Hollywood is still interested.
Unfortunately for Prince George entrepreneurs Cameron and Tammy Thun, their efforts to expose in a network series their own true-life adventures as former owners of a strip club/car wash/brothel in the Dominican Republic have been stalled by the writers’ strike.
“We should have been in production now if the writers’ strike hadn’t happened, that’s how close we are,” said Cameron Thun. “If it wasn’t for COVID and the writers’ strike we’d be on the air.”
For three years, the Thuns have pitched Down Low in the D.R.: Just Another Day in Paradise as an episodic series and at least one major streaming platform has shown an interest in making it happen. But the project in on hold until the strike is settled.
In 2003, while on their honeymoon, Tammy and Cam decided to buy a nightclub in Punta Cana, which they remodeled into a 400-seat venue they called The Maneater Club.
The Thuns found out after they bought the club the girls who worked as strippers also made their living as prostitutes and paid for their food and lodging and covered healthcare for all employees of the club.
After 18 months they decided to sell the business, tired of dealing with their Colombian business partner, machine gun-toting thugs, police bribes, corrupt politicians and narcotics agents. When the deal went sour, Cam was falsely accused of committing fraud on the purchase of six toilets for the club and later proved his innocence in court.
“It almost writes itself,” said Richard Brandes, a Los Angeles-based director/producer/writer backing the Thuns in their series pitch. “You could sustain a series for a number of years with all the characters in that particular setting. A place like that lends itself to all kinds of behind-the-scenes craziness and drama.”
Down Low in the D.R. also draws material from the seven books Cam has written about his life in Prince George and his experiences working at the National Hotel, formerly owned by his mother and stepfather Al Thun, and his Cam’s current occupation as a liquor store/cannabis dispensary owner.
The Thuns were told there’s enough material for between seven and 10 seasons. Their only stipulations are that all of the scenes in Canada be shot in Prince George and that the producers hire their daughter Jessica as a makeup artist.
There was some positive news this week when representatives of the Writers Guild of America and the major studios agreed to meet for the first time since the strike began in early May.
The 11,500 writers are trying to get a deal that guarantees they receive residuals from their work that gives then enough to pay their salaries when they are between contracts. Residual payments have dropped from five-figure cheques to three-figure payments.
The striking writers also want artificial intelligence protections that prevent applications such as ChatGPT from using their literary material as source material or rewriting it to produce scripts.