Monday, December 05, 2005

Whirlpool

Today is the first day of near-recovery from my annual post-Thanksgiving headcold. I am not totally up to capacity, but I am making progress. I can stare at this screen without going all woozy headed. It's a step. I was out of commission for about a week - your standard cold duration - though combined with being housebound in my parents' New Jersey domecile for the holidays, I have pretty much gone stir crazy from half a month of solitary confinement.

Yesterday offered a little respite as I had to escort my girlfriend out to windswept San Bernedino to reclaim her towed/stolen/recovered Mitsubishi Eclipse. The whole day was a comedy of errors that was only compounded by my air-headed remove thanks to five straight days of glugging cough supressant. Anyway, it was an adventure for me considering the farthest I had traveled since coming back from Jersey was the mailbox. And let me just say that there is a golden throne in heaven awaiting Mr. Guy Who Invented Netflix.

SPEAKING OF MOVIES...

Tomorrow I am scheduled to head up to Santa Barbara to infect my writing partner's children with whatever strain of the croup I have... and go over our script one last time before she takes an extended whack at it. The general plan for my life right now is a) get better; b) let her do the hard work on the script long enough for me to finish Air Conditioned Jungle; c) stave off despair vis a vis unemployment, poverty, having wasted 10 years of my life, having a career in the shitter and an impending midlife crisis (ten years early); and d) finish fucking Air Conditioned Jungle*.

That's what will be on my tombstone. Finish (obscenity omitted) Air Conditioned Jungle.

Right. So. They passed on the show at VH1. And, you know, I guess it's not the worst thing ever. I truly would have loved working on it, and I certainly could have used the money, but maybe this will free me up to really *FFACJ. Who needs money? You can't be a starving artist if you got loads of money, right?

Jesus, I'm a starving artist. I'm a two bit cliche. A Hollywood cliche at that. Oh well, there's always '06!

Friday, December 02, 2005

VH Won't

...Because VH1 passed on our show.

Maybe if I weren't sick I would be more upset, maybe I'd have more energy to muster up some frustration or anger or just plain disappointment. But right now I don't give a crap.

When I get out of bed and get out of the house and get some fresh air and stop hacking up a lung I'll compose a more thoughtful and humorous take on this latest indignity.

Yours phlegmatically,

bigjob

Saturday, November 19, 2005

Thank You, Internet

Mimi in New York. Wry observations, New York adventures, Nudity. Man, my blog sucks in comparison.

I'll also put this as a new link, to the right.

Friday, November 18, 2005

Square Two

Yesterday was a study in contrasts.

I had a meeting with my manager around 3 over Whole Foods tuna sandwiches. The topic was Get Low, the script I've been trying to get made for just over three years. I've written about it before, but all you really need to know about it that I've lived with the project since 2001, and for a while there it looked like it was going to get made and put me on the Hollywood map. Soon the phone would ring and I'd go to meetings and I'd get assignments and I'd start to make a living and I'd maybe even get a blurb in one of the trades. I would have "arrived."

Alas, as with so many things, what I anticipated and what actually came to pass have been pretty disconnected. The upshot of our meeting was that, despite my manager's efforts to drum up some money, despite the hard work of the producers, and despite the attachment of two Oscar-winning actors, apparently no one wants to make the thing. Now, this is not to say that it will never get made, necessarily. But the manager's advice was to more or less forget about it. One day if it gets made (which could happen; Unforgiven took twenty years) then it'll make for a nice story in my memoirs. But until then, move on.

So, I am sort of back to square one. Sort of, but not really. Square One would be no one knows who I am or cares. Square Two is maybe where I am. A few people know who I am and a few people care. And maybe that's all you need. Taking stock, in the recent past I've co-written a feature screenplay that is being tag-team rewritten as we speak, I've developed a TV series & pitched it (still waiting to hear from VH1), and I'm in the middle of finishing Air Conditioned Jungle, a script I've mentioned before. And so maybe having a few people know and care means that should any of these get in front of the right people, and the right circumstances crop up, maybe something will come of it. You know, you gotta just have so much faith to be a writer, let alone a writer in Hollywood, let alone an actor in Hollywood. Although if you're an actor you need to have faith plus a smoldering, rough-hewn charm that complements your six pack abs and white, white teeth.

The flip side of the wave of dread known as square two is...

Last night I was invited to a table read of the new pilot "Heist," a really cool show that will be presented to NBC. The first episode is to be directed by Doug Liman.

It was a full house, a large room in a tres moderne office suite on the West Side of LA, stuffed with catered Quiznos sandwiches, cookies, chips and many bottles of water. This being my first "real" table read, I noted the details. Scripts on blue paper for anyone who wanted, and pens everwhere you looked. The only thing they didn't have in spades were chairs.

So my writing partner Matt - the guy that introduced me to the producers, these same ones who are helping he and I get our TV pitch around town - ended up reading all the stage direction: anything that the actors were not supposed to read. He had a heavy duty job since the show is almost all action. There were some great highlights to the night. Probably the best was Seymour Cassel having a very tender bit with his fictional ailing wife. Short scene but powerful stuff from the Cassavettes stalwart.

The script ran long (it was about 55 pages, and for the purposes of a one-hour TV show that times out to 44 minutes of screen time, should probably top off at 50) so immediately after the actors left, the producers and writers (including Matt and I, pro bono) repaired to the production offices across the street and got to work on punching up the text. It was a genuine thrill for me. I was born to be among writers. All thinking, all problem solving, all creative, all funny. Just sort of a little tiny dream come true.

The producers don't really know me that well. I've only really met them a half a dozen times now, and never without Matt at my side. Still, they treat me just fine and hear me out if I've got a suggestion, and they even laugh in all the right spots. So it's a good situation. I even pitched a jokey bit of dialogue that made it into he finished script. And I'm kinda proud of that - maybe no one will ever see it except for NBC executives, but maybe it will get picked up and then suddenly a spontaneous idea hatched in the boiler room of an office park mainly to crack up the writers will actually get seen by you, dear reader/viewer. After things wrapped up, Mark, one of the two producers looked me in the eye and sincerely thanked me for staying until midnight to work for free on his script. Nearly brought a tear to my goddamn eye. That almost made up for him calling me the Italian Woody Allen.

So there you have the two paths that I walk right now. Lost in obscurity and well-liked by a precious few. It could be worse, much worse. It could be raining. Wait, in LA?

Friday, November 11, 2005

Former Boss's Dick on Chopping Block

This guy was the first boss I had in the business. He is an ornery, foul-mouthed man who was extremely fair and extremely funny and I have no doubt he said all the things listed below. But he doesn't have a mean bone in his body and I find it all hard to believe. So... just saying.

Fox News: Bad Language Isn't Illegal
By John M. Higgins -- Broadcasting & Cable, 11/8/2005

The lewd language of a Fox News Channel executive -- however tasteless -- does not constitute sexual harassment or discrimination, a lawyer for the network said Tuesday.

The lawyer was responding to a discrimination suit against the network filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and targeting the head of the company’s promotion department.

The complaint contains a list of statements alleged to have been made by network vice president Joe Chillemi to employees in the 20-person department, roughly one-half of whom are women.

Offensive remarks attributed to Chillemi include saying that a pregnant woman had "tits" like "cannons"

Steven Mintz, a Manhattan lawyer hired by Fox, called the complaint "legally baseless", saying: "We don’t view any of the assertions in the action as either harassment or discrimination. This is a case involving bad language."

Mintz disputes some of the alleged statements, but would only address one of them.

The EEOC says that Chillemi used the phrase "as useless as tits on a bull" in front of women. Mintz said that’s not the precise language. The phrase is "as useless as teats on a bull. "It’s something that’s useless. It’s not a sexual comment." Asked whether Chillemi actually used that word, Mintz replied: "I believe that he said "teats" exactly that way. It’s something he used to say in front of men and women."

But Mintz also acknowledges that some of the language was correctly reported.

Still, while Fox does not encourage bad words in the workplace, Mintz acknowledges that it happens, "probably even at the EEOC."

The suit, filed Monday, charges that Chillemi routinely swore and made ribald remarks and comments that a freelancer in the promotion department found offensive.

The EEOC complaint was filed on behalf of Kim Weiler, a former freelance production assistant in the promotion department and other unnamed women she worked with.

The suit is based on allegations that during Weiler’s 13 months at the network, Chillemi regularly used obscenities and vulgarities and that the network retaliated against Weiler when she objected.

EEOC trial attorney Judy Keenan says that Weiler was not fired outright, but was “constructively terminated” by the hostility toward her after she complained.

"The general tenor of the case is that women were treated differently than men, and the predominant form was harassment," Keenan says. Adding that "We want to send a message that you can’t do this without consequences."

Mintz counters that there was no retaliation. The project Weiler was working on ended and she was offered another slot in the company’s viewer services department.

Further, Mintz contends that Weiler didn’t complain to anyone at the network, which has systems in place to encourage even anonymous reports of harassment problems.

Rather than "following company procedures of notification," Mintz says, "she opted to file a lawsuit instead. Which might be easier than going to work each day." Keenan contends Weiler did complain to human resources.

The suit seeks compensatory damages for any financial losses and emotional distress suffered by Weiler and her colleagues, plus punitive damages.

According to the complaint filed in U.S. District Court in New York:

--Chillemi routinely used gross obscenities and
vulgarities when describing women or their body parts
(referring, for example, to women’s breasts as “tits”
and declaring that something was “as useless as tits
on a bull”).

--He routinely used obscenities and vulgarities with
women employees that he did not use with male
employees (such as telling women that they had put his
“d--k” “on the chopping block”).

--Chillemi routinely cursed at and otherwise
denigrated women employees and treated them in a
demeaning way (including telling women not to be a
“p--sy” but to “be a man”, and referring to women as
being a “bitch”).

--He made a number of derogatory comments about
pregnant women (such as regularly stating that a
pregnant woman had “tits” that were “f---ing huge” and
like “cannons” or “melons” and the on-air talent’s
breasts needed to be “covered” or not shown when the
pregnant woman was being filmed).

--In addition, at a department discussion about a
segment on sexism in the workplace, Chillemi said that
in choosing who to hire “if it came down between a man
or a woman, of course I’d pick the man. The woman
would most likely get pregnant and leave.”

--Women in the Fox Advertising and Promotions
departments supervised by Chillemi were also referred
to in a derogatory way by a supervisor as his “Promo
Girls.”

The suit more broadly charges that Fox has discriminated against Weiler and an other female promotions employees by assigning women primarily to freelance positions with less benefits, less advancement potential and less job security and not
appropriately assigning women to full staff positions.

Allegations of sexual and age discrimination is a persistent problem in the TV news business, particularly involving on-air talent where looks are pivotal to a woman’s success. In a recent B&C cover story on discrimination, lawyers said that actual
complaints and lawsuits are declining in part because retaliation against a woman can be harsh and they can be blackballed by other networks and stations.

A copy of the Fox complaint can be found here:

www.broadcastingcable.com/contents/images/Complaint_20051107.pdf

Thursday, November 10, 2005

Change in the air

Yes, a new look for old bigjob. Why not? This thing is, believe it or not, a year old. A new coat of paint was certainly in order.

And while we're at it, how about a link to a real Hollywood writer's blog. In case you want to read about someone who is actually successful.

Until next time...

Wednesday, November 09, 2005

VH1

A good day today, got back into Air Conditioned Jungle, the script/albatross-around-my-neck I've been trying to finish for about five years. It still sucks! But that's why God made rewrites.

I haven't looked at it since July, but after three days of reading through my notes, I've gotten a handle on where to begin with the next round of work. If there is a God he'll send me a sign - like I'll finish all the notes before Thanksgiving. The idea is to spend all of December doing two things: rewriting the script and going broke.

Yeah, here's the thing, kids. Dad's broke. It's getting real grim around here. Family members will each be getting an original sonnet in their stockings from yours truly because my sad ass won't be able to afford new sweaters for everyone.

UNLESS...

VH1, Video Hits One, decides to come through, to be the white knight I so desperately need. See, today, my writing partner and I pitched our show. We were hilarious and charming and personable and loose and on-message. And I think they might have thought so too. I think she (D girl) liked it. My partner's agent called pretty soon afterward and told us that she's going to recommend they buy the show. Repeat, she's going to recommend they buy the show. So, I don't know nothing about nothing... but it could very well turn out that I finally move some product around here. Let's hope it's in the next little while. I got my eye on the most darling matching Rudolph sweaters for everyone.

Monday, November 07, 2005

The Ugly Fence



So here's the fence, in all its ignominy.

Overheard on Friday: "Now my dog will stop biting people!"

Friday, November 04, 2005

Belly of the Whale, Part II

I had a rewrite assignment vanish recently, a "polish" they call it, where you take a pretty finished script and buff it up to a high shine. On the face of it, an easy gig. And it would have been my first. "Would have been" because it disappeard, which as The Dude would say, is a bummer, man. It was going to float me into financial security for the remaining few months of this year. But just like that it disappeared. More work to be done before I could buff it up.

Did I despair? Yes. But only momentarily - all the therapy is helping a LITTLE. I moved on, saw things on the continuum, got big picture about it. I figured something would come as it often has when I wonder how I'm going to keep the lights on around here. And then, sweet bearded moses, two things came in one day, two offers to write. One short term, one longer term, both affording me another comfortable month here in my palatial estate on Los Angeles's East Side. For about 21 hours I was feeling pretty all right.

Then they vanished. Two phone calls, both graciously slipping a pillow over the assignments and suffocating them. Setting me back at square one. And now I'm broke, hungry, and feeling the chill of December on its way. Um. So, if anyone needs a writer... you know... contact my manager.

Ah, I'm gonna have to sell my sperm, aren't I?

Thursday, November 03, 2005

Essence of Vincent Gallo

Let no one say the man is not a giver.

Belly of the Whale, Part I

So the update on work stuff here in the land of diminishing returns is...

Get Low (aka The Duvall Script) is in some kind of limbo again. This is not a news flash or some new development, just the subtle wearing away of my confidence in the project. There was a time when I was told that they were still hoping to shoot it this year, and that the likely start date would be the first of November. That was sort of a drop-dead date for still getting it done within the year. Since the film is set in the south during the height of the summer, they'd now have to either shoot someplace outside the US where fall (or winter) looks like summer, or just wait until next year, when it's real summer. So what I'm saying here is that the window has closed.

There was a time, also, where I sort of had a timeline worked out, what with shooting, editing, scoring, mixing and all that nonsense leading up to the release. Needless to say the timeline was a tad premature.

So there it stands, off in the distance, a memory of a thing that never happened. I'm not upset about it (...I mean, shit, sure I am) but I'm more whiplashed. Even though it's taken up three years of my life and looks like it will take up more, I feel like the whole thing has whizzed by me at a breakneck speed. Not like, wow, time flew! but more like the way college just passes you by without you even feeling it...one day you're at your first kegger, next thing you know you're hugging your girlfriend farewell. Of course, the glaring difference is that I actually enjoyed college. But just to keep the metaphor going one more moment, I will say that amid all of the frustration and heartache and FREE LABOR and everything else, what came out of this experience was an education. There's no other way to see what it's really like inside the belly of the whale unless you go on in. And so I did. And maybe the movie will get made and I'll go further in, have all sorts of adventures in the lower intesitine, and eventually get spit out the whale's anus like every other writer that's ever walked The Boulevard of Broken Dreams out here. Until then, there is just the experience, the education, the knowledge, and, of course, the bitter, bitter resentment.

As for other projects, there are a few.

There's the Rock n Roll pilot that I've developed with my friend Matt. We're going in to pitch it to VH1 next week, and we've heard good things about their interest. Maybe they'll pay us to write it. That would be as best as we could expect. And we'd have a good old time writing it. Music will be played loud, as it should be when writing a thing about Rock n Roll.

There's also the script I've been working on with my friend Amy. It's been a pleasure to work on it because not only is it a great idea (hers) and a wonderful story (ours) but working with her gets me up to Santa Barbara at least twice a month to have some great home cooked (vegan) meals, play with her amazing and energetic children, and talk Peak Oil with her husband. Did I mention they live in a cabin right by Lake Cachuma? It's paradise. Literally, they live on Paradise Road.

Anyway, the script is pretty well done, in terms of a first draft, and as such, I'm going to take a break from it while she beats the shit out of it and gets it into readable shape. When that's kaput, I'll take a pass, we'll crack some champagne, send it to investors and wait for the money truck to arrive.

There are other things in the works, which I'll get to in Part II... Stay tuned.

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Andrea Quotes

In what will become a recurring feature of this blog, here are some of the more memorable, if fragmentary, quotes I have overheard from my insane next door neighbor:

Andrea to mexican workers, apologizing (?) for yelling at them most of the morning - "I'm not mad at you guys, I was just itchy."

Andrea to her father - "Well, you're the one that had me arrested."

Andrea to mother/boyfriend/father - "Fuck you, I hate you. Fuck you, you ruined my life. You ruined my life, fuck you!!!!"

...more later...

Bad Fences Bad Neighbors Make

Crazy neighbor of mine has finally proven that, although she lives in arguably one of the trendiest locations on all of the USA, she is just a redneck in chunky black glasses and a Chrissy Hynde haircut. Trash knows no borders, it seems. She's been redoing the apartment complex of hers for about three years now, making my life and the lives of all those within a one-block radius a nightmare of screaming tantrums, drunken arguments with her abusive, drug-addled boyfriend, and family dramaturgy worthy of Eugene O'Neill. I hate her. Everything about her sucks. And now, the coup de gras, the erection this morning of a shiny new chickenwire fence separating our narrow little walkway from her property. The irony, of course, is that not that it's ugly and crude (beside our well-appointed older building, with the creeping vine and terra cotta paintjob, the banana tree and the green slat fence)... the irony is that WE'LL STILL FUCKING HEAR HER. She couldn't even have the heads-up to put up something wooden, so at least we'd have a fighting chance that the sounds of arguing/sobbing/hectoring-the-mexican-day-laborers would not have the werewithall to leap over the six foot barrier.

There better be some sound baffling going over that fucking metal atrocity, because if I am awoken by make up sex one more time, I'm going go all In Cold Blood on them, every last one of them. What I really need is CalTrans to come in and put up that cement shit they run along the highway to keep the neighborhood quiet. Andrea, I hope you somehow find your way to this post. Finish the job. Also, SHUT UP!

Thing is, see, I'm a writer. I need peace and quiet to do my thing. Yesterday, when they were drilling into the concrete in order to set the gleaming aluminum posts that - little did I know - would be part of the hideous new addition to the property line, I had to wear the earplugs I usually reserve for drumming. And don't even get me started about the dog, Bok Choy, who was delivered unto us from The Devil himself. Fucking hicks, Jesus.

All right, all right. Enough. I swear the next post will have SOMETHING to do with what's currently (not) going on with my writing career. Until then, I'll try and get a photo of this fence up so you can see it in all its shining unsightliness.

Tuesday, November 01, 2005

Look Closely


When I have a moment, there will be a newer, better post than this. But for now, enjoy my new namesake.

Thursday, October 20, 2005

Monday, October 17, 2005

Drizzle in the Hizzle

Shower and then write, or write and then shower? Always the dilemma of the morning. This morning: write then shower. Feels right. An adventure, my life.

I realize my last post was a lunatic blob of despair. I was pretty overwhelmed at the idea of panic in the post-petroleum streets, but I think I've come back to my senses a bit. It's raining today, and that's oddly restorative. Of course, being awoken every time thunder freaked out the cat was not restorative, but, you know, he's a cat, he gets scared. Anyway, LA doesn't get a lot of rain, or weather of any kind, really. So to actually see something normal, something working the way it's supposed to (unlike me, blogging while I should working) is helpful. Cheerful even.

I also realize that last post was pretty off-topic. No showbiz stuff to speak of, so let me make with the latest.

My project with Santa Barbara writing partner is due next Monday. I've got one scene left to write, and then she and I have to break act three and get it down on paper. In a week. I'm terrified, but I think we'll get it done. She and I have been working for about three months now, and we've really gone to great lengths to beat the story point-by-point before actually sitting down to draft pages. I've not really done that in such detail before, and I think it's the key to us having gotten so much done in so little time. And it's also the key to it being a great story. Notice I didn't say script...I can't confidently say we've written a great script, the story I have a huge amount of faith in. If we just can get it on paper and then refine it to its purest form, THEN we'll have a great script.

This I've really come to learn is the best way to work. To resist the urge to get a few ideas sketched out and then jump into the pages. It NEVER EVER WORKS better than writing and rewriting and putting it away and then rediscovering it and asking HARD QUESTIONS and then rewriting it all out again... and only then sitting in front of Final Draft to start writing the script. And here's the kicker - when you do finally set down pages, it comes so easily and quickly, it feels like you're cheating. You go around that dreadful feeling of being in the middle of a scene not knowing why he just said that and she just did this. It will sing. It will ROCK.

Speaking of, the TV thing I'm doing with my other writing partner has been given a blessing by the William Morris agent who's going to "shepherd" it to networks and production companies, etc. So he's going to start setting up meetings this week and hopefully we'll get into the room with the good folks at HBO, Showtime, FX, Fox, USA, and a few other places. We were pretty good in our pitch to the agent guy - a little stiff at the beginning, but funny and relaxed when we warmed up. Practice is what we need.

Unfortunately, I've not done anything on any of my own stuff, writing-wise, in a while. But I'm letting paying gigs and the hopes of selling this pilot keep me afloat for a little while. Though I am starting to feel the hot breath of 2006 on my shoulder. It is sizing up to be a year I'll need full time work and, more than anything, to just crank out as many scripts as I humanly can. Ah, yeah, always something.

Well, the sun came out. Rain doesn't last long here in the desert. So that probably means it's time to get to work.

PS - Wallace and Grommit is the feel good claymation roller coaster ride of the year.

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

This seems...

Sort of increasingly stupid, this whole blogging thing, don'tcha think? I mean, really, every motherfucker out there has got one, and no one's any more or less interesting than anyone else when you come right down to it. And on top of that, who has time to read? My girllfriend is away for two months, I'm unemployed (though writing all day) and I have maybe two nights a week of stuff to do. And I don't read. I hardly have time. I read when I'm in bed unable to sleep. Not sitting upright at the computer. Okay, except for the occasional TruthOut article or Pitchfork review. But is anyone doing one of these really keeping me hanging on by describing their thesis paper woes at grad school? It's like in The Incredibles, you know, if we're all Super, then what's the point? I think what it is is I'm losing interest. Either that or cat-sitting my girlfriend's white furball is starting to get to me. Cat hair everywhere. Constant meowing. A nice chunky hairball yesterday. Yeah.

I guess I'm in a bit of a grim mood lately, or a "what's the point" mood, at least. I've been reading (when unable to sleep) The Long Emergency (which further contributes to insomnia), which is all about the Peak Oil thing. We are in for it when the tap runs dry. According to this guy, at least, pretty much the world as we know it is a nice piece of burnt toast. Then somebody told me about the Maya Calendar last night, and, I mean, that's all I need - although there is a weird comfort to knowing what is possibly the exact date of end times.

All this has led me to some awfully dark places lately, which, at the recommendation of my highly paid professional therapist, I've tried to leaven by watching reruns of The Simpsons. Ol' brain doctor thinks I dwell on the negative. Really? What next doc, gonna tell me that I could stand to lose 15 pounds? What mighty powers of observation, Dr. Freud.

Anyway. It's a nice enough day here in soon-to-be-returned-to-the-sands-of-time Southern California. So I'm going to go for a walk and see if I can spot a bluebird or something and not think about the doomsday of my writing career, which is as fucking dead as those bird-flu chickens in Turkey.

Wednesday, October 05, 2005

The Constant Procrastinator

Go see The Constant Gardener. I'll just call it right now: best movie of the year.*






*Excluding The Big Lebowski Special Edition DVD set for released in two weeks.

Monday, October 03, 2005

Rock on the Brain

Yeah, I've been away from this a while. The last couple of weeks were sort of a logjam of obligations and celebrations, among them my birthday, my parents visiting town, my trying to meet a script deadline, and my girlfriend leaving for two months in Paris. Today is quite literally the first day I've not had some pressing thing to attend to. There are things, of course, that need to get done, but I've got a few hours here, and it feels nice.

One of the things I've got to get around to is prepping a pitch for various network types, based on a show my writing partner and I developed. It's a music-focused show, and between "researching" it (watching music DVD's, buying CD's I can't afford) and doing some drum work on a batch of demos for a bass player friend of mine, I've definitely got rock on the brain.

Lately, what's been humping on the stereo around here is a mix of classics (The Jam, Husker Du, The Replacements, Gang of Four, Stones) and newbies (Fruit Bats, Robbers on High Street, Rogue Wave, I Am Kloot, Magic Numbers). It's as if a Keith Richards-like blood transfusion of rock n roll has begun working into my veins, reinvigorating me and reawakening zombies from an old life. ROCK N ROLL ATE MY BRAIN! I am really surprised at how much the...passion...for Rock n Roll has come back. I guess when I became a writer, or more accurately DECIDED to become a writer, I purposefully set that part of my creative self aside, thinking that there wasn't room in town for the both of us. But, much as the lead character in the proposed show I'm writing, I'm finding that there's only so much you can put those passions to bed. They will wake up. The sleeping giant will be disturbed. And so I find myself eating and breathing and dreaming about music, about drumming, about playing on stage. Not that I was ever some grand rock star who turned his back on the "life," more that I'm just aware of how long I let a certain very vital part of myself atrophy. And the truth is that it's a part of me I never realized how much I missed.

I'm not saying I haven't played music or bought a CD in the intervening years, because Lord knows I have, but there is something happening here that is more about the FEELING of it all, the impossible-to-replicate-elsewhere-ness of it that I haven't realized until now, until I've come through the other end of writing's satisfactions. The satisfaction you derive from writing is peculiar and short lived, like a nitrous oxide hit that spins you upward for a moment and then dissipates in thirty second's time. Music is there, you can hear it, you know when you've done well, when you've done justice to your skill or your stated goal: the band nails the song, the fill drops in exactly the right pocket, the song ends (always touch and go) on a dime and is followed by that wash of elation that, like the nitrous, only lasts a moment...but is shared by all participants, as with a family watching fireworks. You feel the bursts in your chest, thumping in and out of a rhythm that resolves in slow dissipation, prompting you to elbow your brother and look him in the eye as if to say "did you see that?"

Friday, August 26, 2005

Get Low Update...

It's official. After a lengthy courtship, Sissy Spacek is officially attached to Get Low.

Cocktails!

Money Gets You Honey, or Where Have You Gone Johnny Cash?

Money is on my mind these days. The girlfriend is going to get that Paris job, after all. That means that I've got to come up with enough money to cover airfare, place of residence, and spending money for a month of semi-vacation. Right. So after doing some bills the other day and the crunching what few numbers remain in my checkbook, I basically panicked. I need work. Real hard.

I spent the better part of yesterday afternoon looking for jobs online. Funny, but ain't shit happening in August. Only thing mildly intruiging was a post from the end of July that was for AOL, who is looking for restaurant reviewers for their citysearch-equivalent feature on the LA site. If I read it correctly, they pay $30 for a 150-word review, which seems a little counterintuitive, since $30 is about what it would cost to have enough meals at a place to sufficiently give it a review (excluding a real high-pricer of a place, in which case $30 won't even cover the wine). But broke, looking to procrastinate, and feeling a pang of desire - to live the charmed life of a food critic, that is - I decided to give it a try. I thought, at the very least it would be a $30 investment in my potential future career.

I went to Echo Park's The Bright Spot, for which there is no website otherwise I would provide a link, and determined to think like a restaurant critic as soon as I pulled into the parking lot. Great pains went into describing the sensations on my palette as I ate my chorizo and goat cheese omelette, but I think I most enjoyed trying to capture the detail of the people and the place at 8:15 in the morning. As I sat jotting notes in my restaurant critic's notebook, it dawned on me that I was being a professional people watcher. And if there's one thing a writer must do, it's people watch. So even though I was footing the bill myself, even though I should have been cracking away at a screenplay at that hour, and even though I was hoping to get a gig that didn't promise to be very lucrative, it felt good to be working.

If I could only parlay that into a little Johnny Cash.

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

The Party (I'm not at)

A modest house in a wealthy part of the world. Somewhere near the ocean, probably East Hampton or maybe on Shelter Island. Old, tall trees, a well-kept lawn, salt water smell, etc. I drive up, knowing that I know the man who lives there. The house looks quiet. Perhaps no one is home. I get out of my car, walk around back, glance at the pool, peek into the garage where there is a parked car, and walk to the front. No lights are on; car in the garage must be a sporty job for the highway. A moment goes by, and then a car pulls up. Out gets my friend, Mr. High Powered New York TV Producer. Oddly, he parks his car in the street and not in his driveway. But he gets out and recognizes me, which I find surprising on account of my beard. He greets me, and asks what I'm doing there. We smalltalk for a bit, then I offer to help him carry in a few things he's got in the trunk of his hatch-back. I take them into the house, where I discover a rather raging party is under way. The first person I see is a scraggly-bearded Joseph Fiennes. Then I spot another celebrity, then another and another. I realize this quiet little house is packed to the rafters with not-quite-A-list-celebrities. Beautiful people. Scenesters. And it isn't long before I'm taking what I brought in - cups, ice, bottles of beer - and not just putting them at the bar, but serving people. Coiffed, aloof, smart alecks who are hectoring me. Making me drop things. Ragging on my clumsiness, the fuckers. Then, insult to injury, I run into several people from an old freelance job, people who are decidedly not celebrated stars or starlets, who have apparently been invited! A deep pang of resentment hits me. THEM? They're invited? I KNOW Mr. High Powered New York TV Producer. WTF?

And then I realized that I am not only the help at a party to which I so desperately wanted to have been invited, I am the uninvited help.

This was the dream that awoke me four minutes before my alarm went off this morning. Surely a direct psychological conduit to my career, as I see it. But I suppose it's also my outlook on life in general: I'm missing the party.

I'll print this one out and send it to my psychotherapist. I suspect the diagnosis will be Persecution Complex, Inferiority Complex, or Gay Panic.

Thursday, August 18, 2005

Links

I should be working, but I'm trying to put some links on this jammy. Look screen right and check out some of my favorites...

Wednesday, August 17, 2005

Get Low Update...

Patrick Wilson has said yes to Get Low. That officially makes him the second attachment to the project. So we've got Duvall, a director, and PW. Jeff Bridges is circling. Sissy Spacek is floating. But Actor Number 2 is a lock. Finally, some progress!

Friday, August 12, 2005

Sloth, thine is my name

Nothing has been done today. I woke up late, I got to the desk late, and here it is pushing 4pm and I haven't done a thing. I feel totally lazy and worthless. A blight on upright, productive society members. Only thing that makes up for it all is that I got a call from a writer in Atlanta, a friend of mine, and he was ecstatic about my latest script. He just loved it. It is obviously nice to hear, but also encouraging. It makes me think that all the time I spent on the thing was worth it and that it's not such a crazy thought to maybe get it made.

So right now I'm trying to decide if the rest of the day should be spent napping, reading, watching a netflix, or maybe going to do my laundry. Of course, I could go get coffee and try and salvage the day by working at the cafe for an hour or two. Maybe I should go to the gym. Yes, love handles, maybe you should go to the gym.

See, this is what's going to finally do me in -- all these petty little choices that you have to make when you're unemployed. I could go do a hell of a lot right now if someone were holding a gun to my head. But no one is, I'm a little too groggy in the head from not enough sleep, thus unequipped to motivate mysef, and the sound of the desk fan is lulling me into a full scale I-want-to-look-at-internet-porn coma. I just want to stare at the wall. God, what a waste of space I have become. Someone should fling me into outerspace and reduce the global over-population problem.

God, I gotta snap out of it.

Thursday, August 11, 2005

The thunder

Well, yes, I've gone and joined the band and now what I've got happening is the practices that go until 11pm and so then I get home all jacked up from rocking the drum kit and I don't get to bed until 1:30 or so and then I wake up all groggy and sluggish and sit down and just wait, pray, for the caffeine to kick in and jump start the work. The writing. I'm a writer and all... But I gotta say, the rock is helping to keep away the Black Dog.

Wednesday, August 03, 2005

What's that you say?

Don't let the bastards grind you down?

Hmph.

I've been working at this idea that I "ripped from the headlines." Great story concerning some War in Iraq shenanigans. I've been researching and reading and looking on-line and formulating and all that, all the while knowing time was of the element and the story was too good to go unnoticed by other on-the-ball writers or producers, etc. Last week I find out via Google that the main guy involved, the guy I'm using as my inspiration, is going to have a book come out in the spring, part memoir, part account of said shenanigans. I get my manager to get off his ass and call the publishing house that just announced their purchase of the as-of-yet-unwritten book to find out about getting the rights. Rights secure my investment in the project and allow me to use it as source material. Well, come to find out the publisher already has the rights sold off to an "A-list" writer and an "A-list" studio. And so I'm screwed. And now, fucking well depressed.

All I keep hearing about is high concept, high concept, sellable scripts, commercial ideas...

It's just not what I do. I try and I fail. I have a colleague who just cranks out stuff like that all the time. "He's a guy who suddenly realizes he can stop time with his cell phone..." Stuff like that. And that has its place, and I don't begrudge the guy what he does since, shit, we're all just trying to make a fucking living... But i just don't do that sort of thing. I can't get it up for spending long hours of my day dreaming up "hooks." Maybe for that reason I'm in the wrong game. Maybe I should write novels. Or fucking billboard copy. I saw the other day that a guy who I met out here on what was our first job just sold his script for, literally, a million dollars. It's about a guy trying to pick the best man for their wedding except all his buddies are deadbeats or something. Sounds sorta funny and exactly like the kind of idea I'd never crap out on a napkin over drinks to then sell for a million dollars.

And so here we are. The one time I have an idea that I think I can make high concept, commercial, sellable AND get behind creatively... I can't get the rights to. I mean, I understand that studios comb through publisher's lists of upcoming releases just so they can obtain properties to develop... but this isn't even written yet. This guy was in newspapers, hasn't written a word. And I'm not saying I thought I couild beat the machine but I mean, fucking forget about getting the rights to material unless you are just completely knee deep in the studio world.

So it's down to this quandry: continue working on the thing, which will have to be rejiggered to not be quite as factually close to the real guy's story, thus making it up pretty much from scratch, in the hopes of having them either buy me out when they go to make it in the hopes that there can be two competing projects at the same time, a la Armageddon/Deep Impact.

The other option is to just scrub it and move on to the next thing. The next uncommercial thing.

Christ, this fucking game.

Thursday, July 28, 2005

Mister T

I feel like Mister T lately. I turned down the horror film in order to write what I'm calling my High Concept idea next. I'm probably going to turn down an offer I got to play drums in a band. And these three other writers I had lunch with today want to "gang write" a script, and even though I (half-heartedly) committed to it, I'm gonna have to be Mister T on that one, too. Mister Turndown.

Feedback has been inexorably filtering in on Air Conditioned Jungle. A friend with a cutting sense of humor called me at 8:45 this morning to tell me I was a fraud. Nice to wake up laughing, it's good for the circulation. My manager met with me two days ago to talk it over and I could tell he wasn't feeling it. I think maybe he didn't get the comedy. He used a lot of praising language, but it all had the studied sound of the therapist telling the patient that vioelnt fantasies are perfectly natural, all the while making imaginary finger circles around her ear. A few other friends gave detailed thoughts, for which I'm grateful. Some people even liked it a lot. Go figure. I'm anxious to get back to it, but not too anxious since I'm taking a much needed break. Alas, I'm going to need to get back to it pretty soon. It sits too long, it'll get shuffled to the backburner, and the backburner is bad. Bad burner.

Paris is in the offing, writing in the cafe's of Paree. More about that later. For now, I'm going to just sit in the hot tub (at the Y, which is not as gay as it sounds) and think of all the actors I could cast in AC Jungle. That's always fun. The thinking, not the hot tub. Hot tub is relaxing. In a very straight way. Although...

Monday, July 25, 2005

Decision or two or three

So here's the deal in no particular order: Last monday I was offered a job working with a director to develop an original idea she has for a creepy, Ring-like horror film. There's money involved, and it would be the second writing gig I will have been commissioned for in almost two years (which is not bragging, no). Her idea is not terrible, and it even sounds like she wants to make an intelligent and thoughtful movie - which, naturally, Hollywood will inoculate with stupid. But lest I let my bitterness flow too freely, let me just say the offer is very tempting whatever the outcome. The money is sufficient that if I can do the whole thing in two months, I will have made out pretty well.

It's a career decision more than a money thing right now. I mean, let's face it, I need the money. But the dilemma for me is What Should I Write Next? A horror movie? Not according to an article in today's Hollywood Reporter. The thing I have next up to write is an idea of my own, and it is the first High Concept idea I've ever had that is any good. What I mean is that I usually don't have high concept ideas, and just the fact that I do have one and I actually like it is something new and exciting - and according to certain parties, the only way I'm ever going to make a career of this. Btw, if you aren't familiar with the term High Concept, peep this.

Into the mix, throw in that I finished my own script on Friday and now I feel a burning need to move quickly on to the next thing. If the script that is in the hands of the production company, director and Rober Duvall ever gets made, I need to have a couple of things under my belt to show people right away, striking while the iron is ever-so-briefly hot. Finishing my latest script, Air Conditioned Jungle, I have one down, one to go; half of a powerful arsenal to show any prospective agent/producer/craven money man. Comes to this: my High Concept career-making idea is wrestling the horror offer for top spot on my to do list.

Oh, and my girlfriend is going to be in Paris for nine weeks working on The Bachelor, or Le Bachelorr as I like to say it, so I'm pondering a sojourn to The City of Lights. You know, to write on cafe napkins.

Sunday, July 24, 2005

Meager placeholding nothingness

There may be a band in my future. And a trip to Paris. One does not have anything to do with the other. But these are good things. Plus I finished my script on Friday. Still... it's late Sunday night and despite the relative good news of late, I'm going to finish listening to Jeff Buckley's version on "Hallelujah" and get all wistful and sad. Mmm, Sunday nights and sadness. As it was, as it ever shall be.

More tomorrow.

Friday, July 15, 2005

Crazy Town

Just in case you're wondering, this is the guy some of your favorite celebrities worship. Makes us hysterical Hollywood liberals look normal by comparison.

Wednesday, July 13, 2005

Note to Future Drunken Self...

Maybe not to get on the blog after a night of the pints and quarts.

Awoken this morning by my asshole neighbor yelling at her mother on the phone. 6:30 am. Then her house workers arrived at 8 and started sanding at 8:30. The sanding is over, and it must be staining time because the vapors coming in my window are making me a bit lightheaded.

It could just be that I'm sick of my godforsaken script - I've been doing nothing else for two and a half months and it's time to birth the friggin thing and get it out, get it read and up on the site.

Hmmm. Maybe there is an interesting experiment to be made of posting a script on this site as a Wiki and releasing into the arms of strangers to make it better. Since Hollywood screenplays are already a jumble of faceless particpants, why not just cut to the chase and get you, the audience, to write exactly what you want to see? Do away with credit altogether! Yes! Let's hear it for armchair quarterbacks!

But first I must quit dithering. I actually need to finish the thing before I can throw it up on here for you bastards to rip apart. And so I leave you, dear reader, to court the muse.

Tuesday, July 12, 2005

By the way

Does it really get much better than Young Frankenstein? Gene Wilder, my idol.

Update after numerous beers and years having gone by

I mean, let's face it. Has it been a very interesting life so far? I think we know the answer. And the answer is no. Really. Not all that interesting. It hasn't been so interesting. There is... oh, I'll be conservative and say there is... a truckload left to do. You know, to make it interesting. Or at least to not make it not an out and out waste. It's been pretty pedestrian so far. I mean, when you come right down to it. Pretty generic. Did this, went here, saw that. But no particularly good war stories. Nothing out of the ordinary, that's for sure. Nothing that I think makes them say hey, or wow, or how about that. You know, pretty run of the mill shit. Sure there's the Hollywood angle. But really. I mean. Is that such a big deal? I mean, not such big deal to me, not such a big deal to all the others out here. It's just the way it is.

Ah. Yeah. I guess it's bedtime. Time to sleep 'er off. Sorry folks.

Wednesday, June 15, 2005

Woozy

Bleary eyes. Pinching at the bridge of the nose. Pressure in head. Numbness in nether reigons. Repetetive stress syndrome. Suppressed appetite. And, of course, the weak bladder. Yep, I'm in the mad dash to finish my first draft. Page 89, if you're interested. I'm unable to sleep, as well. It's impossible to work any faster, and I'm not working fast enough. Gotta be done by Wednesday of next week. That's the goal. I cannot, cannot, cannot pass it. I'm a stress case. I need a vacation. I need a salt bath and a rub down. I need to get this monstrosity out of my head.

So it's going well. Which really just means that I actually have and ending and I think it works and that's all... Quality - that's a whole nother story.

AH, there is so much going on otherwise that I don't even know where to begin, and since I'm doing this at the end of my work day, I'll just skip for now. But there's crazy stuff going on. It's been a trying week and a half. I wonder if I have a career? Probably. In the automotive industry.

Wednesday, May 25, 2005

The Rundown

I passed the 60-page mark on my current screenplay. This means it's beginning to be a real screenplay and not just 50 pages of shit. Although I suppose it could now be 60 pages of shit, but that's unlikely. I tend to believe the more pages you rack up, let less fecal a script seems. Less pages means more room for it to just flame out as you realize it was a bad idea from the get-go. When you're deep in there, 40, 50, 60 pages in, how can it suck? How can you have chased this sucky idea for that long? Answer: you couldn't have, your good sense wouldn't have let you. Then again, I once got coverage that said a script I wrote was a "bad idea badly written." So I don't know. Hemingway's got his opinion about the first draft of everything, so I guess by his lights it's all shit no matter how many pages I log - that is, until I turn it into a second draft. Funny aside... a quote from Jim Jarmusch, spoken to a NY Times reporter at this year's Cannes: "I don't do drafts." You tell 'em, Jim.

Had a major revelation yesterday that basically gave me the whole ending. It was a real eureka moment, one of those kind that come few and far between in a writer's life, and it was exhilerating (sp?). Really. I my emailed my old writing partner. I called my girlfriend. I wanted to call my mom, but it was too late in New Jersey.

Chatted up the writer of Crash and Million Dollar Baby, who works out of theOffice these days. Nice guy. Smokes a lot. I should smoke. He looks pensive when he does it. Of course it's probably the Oscar nomination that makes him look pensive.

Writing a 12 minute short with Matt, my newer writing partner, to submit to a festival and/or shoot ourselves. It follows the night and day Dr. John Barry Roundtree, spiritual guru, has a life altering meltdown involving his long-lost mistress and a contract killer. Prediction: HIGH-larity.

Submitted some writing samples to The Bedford Diaries, Tom Fontana's new show, which was picked up for next year. Those of you who know me know I've been trying for ten years to vie for a job with him. Now I'm in the running and it's all up to my talent. Whooooo boy. I'm doomed.

Still no script from the Get Low director. And here it is nearly Memorial Day. Hmm.

Wednesday, May 18, 2005

Sorry!

Settings are changed... and saved. This time it should work.

Tuesday, May 17, 2005

Small Change

A few of you, my devoted public, have mentioned that it's hard to post a comment on here since it involves getting an account, filling out shit, etc. Well, I've gone into the settings and made some changes to hopefully rectify this. Anyone wants to try and see if it's easier, go for it. It's worth it. For me. I need the attention.

Saturday, May 14, 2005

Good Game

I should be at the gym, but as promised, here's a quick wrap-up of my first social engagement with the producers of Get Low.

I met the brothers Zanuck at their Beverly Hills office at quarter of 7, and was introduced to their friend, Bill. He was a nice red-haired Pacific Palisader by way of Canada, and we got along just fine. Turns out Bill is the guy who put together the budget & shooting schedule for Get Low. And through talking to him, I picked up a few tid bits about the status of the film, most notably that Louisiana now leads the race for locations (which is on account of the extremely friendly tax laws regarding film production). Sorry North Carolina.

We all took Dean's car to the game, and for a good long while everyone chatted about baseball and hockey while I watched traffic out the window, only to chime in with an occasional laugh whenever they referenced an obscure shortstop or a goalie's memorable facial hair. Getting to our seats (section 20, behind the visitor dugout) with a beer and a Dodger Dog took no time, and we were witness to a really great game in which Milton Bradley took the Dodgers, down by two, to a 7-4 win off an 8th inning grand slam. Now, I'm not much of a sports guy, but I'm not made of stone: it was unbelievably exciting, and Dean later told me he had never seen two grand slams in one game (the Braves lead was on account of an earlier grand slam, which Dean blamed on my mere sports-inept presence).

Bill and I sat next to one another and talked movies, and since the guy's been in the business a while, he had some pretty good stories about Pacino, Streep, Lumet, Costner, Eastwood and Johnny Knoxville. Soon enough the big fun of the game wound down and victory was imminent, and we left riding a high from the great 8th inning rally.

I was home by 11, greeted by my two neighbors sitting in the courtyard. They offered me a drink, and I thought it was a fine idea, so I obliged. They are both in their own ways - as are most people in this city - in the business, so we talked and gossiped and swapped war stories well into the night, promising to have an apartment complex BBQ in the near future. It probably won't happen, but - as with most people in this city - we were just talking a good game.

Okay, off to the gym to sweat off two Dodger Dogs and an $8.00 Michelob. Until next time.

Friday, May 13, 2005

TMI

I don't know what it is about being "self employed," but I seem to have way too much stuff to do; all these magazine articles to catch up on, all sorts of podcasts (mankind's greatest invention) to listen to, all sorts of news items to keep up with... and it suddenly seems too much. I guess if I was either 1) living in a mountain retreat, or 2) Busy with work, I wouldn't have the sheer time it takes to try and keep up, and I certainly wouldn't have time to complain about it on my bloggg. Maybe it's time to fill out that application at Borders.

Things progress with the screenplay. I sent the first third to my old writing partner Scott, all the way out in Atlanta. We'll see what he's got to say for me. Yesterday I spent at least five hours writing the same scene over and over, only to realize that it was crap, and that I had to go back and take another swing. It's the kind of thing that happens all the time, so I'm not mad. I guess that's the way it goes in writing (and life [resigned sigh])... you gotta plow through the seemingly important bullshit only to realize how wrongheaded and misguided you were, just so you can finally look at something the right way. Like deglazing a pan. Sorta. I don't know if that's an apposite analogy.

Open question to the four people who read this: in the spirit of file-sharing and freedom of information and all that good stuff, I was considering posting the first draft of my oft-delayed screenplay if and when I finish it. Lots of friends ask me to send them something to read and I never do. So I thought I might post the first draft, and some subsequent drafts just to sort of, I don't know... see what happens. I would copyright it, of course, thanks for asking, and I would, I dunno. Just. See where it goes. Anyone think this is a good / bad / legally actionable idea? Is there anyone out there?

Okay, for next time, I swear, I'm going to try and spruce up this thing, post a few pictures, a few more links, something. This is pretty dry, I know it. Also, next time, a full report on the Producers-taking-me-to-a-Dodger-game aftermath.

Tuesday, May 10, 2005

Nothing's ever dead, only sleeping

New screenplay is going along well. I stopped blindly ploughing forward and looked back over what I had done and tried to think it all through. Man, it was thrilling. Nothing I like to do more than think; I'm not a doer, I'm a thinker. Isn't that what this blog proves, really?

The on-again-off-again pilot I wrote with my partner Matt ("Crime & Order: NY") has been once again resurrected from the grave and will get us a meeting some time next week with a company called A Band Apart. It proves what I'm coming to learn about show business, which I stated up there in the title line.

The other interesting/funny/slightly nerve-wracking thing is that after two plus years of a strictly business relationship with the producers of Get Low, suddenly they have invited me and my manager to a Dodger game. I will be going alone (as far as I know) since my manager will be out of town on business. And I am touched by the invitation to do something social, of course, but the Sicilian in me can't help but wonder if it isn't the perfect way to have me whacked. The sort of thing where they suggest I run up the concession stand and get a few bags of Cracker Jacks, and then while I'm waiting in line, some thick-necked goon asks me to follow him into a utility closet, where he then drapes a canvas bag over my head and beats me with a Louisville Slugger.

Or it could just be that they're being thoughtful and nice.

Wednesday, April 27, 2005

The Spine's the Thing

I'm back from New York and driving from place to place, living the life of an itinerant writer. No office, no desk, no smartly-dressed assistant. Today my exploits took me from Mani's Bakery on Fairfax, to the Beverly Hills Library (where there was a most disruptive fire drill), to the Noura Cafe (where I saw tattoo enthusiast Fred Durst), to the relatively new coffee shop on Cahuenga and Sunset, Groundwork (in front of which a motorcyclist was injured in accident, though not badly enough to forgo a cigarette while awaiting medical attention). I feel like I really got a mouthful of Los Angeles today. At least the coffee shops.

Digression: sooner or later, I am going to write about the coffee shops. The "public spaces," too. Anyplace that's amenable to writers and their particular needs. I'll rate them in the detail I expect you would expect from a writer, and might even employ a scale. Something like 1-5, 1 being Hell, i.e. writing while sitting on the men's room toilet in Jumo's Clown Room, 5 being Heaven, i.e. writing at that pay-as-you-go place theOffice... if it were free and in Los Feliz.

ANYway,

My task for the next five weeks is to finish the script I've been nesting on for, oh, the last couple of years. Long ago, I decided to take the I'll-just-let-it-tell-itself approach after spending literally years grinding out the structure, structure, structure on Get Low. I was exhasausted of fucking structure. I just wanted the freedom to write, man. Well, a hell of a lot of good that did me, four years down the pike. There's kind of a *reason for structure. Go figure. So guess what? Back to plotting it out moment for moment until the spineless blob of a "story" I've puked up makes some sense. And so that's what I've done for the last two days (my first two days back at it since I dropped the ball in NY). I've scrapped all the stuff that was going nowhere and laid it all out. It's all about the outline, I don't care who says otherwise. I've tried it every other way and it doesn't work any other way. It just doesn't. And it sucks.

Thursday, April 21, 2005

Indulgent Self-Pitying Bullshit

I have ideas. Things kicking around. Things I'd like to chase down, figure out, write about. TV scripts, film scripts; I still have the notion of trying my hand at a novel - but my priorities have recently been put in a new light. Right before I left L.A. for another round of freelance work in New York, three weeks ago, I was told about the projected start date for Get Low. Sept. 12, as I mentioned in the previous entry. Backtiming from then, it means the script that I'm currently writing has to be bagged, stuffed and mounted by the middle of June so that I have something to bring a producer or studio when the project is officially announced in the trade papers and I hopefully (nay, must) begin meeting people around town. And yet I feel stalled. I can't get any time to write here in New York, but I wonder if that's really the problem. I wonder if the script is begotten of a bad idea. I have been trying to write this story in some version or another since 2001. I wonder if I am a would-be one hit wonder. I am pretty sure I can bring it home, but I'm just as sure that it could languish in my mind forever.

It has been a difficult time for me lately, really for a while now. I guess I mean mentally or emotionally or whatever. I suppose us writers are prone to self-scrutiny and introspection and even neurosis since we lead lives of sensitivity and thoughtfulness and solitude. So maybe I've chosen a vocation that plays to my weaknesses just as strongly as my strengths. Or maybe it is nothing so conspiratorial as my profession's influence upon me. Maybe I was born melancholy and indecisive and destined to gravitate toward this oh so impeccibly tailored job. Or maybe, finally, I am in love with nothing more than the idea of being a sourpuss.

I do know that I suddenly feel under pressure to prove I can write, something I thought I had already done. I feel the urgency to write the right thing, thus proving my value as a commodity to Hollywood filmmakers. I also feel the need to be myself, write the kind of things I want to live with for years at a time; to develop ideas that I find interesting no matter the likelyhood of financial success; and to challenge myself to be not merely good, but excellent.

As I prepare to return to my home in L.A., I consider the choices I'm faced with in the coming weeks regarding my state of mental and emotional health, but also what work I devote myself to. There is weird static in the air and the sky is green. Something's coming.

The wonderful thing about writing is that it is an escape, a dream. By writing all day I escape the problems and decisions I, and we all, must make just as surely as though I were taking a narcotic. I live in a world of my own creation and while away the hours in a fantasy that ends only when I decide. Could that be why I can't finish my script?

Tuesday, March 29, 2005

A Date

September 12th. That's the projected shoot date. We'll either be in Georgia or North Carolina September 12th. Word came from the producers via email late last night. They're going to send us preliminary budgets and location stuff today. And so it seems like the pieces are being put into position.

Strange to have an actual date. It makes it sort of real. You can circle it on the calendar. The 12th. That's really only a couple of months from now. Four days before my birthday. I'd turn 32 on set. Celebrate my birthday with grips and gaffers and catering people.

Thursday, March 24, 2005

Big News

So the big news is that I'm sick again, the third time in about nine weeks. I think maybe I'm dying. I gotta think the whole thing is cancer related, or at least the early stages of that disease where you freeze in one position for years at a time. Like in that Oliver Sachs book. I'm doomed. I gotta go to the doctor tomorrow for the official diagnosis. Probable scenario: "Plague, son. You have Bubonic Plague."

A few things have been going on here in LaLa town. The most significant is that the film is starting to take the shape of one of those hurricane reports. Certain meteorilogical phenomenon are unfolding off the coast of South America and everyone down at the National Weather Service is keeping an eye on things as they develop. It's too early to predict a path or a place of direct impact, but it all has the air of inevitability. Soon charts will be drawn up and computer models will animate courses and trajectories and The National Guard will mobilize and take appropriate evacuation measures.

The producers have hired a line producer, basically a nuts-and-bolts money guy, to draw up a budget; various film commissions have been notified of our intent to shoot this thing, and as a result are courting us for our business; and the director is back from shooting a pilot and is set to retool the script (if he hasn't already begun). The pieces are falling into place. Nothing is really happening to me, per se, but the production is more than ever seeming to take on a life of its own.

Me, I'm doing a little more work for that production company in New York, the one that does all the Food Network stuff. I'm also waiting for the official word on a job my writing partner and I pitched for. It's a improv show on Comedy Central that is loosely described as Reno 911 in a crappy San Diego hospital. We haven't heard no, but we haven't heard yes. In a way, we're not out, we're just not in.

Misc:

Tonight NBC's version of "The Office" premieres. Let's all keep our fingers crossed.

I do not pretend to have discovered this excellent web radio station, but I am giving it my full-hearted endorsement. If you care at all about good music, tune in and rejoice.

God bless Tylenol PM

Tuesday, February 22, 2005

The Writer's Lot

Not much been going on since I been kickin it in New York. I mean there has, but since I'm ensconced in the dreamy chill of the city I haven't really had to pay all that much attention to my "career," such as it is, either here or in LA.

Life in Manhattan has been good, and I am glad to have been extended for these few more couple of weeks, although bedding on the brother's couch is growing more loathesome, the sleep more restless, and the routine increasingly discombobulating. I guess as good as a vacation from life can be, all good things must come to an end. To that point, I should discuss the ostensible subject of this blog, my life in showbiz.

These days, I have been sort of brushed aside as far as the current rewrite of my script is concerned. Early last week I got a call from the producers who asked for my blessing in assigning a new draft of the screenplay to the director. They felt the time was ripe for him to take a swing at achieving his vision. Now perhaps I have been numbed by the process, but I'm not as righteously indignant as perhaps you might think. I can sum up my feelings by quoting Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood. "Let's shoot this fucker." Seriously. If they think that getting him to make with the clackety-clack will hasten the process, God Bless. I sure am tired to death of flogging the horse's bloated carcass. Maybe he'll even bring some fresh insight to it. And I'll go one step further and be charitable; I think he'll do a good job. Might even improve it. Of course, he could never get it perfect because he's not me. But I don't expect perfection, only integrity (which I know is scarce in Hollywood, but go ahead... call me a naif). Above all the thing that lets me sleep at night is not faith, hope, or charity, but the iron-clad knowledge that there are too many checks and balances in place (the producers power to ameliorate grievances; my ability to dash the whole project by walking away) for all hope to be lost in some terrible new draft. Put simply, no matter how bad he might shit the bed, we can always clean it up.

So I say, good luck then. As long as no one fucks me on credit, no one fucks me out of having some say in the subsequent rewrites and polishes, and no one fucks me the whole way down the slippery slope, then I will be one secure, satisfied, Hollywood writer.


Oh I'm so fucked.

Thursday, February 17, 2005

a little something for the effort

The show that I worked on last summer is finally going to be given its day in court. You may or may not recall it was named Carmageddon, then for undisclosed reasons renamed Carpocalypse, and basically consisted of rednecks driving into each other on a Florida speedway for 42 minutes. Ten weeks I worked on that show - on one single episode - and then Spike pulled the plug. Put another team of producers on. I've no idea how it turned out. But I'll get a chance to find out! It has apparently been finished and will get its short flicker of life beginning next Saturday night.

Curiously, Spike TV is promoting it here... but nowhere else that I can find (no bus ads, no billboards and certainly no tv spots), which can only mean the poor show is being unceremoniously dumped and will most certainly have an anonymous and ignominious death. But, what are you gonna do? That's TV. At least I got paid. I may have even gotten a credit! Of course, it will be buried under the the dozens of other triage doctors who swooped in to try and save the friggin thing.

Tuesday, February 01, 2005

Apple Livin'...

...By which I mean couch surfing, but I'll take what I can get. I arrived in New York yesterday afternoon and promptly bivouacked on my brother's couch. Life is good. I am happy to be walking around the city, bundled up, in and out of warm buildings, up and down stairs, and on and off subway cars. A Jersey boy like me never loses his romance for the Big City. Today is the slow start of three weeks doing production work on some interstitial programming for Food Network. "Slow start" is because things are already running a little behind. It's hard to pin people down in the business of show, and this gig is no different than anything else. The honchos over at FN (my abbreviation) are hemming and hawing with direction and my bosses here are already inquiring about possibly extending my stay. Apart from the little lady back in Showbizwood, it sounds good to me. But we'll see. This is only day one.

I was monumentally sick last week, like, epically so. Monday I had obligated myself to turning in a draft of the screenplay by Thursday, and believe me it was all I could do to muster the strength to actually do so. I was combatting a head cold that knocked my inner ear out of whack, so I was suffering dizziness, crushing headaches and nausea. I literally typed up handwritten notes, then put my head on the desk and moaned in agony for a few minutes, and repeated until I was done. It was emblematic of the whole experience of rewriting.

Friday we all met - my manager, the two producers and the director - to discuss what notes we could before I took off... and we were there for four hours. I sniffled and snorted mucous through it all, and generally felt what little will I had left to be a big fabulous screenwriter seep out of my nose along with my will to live. Funnily enough, the director left half an hour into it to go to the doctor. He wasn't even sick. Ah well. I was just so out of it and completely FINISHED with the writing process for a while that I just let all the bad news wash over me. Yes, bad news, as in there is much, much more work to do on it. But the principals need to get their heads together before they give me solid direction... and I need a few weeks to just fucking forget about it. But the day will come. I hate it. I hope it dies soon. Puts me out of my misery. (Of course, I'll sing a different tune when I get a big paycheck. But for now, kill me.)

Friday, January 21, 2005

Phone Keeps Ringing

I can't get anything done here. I have to get out of the house. I'm going to go to theOffice (that's how they sPell it) which is a place in Brentwood where you can pay to work. They've got the Aeron chairs and the fong shwey plants and one of those burbling water things... all very nice, but most importantly productive. And right now, that's the name of the game. I've just landed a couple weeks work in NYC and the script is going to have to be done by the the time I leave (which is looking like a week from Monday). Matter of fact, I don't know how they're going to give me notes on the thing with me out of town, but it's not my problem. That's why God made email.

Tuesday, January 18, 2005

Slaughterhouse Tim

Just spoke with Dean. Tim Robbins passed. As Vonnegut says, So it goes.

Humility, screenwriting is thy name

This article from the NY Times is harrowing, depressing, daunting and crushingly honest. And it is the best, most accurate article I've ever come across about being an aspirant in Hollywood. If only I had read it seven years ago when I first moved here... I probably would have turned around and gone home.

Truly, deeply, sarcasm be damned... I am very lucky to be where I am. I bitch and moan and complain, but given the odds, given what I could be doing (writing all day, dreaming) versus what I am doing (writing all day, dreaming with Robert Duvall, a producer and a director attached) I should keep my mouth shut.

Monday, January 17, 2005

Winter in the City

Encouraging words from Scott, my spritual guide/sometimes writing partner/story guru/fresh set of eyes. He read the 80 pages of the script (still got 20 to go) that I managed to crap slowly out over the last month and a half, and though I maintain a constant level of doom and gloom, he bucked my opinion that it's a total loss; he thinks it may even be better than it was before. Whuh? ...Let me tell you what, that little ray of hope might actually be enough for me to run with over these next, last, terrifically difficult pages. Because a hopeless writer is a short walk to a miserable drunk.

I feel like I haven'd done anything else in ages. Haven't read much, haven't watched my Netflix's, didn't even catch the Golden Globes. Gotta get this thing out off the docket so I can move on. And, you know, I mean move on to starvation, since I have no job, no money, no hope, etc.

Not much to report, and not much time to report it this morning. Although Sissy Spacek has now officially responded that she likes it. It's not quite "I'm in," but it's a good start. Other than that, I'm taking a few meetings here and there and fielding an offer to work in New York for the glorious month of February. Oh, can I? Can I be sleeted upon? Step in frozen slush puddles and icy garbage water? Joy! (Okay, but really, in another, less sarcastic way... joy!)

Tuesday, January 04, 2005

Tabula Rasa

Fresh start to the new year. I guess that goes without saying. So why say it, Chris? It's hackneyed. Cliche. I'm a writer. I should know better. But I guess it's true. Actually, it's not even really that true. My start to the new year is a lot like my end to the old year: working on the rewrite. Yesterday was the first real day back at it, the first Monday after the two week grace period of Holiday meshugas. You could almost hear The Business slowly waking from its slumber; people not used to thinking about whatever silliness was on the docket December 20somethingth. If my attitude and enthusiasm were any indication of anyone else's attitudes and enthusiasm, then it was a slow day indeed. Today is not much better, although I am proud of myself for actually getting up when the alarm went off.

Slow as things are, there have been a few signs that people are ready to shake off the torpor of a two week holiday and get caught up on what's what. I got a call from my manager, my writing partner, the film director and the film producer. No one - except Matt, writing partner - had anything much to say, they were all just taking the temperature. (This is an expression I use but am not sure I fully endorse, as it had some subtly rectal connotations. It is however a chic phrase here in showbizwood, and maybe other places, too. I use it only because I am undecided about my feelings. More to follow.)

Matt mentioned that our long-loathed pilot for the Cop Comedy was percolating some interest at his agency and that perhaps we were going to move things to the next level, which is to say shop the thing around. So far, the people who have not liked it have all been FOWs (Friends Of the Writers) and so nothing tragic has really come of their disdain, professionally speaking. Who knows, maybe new life can be breathed into the once-moribund project that is Crime And Order: NY.

As for my rewrite, well, what is there to say other than it is slow, slow, slow? I am still stuck at the precipice of the 3rd Act, attempting to shore up all the little directives from the director before I lurch ahead into the fray. Truth is, it was good to have a little while away from it to get some perspective. If I did nothing else yesterday (and I did) I realized that some of the things that I'd written over the last few weeks were crap. Ah, the joy of being a writer!

A quick note about Million Dollar Baby: see it. I don't care if a few reviewers call its sentiments cheap or whatever else their problems are, it is a damned fine film and I don't blame the guy (Clint) for taking it over mine.* I would have. It's probably a better movie that Get Low will ever be. Or, a little less self-critically, it's the kind of movie that I would have taken over my movie, if that makes any sense.

*Clint was exclusively courted for Get Low about a year and change ago. He was circling the project for a while, but never committed one way or another. When he finally said he "liked it but didn't love it" we suspected he was passing. Then the trade papers announced Million Dollar Baby, and we knew the horse was out of the stable. So to speak. This does not mean I liken Clint Eastwood to an animal. In no way whatsoever. Although, if he were an animal - specifically a horse - I suppose he'd be Man-O-War or Secretariat, depending on which one lived longer and aged more gracefully.