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Title: Co-author Ramona Hammel Pitches Rate to Screenwriter, Director, and Producer Deborah Pearl

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, 10th Sep 2026 - Pearl’s career began on the acclaimed TV comedy Designing Women before she moved into screenwriting, playwriting, and directing. Her short film Getting Ed Laid, starring Ed Asner and Jean Smart, won the Lou Costello Award for Comedy Short at the 2016 Garden State Film Festival, while her earlier short Waiting for Yvette, starring Wendie Malick, won an audience award at the 2007 Palm Springs International Festival of Short Films. She is also the author of the forthcoming Finding Your Creative Voice - A Guide to Authenticity and The Art of Self Expression.Rate opens on a December night in 1893 at the Setterington homestead near Elsie, Michigan, as farmer Milford “Millie” Setterington waits through his wife Almina’s difficult labor, hoping for a son. When the boy arrives, Milford names him Ralph Horatio and calls him “Rate,” the same nickname his own demanding father used. The inherited name reflects a larger pattern: Milford raises Ralph according to the same harsh methods that shaped his own childhood. The family’s move from England to Canada and eventually to Michigan, along with its transition from farm to town life, unfolds alongside this generational story.Pearl praised the strength of the family material and the opening birth scene, while encouraging Hammel to develop specific scenes showing the relationship between Milford and his father and, in turn, Milford and Ralph. She recommended connecting these moments through a stronger dramatic progression, with Rate reaching a clear emotional resolution rather than relying on future installments to complete the story.Following the pitch, Rate remains under consideration as a potential screen adaptation, with Pearl’s feedback offering direc...

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