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.