Here in miami. Thanks for having me. [inaudible conversations] please be seated. Good afternoon welcome to the 3h annual book fair. Here at the Honors College we are absolutely delighted to host for you this year. Before we get started there are organizations to think. Please give our foundations around of applause. [applause] we are so fortunate those that care about book fairs and, literacy please give yourselves a round of applause. [applause] as is customary please turn off your cell phone we will have q a at the microphone. Please be brief and concise also assigning area is to the right. Ou this is a special panel because we have one of the founders of the book fair. [applause] that is very kind of you that is very kind of you i have been doing this 31 years i have been at mcmahon for about 5000 authors and never nervous but this is the first time. [laughter] as many of you know i have not kept it a secret im involved with the film called the man who invented christmas it will be premiering november 22 on wednesday night. Im having the time of my life doing it. Do with the anatomy of a film to how that allse happens. And not an easy process it took nine years to get made so now to introduce everybody on the pane panel. T4 t4 t4 still a pretty good music, i think. Tty im going to go and start on this side. This is ian. Yes. [cheers and applause] ian is from the Mob Film Company in london. Not the mob, but the mob. [laughter] film company in london and hes been coproducer since 2009 with us. Hes been known for producing series adaptations. You all know him. Yes . Hes the bestselling, the color of magic and hog father of books and i also had the opportunity to see a documentary which im hope to go bring hoping to bring to miami called cruel and unusual. Documentary of three guys in liz and they were were 40 years in solitary confinement for a crime they did not commit and its a very powerful documentary and we are hoping to bring it to miami. [applause] including don deal me mystery series. [laughter] water to the angels, and the man who invented christmas which is why we are here today. [applause] now, i told you that i started about ten years ago and i could only do this because i started a film Company Along with two local folks and i dont know if they are here but its marvin and lisa who are not with us this afternoon but the real person who i could start with a producer, paula who is right here as my partner. [cheers and applause] my partner in the kaplin company and awardwinning producer in her own write. Literary material which is why we get along so well. Shes taken numerous plays from state screens including something yall know, the search for signs of intelligent life in the universe and the vagina monologue, actually. She also produced Karina Karina with whoopi goldberg. Gerard butler and abigael. Shes now partnering with me obviously, i dont know why she didnt wait but i think we are going to start a good role right now and she you know, our company, shell talk a little bit about it i hope too, in addition to this, we have how many of you read the literary and Potato Peel Society . That will be coming out in april. How many months, 11 months, 14 months in london and dublin trying to get all of this done. She gets my most viable player award for helping. And then we have barrett, our director of the film. Gave him a directors nomination and life on mars garnered the International Emmy for best drama. He followed these with tsunami the aftermath, something i saw on hbo, a mini series which dealt with the heroine events of tsunami from work on the series, nominated for emmy as standing director. Cast members of that included tony and i can never pronounce his name. Wonderful actor. And then he did a feature film that i love, im sure youve seen that with amy adams and francis and that film led to work at warner, sony fox and numerous other studios and networks including return to his roots when virgin tv show spooks. He worked with us on the set and i came not knowing him when i came to dublin to watch this film being shot and he was just remarkable. His interplay with the authors and this film as youll see kids involved as well and his empathy for kids and the way was able to work with them gave me kind of a renewed respect for what directors really have to do and thats barrett. [applause] and then robert michaelson, taught me along with ian moore about the financial aspects of filmmaking, i thought bookselling was difficult. Award winning canadian Film Producer and many films hard choices which premiered at sundance. Roller boys, sifi called classic nominated for saturn award. Pros and cons. And travelers, Mark Wahlberg and bill paxton which premiered at south by southwest. La times called the spinel pap of surf movies which was great. Hes a server as well. You need to know. And robert is also member of the broader family because robert and paul are married as well. So thats a really nice thing. We safe money in hotel rooms. [laughter] right. So i thought what we would do now lower the lights an youll get a sense of the man who invented christmas from the trail. [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible conversations] [cheers and applause] thank you. Thats just the beginning of it. A film out of a book, i thought we would start with all of the players who were involved in this very, very and difficult process. Lets start with les who can talk about the material and the book and what drew him to write this book. Well, is this working . Can you hear me out there . Yeah. People often ask me, are you happy with what they did to your book . [laughter] i can say im very happy that my book could be the starting place for what i i think turned out a great film. I had some exposure to the notion that maybe every word in your book will not make its way to the screen and im so tickled that susan, the screen writer from canada and barrett decided to take this book in the direction they did which focuses really on the creative process. When robert first came to me, mitchell told me about your book and i think i can make a film about it. You know its about a guy writing a book. [laughter] hesaid, yeah, yeah, but weve got that covered. Normally you might supposed that what you would see a series of scenes of fellow with paper and what a writer goes through when hes struggling with the process of bringing idea into a form that will actually captivate readers and i think that susan has done a terrific job of imagining the actual interesting things that go on inside a writers head when, what a writer is really doing in most cases in forming a novel is running a little movie inside her head and then if i understand finds the words to get that in paper where people can appreciate it and i think what you see in this film is a very accurate and very entertaining, i have to say representation of what Charles Dickins, goes in one ear and out the ear, a genius like dickins, names, incidents and memories and profound experiences of life and finds a way to weave those all together into a narrative, well n case this turns out to be one of the most popular books ever written. One that 175 years later people still take time at in the Holiday Season to sit down with their families either reread or watch one of the dramatic and representation and while they have a new one to watch because from my money the new favorite scruij scrouge is christopher plummer. Well, i went to graduate school and we didnt spend any time on Christmas Carol because i dont know, i think that my professors thought anything that popular wasnt worthy of serious inquiry to think of that. I thought just the opposite, if anything remains so popular for so long, isnt it worth time to figure it out. When i found out that Charles Dickins had to publish book, they told him to lie down until the urge passed, a ghost story about christmas and he was so upset by that and certain that he had had the best idea to date that he told his agent, i will publish this thing myself and forester said, you dont have any money, dickins, well, forester thats where you come in, helped him raise the funds so that in six weeks write and have illustrated and found deliver advertise and deliver to bookstores in six weeks and sold out all 6,000 copies immediately. Dickins by the way was at the nateer of his career. Famous for having done oliver twist and the old curiosity shop. The last books published had gone terribly for him. He was ready to quit, move to continent and become a travel writer, when i realized how close we came to not having a Christmas Carol, thats when i was convinced that this was a story worth telling. Thank you. [applause] robert, why dont you talk about that story a little bit. Paula. So, yeah, mitch sent me the book and our process is mitch sent me the book and the process is i wake up and there are things in my inbox in santa monica where we live, how about this . This could be a good tv series. This is a great movie. [laughter] there was this book by les and i said, sounds intriguing, send it on but, you know, sent the book, read it and thought, this is great. I have absolutely no idea what to do with it and at that very day, robert, my husband came into the office, i just got a call from the Canadian Broadcast Company and theyre looking for an event film, maybe christmas or Something Like that. [laughter] and i was like what do you think . And it was just curious and robert took it, hes canadian which canadian government actually gives you money to help you make films which the American Government does not and that was really handy being married. And robert ran with it at that point and went out and found the writer susan who is fabulous and started working on putting it together as screen play and first iteration was actually television, it was a short moment and then we looked at it and we thought, you know what, lets lets take a big leap that we can put this out in the theaters and that its going to work at the feature and we took what was tv script and we completely reworked it into a feature script and, you know, compact it into a 90minute piece. Thank you, paula. [applause] yes. We will move to robert. Robert, when you saw that and i know just because i know, we went and jumped through a lot of different hoops and went down a lot of different roads, why dont you talk about some of those and talk about how the mob got involved as well. [laughter] okay. Charles dickins wrote the book in six weeks. It started when i talked to cbc and were looking for a canadian movie, ive never done a Christmas Movie before but i like finding genres and bending them and when i heard about Charles Dickins, my image of Charles Dickins, classic picture of him as old man bent over his desk writing and that was the image i had of him and i started reading the book and here this is, this is a 31yearold, 29 when the process started, you know, young, vital, he was like a literary rock star of his time and so that tied in as using Christmas Carol as the basis and going through dickins imagining a Christmas Carol became something very excited and a way to tell the christmas story but thats different and so that was sort of well researched and i never even knew about and we incorporated a lot of those pieces into the movie. As les was saying, how do you make a story about a writer interesting and i since this was a canadian project, i was looking for a Canadian Writer and susan coin had done a tv series, slings and arrows. A very kind of i dont know if people have seen that. Really talented writer. Magical realism to her work and we we wanted to figure out how to bring this all to life in a movie and make it entertaining and exciting. So we got the canadian government to pay for us to get trip to london, i said it was necessary to do the research and they agreed actually. We met with a lot of dickins experts and we met with simon who is in the movie and we hear stories that dickins use today walk the streets of london, 1015 miles a day and see things and incorporate them in material, that he couldnt start writing a book until he had the characters names, those elements in the movie as well. Just becoming all the different characters and talking to himself in the mirror and taking on all the different voices and becoming different characters. We try today figure out ways of bringing that to the screen. Also to make independent films you need partners and this is about dickins and we were in canada and uk have coproduction agreements which allows you to Work Together and take advantage of each others tax benefits. I was introduced to ian and adam john of the mob and they made an officer we couldnt refuse and so we ended up partnering with them and we scattered locations and long conversation and they say over 9year period this was going to be an event, Christmas Television movie and we had partners in the uk and, tnt was going to do it, evyn and we had such a great script, great idea and said this is too good not to make. Paul came on board and everyone jumped in and four years later we got it made. [laughter] ian can take it from where you started . We started one Conference Call and then two Conference Calls. We have to do this, this is great. We dont know these guys, they are in la and we are in london. Very slowly we started working on the development together. I think what we liked about it was people in uk make stuff dramas about people like Charles Dickins, it wasnt going to be a stuffy period drama, dickins as rock star as the time when you could legitimately come from the u. S. To europe and go home again. Not long before the period. If you came to the u. S. , they couldnt go back because they didnt have the ships to do it. The beginnings of fame and all those kinds of touch points as well. Dickins was the start at the modern celebrity and that felt fresh and interesting and contemporary as well. We just looked at the material and dickins, and just really liked the idea of getting involved in that and we formed a partnership and here we are today to tell you all about it. No, its been a Remarkable Partnership between we have 3 companies, mazer and the mob and Roberts Company and its become a friendship and a family and we want to do more stuff together, clearly. But tell us how barrett got got snuckerred into doing this . [laughter] like a short version of a long version . I think i will do the short version. I always got smacked its like how does any independent film ever get made. The things that fall into line for nine years. Its extraordinary and the passion behind it and as directors we come at the end and take all the credit and the glory. [laughter] but you know, i came in very last minute and these guys have been working for ten years. I was on a speech in mexico. [laughter] in fact, i kept the cap, my lucky cap. I recommend you go there while its still here and the water levels are low. I would literally having a margarita on the beach and these guys found out that we have a take ian who introduced but ian30 years ago told me how to use the camera. [laughter] it kind of goes back to, you know well back yeah. [laughter] victorian times. But but these guys said we have a script and its, you know, its a very different take on Christmas Carol, its not Christmas Carol, its Charles Dickins meets Christmas Carol and we know that youre a big fan of Christmas Carol and i had been attach today a couple of versions already which had begun for other reasons and so so i said, okay, and i borrowed my sons ipad and downloaded les look and they sent me the script and got transported to victorian Christmas Eve england and six months later im in dublin. What really happened was once we give barrett the script, he couldnt hear us, he was on this island, he had to hike halfway of a mountain and looking for the spot where the cell reception was good. So did you like it . Did you like it . And he said, im in. And honestly, 48 hours later, he was on a plane to vancouver to meet dan stevens who was already attached to play dickins and that had to work, its all about chemistry and people feeling good about working with other people, so barrett just literally jumped on the plane and went to vancouver and dan is shooting tv series and youre squeezing a meeting with barrett and they met and it was just it just really clicked and so barrett was on director and i think what robert four days later, we were scouting in dublin. It was inane. It insane. It moved really quickly. When they go, they go. They go fast and play money. [laughter] maybe we can talk a little bit during q a as well but one thing that i learned, all of the money that you get to make a film, you really dont get it until you start making the film. So the question is, how do you then finance that period before youre making the film . [laughter] david is sitting in the first row, david, wave your hand. This is kind of like honukka. We are shooting in a few weeks. It was coming but it just wasnt there yet. 1843, they were all handmade. All the customs were handmade. You dont buy it off the rack. Thats not the process. We needed money immediately and mitch, we went to mitch and said, mitch, we need like a fairy god mother or father to help us through this. We gave him an amount of money that we could use, itll get us two or three weeks of preproduction and then the money was going to come in. Mitch went to david lee and david asked no questions, we worked on other projects, he wrote out a check. May i say the amount to everybody . No. It wasnt that much. It was going to last us two to three weeks. The oil, its supposed to go for one day but then it goes for two, three, eight. So this money, not so much that david gave us which was supposed to be a little gap ended up getting us through eight weeks of preproduction and at the end of each week, these two brilliant produ