, steel desks, rude people and ugly furnishings. 

When I returned from the interview, the agency said, “Good news, you got the job at the dealership!”  I was sad and asked, “Can we wait to hear from the mortuary?”  They replied that I had to accept the first job offered, so I started a long career in accounting and car dealerships, eventually developing software for the industry.  It took me almost a decade to finish college, and I earned a degree in Accounting with a minor in Computer Science and became a CPA, but stayed in the car industry. The picture above is from Automotive News, taken at one of my first clients, a Chevrolet dealership in South Dakota. I sold that tech company last year and picked back up my first choice of career - writing screenplays after getting an Advanced Screenwriting Degree from UCLA.

This picture of my mom and dad was taken with his first Chevrolet that he bought used and eventually traded in on that shiny blue Chevrolet in 1960. I remember how proud he was of that new car; we took a road trip to visit Mom's family in Missouri and his family in Oklahoma. I remember this trip so well because our more rural relatives had outhouses - which reminded me of camping. That gets me back to Derek's script, Camping,  which is based on his years growing up on the reservation in Oklahoma and later being homeless - or, as his mother would say, "camping."

Wish us luck that we'll be able to make Nature's Way into an amazing short!