Unproduced scripts get the red-carpet treatment

When Richard Stayton decided to focus the summer fiction issue of Written By, the Writers Guild of America’s magazine, on unproduced scripts, a member of the editorial advisory committee noted that they could probably pick any dead-end street in Hollywood, knock on every door on the block and get at least one contribution at each stop.

Instead, they decided to poll guild members and compile the most commonly mentioned works, the “famously kicked around” ones that writers have copied and passed along as great examples of the craft.

Excerpts from two of those scripts, “Slay the Dreamer” and “Waking Up the Day,” will finally get a public hearing on Saturday, when Luke Vallerio directs a staged reading with an ensemble of actors at Barnes & Noble at the Grove.

Vallerio chose to present character-driven, rather than action-intensive, scripts “so it’s more like a radio play, except that you’re sitting there live, so you see the facial expressions.”

Though “Slay the Dreamer” is a political thriller about the conspiracy to conceal the true identity of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassin, Donald Freed and Mark Lane’s script tells its story in an intimate, rather than epic, way. The Rev. James Lawson, who figures prominently in the story, will participate in a post-reading discussion.

“Waking Up the Day,” written by Mark Lee, whose writing credits include “Fortunes of War,” focuses on a young boy whose curiosity and integrity inspire the reconciliation of estranged family members.

Among the actors participating in the readings will be Edoardo Ballerini, who’s appeared in such films as “Romeo Must Die” and “Dinner Rush.” Also reading will be Eleanor Comegys (“919 Fifth Avenue”), Carl Gilliard (“The Chatroom”), Paunita Nichols (“Pomegranate”), Steve Schroeder (“The Real Deal”) and Stephanie Wengryn.

To provide historical perspective on the hardly recent phenomenon of unproduced scripts, actor Peter Beckman will also read an excerpt from Orson Welles’ first screenplay, an adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness.” Welles ultimately abandoned the project to make “Citizen Kane.”

If you don’t remember Beckman, you probably remember his voice -- he’s often used on radio spots impersonating Welles’ voice. Beckman worked with Welles 20 years ago on “The Other Side of the Wind,” a now legendary unfinished project.

Stayton calls the scripts “great reads,” likening them to novellas or short stories. Their status as unproduced only reflects the vagaries of the system, not a lack of quality. “All of these writers are successful in the business, so it’s not a study of failure,” he says.

Mostly personal stories and labors of love, the scripts reflect the passion of their creators. In fact, Lee likens “Waking Up the Day,” which has been optioned four times and has yielded many assignments, to an old lover with whom he’d had an affair that didn’t quite work out.

The evening marks the first time the guild has staged such a reading. If it works, the plan is to add more, including unproduced television scripts too. In the meantime, the guild plans to post a downloadable version of the featured scripts.

Among the screenplays that will be available are “Cortes,” written by Nicholas Kazan (“Reversal of Fortune,” “Matilda”) during the 1988 writers’ strike and inspired by William Hickling Prescott’s book “The History of the Conquest of Mexico,” and “Edward Ford,” the notoriously dark and lurid story of a 1940s eccentric who aspires to acquire a SAG card by appearing in B-movies, written by Lem Dobbs (“Kafka,”) in 1979 and never submitted to his agent -- the writer doubted its commercial appeal. Now it’s been copied and exchanged by enough people that the writer refers to it as “the script that refuses to die.”

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The author’s inspiration

Mark Lee on what inspired his script “Waking Up the Day” in Written By:

“Waking Up the Day” is a fictional story inspired by some real emotions. My father was killed in an industrial explosion when I was a boy, and the new paternal figures who appeared in my life were far from satisfactory. At age 12, I rejected grandfathers, sympathetic teachers and the men who showed up to date my mother.

Before he died, my father had assembled an impressive collection of jazz LPs. I used to lie on the living room couch and listen to Miles Davis’ “Kind of Blue” over and over again.

In the early 1990s, when I started to write a spec script to get a new agent, all these memories came back to me.

I created a little boy without a father who finds the perfect substitute: an uncle who is an ex-con, a former heroin addict and a great jazz saxophonist.

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Written By’s staged readings

When: Saturday, 8 p.m.

Where: Barnes & Noble Bookstore, 189 Grove Drive, Los Angeles

Info: (323) 525-0270