“UTA Signs ‘King’s Speech’ Writer”

Wait. You do not have to be a 22 year-old recent film school grad to get noticed in Hollywood? Per Deadline:

After the Tom Hooper-directed Colin Firth-Geoffrey Rush film The King’s Speech came out of Toronto with strong Oscar buzz, United Talent Agency swooped in to sign the pic’s writer, David Seidler. It’s not unusual for the scribes of Oscar-bait film to get snapped up by major agencies. But Seidler is no flash in the pan. He’s 73 years old, and the effort to make the film dates back to before many of today’s top screenwriters were born. His script — covering King George VI’s race to overcome a stutter so he could rally his subjects in radio broadcasts as England fought Hitler’s invading forces in WWII — was subject matter that is woven through Seidler’s own life. While an eloquent speaker now, Seidler developed a debilitating childhood stutter he attributes to the shock of those early days of WWII. “I was a profound stutterer as a kid, and though we relocated to the US after the Battle of Dunkirk, it was the trauma of hearing the guns and bombs from that battle that triggered it. I could barely talk at times, but as the war progressed, we were allowed to listen to the radio and the King of England. He spoke badly, but I thought my goodness, if a king can be brave enough to speak like that on the radio, maybe there’s hope for me. He was always a hero to me.”

Years later, after Seidler finished the 1988 Francis Coppola-directed Tucker: The Man and His Dream, he began researching King George VI and stumbled upon Lionel Logue, the Australian speech therapist who helped the king conquer his stutter. Things were moving on a fast track after he located Logue’s son, Valentine, by then a retired brain surgeon. “He said, ‘come to London, I’d love to talk with you, and I have all the notebooks my father kept of working with the King of England,’” Seidler told me. “But he added, before any of this can happen, you must get written permission from the Queen Mother.” Seidler went through the proper channels, and the reply stopped him in his tracks. “I was told that she’d said, ‘Please, not in my lifetime. The memory of those events are still too painful.’ An American writer might have said to hell with it, but I hold two passports and like a good Brit, I agreed to wait. How long could it take? Well it wasn’t until 28 years later that she left us.”

I hereby name David Seidler an honorary member of The Persistent Writers’ Hall of Fame. 

For more on Seidler, go here if only to read about how he once wrote propaganda for the leader of Fiji. That’s an eye-catcher on the resume!

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