Kenneth Atchity's Blog, page 45
June 15, 2022
Ken on Sell Your Story to Hollywood!
This little book aims to help you figure out how to get your story told on big screens or small.
Available on Amazon
June 13, 2022
AMAZON E-Book GIVEAWAY June 13 - 17! What They're Saying About Ken Atchity's Sell Your Story to Hollywood
Available on Amazon
Maren R, Reviewer
Full of information but still easy to read! If you want to start screen writing -even if it snot the rather lofty goal of becoming a Hollywood writer- this book will tell you how you could actually manage it!
Cristie U, Reviewer
This is a helpful and honest guide as to how to get your book made into a movie or tv show. It seems like it would be easier now because of the internet, but the author points out how difficult it still is and how to ensure your book gets into the right hands.
Terri D, Reviewer
Sell Your Story to Hollywood is a quick guide to getting your story into the hands of those who make things happen in Hollywood. The author Kenneth Atchity speaks from experience with decades working in Hollywood to get stories from the page to the screen. Although every guide about breaking into Hollywood should be viewed through the lens of how small the odds really are, this book starts out a bit discouraging for those who are truly interested in learning what they can do to move from a novel to a produced screenplay. The first step in getting this done, according to this book? Have an international bestseller. Okay. Not everyone can do that. Step 2: get reviewed by the NYT or other prestigious publication. Um... if a writer had that, they probably wouldn't need this book. While some of these initial steps are not quite what you would consider actionable advice for getting your screenplay produced, the book does move toward more actionable steps that you can take, though the guide does assume that you have a great story to tell with either an impeccably written novel or screenplay. As a writer with scripts but no connections to the industry, the parts of this book that I found most helpful were actual Appendix B and Appendix C. Writers at any stage can probably find something useful to take away from this guide to use in pursuing their own Hollywood career.
Reviewer 428382
Informative and well written, this is a guide that ever writer should read. I really enjoyed it and learned a lot.
pamula f, Reviewer
Hollywood buys stories all of the time. Sometimes they buy a story that started out as a small article in a hometown newspaper. This book will show you how to get your writing out there for the world to see.
Steven M, Reviewer
I’ve recently completed a screen writing course and was delighted to have been approved for this ARC. The author clearly knows his stuff and offers an insight into the world of scriptwriting for movies. A perfect introduction to a world that some of us can only dream of.
Librarian 121315
Have you ever watched a movie and thought to yourself that you can come up with a better story? Or have you ever been inspired by a movie to tell a story of you own? For either of those cases, this is one of the books that you must read. I said one of the books because there are other books that can also stir you in the right direction; nevertheless, this book will certainly give you a good start. I loved that the author offers real life examples of movies that we have heard or watched before making the book’s contents more relatable to the readers. This is a great introduction to the business of movie making and readers should feel more comfortable with this subject after studying this book.
June 10, 2022
Ken Atchity, The Story Merchant, visits with Mark to share a family recipe and talk about his book "MY OBIT Daddy Holding Me
On Amazon
Anyone who enjoyed Mircea Eliade’s autobiographical multi-volume Exile’s Odyssey, Oliver Sacks’ The Man Who Mistook My Wife for a Hat and Awakenings, or Richard Feynman’s Surely You Must Be Joking, Mr. Feynman, will find My Obit: Daddy Holding Me a page-turner filled with poignant family experiences, explosive sibling rivalry, literary adventures, ethnic cooking, wide-ranging storytelling, the workings of the brain itself--and what can be learned about life from playing tennis for decades. The jokes and recipes alone are worth the entrance price.
June 8, 2022
June 6, 2022
Books and Pals Gives Ken Atchity's My Obit: Daddy Holding Me Five Stars!
Review: My Obit: Daddy Holding Me
Genre: Memoir/Autobiography
Description:
The author describes his book this way.
“At the prompting of a marketing friend, I was advised to title this book, My Intensely Madcap, Lebanese/Cajun, Jesuit-Schizoid, Terminally Narcissistic, Food-Focused, East Coast/West Coast, Georgetown/Yale, Career-Changing, Cross-Dressing, Runaway Catholic Italophile, Paradoxically Dramatic, Linguistically Neurotic, Hollywood Academic, ADD-Overcompensating, Niche-Abhorring, Jocoserious Obit. But when my designer pointed out that title wouldn’t fit on the spine, much less on any public display list, I changed my mind. Again! The story of my life.
Which this is at least the first volume of. I hope it makes you laugh, spares you some of my grief, and leads you to insist on telling your story to anyone who will listen.”
Author:
“Dr. Ken Atchity loves being a writer, producer, teacher, career coach, and literary manager, responsible for launching hundreds of books and films. His life's passion is finding great stories and storytellers and turning them into bestselling authors and screenwriters--and making films which send their stories around the world.
His books include, most recently, novels The Messiah Matrix and Seven Ways to Die (with William Diehl) and nonfiction books for writers at every stage of their career. Based on his teaching, managing, and writing experience, he's successfully built bestselling careers for novelists, nonfiction writers, and screenwriters from the ground up.
Atchity has also produced 30 films, including Hysteria (Maggie Gyllenhaal and Hugh Dancy), The Expatriate (Aaron Eckhart), The Lost Valentine (Betty White), Gospel Hill (Danny Glover), Joe Somebody (Tim Allen), Life or Something Like It (Angelina Jolie), The Amityville Horror: The Evil Escapes, Shadow of Obsession (Veronica Hammel), The Madam's Family (Ellen Burstyn).”
Appraisal:
Memoirs are an interesting beast. Some I’ve read have been people who I have a lot in common with, growing up in the same environment geographically and culturally, where I find myself comparing our respective life experiences and how we viewed them, sometimes adjusting how I view some things in subtle ways or feeling validated that the author and I are in agreement. Other times the memoirist and I have nothing obvious in common, yet I realize in contrasting our different lives that there are still commonalities with everyone that are part of the generic human experience. These can also help me understand people not like me, which has obvious benefits.
This memoir, billed as volume 1 of Kenneth Atchity’s autobiography, fell somewhere in the middle. I’ve written more than a few book reviews in my time, but never for the big publications that Atchity has. I’ve made a few career or life decisions that were outside the norm, shaking things up with a purpose, which Atchity does. But mostly his experiences were much different from mine, growing up in a much different environment, in a different time, with a much different relationship with his family from what I’ve experienced. He’s also risen to the top of multiple fields, overcoming lots of challenges on the way, learning as he goes, making mistakes, and learning still more from them. In the process of learning about his life, I think I learned a bit more about myself, and maybe picked up a few ideas to help guide me in the future based on the lessons he’s learned from life thus far.
Buy now from: Amazon US Amazon UK
FYI:
So adult language.
Format/Typo Issues:
No significant issues.
Rating: ***** Five Stars
Reviewed by: BigAl
Approximate word count: 100-105,000 words
June 2, 2022
George Gallo, Nick Vallelonga Team on High-End ‘Gambino’ Film Produced by Julius Nasso with Ken Atchity (EP)
Veteran Hollywood multi-hyphenate George Gallo (“Bad Boys,” “The Comeback Trail”) is attached to direct “Gambino,” a high-end biopic about organized crime boss Carlo Gambino that Gallo is co-writing with two-time Oscar winner Nick Vallelonga (“Green Book”).
The ambitious project, announced in Cannes, is being lead produced by Julius R. Nasso, also a Hollywood veteran, best known for his production partnership with Steven Seagal that went sour. Nasso more recently shepherded “Narc,” and is among producers of Susanne Rostock’s Harry Belafonte doc “Sing Your Song.”
Nasso has acquired rights to the novel “Gambino: The Rise” by Pierre James which delves into the U.S. story of Cosa Nostra starting from its roots in Italy and the role played by Carlo Gambino, who was its boss from 1957 until his death in 1976 of natural causes in his Massapequa, Long Island, home.
“I have known this story all my life,” Gallo told Variety, speaking from Los Angeles.
Gallo added that Gambino’s world is very different from that of “The Sopranos,” noting that Carlo Gambino came from an educated background and was a quiet, soft‐spoken man with a courtly manner.
“He was a businessman in a darker universe,” Gallo said. “A tremendous Machiavellian money-maker; that’s why he got to the top and stayed there for decades.”
The “Gambino” film will be “a tale of money and power as the world changed around him,” and also, of course, of betrayals and violence. “But there won’t be a lot of people getting whacked,” the director went on to point out.
Gallo also noted that he’s been friends for decades with Vallelonga and Nasso. Nasso in turn has been pals for ages with U.S.-based Italian singer/songwriter and music producer Tony Renis, who is also among producers of the “Gambino” film. Renis is also set to play Gambino as an old man and is in charge of the film’s music score.
Vallelonga, speaking in Cannes, noted that the approach he and Gallo are taking is: “This is not just a mob movie. We’ve seen a lot of that. This is Shakespearean; it’s on that level. We have to elevate the material, and that’s what we are going to go for.”
“Think of ‘Once Upon a Time in America,’ said Nasso who started out in the film business as an assistant to Sergio Leone. “The book starts from when Gambino was a young boy, so there will be three characters playing the one [titular] role,” he added.
Nasso said he is looking to start pre-production on “Gambino” in Italy in January. The plan is for cameras to start rolling no later than July 15, 2023. The producer intends to reconstruct New York between the 1950s and the 70s at Rome’s Cinecittà Studios and shoot the entire film in Italy.
Nasso and his team have also been scouting locations in Italy’s southern Calabria, Puglia, and Campania regions.
Casting, for which Nasso said he is seeking A-list Hollywood talent, will start as soon as the screenplay is ready. Meanwhile he is recruiting the film’s below-the-line crew in Italy and is in talks with triple-Oscar winner Dante Ferretti who is based at Cinecittà, to come on board as the film’s production designer he said.
“Gambino” is being produced by Julius R. Nasso, Tony Renis, China Bridge Capital founder and CEO Edward Zeng, and Santo Versace, who is an investor, and president of, Italy’s Minerva Pictures.
Minerva chief Gianluca Curti will serve as executive producer, as will Helena Zeng and Ken Atchity.
The film is being produced by Nasso Production, which is as Nasso-Zeng company. Pic is fully financed by Edward Zeng and former Credit Suisse CEO Tidjane Thiam, who were both present at the film’s Cannes announcement.
Minerva Pictures will be handling international sales, excluding U.S., on “Gambino.”
(Pictured above from left: Tony Renis; Nick Vallelonga; Julius R. Nasso in Cannes)
George Gallo, Nick Vallelonga Team on High-End ‘Gambino’ Film Produced by Julius Nasso and Ken Atchity
Veteran Hollywood multi-hyphenate George Gallo (“Bad Boys,” “The Comeback Trail”) is attached to direct “Gambino,” a high-end biopic about organized crime boss Carlo Gambino that Gallo is co-writing with two-time Oscar winner Nick Vallelonga (“Green Book”).
The ambitious project, announced in Cannes, is being lead produced by Julius R. Nasso, also a Hollywood veteran, best known for his production partnership with Steven Seagal that went sour. Nasso more recently shepherded “Narc,” and is among producers of Susanne Rostock’s Harry Belafonte doc “Sing Your Song.”
Nasso has acquired rights to the novel “Gambino: The Rise” by Pierre James which delves into the U.S. story of Cosa Nostra starting from its roots in Italy and the role played by Carlo Gambino, who was its boss from 1957 until his death in 1976 of natural causes in his Massapequa, Long Island, home.
“I have known this story all my life,” Gallo told Variety, speaking from Los Angeles.
Gallo added that Gambino’s world is very different from that of “The Sopranos,” noting that Carlo Gambino came from an educated background and was a quiet, soft‐spoken man with a courtly manner.
“He was a businessman in a darker universe,” Gallo said. “A tremendous Machiavellian money-maker; that’s why he got to the top and stayed there for decades.”
The “Gambino” film will be “a tale of money and power as the world changed around him,” and also, of course, of betrayals and violence. “But there won’t be a lot of people getting whacked,” the director went on to point out.
Gallo also noted that he’s been friends for decades with Vallelonga and Nasso. Nasso in turn has been pals for ages with U.S.-based Italian singer/songwriter and music producer Tony Renis, who is also among producers of the “Gambino” film. Renis is also set to play Gambino as an old man and is in charge of the film’s music score.
Vallelonga, speaking in Cannes, noted that the approach he and Gallo are taking is: “This is not just a mob movie. We’ve seen a lot of that. This is Shakespearean; it’s on that level. We have to elevate the material, and that’s what we are going to go for.”
“Think of ‘Once Upon a Time in America,’ said Nasso who started out in the film business as an assistant to Sergio Leone. “The book starts from when Gambino was a young boy, so there will be three characters playing the one [titular] role,” he added.
Nasso said he is looking to start pre-production on “Gambino” in Italy in January. The plan is for cameras to start rolling no later than July 15, 2023. The producer intends to reconstruct New York between the 1950s and the 70s at Rome’s Cinecittà Studios and shoot the entire film in Italy.
Nasso and his team have also been scouting locations in Italy’s southern Calabria, Puglia, and Campania regions.
Casting, for which Nasso said he is seeking A-list Hollywood talent, will start as soon as the screenplay is ready. Meanwhile he is recruiting the film’s below-the-line crew in Italy and is in talks with triple-Oscar winner Dante Ferretti who is based at Cinecittà, to come on board as the film’s production designer he said.
“Gambino” is being produced by Julius R. Nasso, Tony Renis, China Bridge Capital founder and CEO Edward Zeng, and Santo Versace, who is an investor, and president of, Italy’s Minerva Pictures.
Minerva chief Gianluca Curti will serve as executive producer, as will Helena Zeng and Ken Atchity.
The film is being produced by Nasso Production, which is as Nasso-Zeng company. Pic is fully financed by Edward Zeng and former Credit Suisse CEO Tidjane Thiam, who were both present at the film’s Cannes announcement.
Minerva Pictures will be handling international sales, excluding U.S., on “Gambino.”
(Pictured above from left: Tony Renis; Nick Vallelonga; Julius R. Nasso in Cannes)
June 1, 2022
“A.M. Adair's third book, Shadow War, starts on a high note and holds it there until the very end.”
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May 30, 2022
Readers Are Falling In Love With The Danger Game!
Follow Stephen Quintana in Ian Bull’s Third Installment of the Quintana Adventure Series!
The Danger Game Out Now
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Available on Amazon
May 25, 2022
Kevin Flanagan of District Magazine talks to Ken About the Art of Storytelling!
It was a great year for Irish film with The Room and Brooklyn receiving Oscar nominations. Kevin Flanagan talks to Hollywood producer and author Kenneth John Atchity, about the importance of story and why the Irish are good at telling them.
Kevin met Ken Atchity at the international writer’s symposium held recently in Dublin. There he was able to get the producer’s views on the magic of story from the man who is known internationally as a “Story Merchant.”
I love Hollywood.
In 2003 I spent a month in Los Angeles attempting to sell my script to a Hollywood agent. It was memorable queuing at the local Kinko’s store where they had a photocopying machine that only copied film scripts and the queue was long! People are friendly, once they heard I was from Ireland our individual projects were discussed and phone numbers were swapped. As they say, you have to be friendly in Tinseltown because you never know who you will need on the way up (and down).
The other thing I loved was sitting in my favourite coffee shop Urth Caffé on Melrose Avenue watching drop-dead gorgeous waitresses serve us coffee. They all looked, to my naive eye, like film stars. My cynical Irish friend burst my bubble. He had been working in Hollywood for years and said, between sips of his soya latte, ‘beautiful people are two-a-penny here!’.
As I continued to sit with my mouth wide-open my friend nudged me. A famed Hollywood producer had arrived outside the patio in an open-topped Bentley. Heads swivelled as he took a table, surrounded by a group of acolytes dancing attendance. Certainly the waitress perked up.
Everyone in Hollywood, I soon discovered, was climbing the greasy pole. Actresses, writers, directors, but at the top, wielding the real power, was the fabled Hollywood producer who can make (and break) anyone. You could smell their power and sense their arrogance.
My impression of Hollywood producers had not changed over the years till I meet Ken Atchity in Dublin this June past. Atchity has produced over 30 Hollywood movies and is known in the book world as the ‘Story Merchant’ because he also sells stories to publishers–and publishes them through Story Merchant Books. Soft spoken, educated, he is not at all like the usual hustler I saw on a daily basis in Hollywood. Ken Atchity is above all a reflective man who has built his life around the concept of “story.” He has been an academic, a writer, before he became a movie producer. He loves “story” and wants to share that love.
He certainly did that in Dublin when he spoke this summer to a group of writers, and what he said has stayed with me and helped inform my own work. According to Atchity, whatever the genre – movie, TV series, book or computer game – its core chances of success all come down to story. But story is not confined to the creative arts.
“Look at Brexit,” Atchity says as we sip a drink after his lecture in the bar of the famed Gresham Hotel, “the day after the referendum a lot of British people wanted to have another vote as they were led to believe Brexit was a story about the immigration crisis. But it was also about 200 other things as well: the value of pound and the stock market. But the story was moulded around immigration and national identity and people bought into it.”
Ken lowers his glass and smiles, “Lying is an old Catholic word for what we all do all day – another form of storytelling. If your wife walks down the steps after a long night out and asks “how am I looking?” do you tell the truth or a story to get by and not stir up a row?” He takes another sip. “Everybody is telling a story!”
Storytelling goes back to the dawn of man, Atchity insists, and Homer was the greatest storyteller of them all, probably as product of the oral tradition of storytelling having to be committed to memory. It becomes deeply ingrained.
“Stories are there to warn us what happens when people bring disaster on themselves and their people. To this day story still acts as an exhortation and a warning as what happens when someone brings destruction on all around him. Great stories are changing the world by changing the perception of people.”
Atchity believes storytelling impacts profoundly on both young and old.
“You hear parents saying disparaging remarks about groups of people – say Poles or black people – and you wake up one day as an adult and you believe fully in them.”
But despite this pessimistic view Atchity thinks things in the world are actually improving.
“Fewer people are dying in wars. People are giving up smoking. Communication is helping us. As the saying goes, living well is the best revenge and we are slowly learning to leave things behind. Optimism is the more logical of two options. I love the story of the optimist who was pushed off Empire State Building and half way down says, “Well, so far, so good!”’
Atchity has always believed in the power of “story” and I ask him why that is.
“I think it all goes back to my childhood growing up on front porches in my Cajun Louisiana (maternal) family. My uncles and cousins were storytellers – some accomplished, some not so good. I loved the feeling of community that happened when they began swapping stories and jokes. And though I studied analysis and logic in Jesuit classrooms my heart was with the storytellers. As an Italian friend of mine said one day, trying to explain his new wife’s erratic behavior, “Let me tell you a story instead–isn’t life, after all, just a story?” It’s the power of stories that change the world more than anything else.”
Among a vast oeuvre Atchity has produced his share of horror movies, including Amityville 4: The Evil Escapes. But horror is a genre in decline. Does Atchity have his views on why this is?
“Aristotle’s theory was about how audience needs catharsis. They see horror on stage, walk out of the theatre and give a sigh of relief that the “horror” does not affect their lives. But in today’s world all that has changed. Daily we hear and see horrific things – decapitations and mass murder at every turn. Horror is no longer escapism. Audiences now need to escape their daily dose of real live horror by going to the movie house. There they can watch heroes in blockbusters win and the bad guys lose.”
Despite the decline Atchity still continues to produce movies in the horror genre, “At the moment we are working on a very low budget horror spoof – Friday 31st – and that maybe is the way to go.” // We discuss our best loved horror movies. One of Atchity’s favorites was filmed on the campus he was attending at Georgetown University in Washington.
“Scenes from The Exorcist were shot at my alma mater. I remember reading the book in the early 70’s and being scared to death. Having been raised a Roman Catholic I believed it was all real! From a pure horror point of view it’s my favorite.”
The Exorcist was released in 1973 but not shown in Ireland till 1998. How things have changed! Now, according to Atchity, “horror movies are relegated to low-budget productions with an occasional excursion into brilliance. The market isn’t as robust as the general market is. It’s a selective audience, that doesn’t appear to be growing—because of the advent of alternate media such as online games, web series. Cheap ones are made because the loyal horror audience will see it and is enough by itself to make them profitable even if they don’t cross over to the larger audience.”
We move on to discussing another core shift in storytelling – the move from movies to TV mega stories, Game of Thrones being the prime example. Are these TV series successful because they allow “story” to be told in greater depth?
“A series or miniseries allows the storyteller to develop the characters more fully than the restricted time allowed for a film. The best writers and directors today are in television as well as film.”
Ken has enjoyed walking in the footsteps of Leopold Bloom while in Dublin, and I ask him for any words of wisdom for modern Irish writers.
“Tell a story with universal impact – something we all care about – and make sure it has three well-defined acts and each act is powerfully dramatic. It’s also important to make sure the main character is someone we can all relate to, even if he’s not likeable. Do all that and get someone in Hollywood to give you feedback on it.”
Irish writers get on the case – you know the right person in Hollywood to send it to!
Read more at District Magazine
