Deceit

I wrote this script soon after we completed "King's Highway" and I sold it last year. It was originally entitled "The American Standard" (after the bar in the script). The film had nothing to do with the toilet company, although that was where the title came from and I had incorporated the AS plant into the original script. Anyway, after the film was shot and completed, it was sold to Lifetime television and the title changed to "Deceit".

The film stars Matt Long (from a great, short-lived series on the defunct WB, "Jack & Bobby") and Emmanuelle Chriqui (most notably from HBO's "Entourage").

A couple of weeks ago, it premiered on Lifetime. Now, I would have written about the premiere, except that I didn't know about it until the day before its airing. Turns out the producer and/or his assistant forgot to tell me. This is a bummer. But, Ross (the producer) is a good guy, so I take him at his word that it slipped through the cracks. Luckily, I have a Saturday ritual of taking the TV Guide into the john and perusing most Saturday mornings. See, I like to see what movies are going to be on IFC and TCM, so I can TiVo them and then never watch them because I don't really have the damn time to watch movies anymore (what, with the 20 frickin' hours of television I record, plus trying to write scripts and, oh yeah, being a dad). I digress. So, I'm sitting on the throne. Peace and quiet. I check Sunday's listings on IFC. Mind you, Lifetime's listings are just below the IFC line in my TV Guide. Anyway.

"Hmmmm. "Antoine Fisher" on IFC. Seen it. It was okay. Shot in Cleveland though. So may----what the fuck? Is that "Deceit"? Airing tomorrow night? No. Is it? Holy shit! That's my movie! My movie is airing tomorrow!"

That's pretty much how it went down. Cut to me running out of the bathroom in just my boxers. It's now like, 11 am. I still haven't showered. "Kids. Didn't I say to turn off the television?" Switch on the computer. Our damn, slow as molasses, the worst PC ever on the face of the planet, computer. I don't think there is anything worse than our computer.

No. Wait. There is. Having to use dial-up AOL on our computer is worse. 20 minutes later, I'm on the Lifetime site and sure enough, it was my movie (or, rather, partly my movie). So I sent out as many emails as I could to tell people to watch Lifetime on a Sunday night when most people are watching "Desperate Housewives" or "Cold Case" or pretty much anything else besides Lifetime. I do recall NFL Football... yes, NFL Football is also on Sunday nights.

There were a lot of people I know who watched the movie and man, am I grateful. I wish I could have been with my folks when it aired.

While I could sit here and bitch about what I felt was wrong with the movie or complain about how the script was rewritten, there is no point. The truth is, I wrote the script to sell and have it made into a movie so someone else would see it and ask me to write more movies. From that script, I have been able to get a manager. And because of that script getting produced, I got some credibility when it came time to approach the "Squirrel Boy" writing staff about writing a couple of episodes (which I got to do). So, "Deceit" has been good for me.

Any of you out there reading this who watched the movie. THANK YOU!

Now, if I could just finish this damn thriller, I may regain some of my sanity again.

Aloha