Casting is now open for our next table read, Desert Star News, scheduled for 6 p.m. on Monday, May 5, 2025, at the SF-NC Local Office!
Please submit directly to the filmmakers' contact email at roberthaus430@icloud.com. The deadline has been extended to 5 p.m. on Wednesday, April 23.
If you would like to attend as audience, please RSVP here.
Project: Desert Star News
Writers: Robert Haus
Type: Live table reading
Live Read: Monday, May 5, 6 p.m. Check-in at 5:30 p.m.
Location: 350 Sansome St., Ste. 840, San Francisco, CA 94104
Logline: After a major-market anchorwoman wins a sexual harassment lawsuit, she quickly learns no other station in the country will hire her – except for a low-budget, ramshackle station in the middle of nowhere.
Seeking performers able to read the following roles:
- Narrator: Any age, any gender
MAIN CHARACTERS
- Brooke Pierce: Female, early thirties. Raised in Florida by a Caucasian father and Cuban mother who raised her to be “a nice Republican girl.” Often wryly blames her mother for her “hot-blooded Cuban genes.” Extremely intelligent and supremely confident. Her one obvious character flaw is a desire for a proper trophy husband, which causes her to reject several men who lack the societal cachet she seeks.
- Vince: Male, Caucasian, late forties. Brooke’s loyal, long-suffering agent.
- Leo Judson: Male, Caucasian, early sixties. The owner of the TV station in Joshua Valley. He is new to the broadcasting business, and often comes across as a totally clueless rube. But his years as a car salesman provided him with an instinctive ability to size people up and determine what they want and need. His top priority is selling enough air time to keep the station up and running.
- Jack Oaks: Male, early fifties. The Assignment Editor at the station. He is a retired Marine who finished his career at the town’s recently-closed Marine base. Tough as nails with the young staff. He is a single father. His wife left both their young daughters.
- Marla Wong: Female, Asian, early twenties. She works as a reporter, producer, and substitute anchor at the station. She labors to hide her sensitivity with sharp-tongued toughness, a facade she developed after years of facing racism, sexism, the harsh demands of the news business, and the unwanted attention of numerous men afflicted with “yellow fever.”
- Garth: Male, Caucasian, mid-twenties. A brilliant cameraman, but only if he can find his way to the story. Most likely, he is on the autism spectrum. He has blue hair, piercings, and tattoos.
- Ralph LeMoore: Male, Black, early twenties. The sports anchor-reporter for the station. He aspires to more than sports reporting. Extremely intelligent, perceptive, and witty. He’s also a closeted gay man.
- Bud Norris: Male, Caucasian, early sixties. A local real estate developer and a friend of Leo’s. Financially prosperous but, like Leo, an unsophisticated “desert rat,” partial to polyester clothes and lowbrow tastes.
- Jeff Norris: Male, Caucasian, early thirties. Bud Norris’s son, and the owner of a startup financial planning outfit in San Bernardino. Unlike either his father or Leo, Jeff has developed a certain amount of polish and after his years of living in other cities, for both education and work experience. Eschewing the polyester outfits favored by both his father and Leo, Jeff is well-dressed and urbane. Brooke is quite attracted to him.
SECONDARY CHARACTERS
- Bill Beckwith: Male, Caucasian, fifties. The News Director at the Pittsburgh television station whom Brooke sued for sexual harassment.
- Cliff: Male, Caucasian, mid-thirties. The assignment editor at the Pittsburgh station.
- Kim Oaks: Female, Caucasian, fourteen years old. Jack’s daughter.
- Pittsburgh Station Lawyer: Male, Caucasian, fifties.
MINOR CHARACTERS
- Male Reporter #1
- Male Reporter #2
- Female Reporter
- Female Announcer
- Male Announcer, Financial News
- ER Doctor: Male, thirties
- Station Receptionist: Female, Caucasian, late twenties.
- Control Booth Director: Male, undetermined ethnicity, early twenties
- Male Announcer, News Opening Sequence
Submission Instructions: Please submit directly to the filmmakers' contact email at roberthaus430@icloud.com. The deadline is 5 p.m. on Wednesday, April 23.
This table read is an unpaid stage performance presented to a live audience. We are committed to diverse, inclusive casting. For every role, please submit qualified performers, without regard to disability, race, age, color, national origin, sexual orientation or gender identity, or any other basis prohibited by law, unless otherwise specifically indicated.
Synopsis: The main character, Brooke Pierce, is a former anchorwoman for a Pittsburgh television station. After rejecting repeated sexual demands from the news director, she was demoted to the noon newscast, ostensibly due to falling ratings.
She wins a sexual harassment lawsuit and arranges a settlement with the station. Brooke entrusts the settlement money to her father, the highly regarded owner of a Miami bond brokerage house.
But shortly after winning the suit, she is hospitalized with viral pneumonia. While recovering, she learns she has lost almost all of the settlement money and a good part of her life savings to a financial crisis. Nearly broke, she asks her agent to find an anchoring or reporting job. He tells her no other station will hire her. The station owners feel that any woman who would sue for sexual harassment must be trouble. They will not hire her under any circumstances.
After several months, she receives an offer of an interview. The owner of a low-budget, ramshackle station in the California High Desert town of Joshua Valley is willing to talk with her. Brooke flies out for an interview and finds a small, remote town baking in one hundred degree-plus heat. The station owner is new to the television business and is unaware of her lawsuit and its fallout. The news staff, save for the News Director/Anchor, is young and inexperienced.
Her interview is interrupted when the owner learns his News Director/Anchor has been killed in a car accident. Brooke helps the shaken young news staff assemble and deliver the night’s newscast. Afterwards, the owner offers her the position of News Director/Anchor. Brooke accepts, and starts the new chapter of her life in the isolated, occasionally harsh, and often baffling desert town of Joshua Valley.
About the Writer/Filmmaker: Robert Haus is a former professional musician, Robert Haus also worked for several years as an award-winning television news producer and reporter. In 2019, he retired after a distinguished career as a Public Information Officer with the California Department of Transportation. His magazine articles appeared in Flight Journal and the California Transportation Journal. His first book, Diminished, Resolving to Major was published this year. He lives in Oakland, California.
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