LaVerne Shank Films

Laverne Shank Films is a place I find solstice to create in a world without boundaries. Writing is an expression of one’s soul screaming out to find the place in your mind that takes you on a journey to somewhere else. Another time, another place, another world and sometimes even another life. Just like an artist, showing one’s artistic expression from the paint brush onto canvas, these brush strokes are instead in the form of words.  Words that tell a story of life, love, happiness, sorrow, absurd laughter and flowing tears. A story of many emotions all wrapped up in one story. In my writing, I try to draw a little piece of my own life and place them into each character and situation I write about. Like many of us, we have had our share of ups and downs. One thing we can always count on is change. Sometimes it gets worse before it gets better but it never stops us from always wishing and hoping for a brighter tomorrow.  Each time that I write, whether happy, sad or sometimes both, comes with a passionate desire to strike up memories from our own personal life journeys that after unfolded, helps each of us to cope with the ever evolving present and future within our own lives.

One thing I have found on my own personal quest for expression is that artists are some of the most driven and courageous people on the face of the earth. They deal with more day to day rejection in one year than most people do in a lifetime. Every day, artists face the challenge of living a freelance lifestyle, sometimes feeling alone in their endeavors and even other times disrespected by people who think they should get ‘real’ jobs, and their own fear of failure or that they’ll never work again. Every day they have to ignore the possibility that the vision to which they have dedicated their lives is a pipedream. With every passing year, many of them watch as other people their age; achieve the predictable milestones of normal life - the car, the family, the house, the nest egg. But they stay true to their dream, in spite of the sacrifices. Why? Because artists are willing to give their entire lives to a moment - to that line, that laugh, that gesture, or that interpretation that will stir the audience’s soul. Artists are beings who have tasted life’s nectar in that crystal moment when they poured out their creative spirit and touched another’s heart. In that instant, they were as close to magic, God and perfection as anyone could ever be. And in their own hearts, they know that to dedicate oneself to that moment is worth a thousand lifetimes.

My wish is to share through my life’s journeys, struggles, successes and failures - the stories I have written. To someday have my words, images and those memories in my mind unfold on to the big screen. To sweep the viewer away to another place and time. To forget about one’s own troubles for those two or so hours, where the hope that everything could be perfect in the moment actually becomes a reality. To quote the great Roman Polanski “Cinema should make you forget you are sitting in a theater.”

Cause after all, isn’t that what a good movie should do?

~LaVerne Shank