WRITER PROFILE
It’s always great to get together with a large group of writers and investors and keep up to date on what’s new, the screenplay contest, any recent deals, new dealmaker contacts, agents or managers that are looking and simply encouraging everyone to keep going after every dream in this difficult industry. For the hard working writer we want to do as much as we can to continue the exposure and word of mouth in the investment circles of the industry. Another way we do this is with writer interviews that we send far and wide and showcase at all possible meetings and markets.
We want to encourage your writing spirit, motivate you and again give you the accolades you so deserve.
Muskego Lake
Written by Jon Spano
What motivated you to become a writer?
After a long dance career and personal setback, during the peak years of the AIDS epidemic, I had stories to tell, a voice inside that I wanted to be heard, or at least expressed, if not for a mass audience, then at least for myself. Writing was therapeutic, creative, and transformative. I began as a playwright. My voice as a writer addresses universal themes, however, not only gay-themed work, though some of my plays and short films do just that.
Starting on a blank page is not easy – where does your creativity come from?
The imagination. Seeing stories in my mind, visualizing them. Some stories are pure fiction. Others, like Muskego Lake, are rooted in personal experience and expanded into cinematic form. It’s the same part of the brain that activates dance and acting.
Do you write projects knowing that so many other factors need to happen to get it to screen and does that come into your project creation?
I keep in mind locations, size of main cast, audience appeal, marketability, budgets. Because getting greenlighted is a one-in-a-trillion chance so I try to lower the odds to maybe one in nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine billion.
What is your dream for this project and what other ancillary revenue do you think it could generate?
I’d love to see Muskego Lake made as an indie film with a theatrical release, a streaming release, and then developed into a streaming series as a kind of sequel. Muskego Lake has mass audience appeal, especially for female audiences from teens to the elderly. It’s a date movie, too. Definitely star-bait roles for top actors looking to play complex characters in relatable situations. Who hasn’t had family issues and tragic situations that they’re running from or buried deep down inside?
Muskego Lake also delivers to an underserved market: the working class, especially women under the thumb of a toxic, masculine world, struggling to get by while juggling life’s (seemingly) insurmountable obstacles. It’s a gritty lake town, broken as its residents, yet with its own beauty and potential for healing and reconciliation.
How has your experience been with screenwriting contests for this project so far?
CFSC is the first contest I’ve submitted to, so we’ll see how it goes from here. The feedback I received was truly valuable in shaping Muskego Lake into a 90-page spec script, which was my original goal. I did three rounds of that, and it was worth taking the time to do it. Screenwriting, like screen acting, is a technical medium, very different from playwriting and theatre acting.
If you could stand in a room full of investor partners looking at many projects what would you like them to know about you and this project?
Muskego Lake has a lot of heart and soul. It’s about healing the self and healing relationships after tragedy, even if it’s long-buried, and being able to move on to a happier, more fulfilled life with those around us and whom we love. The film, which also has a lot of humor, is loosely based on my mother, represented by “Emma,” and her time in Muskego Lake, Wisconsin, after she left her family behind in Ohio.
Do you have any website links for your writing, credits, background, etc. that you would like to share?
Below are links to IMDb and website pages. Additional photo attached.