All her career, screenwriter Victoria Male has heard that having a great script was the most important thing she could do to give her work the best shot at getting made. That advice shifted in the midst of the pandemic and the strikes, with studios no longer willing to take bets on just any script.
“There’s … a lot of risk aversion, a lot of fear,” Male told TheWrap, pointing to words of a friend who works as a senior development executive at a U.K. production. “Now people aren’t trying to find the script that they can fight for and that will make their career — they’re just trying not to get fired.”
With a finger on the pulse of the industry, Male decided to take the odds for her feature script — a Y2K nostalgia-filled project titled “Whatever Happened to Baby J” — into her own hands by hosting a one-night only table read at Los Angeles’ Dynasty Typewriter on June 9, starring Jodie Sweetin, best known for playing Stephanie on “Full House,” and “Another Cinderella Story” star Drew Seeley.
“How can I make this the easiest sell as a young writer without any credits, for a younger executive in their weekend reading, fighting for this to the boomer they work for?” Male said.
The table read, which starred Sweetin as a mom whose life turns upside down when her husband (Seeley) goes missing and she learns that he was the lead singer in the 2000s boy band she loved growing up, leaned into the Y2K nostalgia with icons from the decade filling out the rest of the cast, including Marissa Jaret Winokur, Doug Jones, Elisa Donovan, Garrett Clayton, Dale Godboldo, Nate Richert, Romy Rosemont and Myko Olivier.
Putting together a table read of this size stretches well beyond the typical duties of a writer, but Male, who worked her first industry job in casting before working in development at the Montecito Picture Company for five years, was up for the task.
Besides Clayton and Olivier, with whom Male was previously connected, every other cast member came on board from a cold email from Male, including Sweetin, who Male notes is “walking the walk” when it comes to supporting up and coming women in the industry. “She was the first one to say yes, and to have a name as reputable and beloved as hers to take to all the other talent made the whole difference,” Male said. “She took a chance on me, and because she did, I was able to get everyone else to climb on board.”
The night was full of laughs as Richert doubled as a member of the 2000s boy band and Sweetin’s young son while Winokur played a recovering obsessive fan of the band whose mantra was, “It’s not okay to act that way about Baby J.” Proceeds from the event, which was sponsored by Reelworks Studios, VOcation and the Successful Screenwriter, and produced by Lioness Den Productions in partnership with Impact24 PR, Jennifer Smith from Rat Dance Party, and the Always in the Club Foundation, benefitted the AIDS Resource Foundation for Children (ARFC) — a cause near and dear to Male’s heart and family.
With a recording of the livestream captured by Dynasty Typewriter — including the band’s catchy signature song, “Whirlwind,” written by Grammy-nominee Yan Perchuk — Male intends to take the table read out to find partners, whether they be representatives, production companies, studios or talent, to make the script the reality.
“Both Gen Z and millennials are such a resilient bunch that we look at everything and when we are able to rise above and find a way in, or find a new way of approaching things and our elders look at us in awe, we just look back at them and go, ‘what? like it’s hard?’” Male said, quoting another quintessential 2000s film.
