an introduction...

Hi there... for those of you who will be following my journey from short film to television series, a little background...

Back in September 1998, when I was living in San Francisco, I wrote an untitled... and never-finished... 7-page short film script about four friends in San Francisco commiserating about love (or, rather, lack thereof) over coffee at Cafe Flore. By the way, Cafe Flore is still there at the corner of Market and Noe in the Castro district. It's changed owners a few times since then, but it's still the place to go if you want good people-watching. :-)

Two years later, in August 2000, I found that little script again and decided to work on the idea some more. It became a treatment for a short film called "So You Wanna Be A Lesbian: A True Documentary By Jennifer Baker." The treatment included 10 so-called "rules" of lesbian life (i.e. the 10 funniest and you-hate-to-admit-it-but-you-know-they're-true-because-you've-lived-them-or-know-someone-who-has stereotypes of the lesbian world).

A few months later, in January 2001, I wrote the first complete draft of "The Ten Rules" short film script while sitting at the corner table in my friend's coffeeshop, the appropriately named Thinker's Cafe. The script was 21 pages long and incorporated some of the September 1998 script along with all of the "rules" from the August 2000 treatment. By the way, Thinker's Cafe is also still there in San Francisco on 20th near the corner of 20th and Arkansas... and they have wonderful coffee, I must say.

While I was writing that script, I was also beginning to spend more time in Los Angeles... and in my various travels in LA LA land, I met Lee Friedlander, a producer who wanted to direct, and her friend Abbie Ludwig, a producer who wanted to...well...continue producing. They loved the script and we made it happen!! In October 2001, just 10 months and a couple of my script drafts later, we shot "The Ten Rules: A Lesbian Survival Guide" with me as the lead character, Jennifer Baker.

The short film turned out GREAT and did as well as any short film possibly could! It played in over 60 festivals worldwide (I even have a brochure from our screening in Iceland!), won awards at 11 of those festivals, was picked up and featured on two different short film compilations, and has also been screened on cable television.

Lee and Abbie said from the beginning that the short film would make a great television series... but to be honest, I just couldn't see how it would possibly happen because when we made the film in 2001, there were no gay television channels and there was very little gay-themed content on television. In fact, the L Word hadn't even made its debut yet! Fortunately, Lee and Abbie were right. In 2005, after MTV/Viacom got LOGO (their LGBT channel) up and running, Lee began pitching our short film to the LOGO executives. She also brought in Bill Grundfest, an AMAZING writer and producer, to be one of our executive producers on the project. Eventually, the head of LOGO came out from New York to meet with us. The meeting went great! And after several other meetings with the LOGO executives in New York and Los Angeles, we were given the greenlight to produce a pilot presentation!!

And that's where we are now... just 2 1/2 weeks away from shooting the pilot presentation for "The Rules," the television series for LOGO. I'm co-creating, executive producing, writing, and starring in this little baby of mine... and I couldn't be more excited!! Based on how this presentation turns out, LOGO will then decide whether or not to give us the greenlight to do the actual series. We're working really hard to make it a no-brainer for them. ;-)

I'll be adding more posts in the coming days to tell you about the casting process, pre-production, etc. I'll also try to add posts during shooting to let you know how all of that is going. This is an incredibly exciting time for me!! Thanks for reading. I'm happy to have you along for the ride.