AFTER HOURS

Chasing Hollywood

Dave Congalton is hosting a radio talk show, writing screen plays and pursuing his dreams all the way to the big screen.

Dave Congalton

Congalton penned the screen play he called Scribble, which was later renamed Authors Anonymous

EEVERY WEEKDAY FOR the past 22 years, Dave Congalton has been found at KVEC Radio where he broadcasts The Dave Congalton Show from three to seven o’clock. But, it was not the lure of the airwaves that coaxed the native Midwesterner to leave his comfy college professorship in Tulsa, Oklahoma back in 1987.

At 34 years old, Congalton had finally come to terms with the fact that his work was leaving him unfulfilled, uninspired. When he was honest with himself, what he really wanted most was to write a Hollywood screenplay. But, in order to make a go of it he needed an income, a day job. The closest gig he could find to Tinseltown was a short-term teaching position at some obscure college he had never heard of: Cal Poly. It was a particularly fertile time for Congalton who cranked out screenplay after screenplay, seven in all. The studio rejection letters came back just as quickly. Although his passion for writing never waned, after twelve years without a bite, Congalton decided to hang it up. He wrote for a living anyway, as a columnist for the TelegramTribune, and he also ran the Cuesta College Writer’s Conference. Plus he had written a couple of books about animals. And, in 1992 when he transitioned from professor to radio show host, he always had “one foot in radio, one in writing.” In 2005, sensing a shift in the industry, Congalton decided to give it one last try. The creativity flowed and by September of that year he had a first draft of the screen play Scribble written. He learned that the best way to have the film produced was to secure financing for the project in advance. So together with his wife, Charlotte Alexander, now the director of the SLO International Film Festival, the pair began “scouring the globe in search of money.” The couple talked to investors everywhere and, although there was interest, no one was ready to write a check. Not ready to give up, Congalton decided to line up a key actor. With Kaley Cuoco of the hit show The Big Bang Theory on board, one of the investors finally game through. It was 2012, five years later. Once the money was in place, things started to happen very quickly. By August, Congalton was on the set of Scribble, which had been renamed Authors Anonymous. The film, classified as a comedy, follows a group of misfit writers who drive one another crazy and “try to avoid killing each other in the process.” Aside from Cuoco, Dennis Farina and Chris Klein, many other Hollywood well-knowns are found gracing the credits of the film, which is due for an Ultra Videoon-Demand (Ultra VOD) release on March 18th followed by a general movie theatre release to twelve select cities on April 16th. For someone who is accustomed to leading a talk show for four hours a day, Congalton is uncharacteristically at a loss for words to describe his experience on the set as he watched the actors perform the scenes he had imagined and utter the words that he had written. “It was an amazing experience, hard to put into words,” was all he could muster behind a veil of building emotion. “For me, it validates my decision back in ’87 to give it a shot. Everyone thought I was crazy. I tell people now ‘Don’t ever give up on your dreams. It may not happen right away, but it will if you stay with it.’ And, I’m the perfect example of that.” SLO LIFE

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