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.)