Middle of Nowhere, a half-hour, single camera indie television pilot created, written, directed and executive produced by Adjunct Professor Michele Palermo, is experiencing a successful festival showing. It won Best TV Show, Best Director and Best Actress for Elena Wohl at the New York City International Film Festival 2021 and was also selected as Best Television/Webisode at the Hollywood Just 4 Shorts Festival in May of this year. The pilot is now headed to the Independent Comedy Competition at SeriesFest Season 7 where it will screen between June 24 and July 11, 2021.
Middle of Nowhere is a deep dive into the laughably-complicated life of Lisa Giordano-Navarro: middle-aged, mid-divorce, "mid-career" (yeah, out of work). Lisa's starting fresh at fifty, but her larger-than-life family has this middle child feeling stuck. It's Christmas. Lisa comes from NYC to drive her elderly parents from Vegas to Venice, CA for the big family gathering with her brothers (and their others). But unwrapping her memories - and their hidden truths - triggers surprises for all. With the intimate honesty of Better Things, the illuminating time-shifts of This is Us, and the generational conflicts of All in the Family, Middle of Nowhere explores the universally comic tragedy we call middle age.
Michele Palermo is a published and award-winning playwright and screenwriter. She has created myriad television pilots and has worked with industry luminaries David E. Kelley and Peter Horton. Her pilot The Mansion (an upstairs/downstairs dramedy set in a southern governor’s mansion) was purchased and developed by Lifetime Television. She has written, produced and directed two award winning indie features, Ladies in Waiting (based on her play of the same name) and the hilarious mockumentary Unreel: A True Hollywood Story, as well as the popular Web Series Chapin Circle. Palermo spent four years as Chief of Staff and Speechwriter for Virginia First Lady Lisa Collis Warner (wife of former Virginia Governor and current senator Mark R. Warner) and a year researching tomatoes and compost for the incomparable Martha Stewart. Currently, Palermo is working on her pilot Blind Faith, an historical-fiction.
