Jules Howe is a renowned physicist who recently discovered….wait…that’s a lie. Jules Howe is a human. She lives in Northern California. She was born on April 14th, the same day in history that the Titanic actually sank to the bottom of the sea. All those statements are true, as is the rest of what she’s about to say. Jules’ script Jasper Milliken was lucky enough to win the comedy category at AFF in 2010. This opened many doors and gave her enough clout to hold her own at cocktail parties and carry on conversations with industry people she continues to stalk/reach out to.
Most recently, she executive produced a spec pilot based on her Catty Wompus children’s book characters that is currently being shipped to networks and new media outlets. She regularly prays to St. Jude, the patron saint of desperate causes as recommended by a good friend who endured twelve years of Catholic school. She remains hopeful.
After a script she was commissioned to write called Down on the Farm won the family category of Fresh Voices in 2014, and was a quarterfinalist in the Page screenplay competition in 2015, she teamed up with three other writer/producers to form Crooked Sidewalk, a co‐op website to collectively host their respective projects. There’s a little bit of everything in there: comedy / drama / T.V. and books, and is constantly in flux, depending on which way the wind is blowing. Her blog can be found here, where it’s read by tons of people!
What are some of the biggest lessons you‘ve learned: 1) A competition win is not a ticket into the writer‘s hall of fame so keep writing, writing, writing. And when you‘re done writing, you fucking write some more! 2) You’ve got to network while building a solid body of work. 3) Learning to respectfully critique the work of others and to accept notes and critiques from others without chugging a bottle of Tito’s and collapsing into a writhing, crying, hormonal wreck. 4) Submitting work to top-tier competitions is worth the time and effort. Placings help build your resume so use them shamelessly.
What was your hardest scene or project? For me, the hardest thing I’ve done was to take the leap into writing, producing and filming our spec pilot. It’s called The Adventures of Catty Wompus that we hope will get picked up to series. It was – and is – a crap shoot but I couldn’t NOT do it. It was an education within itself and I had to navigate all the craziness of physical production and had no clue what to expect. But it was just like a train that leaves the track and keeps on going. I had to be prepared for anything and everything and be willing to do whatever it took to get through the day. And our shoot was only nine days! Thankfully, I had a very experienced director and business partner who was a master at the ins and outs of physical production having worked on a number of studio features. He kept me from drinking myself into the oblivion of denial.
Major turning point: Without question, winning AFF was the turning point. The beginning really.