Huili in LA: Fred 62

If I look serious, it's because chili cheese fries hang in the balance. Taken at Fred 62.

Huili in Los Angeles: That Guitar Turban Dude

As seen on TV. Taken at Venice Beach.

Huili in Los Angeles: Jesus Control

Taken at the Hollywood and Highland shopping complex. The man was asking for sinners for step forward, and of course someone just had to do it.

Huili

I met Huili during film school, and thought of him as the foreign exchange student from Argentina. Quite frankly, he kind of scared me. I remember our first interaction was coaching each other in an acting class, and he was very upfront about telling me what a big loser he was. At the time, I was like, hey buddy, let's try to have some self-esteem here. That amuses me now.

Huili also had the habit of behaving in every class as if he were Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman. You know, the scene where Pacino says, "If I were half the man I used to be, I'd take a flamethrower to this place!" Imagine sitting through that every hour. I ascribe some of this behavior to him being an Argentinean and Italian mix. Some, but not all.

Huili helped me cheat in photography class by going with me on a road trip to Vegas and shooting pictures with me. During that trip, we visited the pig farm where the leftovers from all the buffets are dumped, multiple whore houses, and the electric light graveyard. It was one of the best road trips I've ever taken.

Huili is also the elucidator of what I call the Sota Curse: every girl who has ever rejected me will realize that they totally blew it, but by the time they have this realization, I will no longer be interested. And as far as I can tell, no one has ever escaped this curse.

Huili is shooting his first feature film in Argentina, he's the founder of one of Argentina's most popular political websites, and he has received German arts fellowships in order to fund projects related to his imaginary friend Chumbacca. He also worked on Highlander II.

Huili took me to my first Jon Brion show, he's the best cook I've ever met, and he's been kicked out of the United States for violating the terms of his Fulbright Fellowship agreement. He currently lives in Madrid with his wife Alina and three-year-old daughter Miranda. I await the day that the State Department allows him back in Los Angeles with much anticipation, as does he.

Download: Judy Talks About Huili - July 2003

Download: Judy Talks About Huili - March 2006

Lingerie Wash Bags

Spend any time in Los Angeles, and you're bound to amass an impressive collection of t-shirts. The weather demands it - when everyday is sunny and seventy degrees, what else are you going to wear?

(One of the things about fashion that I've noticed that there seems to be an arms race among the designers of staples such as t-shirts and jeans. The idea is to take a very simple garment, and ornament it with custom stitching, special printing techniques, and faux distressing, until it's looks like you're wearing a fucking scale model of Versailles. The amount of ornamentation on your garment is a code for how expensive it is - you can instantly tell how much a girl spent on her jeans by looking at the design of the back pockets.)



Lately, I've been purchasing t-shirts made of cotton so distressed it feels like it will disintegrate in a strong breeze. I also have recently purchased other shirts with felt appliques and metallic inks, and I've been concerned that they may not withstand the rigors of the delicate cycle.

I think I've found the answer: Lingerie Wash Bags.

Surely the same technology that protects the unmentionables of sexy ladies from the wear and tear of the washing machine will also protect your t-shirt. And they're only $2 each, which is a small investment if you're trying to protect that $40 tee.

(I've never paid $40 for a t-shirt, by the way. I may be in LA, but I'm not of LA. My woman's-jean-wearing brother, on the other hand...)

What I've Written

If I'm going to be spending all this time writing, I suppose I should explain what it is I write.

Today: previous work. Tomorrow: vague and frustrating allusions to upcoming projects, which is as much as I can post on the Internet for the entire world to see.

Current Preoccupations of My Work:

• The Formation of An Unlikely Gang
  
  A motley bunch of misfits team up to do whatever. The Goonies. Star Wars. Rio Bravo. This is a hardly an unusual preoccupation for a screenwriter. And at least two of my next projects hold this one.



• Really Annoying Girls
  
  Amelia in The Last Whatever walks into Cox Hall, rips down the no-smoking sign, walks over to a table, sweeps someone else's backpacks and books off the table, sits, lights her match off a dude's corduroy pants, and smokes. The thing is, I've never met a girl like this. And I'm not sure that I'd enjoy it. So I'm not really sure where it comes from - maybe it's a Jungian projection of some sort. In any case, I love Marla Singer from Fight Club. Every line of hers in that movie is pure battery acid.



• The Abdication of All Professional Responsibilities
  
  There's a genre of movie I call "escape porn". Field of Dreams. Rain Man. Thelma and Louise. The idea that at many moment, you could just drop everything and away from your life. Only to lose yourself in pure spontaneity. Hmm. Sounds awfully familiar.

My Writing History

Elementary School through College:

• Many Abortive Short Stories That Went Nowhere
  
  I remember writing retellings of famous movies when I was a small boy, but recasting talking animals in the main roles. I don't think anyone thought this was a good idea except myself. In college, I was obsessed with the collection and presentation of cool, nifty details, but didn't have the patience to build a narrative to hang them on. Despite this, I won a summer workshop scholarship at Emory, and was asked to give a reading before a small audience. Afterwards, one of the visiting professional writers approached me and said, "You've got talent. I'm serious."

Film School:

• Lots and Lots of Short Scripts
  
  These nearly broke me in two. I had been "trained" as a fiction writer, which means I didn't know shit about dramatic storytelling, and the transition was a bitch. I nearly dropped out of film school after one semester, and just barely stayed on thanks to the efforts of my friends and family. There's a story about my friend Danielle's emergency intervention which I will share in a future post.



• Republic of Strangers
  
  This was my first full-length screenplay. It's about coyotes - illegal alien smugglers - trying to move Mexicans across the border into El Paso. It actually made the first cut in the Sundance Film Festival's screenplay competition back in 2000, despite the fact that I wrote the last thirty pages of it in about two days. Mark my words: no one will ever read this script.



• Age of Wonder
  
  This one is about a world-wide conspiracy involving the Knights Templar and... what? Dammit! Just kidding. Dan Brown and I actually stole from the same book: Holy Blood, Holy Grail. (But I did it four years before he did.) Mine takes place in a mythical, steampunk France, and involves demons and superheroes, and lots and lots of gunplay. As unlikely as it sounds, I ended up using many elements of this script in my next script...

Post-Graduation:

• The Last Whatever
  
  The official logline: a group of college misfits discover a mysterious force of nature running beneath their campus, which leads them to solve the mystery of a single moment in time, repeating itself over and over.
  
  Many of you have read this. If you haven't, feel free to request a copy in the comments. If you know me personally, or know someone I know personally, I'll send you one. There's a story about how I came up with the idea for TLW, but I'll share it in another post.

A Small Confession

This is actually the SECOND time I've done this.

You know, the-whole-quit-your-job-to-write thing.

In fact, this is the second time I've left the video game company. Because they hired me again after I left the first time.

Feels like the Matrix Reloaded up in here, doesn't it?

Let me explain. The first time was much less ambitious. I left my video game job, and took a 10k paycut to work at an entertainment non-profit, which hosts a widely ignored awards ceremony. They locked my hours at about 35 per week. And it was the kind of job where I only had to do about two hours of work a day, and then I could just write at my desk. Additionally, they gave me twelve weeks leave to go travel the world. I spent ten weeks in Europe, and another two in South America.

I wrote. And I was bored most of the time. I spent a lot of time among the trees of Amelia Earheart park, thinking and pacing. (Ironically, the statue of Amelia that stands in her park was missing for most of that time. I attended its reinstallation ceremony (above) during one of my work breaks.)

During that year and a half, I finished my script The Last Whatever, and I was pleased with it.

But for a long while, it appeared that my risk - leaving my job, taking a paycut, being bored a lot - none of it had paid off. Nobody was pounding on my door asking to buy the script, and I had to return to the job that I had left. My life was inexorably returning to the status quo.

It felt like nothing had changed. At all.

Now. 18 months later. My script blows up. I have money in the bank. And it's on.

If I hadn't quit my job the first time, I wouldn't have written the script. And none of this would have happened. I came this close to being a unfulfilled game designer for life.

Ray Kinsella had to wait through the entire winter before Shoeless Joe showed up on that field.

The return on that initial risk may be slow to arrive.

But that doesn't mean it's not coming.

My Epic Lunch

I felt hungry around one.

So I took a fifteen minute walk to Larchmont Boulevard to eat some pizza.

And I realized, that for the first time in a very long time, I had absolutely nowhere to be on a Thursday afternoon. So I walked twice as slowly as I usually do.

And on the way to getting pizza, I stopped at a funky shoe store and talked vintage sneakers with the saleswoman. Because why not?

Then I headed over to the pizzeria, got some pizza, chatted some with the employees there, told them who my favorite pizza chef there was.

Then I thought, hey. I could use a chocolate croissant right now. So I ambled over to the coffee place and got one.

But on the way I stopped at the stationary store, discussed various paper samples with them.

Then I walked back home.

The tempo of my day is already slowing. And I like it.

Judy

I met with Judy, my favorite intuitive advisor from Thousand Oaks. She only covered three topics:

• The overall outlook for the year ahead. Her bottom line? Buckle up, beeyatch. It's going to be a great year, y'all. In fact, if I had to pick only one year out of my life to document in a blog, this would apparently be the one.
  
  Professionally, the good news is that scenario number two from this post will not happen. In fact, it appears that my next project might generate some interest (and some cash). The phrase that my writing partner Huili and I use incessantly is: we'll see.



• A very thorough post-mortem of my last relationship; Judy's relentless deconstruction left me emotionally exhausted, but relieved. I learned many sad things, only a few of which were truly surprising.
  
  Of course, it might have helped if Judy had mentioned some of these things to me two years ago, when she predicted the relationship (and its demise). But experiencing things for yourself is probably necessary.
  
  (Request: please DO NOT mention my ex in the comments section. I wasn't particularly forthcoming about this relationship when it was on (many of you are most likely learning about it only now), and it falls squarely outside the scope of this blog.)

About MP3s. Even if you're like George, a skeptic when it comes to psychic phenomena, you have to be somewhat curious about what a tarot reading sounds like, right? Luckily for us, I recorded Judy in 320kps 44khz mp3s using an iRiver IFP-899, the podcaster's recording device of choice (for the layperson: this means me and her sound like we're in the room with you). However, I need to obtain some sound-editing software to edit the clips and do some mixing, which I will obtain in about a week. Yes, I do indeed nerd it up and dork out. And I do it well.

But I won't be posting all the mp3s at once. Unless there are strong objections, I think I'll post small Judy mp3s as an ongoing feature. I will warn you now, there's nothing you'll hear that will convince you that what she does is real. The most impressive parts of the reading are precisely the ones I can't post, because they're simply too personal. But I'll do what I can.

By the way, this anecdote makes for a very interesting read.

Launch Commit... Liftoff... And The Tower Is Clear!

Download This

T-Minus 1 Day: What I Did Today

A co-worker of mine asked:

"Did you have a good last day?"

"Yeah."

"Did you do any work?"

Pause.

"Uh... the CEO asked me to find something and I couldn't. So I told him that."

But it was a good day today. I ate lunch at a fancy restaurant courtesy of my favorite art director, and had an eye exam, after which my eyes were pronounced healthy. Also underwent the obligatory exit interview, in which I gave maddeningly vague and glib answers, in order to prevent future retribution: "I love this company and everyone who works here. It's great!"

Tonight I go to bed late just because I can.

And then it's off to Thousand Oaks in the morning.

Hollywood hijinks resume on the 22nd, as my writing partner Huili arrives from Madrid and we enter a new round of meetings. I have absolutely no idea what will come of it.

T-Minus 1 Day: Intuitive Advice

Tomorrow I drive out to the edge of the earth, also known as Thousand Oaks, in order to participate in a yearly ritual of mine.

Every year, I visit a Jewish grandmother named Judy, who works in a New Age book store located in the suburbs outside of Los Angeles. Judy reads tarot cards, but she doesn't claim to be a psychic - she gives "intuitive advice". She's takes personal growth very seriously, and she definitely enjoys showing off.

Why do I do this?

The stock answers are: the entertainment value, the predictive data, the action-guiding advice. And I enjoy all of these things, but my reasons are a bit different.

I see Judy to mark my progress. It's a good way to look back at where I've been, and to see where I'm going. She has the ability to spread the map of my life across the table, and survey the entire landscape. She has a very keen sense of what the current challenges of my life are, and what the next ones will be. Judy speaks not of weeks, or months, but of years. Her favorite unit of time is 18 months. Which is precisely the amount of time this endeavor will last.

Remember the events that precipitated the creation of this website? She called them all ten months ago, and I'll see if I can wrangle up some MP3s to prove it. Last year, she told me "with 90% certainty" that I would leave my job to pursue writing on my own.

Despite that bold prediction, very little of our sessions are comprised of concrete predictions about the future; there is some fortune-telling, but most of the time is filled by old-fashioned wisdom acquired through the time-honored process of living. This wisdom serves as a transition between subjects, and camouflages the paucity of actual precognitive data.

It's excellent wisdom, however - the kind I rarely receive, if ever. Just about everything she said was true and helpful, and she was merciless in driving me towards crucial insights and revealing admissions about my life.

Admittedly, wisdom isn't a supernatural ability, and may not be worth eighty dollars an hour. But she has one astonishing ability that is both: the ability to intuitively understand the secret inner lives of people, even people who aren't present.

The most impressive parts of my readings consist of her speaking to me about the personal histories and hidden feelings of people she couldn't possibly know anything about: my parents, my brother, my friends.

When I listen to the tape of the session, I cannot ascribe these feats to psychology or performance. The specificity and familiarity and ease with which she discusses people close to me - as if they are close to her too - is what makes the experience supernatural.

T-Minus 1 Day: My Elevator Ride With The CEO

The CEO of my company and I have been friendly ever since I started working at the company. Our relationship has mainly consisted of good-natured ribbing and chats about the intersection of the game and film businesses.

My first interaction with him was in our office kitchen about five year ago. I was making my lunch, as I did every day: a ham sandwich and a can of soup. (I was making ten dollars an hour at the time.)

CEO: You're so frugal, making lunch everyday.

Me: It's due to necessity. You could do something about that, you know.

CEO: (Laughs, walks away.)

Just for the record, I got a raise later.

Last night, as I was leaving the office, I stepped into the elevator with the CEO, for what is likely to be my last interaction with him. (For a while, anyway.) It was pretty clear to both of us that we were at T-Minus-2-Days, because I was carrying a box with the contents of my desk.

Here was our conversation in its entirety:

CEO: Yo!

Me: Yo indeed.

(Elevator stops on CEO's floor.)

Me: Good night.

Him: Good night.

T-Minus 2 Days: The Budget

If you haven't noticed, I've been unusually open and forthcoming about the amounts of money that are relevant to this blog. Or, as my friend Brian might say, I love talking about how much money I make (made). My transparency is not due to the fact that I enjoy flaunting my cash flow (some of you make and save more than me). It's due to the fact that money and its allocation is central to the staging of this adventure. Saving it, spending it, budgeting it. In order to show you my strategy at the table, you have to understand how I'm stacking the chips.

This is my roundabout way of saying the money talk below may offend your sense of propriety. If it does, you should probably come back tomorrow for talk about psychic tarot readers. On second thought, maybe you should come back the day after tomorrow.

Now let's do this.

For the past six years, I've been recording every single dollar I spend in a piece of software called Microsoft Money. I record the amount, the date, the location of the transaction, and its category. MS Money tabulates the results, and instantly produces handy breakdowns, projections, and charts. (On my top ten list of video games, number ten is MS Money. It's addictive to watch your cash flow projection adjust itself with every single transaction you input.)

So when it came time to create a budget for my sabbatical, it was as simple as booting up MS Money and asking it for a monthly breakdown from calendar year 2005:


MONTHLY SPENDING IN 2005
(click the pie chart to enlarge)

CATEGORY	$ / MONTH
Rent	622
Dining Out	383
Groceries	247
Leisure	123
Clothing	116
Fuel	95
Gifts	90
Car Service	72
Household	57
Misc	51
Phone/DSL	50
Gym	35
Hair	33
Power	30
Natural Gas	5

GRAND TOTAL = $2009 / month


My reactions:

• I spent only fifty bucks a month on land line phone, DSL, and cell phone COMBINED. I rule.


• I spent more on clothes than on gifts? I suck.


• Owning a car is expensive. I wouldn't need a car in New York. Hmm. HMM.


• Not a whole lot of room for optimization here. I think the two categories where I could easily tighten my belt are Eating Out and Clothing.


• Clothing is pretty much taken care of, as I have a full wardrobe now. From now on, I'm only buying expensive pieces I'm in love with.


• The total for Eating Out is way overstated. I dumped a lot of non-food expenses in that category, including dates. But I could easily trim $100 from that category, because I don't cook nearly enough. I'm suspect my food budget could easily feed an entire family. (Please don't confirm this for me. I feel bad enough as it is.)

So if I can just trim Clothing to $50 and Eating Out to $250, that brings me down to $1810 a month. And that's a conservative estimate. I think I could go even lower.

As a commitment to fiscal responsibility, I'm setting my monthly budget at $2000 a month. If I can keep myself under $1800, that leaves me plenty of breathing room. And if I play my cards right, I can afford an extra plane ticket or two. Maybe a PS3.

I think this just might work.

The Ordeal of the Perfect Jeans

[14:08] jon: i found jeans that fit me awesome and are only 30 bucks
[14:09] rob: from where?
[14:10] jon: levi's women's jeans hahaha
[14:10] rob: that's funny
[14:10] jon: im a 3m
[14:10] jon: in womens
[14:10] rob: how did you find that out?
[14:10] rob: did you go try them on in the store?
[14:10] jon: went to the department store
[14:10] jon: and tried them on HAHA
[14:10] rob: did they look at you funny?
[14:10] jon: all the women there were looking at me
[14:10] jon: yeah
[14:10] jon: cuz i was the only one there
[14:10] jon: i tried to play it off like i was buyin them for a girlfriend or something
[14:11] jon: yeah.. that didnt work
[14:11] rob: yeah
[14:11] rob: you don't try on your gf's jeans
[14:11] rob: just say
[14:12] rob: ladies, I get down like that
[14:12] jon: haha
[14:12] jon: well
[14:12] jon: it got really embarassing
[14:12] jon: because i was on a womens floor of the department store
[14:12] jon: so like they didnt have fitting rooms for men
[14:12] jon: and i couldnt take them anywhere else but that floor
[14:12] rob: so what did you do?
[14:12] jon: so i asked the woman, could i try them all, she said only if there is no one in the fitting room
[14:13] jon: but there was one woman in there at the time
[14:13] jon: so she said once shes done i could go in
[14:13] rob: this is pretty fucking epic
[14:13] jon: but as soon as that woman left, she screams at me, " YOU CAN TRY ON YOUR JEANS NOW"
[14:13] jon: i think like 3 girls heard that shit.

T-Minus 3 Days: How NOT To Find Your True Calling

One of the books I read while I was pondering my plan was What Should I Do With My Life?: The True Story of People Who Answered The Ultimate Question.

The author, Po Bronson, interviewed fifty people searching for their true callings: everyone from a truck driver to a Tibetan Buddhist monk. The book bears some resemblance to the work of Studs Terkel, but Bronson eschews the tone of impartial observation found in many documentary works. He asks questions, he offers a shoulder to cry on, he meddles. At one point, he even offers one of his subjects a job. The book has a New Agey, San Franciscan feel (Bronson was a famous chronicler of the dot-com boom): non-judgmental, gentle, contemplative.

There's only one thing I really learned from this book. Unfortunately, I can't find the passage so I can properly cite it, but I'll share my paraphrase with you.

In all of Bronson's interviews with his subjects, he found only one commonality among them. The one and only law of finding your true calling:

If you keep doing what you don't like, in order to earn the money to do what you do like, you will never do what you like.

The idea that you'll keep socking away the cash, and then one magical day, you'll unroll that wad of bills, and begin your life in earnest? That NEVER happens.

It's not about the money. It's about fear.

I've learned this principle for myself. I'm leaving my job in three days. The timing of this event is due to a confluence of factors: a brief lull in my projects at work, the completion of my savings goal, my writing schedule. It's a wonderful moment to begin this endeavor.

But the plan almost didn't happen. Because I nearly fell into the trap of waiting for just one more check. With one more check, I'd buy that widescreen iBook. Or that vacation to South Africa. Or two more months of living expenses. And then you get the check. And then it begins all over again. My mathematician friends, well-acquainted with induction as a way of proving theorems, were the first to point out the infinite nature of this cycle.

I was afraid of leaving. I was telling myself that I was merely thinking about delaying, but I don't know if I was being truthful with myself. At one point, a friend of mine accused me of giving up entirely on the plan. And it wasn't until I had a really bad day (both at work and in my personal life), that I was jolted into action. If it hadn't been for that bad day, I don't believe you would be reading this. Sometimes a bad day is exactly what you need.

I still have at least one more royalty check coming my way, and it's a big one. But I'm walking away just before I get it. Because if there's one thing I've learned from the movies, it's that people who wait for that one last score, always get screwed.

Tess In Los Angeles

Lately, I've been spending time at Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park, which is also known as the burial ground of Marilyn Monroe and Rodney Dangerfield. (A writer-director of some renown is pictured above.)

It's a strange little cemetery: picture an idyllic burial plot the size of a large Dallas front lawn nestled among the high-rise office buildings of Westwood. Most people don't even know it's there, because it's trapped between an office tower and a parking garage.

I like visiting the cemetery because it's only a few steps away from my office, and is adjacent to the library where I often do my work. It's quiet and peaceful, it's got nice fountains, and strangely enough, I feel quite happy there.

(I like cemeteries because they're one of the few places where it's perfectly acceptable to cry in public. You can sit down on a bench and bawl your eyes out, and hug your sides, and roll around on the ground, and nobody will bat an eye. Hey, you're mourning!)

The last time I was there, I was walking past by a perfectly sculpted and trimmed young tree, and for an instant, I could have sworn I saw a human figure moving within the tree's foliage, as if he or she were made of leaves.

And it absolutely scared the crap out of me.

So that's what it feels like.

T-Minus 6 Days: How I Saved The Money

There are a couple questions people ask when I tell them The Plan.

1) How are you going to live?

Simply.


2) How did you save the money?

I'm not entirely sure. I never really felt like I had to tighten my belt. I went out quite a bit, ate a lot at restaurants. I bought all the clothes and video games I wanted. I lived my life as if I had all the money in the world. This was true even when I was working at an entertainment non-profit, and making $35,000.

But when I sit and think about it, I had realize that I had several factors going for my bank account, which many may not have:

• Rent-Controlled Apartment

If I were to move out of my current space, and try to find an equivalent space in Los Angeles (or worse, Santa Monica), it would cost me at least $900 a month. As it is, I happened to luck out during my initial apartment search. I live in an extremely spacious building in a very pretty and quiet neighborhood, located within walking distance of shops and restaurants. And it's rent controlled, so they can't raise the rent beyond 3% a year. I pay about $600 a month now, but I paid $500 when I first moved here.


• I'm Happy and Healthy

Much of this has to do with my relative youth, which is definitely helpful. But I also go the gym a few times a week, I meditate, and I brush and floss. I don't have any significant mental and emotional issues (significant, I said). I'd like to give a very special shout-out to my parents for remaining married all these years - that definitely helped. The bottom line is, I'm a happy person and my life is good. This results in tremendous healthcare cost savings. I don't take any expensive medications, I have no chronic conditions, and I require no complicated dental work. I could probably get by without health insurance, but I'm too risk averse.


• No Debt Load

If there's one thing I kind of regret about the past five years (and it's not a big regret), it's buying a brand new Honda five years ago. I took out a $20,000 car loan, which took me four years to repay. At the very least, I could have purchased a used Honda and had an extra $8000 in my pocket right now. That's about four months living expenses, or about six extra vacations, or all the next-gen video games I can buy. Then again, I graduated from film school with no school loans, and no credit card debt. There are people out there who have all three: car, credit cards, school loans. I can't imagine what the monthly payments are like. Hopefully, I'll never have to find out.


• No Alcohol

I don't drink. This is not a moral decision; I have nothing against imbibing. This year I had my fair share of alcohol, though, and came to a somewhat obvious realization. Alcohol does absolutely nothing for me, and I don't really enjoy it. So I stopped. If you enjoy drinking, though, it gets really expensive really quickly. I've paid $10 for a gin and tonic. Whenever I do that, I thinking, I'm in a bar, that's how much drinks cost, okay. But as soon as I'm out of that context, I realize that I often purchase entire meals for that much.


• No Starbucks

So now we're stretching it. But there are people at my office who drink a Frappuccino every day. So let's do the math. Let's say that's $4 a hit. Twenty or so work days per month, and you're looking at $80 a month. That's almost $1000 a year! Again, coffee does nothing for me. My palate is a little childish, so I tend to favor sweetness over bitterness. When I was a kid, I thought coffee would taste like really awesome hot chocolate. Imagine my disappointment.

[ Next: The Budget (with pie chart and figures) ]

T-Minus 7 Days: Hollywood Part III

Another story.

This one is about how you should be prepared to do something frivolous and whimsical at any moment, because you never know where it might lead.

In my case, I decided to attend a punk rock show held in the parking garage of a comic book store.

At the time, I didn't listen to punk rock. And I didn't read comic books.

While I was waiting for the show to begin, I idly began to thumb through the comic books on the rack.

I read the opening panels of a book - it didn't go anywhere ineresting.

But at that moment, I had an idea for a story.

I was immediately electrified -- couldn't stop thinking about it. Thought about it at the show, in the days and nights afterwards, while I was finishing my other script.

A few weeks later, I got on a plane to Madrid, and told my friend Huili about it. He loved it. He wanted to write it together.

So we began to write a screenplay by writing e-mails to each other, back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean. Then we started a secret blog, and started writing blog posts to each other.

This went on for a couple years. I have a stack of printouts the size of a telephone book with all the material that we wrote. I read it now, and harbor a few doubts about our sanity.

Then I placed in the Academy's competition. I got phone calls. E-mails. Meetings.

People told me that they couldn't do anything with The Last Whatever, but was I working on anything else?

And so I told them the ten-second pitch for this idea I'd been working on.

Most of them didn't get it.

But a few of them did. They really got it. And they wanted to hear more.

And that's what's happening now.

We're about to go in for a new round of meetings with the helpful addition of "more".

I can't name the people we're meeting with, but I can say that I absolutely adored their movies when I was a kid. They're the reasons why I got into movies in the first place.

And none of this would have happened had I not attended a punk rock show in the parking garage of a comic book store.

T-Minus 7 Days: Hollywood Part II

One more story.

I received a phone call from an Academy member about a month after I received my notification that I had placed in their competition.

He was a judge in the competition who had read my script in the closing round, an elderly man, and said that he had strongly urged the Academy to put my in the top 10. He said that he thought the script was "extremely impressive". He asked what I was doing, and we spoke a bit about the games industry. I thanked him for his kind comments, we said goodbye.

Later, I typed his name into the IMDB, only to find out that this guy had won Academy Awards. He'd worked with Brian De Palma. Sidney Lumet. Paddy Chayefsky.

I was absolutely floored.

You see, I had spent years toiling away on my own, putting one foot in front of the other, trying to climb what looked to be a very large mountain. I finished that script after a few years of on-again, off-again work, was just relieved to be finished, and then quietly dropped it in the mail to the Academy.

So after two years of film school, and a few years of writing, this was my first piece of external validation.

It felt pretty good.

T-Minus 8 Days: Hollywood

Oh wait.

I almost forgot to tell this part.

Otherwise the story doesn't make any sense.

After all, when you have a "creative" and "glamorous" job that pays really well, you generally don't leave unless something happens.

Well, something happened.

Every year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, home of the Oscars, conducts an open screenplay competition for unproduced writers.

A few months ago, I was informed by the Academy that my script, the Last Whatever, placed in the top 30 scripts out of 6000.

That's the top half of one percent.

There may or may not have been a correlation between this event and the fact that my phone was ringing off the hook for about a month straight.

Remember how in sitcoms, there's always the episode with the mischievous teenage boy who has to go on two dates at the same time, and rushes back and forth between two different tables in the same restaurant?

That was my life during those weeks. I'd show up for work at my day job, only to take three hour "lunches" and exceedingly lengthy trips to the "dentist" or the "dry cleaners".

That's because I was dashing back and forth across all of Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, and Burbank, meeting with studio executives, agents, and producers.

Why wasn't I fired for playing hooky from work? As it so happens, at that same time, my company was purchased by a rock star.

It was that kind of month.

Strange and wonderful moment from that time:

I step into a bigshot producer's office, and the assistant offers me water, which I accept. I am then asked, "Ice cold or room temperature?"

So did someone buy The Last Whatever?

No. The common feedback on TLW is that it is "poetic" and "beautifully written", but those are euphemisms for "completely unmarketable and uncommercial". I LOVE the fact that a script which includes the line "the bitch has got sand in her vagina" is considered poetic, by the way.

And normally the story would end there.

Except in many of these meetings, I was asked, "So what are you working on next?"

And as it turns out, what I am working on next was of great interest to some of these folks.

Who just happen to have made movies you've seen and loved.

But I'll save that part for tomorrow.

My Stylist Quits Too

I get my hair cut at a salon that's conveniently located in the same Westwood high rise I work in.

Today, as I sit in the chair, my stylist covertly hands me a business card with her cell phone number on it.

"I'm leaving," she whispers.

"Why?"

"I don't like having a boss. I want to work for myself."

I pocket the card, look at her, and say, "This is why you're my barber."

T-Minus 9 Days: How This Will End

Some ground rules today.

This website has three end conditions.

By end condition, I mean if any of the following events happens, the story this website tells will be finished. And I stop updating the site.

1) I Get Paid.

I sign some papers with a studio, and get paid to do exactly what I'm doing now. Everyone seems to assume that selling a screenplay, or being hired for an assignment, immediately precedes eating gold-plated sushi off of naked Japanese models. This is not true, because:

• a) After taxes, agents' fees, lawyers' fees, and Writer's Guild dues, you have a lot less than you thought.


• b) You simply don't know where or when your next dollar is coming from. It could be months, years, before you get another gig.

So I don't forsee my life magically changing in the event of earning a substantial sum of money. In fact, I think I would say that the magical change is happening. Right. Now.


2) I Go Broke.

Naturally, I get a lot of questions about what happens in this scenario. I was talking to my mom about it, and I was telling her that I'd probably move back into my folks' home for a while. Just long enough to finish whichever script I'd be working on at the time. I'd get to help out at my mom's shop, take walks with the dogs in the woods near the house. It'd be nice.

But my mom said, I've got a better idea. Why don't you stay in your dad's apartment in Shanghai when he's not there? Wouldn't that be cooler?

And I was like, daaaaamn, mom. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree in the Lo orchard.

After finishing that last script, I'd return to Los Angeles, and start knocking on doors. I'd probably have to get a particularly unfulfilling job in order to make ends meet at that point. But on the other hand, if all goes well, I'll have three brand new screenplays to show. It doesn't sound bad.

My friend Brian wanted to know about my contingency plan, and I told him the above. He said, "This is NOT a contingency plan." But in my view, when you make a contingency plan, you're preparing yourself for failure. Which is not necessarily a bad thing to do, as long as it doesn't distract you from preparing yourself for success.


3) A Scenario I Haven't Thought Of.

This is most likely to happen.

[ Up Next: How I Saved The Money ]

T-Minus 10 Days and Counting

So in ten days, I'll be leaving my job.

I'm walking away from approximately $70,000 a year. Up to $600,000 in stock options. And comprehensive health insurance.

Why?

Because I'm going to write down some stories, go on a few trips, and generally behave like Ferris Bueller.

And I'm going to do this for at least a year and a half.

This might possibly be the greatest adventure of my life.

Which is why I'm writing about it here. The purpose of this site is to document the next year-and-a-half, remind myself of my purpose, and keep track of my progress.

If you feel like checking on me, feel free to visit as often as you like. In fact, you should definitely return for:

THE GREAT LO BLOGGING EXTRAVAGANZA 2006:
Fresh Posts Almost Daily
Subjects To Be Addressed:

• Hollywood Calls

In which I receive phone calls from Academy Award-winning producers, and am asked if I would like my water "ice cold" or "room temperature". I choose "ice cold".


• How The Hell Can I Afford To Do This?

All the financial details of this adventure, laid out in pornographic detail. We're talking pie charts! And numbers!


• New York vs. Los Angeles

I was hoping not to start something here. But this has to be settled once and for all.


• What I Will Write

The bad news: I can't say much. The good news: I'll definitely have some things for you to read.


• The Travel Itinerary

Rock on Kyoto, Shanghai, Venice, and London. I extend an open invitation to all to come stay with me for free in an apartment in Shanghai.


• School's Out FOREVER!

My first month off will be spent at the yoga studio, in the kitchen, and on my couch. It's time for hanging out. And chilling. And kicking it. A sneak preview of my daily routine.


• A Word To My Friends

After all, you are one of the reasons I am here to write this today.


• War Stories

I'm going into some Hollywood pitch meetings at the end of the month. If you don't hear back from me, tell my wife...that I...I love her.


• Special Guest Appearance: Judy

So who didn't see this coming? Not Judy! The "intuitive" advisor extraordinaire draws a roadmap of the next 18 months. Featuring MP3s. (The posting of MP3s is subject to personal discretion and technical issues.)

May the good people of the world wish me luck.

(Click on the comments link below to leave me a note.)