SCE's Backstory

Jeff Willoughby had been writing scripts, script treatments and short stories for quite a while before Rebecca Lynn came on the scene. The two were thrown together by accident when Becca took a waitressing job at the restaurant and bar where Jeff was employed as a part-time bartender. She was in the process of finishing her Bachelor's degree in English at the time, and was always anxiously looking for new and different things to expand her writing horizons. Jeff was searching for a way to save some of his stagnating scripts by adding a female character perspective. So when he asked her to come aboard as his writing partner, she readily agreed.

The upcoming release “Sun Moon Stars Rain” from CinemaAudio Productions was, at that time, an untitled, unfinished script that bore a coincidental resemblance to the then-just released film, “Six Days Seven Nights” starring Anne Heche and Harrison Ford. Jeff had been in the process of writing it months earlier when the hit movie trailer appeared on the little screen. “One night I was actually in the office writing, working on it, and my daughter called to me from the living room. She said, ‘Dad, your movie is on TV!'” Understandably disheartened, Jeff relegated the incomplete script to the bottom of the growing pile of works he was producing. He sought advice from the writer's mentoring program that he was involved in, where anonymous writers, producers, and directors shared their thoughts and knowledge of the industry with aspiring scriptwriters. “The mentor told me to ‘finish it, or you'll never finish it'” says Jeff. Once the script was done, then the mentor's advice was to go back and change things to preserve the originality. So when Jeff and Becca began writing together, Jeff thought it would be the right time to resurrect the old piece. They reconstructed, storyboarded, and used a variety of tandem writing techniques, including trading scenes over email, and they finished the script about seven months after the completion of their first endeavor, “End Run.”

Now Jeff and Becca had two scripts and they were ready to try to take their work to Hollywood . Researching agents and studios using the internet and the Writer's Guide, they selected individuals and organizations they thought would be well-suited to their projects. As Becca graduated with her Bachelor's Degree from Bloomsburg University with honors, they drafted query letters and sent them out, beginning the waiting game.