Del Shores was afraid that coming out of the closet would ruin his TV writing career.
Instead, he turned the confession to his wife and daughters that he was gay into a cult play that has been turned into a film and is now about to become a television series.
“It was the best thing that ever happened to me,” Shores said.
The series, “Sordid Lives,” will debut this summer on MTV’s Logo Television Network. Because the fledgling network doesn’t have a budget comparable with HBO, Showtime or other cable networks, turning Shores’ vision into a TV show was challenging. But thanks to foreign financing, a prominent cast and Louisiana’s production incentives, Shores was able to get enough money together to complete 13 episodes.
Prior to “Sordid Lives,” Shores had worked for nearly a decade with Warner Bros. and Fox, among other studios. Series that he had written for include “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” and “Ned and Stacy.”
Shores produced his coming-out play at Theater Theater in Hollywood in 1996. It had a successful run there, garnering critics’ awards and going on to play larger theaters elsewhere in the United States.
The movie version of his coming-out story developed a rabid following when it debuted in 2001. Like fans of “Rocky Horror Picture Show,” moviegoers would dress as their favorite characters, flock to midnight showings and shout the film’s tawdry lines in unison.
Shores thought he could mine the popularity of the movie for TV, but financing it was a question mark.
“I didn’t know how I was going to get the money to make it into a television series,” Shores said. “But through a lot of help from people who really loved the play and the movie, I was able to cobble together a patchwork of financing.”
Logo, a network that caters to gay and lesbian audiences, immediately saw the series’ potential and agreed to fund most of the project. A gap remained, however.
Shores turned to Damian Ganczewski at Once Upon a Time Films, which produces cable specials on past TV shows such as “Three’s Company,” to help seek the additional money needed to make the series.
In what is becoming a common practice for television production, the duo sought deficit financing from outside the United States. Deficit financing allows content owners to sell off certain distribution rights in exchange for money upfront, before production even begins.
“The game has really changed when it comes to financing television productions these days,” said Rob Eric, executive vice president of sales and acquisitions for Scout Productions.
Los Angeles-based Scout eventually produced the series along with Shores and Once Upon a Time.
International deal
Knowing that international media giant IMG Sports & Entertainment wanted to develop more entertainment programming, Eric contacted Alex Fraser, vice president of entertainment sales and acquisitions at IMG’s London offices.
An international distribution deal was made.
IMG provided deficit financing in exchange for international broadcast, cable, satellite, DVD and online rights, while Once Upon a Time worked out a similar financial agreement in exchange for domestic DVD, online and mobile rights to the series. Logo has the domestic broadcast, cable and satellite rights.
“This involves a bit more risk than we usually take on but it was the cast of talent that we are betting on to balance out those risks,” Fraser said.
The series features Olivia Newton-John, Rue McClanahan and Caroline Rhea. This will be Logo’s first original series to feature such well-known actors, and that was a point not lost on the network brass.
“We’re hopeful that the cast will broaden our viewing audience to non-gays,” said Dave Mace, head of original programming at Logo.
At the same time, the series had what the network calls “gay sensibility,” meaning that cast members such as Newton-John have a high approval rating among Logo’s core audience.
In order to control costs, Shores and his production partners designed a shooting schedule similar to that of a feature film, rather than an episodic television series. By timing all the shots that involved top stars to occur within days of each other, they were able to reduce transportation costs, as the series was shot in Shreveport, La. Big-name talent also worked with Shores on the cheap because of their love for the original play, about a young man who comes out of the closet while attending his grandmother’s funeral in Texas.
Shores divorced his wife after he came out, but they remain amicable. She even co-produced the “Sordid Lives” play.
“The fact that so many members of the cast worked for scale really made it all possible,” said Shores, who has also worked as a producer on Showtime’s hit series “Queer as Folk” and Fox’s “Dharma and Greg” comedy series.
Stanley Brooks, chief executive of Once Upon a Time Films, said that they debated shooting in Canada to save money, but Shreveport offered the best deal while maintaining a Southern feel for location shots.
“Had it not been for the incentives offered by the state of Louisiana we would have never been able to get this done,” Brooks said.
Louisiana reimburses film companies up to 35 percent of their in-state production costs. The incentive played a key role in getting a final commitment from Brooks, Shores said.
