Life After Lisa will be produced by crew members of the HBO series, The Wire.
The screenplay was written by Elena Moscatt, who ran the craft services department of The Wire all five seasons. The very first film she worked on was the original “Hairspray” in 1987 by John Waters. Elena was a wardrobe intern, and a Goucher student at the time. Life After Lisa is actually set at a school similar to Goucher College. The characters were created while she was a student. She used to walk around campus imagining her characters, and creating the stories around Lisa and her friends between her real classes.
“As I lived my crazy college life, I also imagined how my characters would be living. What they would be doing, etc. One day, at a night club, I came across the perfect Toejo. I walked over to him, and asked if he was okay. He looked so sad. He told me his best friend had been killed the previous week in a boating accident. I recognized that pain and anguish in his eyes that Toejo would have in his. Later on that night, this same guy ran off with a beautiful brunette woman, looking so much like Lisa. I just smiled. My two “characters” had found each other in a crowded Fells Point Bar. It brought tears to my eyes...”
Elena also worked as Kevin Bacon’s assistant on the film “He Said, She Said”. She would actually write scenes for Life After Lisa in his trailer while Kevin was reading other scripts or practicing his lines. He would try to take a peek at it. But back then she was handwriting everything and her handwriting was dreadful.
She finally finished a completed version of the script in 1995. “It’s such a rewarding feeling to be able to write the words “Fade Out” or “The End” on the end of a script.” And then there are those endless rewrites... Elena is still rewriting the now “webisodes” of Life After Lisa. To her it’s always a work in progress...
Elena has spent the past 20 years working in the craft services field on various films such as “12 Monkeys”, “Contact”, “Sleepless In Seattle”, “The Replacements”, and most recently, “Body of Lies”, and “Burn After Reading”.
In 1998 Elena got tired of making coffee for everyone and decided to use her creative film-making skills. She created an online web series called Jamie’s Way, seen at http://www.JamiesWay.com She was able to get a small amount of money together, and hire some of her co-workers as crew. She wrote a few episodes, and casted her God-Daughter Krysten as Jamie. She put ads out for actors, and found a wonderful group of teenagers to star in her show. She became a mentor to many of them. One of her actors, Matt McClain came up to her oneday with a full episode of Jamie’s Way written. She loved it so much she used it as the third episode. It was called Tyler’s Way. Matt at the age of 15 years old, directed it.
Four episodes were filmed of Jamie’s Way, and fans from around the world wrote to the cast. However, this was before MySpace.com, and Youtube. So video online was much harder to view. People didn’t understand what a webisode was. And certainly didn’t understand advertising on the web. The 22, 000 hits per day went unnoticed. However, Elena still believes that the Web Series is the future of television. And so now she’s ready to do it over again, but has a lot more friends to back her up...
Screenwriting is her passion. “It’s been so surreal casting my characters. But it will be amazing watching them all finally come to life. They’ve been sitting on my shoulders way too long, begging me to bring them to life. I can’t wait to see it finally happen!!”
