Film Rights to Nobody Nowhere

So you heard there was going to be a film made of my book, Nobody Nowhere?

When a company buys the option to develop a film the first step is finding a writer. In the case of Nobody Nowhere this means finding someone who can envision how to take a story that spans 26 years and takes around 48 hours to read non-stop in a book, and condense that into a film which is around two hours long.

The 26 year span in the book, Nobody Nowhere covers three different continents and the main character, Donna, would have to be captured at several different ages. No matter how incredible a book is, if they can't envision converting the power of that book into a film of about 2 hrs length, then they get stuck. We were waiting for someone who could do that successfully.

In the process of reading potential scripts, I mapped the structures and tricks used in scriptwriting. I am a natural systematician. I feel systems intuitively and I map them just like an architect can feel out the structure of a building, an engineer can feel out the mechanisms in a tool, a linguist can map the structure of languages. I mapped the system of scriptwriting. Like with writing, art, sculpture and music, however, I had no idea that I could actually write a film script.

Magically, I encountered a wonderful, funny, fountain named Beverly Nero, a producer who picked up the option, who supported my belief I might write the screenplay.

Later, producers Norman Stephens and Su Armstrong came on board with the project and the Nobody Nowhere was on the road to development.  Next we found our director, a wonderful, talented and award winning Australian director, Garth Davis.  After working extensively with Garth, the script was ready to be sent out and we moved into pre-production.

The movie is set in the UK, throughout England and Wales, over to greater Europe and back to Australia and tells the story from Donna's perspective.

The focus of the film is on the year that changed everything, Donna's 26th year, and is an invitation to journey into a depth only touched on in the book.

It was the year I first met 'the Welshman', 'Sion', a soldier with multiple fractures of the soul and more than one battle on his hands who became my real life 'mirror' after which the cold flat glass surface of my best friend, my mirror reflection, could no longer compare.

It was in this year that my Exposure Anxiety brought me to the edge of a breakdown but instead I found my scream through the writing of Nobody Nowhere, the book that came to give a dynamic, human, real-life living face to the word Autism and explode the existing stereotypes laying bare its incredible diversity and ultimately the essential humanness we all share.

Nobody Nowhere dramatically changed the treatment, the education and the statistics forever of those with Developmental Differences and opened the doors for worldwide social, political and cultural changes in that field. More than this, Nobody Nowhere was read by 'ordinary people' and those on the peripheries alike, ironically giving a voice to many non-autistic men and women around the world as they felt gripped and swept up, often deeply exposed through my own story to their own deeply hidden, sometimes imprisoning truths.

Commuters on the motorway in Toronto listening to me on the renowned CBS Morningside program of the lovely late Peter Gzowski were so gripped by what they heard they pulled over onto the hard shoulder to listen. The much loved late Peter Jennings flew to London to capture my story for his Person Of The Week show on America's ABC.

Nobody Nowhere sold over half a million copies in 20 languages worldwide, and has been read by millions more. Covering deep social issues far beyond the scope of Autism, it challenges concepts of sanity and normality in the face of ignorance, brutality and deprivation and brought empathy and an inspiring sense of celebration and hope to mainstream people and solace to a diversity of the most marginalized, disempowered and alone people in society. The film, Nobody Nowhere is for all of these people.

Nobody Nowhere was, is and has always been more than 'an autism story'.  We are more than the packages we come in and sometimes when we open those packages we surprise ourselves and all those we touch.

The film is still in pre-production, yet to be filmed, but this is the place to join the friends list for updates as soon as they become public.

If you would like more information about the film, please join the mailing list for announcements about "Nobody Nowhere" the film, or you can visit the MySpace page and become a friend of the film.

To contact the producer, Beverly Nero, please email : NobodyNowhereLLC at socal.rr.com