We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Audrey Kelly. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Audrey below.

Audrey, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you tell us the backstory behind how you came up with the idea?

There are two kinds of ideas you have in your early twenties: the ones that are deeply impractical and the ones that are deeply impractical but, for reasons no one can fully explain, actually work.

The Hollywood Pitch Festival was the second kind.

At the time, I was trying to solve a problem: emerging screenwriters and filmmakers will no ability to get in the room, and industry professionals constantly searching for something fresh but maintaining a policy of no unsolicited material. It’s a system that manages to be both exclusive and inefficient, which is a rare combination.

So I came up with a solution that, in hindsight, sounds like something you’d say as a joke at dinner and then immediately abandon: what if pitching buyers and reps worked like speed dating?

You sit down. You have a few minutes. You try to be charming, coherent, and memorable — three things that are rarely achieved at the same time — and then a bell rings and you move on to the next person.

This did not, on paper, seem like a good idea.

And yet, from the very first festival, it was clear that something slightly miraculous was happening. Aspiring writers and filmmakers who had never been taken seriously were suddenly face-to-face with people who could change their careers overnight. And those same people — producers, agents, managers, executives — were being forced, in the gentlest possible way, to actually listen.

Deals started happening almost immediately. Screenwriters got repped. Scripts were optioned. Projects were produced. In Hollywood terms, this qualifies as a minor miracle, if not a statistical anomaly.

The first event made the front page of Variety, which is the kind of thing that makes you wonder if you’ve accidentally become a person who knows what they’re doing. Then came The New York Times, MTV, ABC, World News Tonight, The Tonight Show annually — at which point it became harder to pretend this was all just a fluke.

And then, of course, there is my favorite story, which I mention at every possible opportunity because it sounds made up: a screenwriter/producer and an attendee met at the festival, fell in love, got married, and had four children. Four. Which is not only a love story but a level of commitment that most development deals never reach.

What I’ve learned over the years is that Hollywood isn’t really a meritocracy or a meritocracy-adjacent system or even a system that can be easily explained without hand gestures. It’s a place that runs on connection — on that elusive moment when someone hears your idea and, against all odds, doesn’t immediately check their phone.

The problem is that finding that person requires meeting a lot of people who are not that person.

Which is where the dating comparison becomes less of a metaphor and more of a warning. You will have awkward encounters. You will say things you wish you could take back. You will occasionally think, “This is going well,” when it absolutely is not. And then, just when you’ve adjusted your expectations to a more realistic level — which is to say, very low — you’ll meet someone who gets it.

And that changes everything.

Thirty years in, I still think about how unlikely the whole thing was. A slightly absurd idea, a lot of folding tables, and the belief that if you could just get the right people in the same room — and keep them there long enough — they might actually find each other.

It turns out, they do.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I got my start in the film industry as a producer, co-producing Clay Pigeons alongside filmmakers Ridley and Tony Scott, director David Dobkin, and producers Nigel Sinclair and Guy East. That experience opened the door to a range of projects, and I’ve continued developing both film and television, including the Black List script Pure at Castle Rock and several feature and TV projects with Emmy Award–winning producers behind shows like Boardwalk Empire, Entourage, and Lone Survivor. I also cast a bevy of A-list talent for the documentary Unity, directed by Shaun Monson and produced by Academy Award winner Louie Psihoyos.

Alongside my work in film, I’ve always had an entrepreneurial side. I founded, published and edited Fade In Magazine and Fadeinonline.com back in 1993, long before digital platforms became the norm. Later, I launched GreenlightMyMovie.com in 2012 as Hollywood’s official submission platform for filmmakers, and more recently, NextLevelScribe.com, a platform where you can book top screenwriters and showrunners for expert advice.

At one point, my journey even crossed into pop culture — I was portrayed in an episode of HBO’s Entourage, which was a surreal and fun, full-circle moment.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

Hollywood is a lot like the mafia. You need a made man on the inside who will vouch for you. As someone who has worked in the entertainment industry for thirty years, all of my platforms and websites have always provided a way in to those creatives who take advantage of the services, competitions and events offered. Word of mouth, success stories and five-star reviews have helped, as well.

And I’d add always striving for quality over quantity. For instance, with the Hollywood Pitch Festival, I’d rather produce a high quality event that people (on both sides of the table) would like to come back to each year than just sell as many tickets as possible.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

Definitely the discovery of new talent. For instance, had I not created the FadeInAwards.com screenwriting competition thirty years ago, we might not have ever seen NBC’s “The Blacklist” or the #1 box-office hit movie “Cold Pursuit.” Showrunner Jon Bokenkamp and screenwriter Frank Baldwin both entered their spec scripts into the Fade In Awards, which landed them representation and jumpstarted their careers.

Contact Info:

• Website: fadeinonline.com, greenlightmymovie.com, nextlevelscribe.com, fadeinawards.com, hollywoodpitchfestival.com
• Instagram: @sophiented
• Facebook: @hollywoodpitchfestival
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/audrey-kelly-81b16b68/
• Twitter: @fadeinpitchfest