BEING HENRY DAVID: The Movie!

Full disclosure: Being Henry David is not in theaters…YET. But here’s the exciting news: I have taken the first step.

Being Henry David is officially a screenplay!

This was a project born of Covid isolation, when we became intimate friends with Netflix and Prime and Hulu and HBO and I thought to myself, “Huh…they need a lot of content to create all these shows for all these channels. Why not try my hand at adapting BHD to film?”

And so, dear reader, I did it. I took a bunch of classes through the Gotham Writing Workshop online and via Zoom. (They are fabulous, by the way. Shout out to instructor C.C. Webster and my tough, discerning, but encouraging classmates!) And it was HARD. I was humbled by how much I didn’t know about screenwriting, and how different it is from writing novels. Then, when I got Covid myself this past May, the silver lining of that long isolation was that I finished the first full draft. I’ve been polishing it obsessively ever since.

Last night, I gathered together a small group of dear friends, most of them seasoned community theater folks, and we did a read-through of the script. It was AMAZING! In addition to it being fun, it was helpful. (Gotta get my red pencil out and do a few more tweaks.) And, a cool fun fact: One of them, Rachel Crane, was one of the first readers of Being Henry David when it was first published in 2013 and she was a middle school student, and this year she graduated from (get this) film school! We had such a great time talking about the excitement and challenges of screenwriting and the “biz.”

Here are a few photos…including a cheesy one of me slapping shut a pretend clapperboard (I had to look up the proper term for that thingie just now…) before shouting “ACTION!” Plus, my cast of fabulous friends and the movie snacks. Yep, I love me a party theme.

So….I am doing this. I’m currently moving forward with this script, making my first connections in the industry, and learning more every day. Obviously, I will keep you posted as things progress!

Wish me well, AND HEY, if you happen to have any connections in the movie business, someone who might find it intriguing that an acclaimed award-winning YA novel has been adapted for film by the original author of said YA novel, please feel free to drop me a note at cal.armistead1@gmail.com.

Hey, it’s a tough business. But you never know…