Nevada Film Festival 1st Place Screenplay Winner Jeffrey Morin took the prize for his script Poetease on December 4th at the Rampart Casino in Las Vegas and was happy to come to town for a visit to collect it. For Jeff, getting to this point in his career has been filled with twists and turns that began many years ago when he attended thr University of Wisconsin in Madison. After that he moved to Milwaukee, married and became the father of two, dramatically altering his plan to move to New York and do Broadway. Instead, he started a theatre company called East Hollywood Productions. "The concept was to do original theatre and then have a video backdrop. We'd take the scenes we were shooting for the show and run out on location, so if it was in a park, we'd film in a park, if it was at a beach, then we'd film at a beach and then show that in the production," Morin explained.
At this point, which was around 1990,Jeff wrote his first script. "I tried it and it was just so cumbersome to try and get the screenplay in the format that they wanted cause back then you just used Word. When you edited it, forget it, everything just went offline. So, I did one, I entered it into the Nicholl Fellowships and after that I kind of let it go," he continued. Now, with his 26 year old son married, his 22 year old daughter in college and the changes in technology making screenwriting easier, he decided the time was right to pursue his old interest. One discovery that has made the process better is Script Buddy, full featured screenwriting software that facilitates online writing and formatting and also allows users to dump their files into a text format or PDF file when they are finished. "It took away the technical aspects of writing, so that you could focus on the story and just write and not worry about if it's in the right format," he said. Another advantage is that Script Buddy is a log in systems that can be accessed from any computer unlike other software products that need to be installed.
In August Morin began working on Poetease, which tells the story of Alex and Theo, two people living in darkness at opposite ends of society. During a brief, but meaningful 36 hour encounter they share an intimacy and passion that transforms their lives through a kind of genesis. Alex is a young, wealthy wanderer, poet and sex addict with the best of everything, while Theo is an 18 year old runaway from the Faith Homes in Illinois, who has been abused and lived on the streets. Originally Theo had been Thea, but then Jeff decided to turn the character into a man. One of the reasons he wrote Poetease as a gay piece was because of stories in the press describing how many homosexuals end up taking their lives because of their failure to find acceptance. He believes that even though there are a lot of characters created that are funny or bitchy, they are stereotypical and that there is a shortage of ones with realism and quality being written. "I think Theo is a gem of a character, innocent and pure," he said. Although the young man worked as a prostitute and was abused, he doesn't see wrong in anyone. On the other end of the spectrum is Alex, who in his 20's has inherited a great deal of wealth from his late mother. Still, with all of the abundance in his life he feels souless. "I'm more dark. I like to do dark sort of stories, more character based and not a lot of action and a lot of, you know, to do about the set, so it's more of an intimate relationship between two," Morin related.
The screenwriter spent a lot of time doing research and creating profiles online meeting people who could give him insight into his characters. "I kind of set up some profiles and went undercover with that, so it was kind of interesting to see. I mean there's a whole other world out there," he added. Aside from the win at the Nevada Film Festival, Poetease has been accepted as one of the 10 entries in the Diamond Category at the California Film Awards, which will be held on January 22nd at the Bahia Resort Hotel in San Diego, California.
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