Introduce Yourself : Back again! by Christopher Fisher

Well, after taking a short break from posting, either to IYW or to Stage 32 in general, due to the vagaries of "real life" that have a tendency to pop up at the least convenient moments, I'm back!

So who am "I", for those tuning in for the first time? Christopher Neal Fisher, 63 year old civil service retiree, denizen of the so-called "Athens of the Midwest" (aka Madison, Wisconsin), husband, stepfather, step-grandfather, step-great-grandfather, and now aspiring screenwriter as well -- at your service!

Much like Henry Hill realizing that as far back as he could remember, he'd always wanted to be a gangster, I've pretty much always wanted to be a screenwriter ever since I was about 6 or so. The shows I watched as a boy, like Batman, Secret Agent, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Wild Wild West, The Time Tunnel, The Avengers, Lost in Space, and my all-time favorite show, The Prisoner, seemed magical to me, and even at that young age, there was something inside me that said "I want to make some of that magic, too!". My friends' heroes were guys like Bart Starr and Mickey Mantle, mine were guys like Groucho Marx and Orson Welles.

Starting as far back as about 4th or 5th grade, I tried writing scripts, but of course nothing came of it. As the years went by, I learned more and more about screenwriting, though in the pre-internet days stuff on how to write a script or how to get the "people who matter" to look at it were not easy to come by, neither in the small college town I grew up in, nor in the much more cosmopolitan and sophisticated city I moved to, and where I still live today. But even once I overcame that lack of knowledge (though even now I'm still finding out how much I have left to learn about "the biz"), there were other adversaries that worked against my having the time and energy to put together scripts that had cohesive plots (the inciting incident and climax were always easy to come up with -- it was the stuff in-between that was hard! lol), like having a full time job (sometimes with overtime), and a full-time relationship/marriage. Some people are still able to write, and write well, even with those distractions, but I discovered I couldn't (probably also in part because, as I finally discovered in my early 50s, I had moderate OCD and ADHD on top of everything else). But then a miracle happened (though it didn't seem like it at the time): I was forcibly retired from my job at age 55. While I tried to find -- without success -- work in the field I'd worked in for over 30 years (office support), I found myself finally having the time I needed to be able to devote to writing scripts. My wife receiving an inheritance from an uncle a few years later made it possible for me to quit my (admittedly half-hearted) job search, and dig in full time into my screenwriting, which I continue to do as of this writing.

So what are my current projects? Well, the main one for the past few years has been a TV series concept I've created with the working title of "Bayou Noir". It's an hour-long serial drama series that I sometimes describe as a "Southern Gothic Soap Opera set in the heart of Louisiana's famous Cajun Country; part Faulkner, part Dark Shadows (the original series, not the 2012 movie PERversion with Johnny Depp as Barnabas), and part The Sopranos". I've written a pilot episode script for it, entitled "Made in Louisiana", which was a finalist in the. 6th Annual TV Writers' Contest held by Stage 32 in 2021, have written a draft for a pitch bible, a two-page written pitch, and am currently working on drafts for a couple of the episodes that follow the pilot. One update to add to all of that: my entry was one of two selected in April as runners up in Stage 32's Drama Logline Contest! Below is my entry:

"The saga of a wealthy and powerful Louisiana French family, as they struggle with familial dysfunction and conflicting agendas, and against enemies human and supernatural — any of which could end them and their 'bayou empire'."

Other things I'm working on are right now at the research stage, like some short film scripts based on Missouri French folktales, and a possible series idea set in Kaskaskia, the capital of the Illinois territory at the time, sort of like a somewhat less "wild and wooly" Deadwood, with Anglo-American settlers, Franco-American coureurs du bois, First Nations folk, Metis (mixed French and First Nations), and free African-Americans, all of them trying to do their own thing in what was the closest thing to a metropolis (population 7,000!) in that part of the American frontier. But definitely my main focus is, and I suspect will continue to be, Bayou Noir -- it's what I've invested the most time, money, and energy in, but more than that, the greatest part of my heart and soul in. It's a world and characters that I've come to love, and know like the back of my hand.

So anyway, that's who I am, and what I'm doing. But now it's time to take a little break, then go down to our storage bin and get out the hoe and rake, and start prepping the planters on our balcony for this year's garden. We now have a southern exposure, and I'm trying a variety of sweet corn this year that's supposed to grow well in planters, so we'll see what happens.

Have a great weekend (and Memorial Day), everyone! Until next time...