Vacancy expired!
Hello professional trailer-producers in LA (and possibly outside LA)!
PLEASE DO NOT RESPOND UNLESS YOU READ ALL OF THIS AND INCLUDE A PERSONALIZED OPENING PARAGRAPH IN YOUR FIRST EMAIL!
I'm just back from Sundance Film Festival, my 4th timeamazing!
If you are not in LA, and can only work on Zoom, I will possibly consider. But ideally I want in-person meetings!
My name is Scott Hannon, the 14 year old in one photo and 45 year old next to Pelosi.
If you are curious, stick through to the end of this! It will be worth it!
It included the 4 main PILLARS of my docudrama, and then a few video segments already made to help you understand what is going on here and what my team is looking for!
I'm a UC Berkeley (BA), Harvard (MA) and Columbia (EdD) trained educator and documentary filmmaker who is making my dream 6-8 hour docudrama (with the help of several other (some award-winners) filmmakers in my current team that I've been writing, conceptualizing, crafting and editing for a few years.
My team has determined that it is time to create an PROFESSIONAL SIZZLE/TEASER TRAILER so that we can take it to the next level in terms of securing more funding and continuing to pay a team that can take this film to the finish line: film festivals around the world, streaming on multiple platforms, etc.
The title is undecided, but possibilities are (top so far)
1. “Leave me my Dadafter the Beep Tone",
2. "Voice in the Cradle",
3. “Messaging Machine",
4. “Radio Star".
Fun fact: that last title is a fun riff off of the 1980 Buggles song titled "Video Killed the Radio Star" (the first video ever featured on MTV), 3 seconds of which will appear in the film itself along with many other fun references to the (mostly performing) arts from the last 77 years.
Here is the basic premise of my 6-8 hour docudrama, based on 4 PILLARS, over a 77-year period (since end of World War II):
1. PILLAR #1: Me and my 16 consecutive years of saved answering machine messages
I did the unthinkable, the incomprehensible, the inconceivable (Wallace Shawn reference from Princess Bride, and we will have one clip of him saying that in the film). I literally saved every-single-one-of-my-answering-maching-messages fodrum roll16 consecutive years (1988 - 2004).
Let that sink in for a moment.
Let me be more clear and specific. I painstakingly transferred/recorded EACH of my messages on to those famed and nostalgic 90-minute cassette tapes. And I have upward of 86 of these 90-minute cassettes.
Yes they are 100% authentic and at some point if you needed proof you could use an old school audio tape player and just reach into the pile and fast forward or rewind anywhere you want, press play, and there you would hear one of the messages.
As for the number of minutes I have, let's do the math (sorry if that brought back some middle school trauma). Taking into consideration silences and gaps, that that's well over 6000 minutes, or 100 hours, or over 4 consecutive days of messages. Messages from family, best friends, friends, acquaintances, and yes those random calls from, say, the phone company calling to remind of bills due, etc.
According to the opinion of over 100 documentarians I've met in LA and NYC, this is a priceless time capsule of the intimate voices of the 90's.
It is DOCUMENTARY GOLD.
Other people maybe saved one or two from a sick parent, but no one did anything close to this. Ira Glass from NPR's "This American Life" wants to do a piece on it, a few podcasts have expressed interest, and a friend at the Smithsonian American History Museum wants them to be part of their collection.
But what is the back story on WHY I was so nostalgic and aware of the value of archives to do such a thing
2. PILLAR #2: My father Denis Hannon
My father, Denis. Understanding him and his life is instrumental to understanding why I became the "most nostalgic person in the world, and saved 16 years of messages.
You see, my dad has been described by some as the most interesting, charismatic person in the recent history of Phoenix, AZ.
Why do I not say all of Arizona or even the entire Southwest? Well, I guess it might be considered quite a stretch to include places like LA in this ranking, given the personalities there. I just decided for this film to make this claim about Phoenix, a city of about 2-3 million (at the time of his peak, that is!).
We are going to make the case that he was in fact the most interesting person in Phoenix. Not the wealthiest, or most powerful, or politically savvy, or most ethical. Just the MOST INTERESTING (an admittedly subjective term).
Let me elaborate.
My dad grew up the son of an American diplomat, traveling all over Europe, where his dad was most needed right after World War II shattered much of Europe. His elementary school was a German-American school and during middle school his dad was the Assistant to the American Cultural Ambassador to Switzerland. During this time his siblings and parents lived in a castle overlooking a valley near Bern.
His family returned to Berkeley in 1952-5 where he was the Sea Scout boy and newspaper boy that everyone crowded around to hear tell stories.
Fast forward to his 20's and early 30's and he hung out in famed Laurel Canyon and other spots with which one associates 70s LA!
This was, of course, a time when people experimented with many different kind of drugs. During this time my dad also made several trips to India and Nepal, at about the same time as the Beatles.
When he eventually settled in Phoenix, he owned and landlord-ed (at different times) a youth hostel, a trailer park, a rooming house, and an apartment complex with 30 tenants.
He owned a few of the oldest structures in Phoenix, one of which became a Heritage building and was occupied previously by a local mayor.
But most important and relevant is that his stories from growing up abroad (and seeing a tattered Europe), several years in Berkeley, several in LA, and a few in India, combined with audiences made up of his Phoenix tenants and friends, led to him being almost a professional storyteller; people crowded around him to hear his tales and humor.
He organized and ran the Phoenix Humanists group each week. And he also went once a week (for over a quarter of a century) to the huge local auction in Phoenix, where a community of friend met to buy rare vintage items and to tell stories. He constantly was surrounded by people socializing, making music, doing drugs and telling stories.
One certainly could make a direct analogy to Jack Kerouak and the Merry Pranksters…but the Phoenix version! And we may actually do that in the film.
Now, since my dad was the most interesting person in an entire city, you can imagine how little access to him I had. Combined with two fiercely jealous wives (the two after my mom), my time with him was limited to just a couple weeks a year, if that. All other communications occurred on the phone, often when his wife was not home.
And when he called but I was not there to answer, he left the most extraordinary, lovely, magical 2-4 minute messages that you can imagine. Many times I actually let him go to the answering machine rather than pick up, so that I had a record of his little private stories to me. Then I'd usually pick up at the end or call him back in 5 minutes, pretending I'd been gone.
After about a decade of wishing I'd saved my dad's extraordinary messages, I started to do so in the late 80's. Systematically. Every single message. for 16 years. With the patience of someone like Richard Linklater in his filming of Boyhood over 12 years!
And, as one might imagine, I saved messages from my friends (each of whom had their own charisma, many of them actors and storytellers). As I saved them, I experimented with interesting MY "outgoing messages", designed at time to lure more interesting and elaborate messages on my machine.
And so then, a full 12 year after I stopped saving them, when I had all but forgotten about them, I stumbled upon the box of messages behind the cobwebs of my family's attic, and instantly realized that I'd accidentally discovered time capsule of gold in the form of "the private phone messages of the pre-cell phone and pre-internet 90's America", featuring front and center the arguably most interesting and colorful character in all of Arizona.
And some truly interesting ones in the SF Bay (where I lived), too!
3. PILLAR #3: My grandfather Stuart L. Hannon, the American diplomat and Democratic presidential consultant
NOTE: I just self-produced (Snapfish) a 90-page coffee table book with all his documents in full color, along with my commentary on those documents. This will serve as a guide, a storyboard if you will, for you and/or those who go on the make the film! I'LL HAVE A VIDEO OF MY WALKING THROUGH THAT BOOK UP SOON FOR YOU TO SEE!
We have about 130 documents from his life so far, as mentioned in the videos below.
So far my team (several selected so far out of over 200 applying) think the film will start with me at age 5, soon after the divorce and lonely for my dad, and use the general method of a few key flashbacks, telling the story of my grandfather AFTER the story of me, my messages, and my father. And like any well designed film that covers a large time period (77 year in this case), we must look back at the past to understand the present.
My grandfather was raised in Seattle, met his wife in a Russian class in the 30's, his wife had her own radio show in the SF Bay, and he combined his radio and political savvy to:
a. Help out diplomatically with WW2
b. Be an official observer of the Nuremburg Trials
c. Help rebuild a devastated southern Germany (90% of the German people were also victims of the Nazis)
d. Support the President of Greece during one of their most turbulent times (1948).
e. Be the assistant to the Swiss-American Cultural Ambassador
f. Be the #2 man to the Director of Radio Free Europe (see reference above to "Video Killed the Radio Star")
g. Advise and correspond with Adlai Stevenson in his (losing) campaign against Dwight Eisenhower
h. Advise and correspond with LBJ both while he was a Texas Senator and while he was President
i. Resisting Soviet aggression while also resisting the McCarthyist witch hunt scare frenzy.
j. Help to bring an end to the Vietnam War (letters document this)
h. MOST INTERESTING: Correspond with John Steinbeck in 1958, writing about Pasternak, the Soviet Nobel Prize Winner in Literature. Pasternak, by the way had something to do with the script for Dr. Zhivago.
It was in this climate that my dad and his siblings were raised, sometimes living with their mom away from the action, sometimes along with their dad on these diplomatic trips.
At the risk of this being too long, I'll sum it all up by it leading to some very interesting life experiences for my father, combined with also not having much access to a personal relationship with his father, often having to compete with the other siblings, as well as media who came into their home.
In fact, his father was gone so much of the time, and my dad missed him so much, that he asked for access to his dad's radio broadcasts so that he could at least get to know him from his VOICE.
If you didn’t see the glaring way in which that last sentence gives away the key to this entire film, well, perhaps you do now.
And if your mind explodes with inspiration for this film, a film that if done with expert help could register as one of the top 100-200 films ever made, then you are just the person I want on my team to create this TEASER TRAILER.
4. PILLAR #4: Denis' descent into Alzheimers, 2015-2022 (still alive, living in a small home for the elderly)
In this section, I will reveal that I documented my dad's descent into Alzheimers just about as systematically as any Alzheimer's patients. The footage is as raw, authentic, and entertaining as any you could image.
Remember, I'm in these years I'm recording someone who accumulated 75 years of one of the most interesting lives in all of Arizona, and he did not shy away from telling those stories, even as he lost his memory.
IN FACT, IT IS THE FACT THAT DAD WAS ONE OF THE TRUE LOVERS OF MEMORY (AS MOST STORYTELLERS ARE) WHO THEN LOST IS MEMORY (THUS HIS CAPACITY TO COVER ALL THE DETAILS) THAT MAKES THIS FOOTAGE SHOCKINGLY RELEVANT, POWERFUL, AND BEAUTIFUL.
I'll remind the reader that Alzheimer's is one of the most relevant topics in all of medicine and psychology at this time, the 5th ranked killer and perhaps the most mysterious.
A relevant film clip here of what could be used in this film is this one (which admittedly needs the lighting adjusted with the help of video technology) will be found BELOW IN SECTION C. In it you will see me and dad listening (while looking at his own 1959 high school photo) to a famous 70's song titled "Cat in the Cradle" what, to some extent, captures the Zeitgeist of my dad's relationship with his father, and my dad's relationship with me.
How is all of this pulled together in one byline or elevator pitch?
Perhaps something like:
"An epic son-father-grandfather (with other important characters, but it’s focus is male parent-child issues), tale spanning the last quarter of a century. The smash of modern society and technologies took them away from each other. And yet hidden in the cracks were breadcrumb, in the form of recorded voice, that provided clues to knowing each other.
The son, yearning to understand, not wanting to continually delete an already much deleted dad, surrendered to his nostalgia and saved 16 consecutive years of his answering machine messages. In the hopes of finding his lost dad and granddad.
(Possible) Title: "LEAVE ME MY DAD…AFTER THE BEEP TONE"
Now, here are a few links that provide some sense of added reality to this project
A. A preliminary trailer (if you can even call it that) in the form of a 3-minute narration (in two parts) I made of my dad,
a Pulitzer-Prize winning member of our team named Paul Brinkley-Rogers, evidence of the 200 papers that make up my grandfather's diplomatic career, and footage of the original 16 years of answering machine messages.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-EjIQfvvfM
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/wjRIVUcR2Xc
B. A doc-short I made in 2015 about community in the SF Bay Area that provides a small example of 2 of the approximate 10,000 messages I saved from 1988 - 2004:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcTJq9QrTa4&t=7s
C. For those who geek out about the time period of my grandfather's heyday (diplomacy, resisting Soviet aggression, Radio Free Europe, etc), you might want to listen to only know audio recording of one of my grandfather's many talks.
This one took place in September 1960, just before Kennedy beat Nixon, titled "The New Soviet Offensive".
And yes, this is PARTICULARLY RELEVANT as of Feb 24, 2022 when Putin invaded Ukraine!
https://www.commonwealthclub.org/events/archive/podcast/new-soviet-offensive-09021960
D. One of a few thousand video clips made by me from 2015-2022 documenting my dad's descent into Alzheimer's,
which play a role in telling the larger 77-year story.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAQY0FvL8Cc
Finally, if you have made it this far (which demonstrates your true interest), and you have the skills necessary to make a PROFESSIONAL QUALITY 3-4 minute teaser trailer, you probably have many ideas of how to go about it.
Please, in your email to me, in addition to your resume, include A PARAGRAPH OR TWO WITH YOUR REACTION TO ALL OF THIS, AND YOUR IDEAS ON HOW TO PRODUCE THIS TRAILER!
Finally, I humbly ask you please do NOT respond to this ad unless you are quite accomplished and qualified to make a professional trailer. My regular film team, which it might be appropriate for you to join in the future, is full of award-winners and other extraordinary talents.
Thank you immensely,
Scott Hannon
