Long before Oklahoma became a hub for film production, one creative professional was already trying to make it happen. Operating Films by Independent Artists, Inc. in the 1990s, author and screenwriter Georgianne Landy-Kordis produced trailers for her own works, hoping to secure funding for full productions in a state that wasn’t yet on Hollywood’s radar.
“I was told by an L.A. producer that I was ahead of my time,” she recalls of that period. “I was trying to do then what they are just now doing in Oklahoma—making movies here.”
The path from screenplay to screen proved elusive, despite decades of effort. In 2016, while collaborating with a Los Angeles producer on an adaptation of a book by a Bolivia-based author, the project stalled over funding issues. That became a turning point.
A Shift in Medium, Not Vision
Rather than abandoning her stories entirely, Landy-Kordis found another outlet. Several of her screenplays have been transformed into books, now available on Amazon and Audible. Her memoir, “And I Thought I’d be a Nun,” offers readers a window into her personal history, while a short story series featuring a character named Tapioca showcases her fiction work.
The transition from visual storytelling to written and audio formats represents a practical pivot for someone who spent years fighting for a place in film production. Her published works now reach audiences directly, without the gatekeepers and funding challenges that derailed her screenwriting ambitions.
The Challenge of Being Found
Now retired and focused primarily on painting when the creative urge strikes, Landy-Kordis faces a different obstacle: visibility. “I do wish my books would sell a lot better, but self-publishing authors seem to get lost in all the books out there,” she explains.
It’s a common frustration in an era where Amazon alone hosts millions of titles, and algorithms often favor established authors or those with significant marketing budgets. For someone who made Films by Independent Artists work in the pre-digital age, the irony of struggling with discoverability in an infinitely more connected world isn’t lost.
Her trajectory reflects broader changes in independent creative work—from the physical challenges of producing film trailers in the 1990s to today’s digital publishing platforms that offer unprecedented access but fierce competition. While her creative output has slowed with retirement, the body of work remains: screenplays reimagined as books, a memoir, short stories, and occasional paintings.
Whether her assessment that “it just wasn’t in the cards” for the big screen represents acceptance or resignation, Landy-Kordis has found ways to keep her stories alive. They just appear in formats she hadn’t originally envisioned during those early days of making movie trailers in Oklahoma, decades before anyone else thought it possible.
