Get some tips on how to sell that sitcom at Geneva Film Fest

TV comedy fans, here is your chance to pick the brain of an expert about how those shows get done.

Gloria Calderon Kellett, who wrote, edited or co-produced 36 episodes of "How I Met Your Mother," and actress/producer Lara Wickes ("How I Met Your Mother," "Entourage") will screen their short film "Wounded" Friday night at a dinner at Le Berry Bistro in Geneva, then speak about how they made the film and how things get done out in Hollywood. They will also present workshops Saturday during the film festival.

Kellett intended to be an actress, fell in to writing plays, got into writing for TV, then made her film. The dramatic film is based on one of her one-act plays, and is about a soldier returning from the war in Iraq with post-traumatic stress disorder.

It's a departure for the woman who thinks a comedy writer's room is "a pretty extraordinary place," where the first order of business each day is ordering lunch. Then you compete with 12 people pitching story ideas, and an episode is written and edited weekly. "It's pretty awesome fun," said Kellett.

She intends to address the business side of show business, such as selling scripts on spec. "There are a lot of people who don't know the business side of an artistic endeavor," such as finding money to stage a play or how to find a hospital to shoot in when you don't have much money. The one in "Wounded" may look familiar; it's the same shuttered hospital used for the filming of the comedy "Scrubs," and they got to film there through one of Wickes' connections.

She credits a year spent working for ADP, between college and graduate school, for giving her perspective on non-entertainment life.

Kellett, a graduate of Loyola University - Marymount, discovered her love of writing her senior year when a professor suggested she stop rewriting her lines in a Neil Simon play and write her own works. She stages a new play or one-acts night annually, and credits those with bringing her to the attention of industry professionals. That's how people from Tom Cruise's production company noticed her and got her a job as an assistant to writer-director Cameron Crowe on the Cruise movie "Vanilla Sky." Crowe then suggested she try writing for television. She was hired for the short-lived Andy Richter comedy "Quintuplets," where she met the two men who would go on to start "How I Met Your Mother." After taking time off to have a baby, she's sold a television series pilot to CBS, and is promoting "Wounded" at film festivals.

"We've been able to pay our bills doing what I love," she said.

Tickets to Friday's 7 p.m. fundraising dinner are $60. To make a reservation, contact Denise Dorman at denise@writebrainmedia.com, (630) 845-4694.

Tickets to the Saturday-morning workshops at the Riverside Banquet and Conference Center are $10.

For a schedule of all film festival events, visit genevafilmfestival.org.