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.

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.

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!)

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.