I Wake Up Screening: Everything You Need to Know about Independent Films Including a Thousand Reasons Not To

Frank D. Gilroy is a compulsive diarist who wrote I Wake Up Screening! while he made four independent feature films—each accorded three stars in Leonard Maltin’s TV Movies and Video Guide—witha total investment of two million dollars (for all four films!).

These intimate logs of the making of Desperate Characters, Once in Paris, The Gig, and The Luckiest Man in the World show clearly that a film school that doesn’t include in its curriculum discussions of negotiating with the Teamsters and of raising money as independent producers is leaving out vital parts of the filmmaking process.

Because Gilroy wrote the scripts, raised the money, assembled the production team, directed, opened each of the four films, and even ventured into the murky world of distribution, I Wake Up Screening! is a vast repository of information about filmmaking in general and independent filmmaking in particular. It is not recommended, however, for anyone who wishes to preserve a fairy-tale notion about feature filmmaking. When Gilroy first considered publishing these logs, his wife encouraged him. "Do it," she said. "If it stops one person from following in your footsteps, it will be worthwhile."

Frank D. Gilroy is a playwright, novelist, television writer, screenwriter, director, and independent filmmaker. His awards include a Pulitzer Prize (for The Subject Was Roses), an Obie (for Who’ll Save the Plowboy?), and a Silver Bear (for Desperate Characters) from the Berlin Film Festival. A member of both the Writers Guild and Directors Guild of America, Gilroy is past president of the Dramatists Guild, of which he is a lifetime council member.