I'd Like to Thanks The Academy...

I am truly blessed to be standing here today in front of my friends and peers in the movie business. Thank you for being a guide post for movie creation excellence. A key part of moving forward was being a sponge and watching your acceptance speeches over and over. I'd like to thank my family, friends and the seniors who I've met and served as a home care provider and massage therapist. I especially want to thank YouTube, Wikipedia and NPR for aiding in part of the research of my characters, setting and different time and places and the Hollywood success stories I choose to embrace and fully live. I'm also delighted that the producers observed the overwhelming demand for more Sophie and Clyde and have created "Sophie", a sitcom on the comical adventures of a couple inspiring the health and wealth of their community while balancing their older world values in a rapidly changing society.

Sophie's story was gifted to me shortly after a friend loaned me a copy of her book, _Ancient Secrets of the Fountain_ of Youth by Peter Kelder back in 2001. I started a log of how these five yoga exercised effected my health and well being and the rest is history... I'd like to thank the creators of Benjamin Buttons who notified me the world was ready to receive the story of how one woman used tools available to all healthy humans to improve her quality of life. I'd like to thank my brother Paul Dilley for writing the award winning score that seamlessly lead us through an emotionally fitting journey of the decades. I'd like to thank my producer. Thank you to Craig Kellem at hollywoodscripts.com. Thank you to my award winning husband, Jason Wood for giving me all the financial tools, time, love, encouragement this playwright needed to succeed at getting my dream out of my computer... and on a much bigger screen. This award is dedicated to my Tutu who instilled in me the love of world travel, adventure, writing and a strong female role model from Sophie's era...

INTERVIEW:

When Sophie started telling me her story a couple weeks into starting something called Tibetan Rites or Five Rites yoga exercises... she was a fully formed woman in her 70's born in 1919, enthusiastically feeding her life story to me... how she was a mother of five children, she loved her home in New Orleans and Cajun cooking and how her home care giver, Mary had begun teaching her these yoga exercises. It was almost like going to the theater... the days I did my yoga which offer a variety of stand alone benefits that seemed to offer relief for childhood Scoliosis I was told more of her story. As a story teller, winning yearly elementary school young author's contests and a playwright since high school it was massive entertainment and incentive to keep doing the yoga which was quite challenging at first.

Within five years I had filled a stack of 3x5 spiral notebooks. I was in no hury to rush the process. Sophie was my friend, mirror and emotional historian of my daily life including the conversations I had, interviews I heard on NPR and my own aspirations and challenges. I was able to get the lesson in the voices and actions of my characters in a meditative, eavesdropping way.

Then I started transferring her story to my computer. What I noticed most is while she was getting younger in appearance I was getting older... I would write about Sophie's husband which lead me to mine. Then I wrote about the forgotten ones and a secret society of homeless, lonely seniors and troubled citizens that got ushered into the care of Mary's community Opulas. That was in March of 2005 and in September my mom called me and said are you watching the news... your people in New Orleans are in trouble. I found myself dumbfounded and a bit like a deer in the headlights. I stopped writing for a while after that. Yet, many synchronicity occurred like that. I had lots of time to think and listen to Sophie's story while treating my massage clients. In that way I'm like Jane the sculptor.

When "The Curious Case of Benjamin Buttons" came out I was intrigued since I hadn't remembered hearing about F. Scott Fitzgerald short comic story. I sat in the theater on January 1, 2009 saying to my husband... that scene is in there... so is that one... mostly parallels were things that depicted the nature of the church and my imagined experiences growing up in the south. Also there were similar insights on getting younger while the people around Sophie and Benjamin got older. I had imagined CLYDE BENSON'S dad, T.J. a Forrest Gump in that he was there at the right time and things clicked in place for him. That's why I was also amused that Eric Roth's script was the one that was finally chosen during the project that spanned over ten years.

That week before seeing the Benjamin story, I heard a man give an inspiring talk the Sunday before Christmas which included his brush with death seven times. I immediately thought it would be cool to have Clyde have a similar story of dying multiple times while Sophie was avoiding aging and death. After watching Benjamin, where the man in the nursing home said, "I got struck by lightning ___ times. One time..." I let that idea fade away since my script was already very full. After seening the movie, part of me wanted my story to stay under the rock. Fortunately I was instead inspired to write a letter of intent to my mom, dad, brother, husband and grandmom that I'd finish the rough draft in 30 days by January 31, 2009. I didn't put a deadline on the final version but definitely got massive encouragement from my husband to wrap it up and send it to my script writing coach a.s.a.p.

I've toyed with the idea of having the Five Rites movie be filmed in one continuous take like "The Russian Ark". The reenactment of earlier scenes would be done at the Benson Estate. Everyone involved could flow from one scene or section of the yard or buildings till the whole story is told.