I had the pleasure a few years back of meeting Graham Moore…who just won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Imitation Game. I’d actually been exposed to Graham’s work before, having read his excellent book, The Sherlockian, and when I met him, he was working on another screenplay, so I was asked to sit down with him and provide some background information about my job, and spin a few stories from my career to add some “color” to what he was working on (I was fortunate enough to have a meeting with another great screenwriter, Matthew Carnahan). I wasted a better part of Graham’s afternoon with my jokes and stories, and I found him to be (obviously) bright, professional, and articulate. He’s been rightly lauded for his “Stay Weird, Stay Different” acceptance speech, and I think many found it both poignant and inspirational.
Today, I’m not sure if he’d remember much of that afternoon, and I don’t know if the screenplay he was working on then will ever see the light of day. But when we met, I’d just started really taking my writing serious again. I had one book under my belt, and was deep into the second, the one that ultimately got me represented. But as we sat there, where I was too embarrassed to mention my own amateur efforts, I soaked up everything he said about his career path and writing craft. It was an amazing one-on-one session, and as inspirational as his Oscar acceptance speech was to so many people, he was equally inspirational that day to this one writer, even if he didn’t know it at the time.
Anyway, I now have my book deal, and by this time next year, BAD LAND (or whatever it ends up being titled) will be on the verge of release. It will be my personal Oscar moment, and although I’ll have a ton of people to thank at the time, I’d be remiss if I also didn’t recognize how important that one afternoon with Graham Moore was to that success.
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