A film project co-written by a Jersey City freeholder and a Bayonne resident won a Best Short Film award at the New York International Film and Video Festival last month.
“Meet the Pitts,” a film co-written by Hudson County Freeholder Bill O’Dea and Bayonne resident Cathy McGrath, and directed by Bayonne resident Nick Taylor, was showcased as a possible situation comedy for television. It had been adapted from an O’Dea play called “Therapy” that was produced on stage last year in New York City.
“The competition in the festival is very strong, as there are about 400-plus films in the festival,” O’Dea said. “The festival actually created this award for “Meet the Pitts” because of its unique appeal as a sit-com pilot as opposed to a short comedy film.”
When O’Dea first started writing scripts for screenplays in the 1980s, he was not a freeholder or even a Jersey City councilman. Yet his involvement in local politics taught him to look more closely at the people around him and the draw out of them inspiration for characters he might use.
His early efforts dealt with specific people in politics, collecting their quirks and the behind-the-scenes antics to reassemble these into situations he could use.
“I’ve always been inspired by the people I deal with and that I meet,” O’Dea said during an interview earlier this year.
Over the years, he always believed his writing efforts would eventually pay off, even as his work shifted from the political backdrop of Hudson County to more human-oriented fiction.
In the late 1980s, O’Dea wrote a screenplay called “Heath Nuts”, loosely based upon his experiences joining a health club in Secaucus, where he discovered many lonely people seeking to find “Mister or Miss Right.”
Later, he wrote a play called Therapy, out of which Meet the Pitts evolved. Therapy combined characters he explored in earlier works, reflecting the oddities he found in life’s theater.
Therapyis a sitcom takes a light-hearted look at a dysfunctional group of six people who are trying to find their way into recovery from a variety of compulsive behaviors/addictions. These include a recovering alcoholic, a compulsive shopper, a compulsive gambler, an overeater, a nymphomaniac, and a doctor.
Although O’Dea staged an earlier version of Therapy back in the early 1990s, he then put the work aside until a sitcom class he took last year revived it.
This taught him a lot about his craft, and pushed him deeper into the review process, how to sharpen his skills, and how to make the work tight enough for people in the industry to take notice.
Therapy was produced by Rick Scott of Bayonne with the hope that the production would catch the attention of the networks.
Therapy was derived from a series of sitcom scripts O’Dea had written over the last few years, involving people struggling to recover from a variety of compulsive behaviors. In the latest video incarnation, the characters – originally strangers – were shaped into members of the same family living in the same house.
While the stage effort managed to get local support and encouragement, he and others connected with the project knew they would have to bring the work to film. Two Bayonne residents stepped into the process: McGrath and Taylor.
Both had credentials and experience O’Dea lacked, helping to modify the original concept into something that would be more palatable to a television network. Their plan was to enter the work in the New York International Film and Video Festival – with the hope of drawing attention that way. The NYIFF is a bit of a misnomer because the competition actually involves three cities across the United States: New York, Los Angeles and Las Vegas, where films are presented and judged.
The creators of the film went to the Laemmle Theatre in Los Angeles as part an effort to market the production.
Where does it go from here?
O’Dea said last week that the future of Meet the Pitts is still uncertain.
“The award now gives us a stronger marketing tool as we try and shop the concept to people in the industry,” he said. “The people associated with the festival found it to be very funny and also a bit edgy. They thought it had an HBO/Showtime type edge to it. They also felt the concept of a ‘white trash’ American family would appeal overseas. They said they could see the Meet the Pitts on an episode of the Jerry Springer Show.”
O’Dea called the audience response tremendous.
“Some of the actors were signing autographs afterwards, and a representative from Lion’s Gate Productions spoke with Nick,” O’Dea said. “There was more laughter from the audience during the 30-minute showing than during most 90-minute comedy movies in a theatre.”
O’Dea said he is currently looking for an entertainment authority to formally submit the film to networks and production companies.
“If there are any local attorneys who do entertainment law, they could contact George Blount at (201) 424-5580, who is our producer,” O’Dea said. “We don’t know if it will be picked up as is, or if someone will just like the concept and do it themselves. One of the avenues we started to explore is getting a limited release on a few cable stations in a few larger cities just to get more feedback and exposure.”
O’Dea said he and members of the film’s staff met with a group that had gone this route with a station METRO NY.
“Nick is also going to put in a laugh track for the version we send out to industry types,” O’Dea said.
Taylor has submitted Meet the Pitts to the Independent Feature Project (IFP) Film Festival in New York City and the HBO and Toronto Comedy Festival for the fall.
“There should be a local screening in late October as part of another festival that Nick is working on,” O’Dea said.