After spending a week in the ICU, the only residual effect keeping me from returning to work was a minor pronunciation impediment, so my neurologist recommended I start working with a speech pathologist. Fortunately, one of the country’s top specialists worked right down the street. Being in the entertainment industry, I’d heard of the doctor and the valuable work he was doing with celebrities. He was instrumental in eliminating Daffy Duck’s lisp, Porky Pig’s stuttering and Foghorn Leghorn’s southern drawl. He’d also worked with the Roadrunner to expand his miniscule vocabulary from meep meep to that of a graduate student in English literature. I was ushered into an exam room…
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Screenplays Are Easy What do MASH, Law & Order and The Sopranos have in common?
Late Sunday evening, the phone rang. Which, in and of itself wouldn’t be remarkable except that I had been in the Federal Witness Protection Program for over six months. What was more intriguing was the nature of the call and how it would change my life forever–writing Academy Award worthy screenplays. “Hello, is this Allen Smith?” It is. “This is Yolanda Vonnoh and I’m the Dean of Curriculum at John Wilkes Booth Community College. I got your name from one of the articles you wrote for The Morning Sunset and would like to know if you’d be interested in teaching a class for us?” The Morning Sunset was a throw-away…