The Ugly Fence

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

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

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?

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.

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.

Look Closely

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

This guy gives us a bad name

Awesome.

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.

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.

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.

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?"

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.

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.

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...

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!

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.

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.

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.