Still Alive and Kicking... barely

I do still check in on the blog from time to time, I just haven't felt moved to write very much. There's a glut of blogs out there sort of "covering" the topics I'm interested in, and doing a much much better job. I guess I just felt redundant. LOL.

I've been doing less freelance work this past year. A lot less. I wanted to push myself to finish the novel and get a few other personal things completed. I'm gearing up for another push this fall (after the High Holies) but took the entire summer to lay low and rest. I wrote a couple of scripts last spring (one for freelance $$ and one as a TV sample) and I have to finish a feature spec that I pitched out last spring (got some interest but no sale). I'm not that exciting right now.

I have been working on a few ideas about craft that I'll post here. I've done a bunch of reading over the summer, specs, novels, novels-in-progress, etc. and a note that keeps coming up again and again is: what is this piece about? I have some thoughts on how to keep all of that straight while writing, and also, I thought I'd write a piece about critique -- how to give it, how to take it, and when you shouldn't look for any but keep your head down and keep pounding out the pages.

For now, just know that I'm out here. Writing, reading, producing. I hope you are too.

Live From Abbey Road

Just checking in -- I promised I'd write more frequently, I didn't promise there'd be anything revelatory. :-)

I'm watching Live from Abbey Road with Def Leppard. Oh man, what a great Saturday. Reminds me of being a teenager.

Agency Pitches

I'm back in Los Angeles after two weeks in Hawaii. I had a great time, got some writing done, browned a bit, ate a ton of tropical fruit, and started planning for my next big trip sometime this summer. Don't know where it will be, probably Italy since I haven't been there yet. ANYWAY....
I was talking to a friend of mine the other day and she mentioned attending an agency pitch session. Agency pitches are meetings in which executives and agents play speed dating with writer/director/actor careers. Basically, the agency comes over en masse to meet with all the executives at a network/studio and they "pitch" clients for various open assignments. These meetings typically take place monthly for film studios, and roughly quarterly for television.

In the case of a film studio (although it works exactly the same in television), the head of the studio and the head of the agency talk in advance about what projects are a priority. Then, the agents all come to the lot, sit down and pitch their clients. If an agency doesn't have a strong client list, then the meetings are icily polite. For the A-list agencies, the biggest agents don't typically show up with all the minnows, but they will send a number of senior level agents over to play footsie. When the agents come, they bring some kind of resume book with each client's credits and sometimes a short bio (especially for less established talent).

That part is pretty dry, but the real purpose of these meetings is to get good gossip: Who is dating whom, who just got divorced, which writers/directors/actors are recovering from drug addictions. Assignments do get filled this way, an executive makes a comment, an agent remembers a client's words in passing about a love of ballooning, or time spent as an arctic explorer and the next thing you know... summer home in Crete! A girl can dream....

Sorry for the sparse posting. I got back from Maui and have been immersed in putting together information for the short film I'm producing which is finally SHOOTING in two weeks. I can't wait!!! I'll blog about the process this month starting later today!

First post: herding cats aka how to get disparate folks on the same page during production. Mmm, producer fun.

Merry X-mas

I'm busy busy busy and apologize for not being as prolific as Will. :-) After the 11+ hour flight back from the UK, I've been doing yoga, fasting (all that cheese, ugh), and spending time with the dog. He's real sweet and has been following me all over the house since I got back. He spent the two weeks being spoiled by my mom and has learned a really great new trick -- whining at the back door at 2 AM to be let out for a moonlight romp in the garden. Yay! Thanks, Mom! I really appreciate being awakened EVERY NIGHT by the dog! More together time! :-)~

I flew up to San Francisco for my novel-writing group and am finally back in LA for the next week and a half before I head out to San Diego for a wedding and possible trip to TJ (or Tijuana if you aren't from SoCal). At this point, I'm looking forward to January which has only got one trip planned so far, and February in which I will be home all month.

The new screenplay is turning out nicely. I've got work to do on the third act before I'll feel comfortable handing it out, but hope to get that done this week. My other screenplay is still awaiting notes from a friend -- he called to let me know he's started reading for an A+ list director, but will read my script on his plane ride home. I love it. I'm very happy he's getting this big break -- he has long wanted to work as a producer and paid his dues in some of the worst offices in town. Real terrible places where people get things thrown at their heads and are made to do humiliating personal chores that are best left undetailed (also, I don't want any scary lawyer-types emailing me). Anywho, he has an excellent eye for structure and the script that I've asked him to help me with is one that I wrote in two separate bursts two years apart, so it's uneven and reflects how much I changed vis a vis the subject matter. I'm hoping he'll throw me a lifeline when he gets back.

In the new year I'm going to blog the other half of that managers post from November, and also I wanted to blog a little bit about negotiating contracts. The request line is open, as always. I'll blog as much as I can over the next couple of weeks, but like the rest of Hollywood, I'm pretty much shut down until after Sundance.

Mincemeat and Stilton

So, Day 9 in the UK and I'm finally waking up before noon. For someone who is used to waking up at sunrise, the last week has really kicked my butt, especially because sunset here is around 4:30-5pm.

I haven't traveled around too much, the friend I'm visiting has alternately had car trouble, baby trouble and stomach trouble, but I have managed to eat a few cheeses, some mincemeat pies (taste great with Blue Stilton!), these really great sausages made by The Black Farmer (apparently the only one in England, he even has a TV show wherein he trains and selects two apprentice farmers from a group of inner-city black youths), digestives, genuine lamb stew (with the fatty bits on, ugh, but the stew was delicious), tons of coffee, tea and every bit of bread I've come across, a crazy fruit from Israel called a Sharon fruit ("The sweetest persimmon in the world!), Cornish pasty (Steak and Stilton!), fish and chips, HP sauce, and at some point this week, I'm supposed to be headed to the town of Cheddar. Oh yeah, baby. I can't wait. After reading this list, it looks like it was a stroke of luck that I've had to walk everywhere....

Had to nix the trip to France since the dollar is doing so poorly (I knew I should've exchanged money the week before I left!!) it will literally cost me about 30% more than I've budgeted. I guess I'll have to do that as a separate trip. Darn. :-)

Anyway, in writing news, I'm pushing through on the drama I started a few weeks ago. I've been writing ahead, then reaching back and tweaking the first act as I refine the concept. I've been trying to use this SAVE THE CAT! software, but my brain rejects some of the terminology he uses (not because I don't believe in his structural outline, I just learned it under different names). It does look promising for anyone who outlines and plots with story cards and the demo version I have allows me to save and print to PDF for the outline I've started. I'll keep you posted on my progress.

One book that has been a tremendous resource for this is Linda Seger's classic MAKING A GOOD SCREENPLAY GREAT. I'm not afraid to reference a writing book, especially for craft information. No one can write your story for you, but there are definitely some nifty tricks to keep in mind along the journey. I haven't read any of her other books, so I can't recommend them. Please feel free to suggest away in the comments section.

In fact, I meant to ask folks to recommend their favorite craft books. I'll start a separate post with links to all the books on my shelf. Please include reference books as well, if you don't mind. I would never dream of asking anyone for their obscure reference materials, (you know, the one you found in a discard bin that is a first-person narrative outlining some completely mind-blowing life experience/job/time period/lifestyle), that would make me feel guilty and like a hustler -- I hate when writers steal my reference materials and write something better than me. :-)~

Anyway, it's nighttime here, and I'm trying to get to bed at a reasonable hour. My fingers are blue from the cold, even though the heat has been turned up to indulge the Southern Californian. I feel too guilty to complain, thank God I have my laptop to heat up my legs, my nose is colder than the dog's.

And the short film has been pushed AGAIN. The rock star DP isn't available until February cuz... he's a Rock Star DP. But, because it's been so long, the cool actor the director is enamored of (okay, it's really me, I'm enamored of him) has become available once again and is still interested. One good thing is that I have a lead on a location that will let me hang a rig (and an operator) out of a window and simulate flames and smoke. Heh, heh, heh. My own short film is waiting patiently for me to rewrite it. I went a wee bit astray starting this feature spec because I just woke up one day with 50 full-blown pages in my head and couldn't turn away from that (right, right?? I need validation here, people!). I am supposed to be rewriting the pilot, updating my SHIELD spec, speccing another current (prob RESCUE ME) and submitting all of this to the Agent and manager type folks I've been teasing for the last few months. Ugh. Back to the grindstone. I'm giving this drama another week's worth of work, and then returning to my "to-do" list of work. Promise.

Happy Belated Anniversary!

Last week marked my one year anniversary blogging. Thank you to everyone who visits on a regular basis, and to everyone who posts comments (it's better than getting snail mail!).

I've really enjoyed this experience and hope to find more and better topics to post about in the upcoming year.

I'm off to Europe and San Francisco for the next few weeks, trying to clear my head so I can finish some things up in time for TV season. If I can master the whole Internet cafe thing, I'll post about what I'm up to.

TV shows I'm following:

HEROES -- Against my will I enjoyed this week's show. My resistance is entirely related to the plot hinging on the cheerleader, when there are other, much more intriguing story lines. And what's up with the short chick's mutation being the power of persuasion? I mean, honestly, I get it's some kind of mind control, but the way it was played out, she just seemed really really convincing (like Bill Clinton with a pixie cut). Let's hope the Hottie Brothers get it together soon.

BSG -- Loved last week's show, but it felt like it was missing a subplot, and I'm not sure I believe Adama would believe he was personally responsible for provoking the Cylons. Anyway, hope they give Tahmoh some screen time in this week's boxing episode. :-)

Grey's -- I'm still watching, but not as avidly as last season. I guess I'm hoping they start taking the medicine seriously again. I always enjoyed the personal drama, but felt like it was made more realistic by the grounding in the medicine. Tough balance, but I'm hanging in there hoping the show finds it again.

Ugly Betty -- Needs to get funny again. Telenovelas always have a melodramatic story point in the middle of the season, but I feel like the strength of this show really is in the fish-out-of-water comedy of Betty in the magazine world, now that they seemed determined to make her the Magic Chicana who sees things clearly and can solve any problem, I'm getting nervous.

Dexter -- Who did not already guess that the sister's boyfriend was the Ice Truck Killer??? The show is still very good, and I love that they took his character to the next level, and hope that the flashbacks into his life reveal some good shit. Can't wait for the rest of the episodes.

DAYBREAK -- So, I dug last week's show. Was really excited about Taye Diggs, happy he found something that will position him with a different audience (males 18-25, as opposed to the over-25 females his last show targeted), and am looking forward to tonight's epi. This will really determine for me if the show's premise has enough room to allow for a full season (let alone multiple seasons).

THE UNIT -- I watch this show every week even though the dialogue is sometimes uneven (I imagine that's what happens when Shawn Ryan and David Mamet pass scripts back and forth).

I'm taping everything while I travel and when I return, plan to throw up the blackout curtains and burn my retinas out catching up.

What are you guys watching?

Digging You Taye Diggs

I'm digging DAYBREAK. I was worried that it would be terrible, that it would take the premise and mangle it, or worse, be a ham-fisted attempt at reimagining the concept.

Thank goodness I was wrong!! I'm excited about next week. I'm a little worried that my head won't be able to hang on to all of the alternate reality details, I'm loving that Hopper's body reflects the events as if they happened in linear time, and hopefully that they will keep the production values as high as they were tonight. ABC is doing a great job with this big act-outs. I barely had time to pop some corn for the second hour of the premiere and I wanted to make sure I didn't miss a minute. Pretty unusual for me since I have a dvr, but I didn't want to miss the "flow" of the story. I'm going to roll it back now and watch the bottom half of the first half hour -- I wasn't paying attention because I was skeptical!

Let's hope Deja Vu is as good, but in a totally different way. Coincidentally it's a Bruckheimer film whose film deal is at Disney which is also ABC... or is it? Hmm...

Housekeeping

OK, so, I hope I didn't screw with anybody's day by labeling all these posts without a warning. If so, *smack*! That's me tossing you a kiss.

I have nothing to say for myself. Borat is number one at the box office, comedies rule, and for a drama writer an ill-wind is blowing....

I'm sharpening up the pages on the pilot for the next few days. The drama feature spec I've been working on has been writing itself for the past week in odd bits and snatches, so I'm going to give it another week before I find out if I'm just nuts or if the pages are actually working as well as I think they are.

Just for Will: MySpace Answer

For some reason, this nutty blogger-beta won't let me make comments on anyone else's blog (unless they don't require a sign-in). So, because Will is always so nice about commenting on my blog (and has great stories and YouTube connects), I'm creating a post just for you, Will!

I've been way out of it so I know I'm Diva-Come-Late-to-the-Party on this
one....

I think MySpace is about people feeling the need to get
noticed. Look at all the social networking sites YouTube, MySpace,
Blogger, etc., and the common theme is folks reaching out for validation, peers
and admirers. Not to get too philosophical, but celebrity has always been
about the search for love, and if you go through some of these profiles that
becomes soooo apparent.

Most of the A-list folks I've worked with (and the hardworking folks who
aren't household names, but still manage to pull in north of $750K a script, or
$2-3 million for a directing gig) are far too computer illerate to set-up and
maintain anything on the internet. They can barely operate their
text-messaging (I actually have a friend who dictates text messages to his asst
because his ADD is so bad he can't operate the Blackberry!).

Of the industry folks I know out here who have MySpace profiles they are
either doing it to promote themselves professionally or have serious addictions
(comics, sex, teenagers - or other darker things). I do have a friend who
uses it to keep in touch with her extremely large extended family.

As for the Diva, I set up a page long long ago, but found blogger much more
suited to my purposes -- I have no interest in DRKNITE79 and his ill-conceived
plans for my body....