Quadriplegic Attacked Accidentally at Inaugural Film Festival

BRADENTON, Fla. - June 22, 2015 - PRLog -- Bradenton, Florida. The Skyway Film Festival had its successful inaugural event this past weekend with slight hiccup. Celebrities who attended were Tom Smothers of Smothers Brothers Fame and Jon Michael Hall (Elementary, CBS) and David J. Schroeder, a festival award winning screen writer.

At the Manatee Performing Arts Center in Bradenton, Florida, Joseph A Camerieri was in the audience of one of the “Labs,” a teaching tool at Festivals to teach a specific category of film making. Skyway Film Festival finalist in the Teleplay Pitch Lab was David J. Schroeder, award winning screenwriter who won over 51 festival awards for six different screenplays. Mr. Schroeder is a quadriplegic and a English professor at University of Miami. These two never met before until...

Teleplay Pitch Lab was a “Shark Tank” like atmosphere, Mr.Schroeder gave four minute of his self interrupted and mishandling his microphone and halfway funny pitch for Curb Enthusiasm. One of the judges, a successful film writer himself, was Michael Lucker (Mulan II, Vampire In Brooklyn). He politely gave suggestions and good evaluation and the next judge did the same thing to improve. Both overlooked the awkwardness of the Schroeder’s pitch.

But the moderator opened the comments and questions to the audience. First to get his hand raised was Mr. Camerieri, our fast talking Brooklyn version of Simon Cowell (mean judge of American Idol) as he himself quoted what he felt like in his head. In his New York accent, Mr. Camerieri gave some loud suggestions, such as “don’t mumble,” “stop interrupting yourself,” implying keep the flow going consistently, “smoothness”. This went on for two minutes.

Mr. Camerieri did not raise his hand on the next three finalists but after the event was over, Mr. Camerieri went directly to the victim of his evaluation and said, “Hey, I hope I didn’t come across hard, I apologize.” But that wasn’t the end of the story. Professor Schroeder informed the newly crowned Simon Cowell of Film makers, “No, it's okay, I'm a quadriplegic,” and slowly moved backward revealing the wheelchair. A huge redness came over on Mr. Camerieri; apparently Mr. Camerieri didn’t see the professor wheeling himself in the event area stage and then again was profusely apologetic. “I felt like a complete idiot,” he said. Joseph said Today (Sunday), "I went from being humble at Church to humiliation in a matter of hours." David Schroeder explained due to his disability he has hard time breathing and his hand was effected too. After the lab, Joseph was explaining to Jon Hill (Elementary CBS), who was also pitching his project, “In my head it sounded like I was being harsh. I didn't mean to attack him.” Jon kind of blew it off like nothing ever happened.

Camerieri and David Schroeder are now film makers acquaintances. After talking with David personally for twenty or so minutes Joseph is now helping David find representation.