Forgotten Hollywood

Manny P. here…

   After four months of fundraising through Indiegogo, we have begun principal production of our Forgotten Hollywood Documentary, with Lionel Barrymore as our primary subject. Nervousa Films was on hand to capture first person interviews of Academy Award winning actress Margaret O’Brien; and Scott Essman, the creative director of Visionary Media, and public relations for Universal Studios and their 100-year celebration. He will be our go-to historian with issues related to Hollywood’s Silent Era and Golden Age. Miss O’Brien worked on two MGM productions with Barrymore; and she was a poster child and advocate for the March of Dimes effort.             LIONEL BARRYMORE

       MANNY PACHECO    MARGARET O’BRIEN                             SCOTT ESSMAN

   Essman and O’Brien were engaging and informative. I’m confident their contributions were original and uniquely fresh in the cinematic storytelling process. Each guest provided a valuable first-person narrative and personal assessment relating to Lionel Barrymore’s quest to continue working despite a degenerative disability due to arthritis; the relationship between President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Hollywood during the origins of the March of Dimes; and the movie studio maturation process in the illustration of disease and disability to interested audiences.

   Actors Lon Chaney, Dwight Frye, John Barrymore, and Lon Chaney Jr. were all part of the conversation. Plus, the Hays Code, which defined how censorship was applied as a motion picture code; and the Coogan Act, which protected children working on a movie set, were additionally discussed.

   Michelle Merker is a co-producer of the documentary project, and together, we conducted the day-long interviews. Dan Donley was our director of photography.  This first day of production took place at the Granada Pavilion, a multi-purpose facility in the San Fernando Valley. Virginia Vandewouwer was in charge of craft services.

   The next step is to catalogue the interview footage, collect the appropriate still photos to help us tell the story, and create narration. The finished Trailer will be used in conjunction with a Pitch Package to garner potential major investment opportunities.

   This overall process is quite exciting!

Until next time>                               “never forget”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 5th, 2013 at 12:09 am and is filed under Blog by Manny Pacheco. You can follow any comments to this post through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

Bookmark this post: