Projects For 2024

Happy New Year, everyone! I’m entering 2024 with a number of projects that I’m currently working on and hope to get completed sooner than later.

One project is a comedic short movie with the working title Office Supplies. It’s about an office worker trying to find a new pen, but as he goes about asking his demented co-workers where the pens are he finds so much more. I had a lot of fun making my earlier short comedic movie Escape From Jury Duty and I look forward to making Office Supplies (what a dull title! I’ll have to work on that as well) and other short movies, already have some ideas. I’ve also entered EFJD into some film festivals so hopefully it’ll entertain some more people and gain notice.

I’m also going to revive my live broadcast television show, an anthology of drama and comedy televised stage plays. My previous program was called Pacific Television Theater but for the revival I’m going to change the title to Studio One Television Theater. This is partly a tribute the former CBS live broadcast anthology that ran from 1948 to 1958 and I adjusted the title to avoid any potential legal issues. 

This new version of my TV anthology will be different from the last because I’m going to accept scripts from other writers instead of doing all the writing myself. I’m also going to more actively solicit underwriters to offset costs and perhaps turn this project into something lucrative.

Other projects include a couple of short stage plays I sent to off-off-Broadway theaters in lower Manhattan, hopefully one or both of those will be accepted. One play is a one act drama that takes place in a neighborhood pub on a Tuesday night, has three separate story lines about people trying to get what they can’t have, and has a serious, somber tone. The other play is a 10 minute comedy about a pair of hack screenwriters from Hollywood who come with one preposterous premise after another, it has a satiric, absurd tone, and it’s based on a short story I wrote a couple of years ago, here’s the link: https://robertkirkendall.com/2021/01/30/hacks/

I’m also going to try to get more attention paid to my novel Redwood Summer. I continue to polish it and I think it has something important to say about our times. It takes place in San Jose, CA at the end of 1990 and it focuses on a young man who’s looking over the events of the year and trying to figure out how they transformed his life from one with a promising future to one with a future cast in doubt. As his life changing events of 1990 are revealed in an extended flashback it is also taking place against the backdrop of the greater world changes of that pivotal year which began in optimism as the Cold War declined and ended in uncertainty with Persian Gulf War I. The link below goes to Redwood Summer’s page and has links to all 17 chapters and a short story prologue.

Redwood Summer – A Novel

That’s all for now, I’ll post more updates as these projects move ahead. 

May 2024 be an improvement over 2023!

©2024 Robert Kirkendall