The Bitch List 2017

Hopefully you’ve all recovered from The Golden Globes.

Monday, January 9, 2017

#THEBITCHLIST2017  Mni Wiconi – Water is Life and so is inclusive storytelling

Tara Houska mentions narratives and how Indigenous Peoples are not seen on TV

in this New York Times video interview

Things that were apparent with this year’s list:

None of the big agencies except Gersh represented this year. It’s an interesting trend as ones like ICM are repping people like Tomi Lahren. Simon & Schuster poured money on that Milo guy who trolled Leslie Jones and many others. We must see #ScreenwritersResist (and reps as well), not further promotion of bullies and the oppression of People of Color, LGBTQ and Disabled People via our content.

On this year’s list also– Brillstein repping. Echo Lake doubled up and more– The boutique management companies stepped up and took over. Good to have staff who are closer to audience members and not so removed and out of touch as companies grow.

Two stories take place in the Dakotas, USA.

Stories this year contain themes such as gentrification, colonization and its effects, trans issues, immigration issues and mental health issues.

Nominations this year surpassed all of the previous years’ nominations combined.

No clear cut #1 this time as verification of nominators’ roles within the entertainment industry was more difficult.  Suggestions are to send people the nomination link and let them proceed- rules for active campaigning will be researched. Appreciate the massive enthusiasm to get on this list, but do not appreciate a writer asking people to participate in a “spiel” one mass email accidentally forwarded by a nominator indicated. Seeing this was disappointing, after noticing trend of nominations that were all the marked generically “producer” as industry affiliation. Grateful that moving forward, next year will require more specification in nominators.

Some people emailed in their own list of 20+ screenplays- this is not at all advisable. Nominations that did not follow the simple instructions were nullified– Ones for completed films also. This is a list for the industry’s most liked Bechdel Test passing un-produced screenplays.

Lesson learned: Next year’s nomination process will require double tier of verification via imdb pro or must come from a work email showing industry affiliation, proof that nominator is indeed trained professionally in script reading and coverage.

This year’s nominators have included a celeb Woman of Color actress, development execs from top international production companies.

Thank you especially to past years’ The Bitch List alumni who are writers on major network TV shows or having their films produced, who have come back to nominate the next layer of alumni. Thank you again to A-Squared//F & H-WOC sub-tracking groups who put in their time vetting stories/nominations.

This is run by a person who adds up votes, not your agent, not your manger who will spend time to pass your work to anyone or read your work– Not a PR company either who will do the labor of promo-ing your work around the clock- just here promote the concept that we need more diverse stories.

All stories are available as of this list’s publishing date.

If no rep under listing, it means unrepped as of now.

Because of over-zealousness in personal campaigning, there could be no clear cut winner this year— Stories are instead ordered this way: Women of Color writers first, stories about Women of Color/Trans Women first, then others, then male writers. This may just continue in future years to un-do white privilege bias/attempts at nomination tampering.

If the story/stories you believe in didn’t make it onto this year’s list- try again next year. Had to cap the list- nominations were completely overwhelming this time around.

We have seen historical films starring Women of Color rule the box office.

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#TheBitchList2017 #TheBitchList #ScreenwritersResist

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First though- best #BitchPitches #filminclusion logline from Twitter

BLOCKWATCH

Timea Quon

@TimeaTheTranny

TV Dark Comedy

An overworked matriarch and her mousy transsexual best friend learn the best way to clean up their neighborhood is by embracing their deviant side.

Contact: timjq@shaw.ca for a read

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Want to highlight a story about Standing Rock by @phoenix_rivera:

WASH (We Are Still Here)

A fiercely independent Lakota woman moves to California to escape poverty and her past on the Standing Rock Reservation. When her partner is murdered, she moves back, forced to confront the threats to her and her family still there.

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NO BODIES

Sereena Shamsi

Film Dark Comedy

A British Indian girl being forced into an arranged marriage is suddenly trapped inside the body of a suicidal Irish DJ, and must fight to get her life back before the clock runs out.

sereena@gmail.com

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THE SALT FLATS

Shaz Bennett

TV Drama

Suspended cop Lucinda “Lucy” Waters, an Indigenous woman, finds a beaten, bloody young girl in the middle of the desolate Bonneville Salt Flat on the border of Nevada/Utah. In the Flats, secretive, closed communities collide. The Salt Flats are home to Daredevil speed racers; Goshute Indians; down on their luck Gamblers; a private military base used to test bombs and chemical weapons; a polygamist offshoot of the Mormon church called the Levitical Brotherhood. Lucy has ties to all these communities and can gain access to all their secrets, because their secrets are hers too. In unraveling what happened to this girl, Lucy is forced to face her past in order to save the lost girl.

Dave Brown, Echo Lake Entertainment

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RED ROAD RASTAS

Amy Banks

Feature Comedy

When Ruby Killed Skunk and her group of Native American “Aunties” find they are no longer revered by their tribe, they set out to reclaim their mojo on an adventure of a lifetime in Jamaica where they find friends, kine bud, and the secret to to getting irie.

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GREEN CARDED

Kathy Yamamoto

Feature Comedy

When an ambitious millennial running an illegal green card matchmaking ring falls in love with her latest client, she’ll have to choose between her next large paycheck and her newfound love.

Leads are Armenian, Asian-American and Latina.

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GET REAL

Thomas Reyes

TV Comedy

Vera Mistri, an ambitious Indian-American journalist, is forced to take a job at a reality TV production company and discovers that her skills producing highbrow broadcast news don’t translate to the pranking, naked dating, Honey Boo Boo world of reality TV.

Stan Spry at Cartel Management

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ONE WOMAN SHOW

Shakina Nayfack & Howard Emanuel

TV Comedy

An unruly cabaret singer attempting to crowd-fund gender reassignment surgery must contend with her boyhood past, a conflicted ex-lover, and a circle of nearly-famous friends all trying to navigate life’s transitions in this Sex and the City meets Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

Shakina on Twitter is @shakeenz

Katie.Gamelli@abramsartny.com

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B

OX

TV Drama

Adrienne Rush

A bi-racial (Black and Caucasian) young woman leaves her dead-end town in Mississippi for the brighter lights of Los Angeles, but soon finds herself homeless and losing all will to gain a foothold in society. A chance encounter leaves her straddling two worlds at once while secretly living out of a storage unit.

Jessica Jordan, Manager

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JERRICASAYS

TV Comedy

Jerrica Long

After her breakup goes viral, a twenty-something Black Woman uses her investigative skills from dating both sexes to help men and women find out if their partner is cheating, while she attempts to pick up the pieces of her life. Filled with funny, real-life adventures, the show explores the uncharted territory of dating, in a time when Drake lyrics have come to define relationship goals.

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101 WAYS TO BE A BETTER PERSON

Megan Bacharach

TV Comedy

The story centers on a twenty-something woman with sociopathic tendencies who commits to blindly following a list of self-improvement initiatives as a promise to her late mother–the only person she ever cared about and the only person who believed her to be capable of good.

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NASA @ NIGHT

Maggie Mae Fish

TV Comedy

Nobody wants to run the Night Shift at NASA. But when Sarah Harris–an unbridled optimist–takes the position, she sets out to turn this dead end job into the launching pad for her dream career, even if everyone at NASA thinks her team is a joke. The team is 50% Women of Color.

Wenzel Entertainment

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SILVER STAR

TV Drama

Katherine Ruppe

After the bones of her radical Blackfeet mother are discovered on the reservation where she was raised, intrepid big-city detective Riley Running Wolf reluctantly returns to her rugged Montana home town to work as a deputy for her sheriff father. While fighting tough crimes in the new wild West, she battles the FBI, greedy oil interests, and Blackfeet militants to untangle the conspiracy of her mother’s murder.

Jeffrey Thal, Manager, Ensemble Entertainment

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THE COMMONS

TV Drama

Laura E. Davis

At a time when disease no longer exists and suicide is compulsory at age 60, an agent for the government’s Sustainability Program must determine if she can facilitate the death of a beloved client after the agent’s world is upturned.

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KILL ME

Feature Drama

Alix Joyce

Anne McGregor, a mortician with a bloody past, has given up on love until the day a charismatic conman waltzes into her funeral parlor.

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PRIX FIXE

Angela Waldrop Gilbert

TV Dramedy

Socially anxious and plain, Marcelle hadn’t planned to ever leave the family maple farm in rural southern Quebec. When finances and her father’s health put the property at risk of being sold, she turns to black market food supplying in order to make ends meet–and then some. Breaking Bad with maple syrup.

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DESICCATE

Brandi Sperry

Feature Horror

When her reclusive sister turns to occult methods in a desperate attempt to save their failing vineyard from a devastating drought, a woman must try to save her family from the mysterious force that begins threatening the lives of all who set foot there.

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THE WILD HUNT

Vanessa Yardley

Feature Drama

A farm girl and her BFF must defend their sleepy English village when it‘s attacked by a horde of supernatural hunters.

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THE CIRCLE

CC Campbell

TV Drama

Johnny Cash called it The Greatest Story Never Told:

Three musicians, two of them pioneering women, embark on an odyssey through a dark, Southern Gothic world grappling to keep marriages, themselves and the music that changed a nation alive.

Two of the first professional female musicians charge through a maze of dark figures and mysterious towns, often on motorcycles and brandishing guns, all the time singing for a living and sometimes, for their lives.

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ALMA MATER

Jenny Deiker

TV Drama

When a psychiatrist returns to visit her Alma Mater, a prestigious boarding school in Wales, a student’s violent suicide prompts her to stay and support the staff and students. As her connection with a grieving student begins to blur the lines between reality/fiction, she begins to realize that this may have all happened once before. Think Pretty Little Liars meets Shutter Island.

Tom Carter, Artillery Creative / Noah Jones, Gersh

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THE GOBLIN CHILD

Shoshana Rosenbaum

Feature Horror

A woman adjusting to motherhood must confront a terrifying presence in the woods connected to–or summoned by–the lonely little boy next door.

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WONDER DRUG

Caitlin McCarthy

The true story of the drug DES (diethylstilbestrol), seen as a medical miracle to help women with pregnancy issues and one of the first cash cows for pharmaceutical companies – but which was, in fact, a toxic, carcinogenic drug and one of the biggest medical disasters in history, affecting millions of people worldwide.

Barry Krost Management

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CASEY CAN’T

Kaitlin Fontana

TV Comedy

When a veteran, old school music critic loses her job, she is forced to take a new one with the sort of magazine she’s always despised: an online blog.

Brandon Stein, Brillstein Entertainment Partners New York City office

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FOUR

Caitlin Schneiderhan

TV Drama

A re-imagining of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse as four warring crime families.

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KILLERS

Lyn Stephenson-Ivers and Allen Ivers

TV Drama

Along the lines of a female drive DEXTER set in the beauty industry, KILLERS follows ambitious marketing exec SOPHIE, who finds her job, her sick brother, and her life in jeopardy when a manipulative psychopath uncovers her secret life as a serial killer.

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THE LETTERS

Dani Bailes

TV Drama

After discovering her mother’s extensive correspondence with a notorious serial killer, Violet Bryce finds herself entangled in family secrets when a similar murder occurs in her own backyard.

Zadoc Angell & Chelsea Benson, Echo Lake Entertainment

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HIGH SCHOOL HELLIONS

Nate Myers

Feature Action Comedy

At a boarding school for genius, juvenile delinquents, a student creates a new drug called Bliss. But when it goes horribly awry, our leading lady and her two best friends have to fight their way to freedom.

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LOOPED

Gabriel Klein

TV Animated Comedy

Jane and her teenage son break into an old R&D lab at the tech company she co-founded with her estranged childhood friends to finish their time machine. Once completed the time machine’s existence causes a paradox wherein all six of the diverse friends who worked on the invention are trapped in a continuous loop predestined to be a part of world history. Now they flash through time interacting with famous figures and guiding their paths, while flashbacks illustrate their own past together and the friendships worth reuniting.

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LEGACY

Alex Freedman

TV Drama

Following the suicide of her father, an attorney is forced to return to her distant brother and family law firm in New York.

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HUMANE

Mike Sorce & Matthew Kic

TV Drama

Buried secrets come to light after a tragic car accident disrupts the lives of several employees of a small town animal kill shelter. SIX FEET UNDER meets THE AFFAIR.

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TRANSPLANT

Joe Brukner

TV Comedy

When the stubborn and self-reliant April Johnson is diagnosed with acute kidney failure, she returns home to South Dakota to con her estranged family in to giving her a kidney.

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Thank you writers and now #TheBitchList alumni!