“All he could do was say no, right?”

I saw this NYT article the other day:

PARK CITY, Utah — David Sedaris has never allowed Hollywood to get its paws on his writing.

— —

How, then, did a 29-year-old director named Kyle Patrick Alvarez, with a tiny budget and only one movie under his belt (a phone sex drama at that), get Mr. Sedaris to let him bring one of his works to the screen?

The answer involves a little of Mr. Alvarez’s pluck in getting his proposal to the author, and a lot of Mr. Sedaris’s quirkiness in deciding to trust him.

Mr. Alvarez, a passionate fan of Mr. Sedaris’s offbeat essays, had long wanted to adapt “C.O.G.,” a fish-out-of-water tale that finds a young Mr. Sedaris working on an apple farm in the Pacific Northwest. The story, which also involves an overly friendly forklift operator with an unusual hobby and a born-again Christian who carves rocks into Oregon-shaped clocks, comes from “Naked,” Mr. Sedaris’s 1997 collection of essays.

“I saw it as dark and funny and a chance to hopefully make something special,” Mr. Alvarez said. “It’s also not about his family, which made me think I had a shot at getting him to say yes.”

But Mr. Alvarez had already been rebuffed by Mr. Sedaris’s agents. So he started to brainstorm.

Mr. Alvarez’s first feature, “Easier With Practice,” a 2009 drama about an introverted writer who has a lot of phone sex, was based on a GQ article written by Davy Rothbart. Mr. Rothbart is a contributor to “This American Life,” an NPR show on which Mr. Sedaris is also a regular. So Mr. Alvarez decided to attend one of Mr. Sedaris’s book signings and use the connection to press his case. “All he could say was no, right?” he said.

All he could say was no, right? That is so much in the spirit of the spec. Take a chance. Be willing to risk. What’s the downside? The universe can say no? It can also say yes.

In this case, Sedaris said yes. Here is video of the author at this year’s Sundance Film Festival talking about C.O.G. which debuted this weekend:

What Alvarez accomplished in getting C.O.G. made is yet another great object lesson for us to embrace the spirit of the spec.

The downside is a no. But the upside? That can be a big, juicy YES!

For more of the NYT article, go here.

Video links via @Indiewire and @peterknegt.

Comment Archive