Arts & Entertainment

Sudsy Story

Soap-opera competition winner heads to Hollywood to follow his dream.

U-M student Eric Kahn Gale: "I really love storytelling."

Suzanne Chessler
Special to the Jewish News

E

ric Kahn Gale has found a life-
changing reality in the world of
soap operas.
It's not that he identifies with any of the
characters known for lengthy histories. It's
that he's developed characters, put them
into dramatic plot lines and realized a
$20,000 prize.
Gale, a West Bloomfield resident just
finishing his junior year at the University
of Michigan, is the grand-prize winner
in a SOAPnet competition for college stu-
dents across the country.
After writing a 10-minute film that
placed him in the semifinals, he developed
a five-minute film for the second round,
decided by Internet voters.
Night Call, the first film, is about two
friends interested in the same woman.
The second film, The Harder They Fall, is
about a celebrity photographer working

for a tabloid. Both can be seen at www.
soapnet.com .
While Gale must use the prize money to
create a new soap opera, he also gets a trip
to Los Angeles to participate in a pitch
meeting with Hollywood executives.
"I feel a giant door has been opened to
me, but I don't feel I'm sitting on a pile of
gold',' says the 21-year-old Gale, a film and
video major who hopes to build a career
in feature film animation. "I feel I have to
keep going and charging ahead.
"I don't think of the soap prize as
receiving money. I think of it as receiving
an opportunity to work. It's a big career
launcher and a chance for making lots of
connections."
Gale, who plans to spend July in
California to do the filming, has more
than the prize to give him a strong foun-
dation for advancement. At the time he
won the soap award, he also won a $7,500
Hopwood Drama Award and a $2,500
Dennis McIntyre Award for Distinction

in Undergraduate Playwriting, both from
U-M.
"We always new Eric was a bright and
talented kid, but this recognition has been
so amazing:' says dad Allan Gale, associ-
ate director of the Jewish Community
Relations Council of Metropolitan Detroit.
"For me, two things seemed to show
his creativity most — his combination of
acting, singing and dancing in a seventh-
grade performance in The Wizard of Oz
and a play he wrote, produced and direct-
ed in a staged reading two years ago."
Gale's theater interests intensified as he
participated in school programs.
"I enjoyed acting throughout Groves
High School," recalls Gale, whose religious
education was at Temple Emanu-El and
Temple Israel, where he had his bar mitz-
vah. "When I got to college, I realized that
I was stronger in writing, and I enjoyed
writing more. I really love storytelling.
"I wrote a good amount in my fresh-
man year, but my sophomore year was my

big year for writing. I wrote my first full-
length play, Marlin and the Jaguar, a magi-
cal fantasy about a boy who can speak to
animals."
Gale, who started out as a theater major
and participated in university produc-
tions, unsuccessfully submitted the play
for a Hopwood while he was a sophomore.
With only one word changed, he submit-
ted it again and attained the recent uni-
versity awards.
"One of my career goals is to turn it into
a movie," Gale says. "I'm trying to take out
some of the more disturbing elements
because it's kind of dark for children."
Gale, who hadn't watched soap operas
since his own childhood, started watch-
ing them again after he happened upon a
SOAPnet contest poster. It was in a univer-
sity building, where he was working on a
public access television show.
When Gale was a child, he watched
the soap All My Children with his mom,
Linda, a preschool teacher. To prepare for
the contest, he watched All My Children
and General Hospital. He also tuned into
primetime dramas, which he feels are
pretty much soap operas.
Gale completed the qualifying entry in a
month with the help of friends Nick Lang,
Matt Lang and Chris Allen, also aspiring
filmmakers. That time frame included five
days of independent editing.
For the final film, Gale turned to his
friends again. He also had to submit a
20-second promotional piece, centered
around the world of pop culture.
Gale will be working with his team on
the upcoming project in California.
SOAPnet launched the college initiative
last fall, when executives set out to find
new content from the next generation of
producers, directors and stars. The Web
site offers same-day episodes of popular
daytime dramas and original programs.
"When we go to California, we plan to
make a pilot for a television show we're
developing:' says Gale, who relaxes while
riding his bike. "It's going to be distributed
on the Internet.
"I'm hoping that we create a pilot that's
so good we find a network that wants to
buy it. That's my true goal.
"All this has been like a five-month
audition. As hard and challenging as the
contest was, it's nothing compared to what
I'm facing now." II

May 24 2007

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