The Top Five People of 2006

Okay, enough smack talk. Man writes an outline for a movie and it's all like he liberated Iraq or something. It's time to talk about someone else other than myself, so without further ado, here are my my picks for the top five people of 2006. To be eligible for this list, you must be 1) a NEW presence in my life, and one that has 2) affected me in some significant way.


5) Bono, Rock Star/Activist/Capitalist



You're quietly saving up your nickels and dimes so you can quit your job. You figure you can do eke out at least a year, IF you live frugally: beans and rice, taking public transit a lot, squeezing out the dregs of the toothpaste. Then a rock star shows up at your company and buys the damn place, and hands everyone a nice bonus check. Now you can do 18 months. You can take unlimited yoga classes. And you're going to Asia. All thanks to a perennial Nobel peace prize nominee who makes video games about indiscriminately killing brown people. Bono, you may be a contradiction, but you're MY contradiction. God bless you.


4) ???, Unlockable Character



I am in so much trouble for doing this. I couldn't get the necessary clearances from the legal department to publish this, so what can I tell you about Number Four? Um, nothing. But I can tell you that this person garners a high mention count in discussions with my friends, and is the subject of considerable speculation. And the buzz continues to get louder and louder. Will "El Numero Cuatro", as we affectionately refer to this person, deliver on the hype? Hell if I know.


3) Satoru Iwata, President and CEO of Nintendo Co., Ltd.



This is the man who proved all those worthless game industry analysts and would-be pundits wrong in 2006. He championed pure gameplay over cynical marketing, graphical realism, and fanboy provincialism. And he bet the entire farm on his beliefs. In doing so, he saved the company that gave birth to many childhood memories, and reminded everyone what it was like to play a video game for the very first time. But that's not why he's on this list. He's here because he's a soft-spoken and humble man who quietly worked his way up from developer to CEO. He doesn't speak in marketing copy, loves and believes in his work, and is very cute. (No seriously, dude - I've been in the room with this man, and he's adorable.) In short, he's everything I aspire to be in the entertainment world.


2) My Yoga Instructor, Uh...Yoga Instructor



Here's what I wrote about her a week ago: "This woman is one of the greatest teachers I've ever had in any subject. I go to her class every single day. In that time, I've gained seven pounds of muscle. I've grown out of some of my favorite t-shirts. My back, my shoulders, and most importantly, my heart -- all of these have opened. I feel sturdier than ever, and yet, I feel softer than ever. Something is happening to me, and yoga is only a part of it. And my instructor been with me every step of the way, knowing how far I've come, and how much further I will go."


1) Naruto Uzumaki, Konohagakure Ninja (Genin rank)



Let's be real. Who couldn't see this coming? I've written about him previously here and here, but let me step outside my fandom to write that Naruto is by far the most potent adolescent power fantasy of our time. Stronger than Buffy. Stronger than Harry, even. There's a bored kid inside of all of us, waiting (and waiting still) for the call to adventure. The voice behind the call, if you listen carefully enough, is Mr. Uzumaki's. Naruto turns 15 this February, as the second saga of his chronicles premieres on Japanese television. You know I'll be there.

Twenty-Three Reasons to Quit Your Damn Job Already (2006 Edition)

1. Run into international pop stars at the shoe store.


2. Eat chocolate croissants whenever you damn well please.


3. Skip town for a couple weeks to hang out with old friends BECAUSE YOU FEEL LIKE IT.


4. Take public speaking lessons at USC Business School with future MBAs.


5. Take a road trip to Austin to help your brother move into his new apartment.


6. Learn to do a handstand.


7. Ride the train to San Diego and attend the Comic-Con.


8. Spend more time with your family.


9. Visit a tarot reader.


10. Attend a Hollywood movie premiere.


11. Tour the inside of a B-12 Flying Fortress.


12. Pitch a movie to Hollywood studio executives.


13. Walk the Brookyln Bridge.


14. Remove the bicycle from storage and ride around the neighborhood.


15. Learn to make risotto and other things.


16. Create ringtones of your favorite anime series for the amusement of teenagers across the Internet.
    


17. Gamble at an Indian casino.


18. Disassemble a video game console and recalibrate the laser.


19. Attend the Whitney Biennial.


20. Eat barbeque in South Central Los Angeles.


21. Take yoga lessons.


22. Serve as a juror on a trial and deliver a verdict.


23. Write a blockbuster movie about Lobsters fighting Butterflies.

Some Assorted Thoughts On Life and Happiness and Everything, Part VI

So this series is clearly turning into a year-end roundup of sorts. A summary seems appropriate at this point, because I am roughly halfway through this little adventure, having spent approximately half of my savings.

Let's answer some Frequently Asked Questions:

Q) Are you worried yet?

A) Nope.

Q) Are you happy?

A) Yes. Very much so.

Q) Do you miss your old job?

A) Lol.

I recently met with a former coworker from the video game company who hadn't seen me since I left. We caught up over lunch, and the following bit of dialogue ensued:

Him: I think this plan of yours is going to work.

Me: How can you tell?

Him: Your voice. I can tell by the way you talk about things.

I'm not necessarily agreeing with him. It's way too early to tell. But his commment is a small reminder to me that significant changes are happening in my life. And they may be happening more slowly than I can notice.

There was a day, not too long ago, when I put on a favorite t-shirt and noticed that it fit me a lot more snugly (and uncomfortably) than usual. I thought that perhaps I had unintentionally shrunk it by putting it in the dryer (I hang dry all my shirts). So I put on another shirt. Again, a bit too tight for comfort.

Then I realized: it wasn't the t-shirts. It was me. And more specifically, me in yoga class. I later weighed myself. I had put on seven pounds of muscle. And I hadn't even noticed.

I suspect something similar is happening to my creative faculties, but I won't really know until I am well into my first draft of Lobsters vs. Butterflies. I can tell you that ideas seem to come much more quickly than they used to. There's a nice sense of playfulness to my work. I'm beginning to remember what it was like to be engaged in something, only to hear my mother's voice yelling, "DINNERTIME!", and to look up, blinking.

And if you're asking me to compare my creative powers now to when I was punching a clock, it's no contest. The day after I left my job, I traveled to Thousand Oaks to visit an intuitive advisor. She described the then upcoming transition in my life thusly:

Download: Judy Talks About My Creativity Before And After Leaving My Job

At the time, I thought her metaphor was quite goofy. But now I realize that it was quite apt.

Welcome to the meadow, ladies.

Some Assorted Thoughts On Life and Happiness and Everything, Part V

This post is about destiny.

No, it's not another Judy post (come back tomorrow). This one is about something even Judy's formidable powers cannot foresee: ideas.

As a writer, you spend an inordinate amount of your life sitting in a room and banging your head against a desk. The only reason anyone would willingly choose such a life is that she has become obsessed with a beautiful idea.

Ideas are your most fragile and precious resource. They are both your livelihood and fuel, and you spend a lot of time waiting for them to appear. You "research": you read, you watch movies, you talk to people. You survey the landscape, take soil samples, and drill down, hoping for another big strike.

More often than not, you don't find it. Your greatest fear is that you've tapped out your wells. But the truth is, all of this "research" is a sham: you have no idea when or where an idea will appear. Ideas only seep slowly and unpredicatably from the most obscure crevasses and fissures of your life. They spring from the most trivial moments, the most chance encounters, the silliest events.

Don't believe me? Here's a roundup of my writing projects and their origin stories:

The Last Whatever: During high school, I walk across a courtyard and see an autumn leaf floating across the ground, traveling in perfect concentric circles. (Uh, that's it. And this script got me a ton of meetings and recognition. Ridiculous.)

Waxahachie Air: I buy a cheap paperback pulp, read a few chapters of it, and toss it aside. My friend Wallace shows up, picks up the book, reads a chapter I hadn't read, tells me, "Hey, this is interesting." I read the chapter he's talking about, and say, "You're right. I want to make a movie out of this."

Pillow Crisis: I go to a Minibosses show at Meltdown Comics. I idly thumb through some lame time-traveling comic while waiting for the band to go on. Bam! Random idea strikes. (I can't even tell you the name of the comic.)

Lobsters vs. Butterflies: My brother gets a summer job as a game tester at my former place of employment. He spends a lot of time in the Quality Assurance room with other adolescent guys, playing games, talking shit, and watching anime. His coworker introduces him to one Naruto Uzumaki, who immediately becomes an obsession of my brother's. Jon loads up my hard drive with twenty gigs of episodes, and makes me promise to watch it. He returns to college. I forget about Naruto. And then, one day, I quit my job. Suddenly, I have all the time in the world. I'm bored. So I watch some Naruto. And watch some more. Take a few breaks for meals and sleep. Watch even more. And as I'm watching, a story crystallizes in my head: the idea, the tone, the world.

Those stories are quite possibly the most banal things I've ever written. But their banality supports my thesis: a writer's entire career balances on the point of the most trivial and ephemeral moments.

What if I hadn't crossed the courtyard that day? What if I hadn't gone to the Minibosses show? What if my brother hadn't worked at the game company? Three whole years of my life - the years I spent chasing those random ideas down - would have been radically different.

There's a small, whimsical form of destiny at work here. And the only thing I can tell you about it, with any certainty, is that it feeds on idle time. It only sneaks up on you when you're ready to play. It only works when you step away from your desk.

One of the primary aims of my little experiment - of these eighteen months - has been to give myself as much idle time as possible. I can guarantee you that if I hadn't quit my job, I would never have watched seventy episodes of a Japanese animated series about a hyperactive twelve-year-old who wears an orange jumpsuit and yells a lot.

But I did.

And doing so might very well mean the beginning of an entire career.

Some Assorted Thoughts On Life and Happiness and Everything, Part IV

Download this and listen.

Some Assorted Thoughts On Life and Happiness and Everything, Part III

The amazing thing is not that Judy got it right.

The amazing thing is that she got it right, and life STILL took me by surprise.

P.S. We haven't even gotten to the best part yet. Buckle up.

Some Assorted Thoughts On Life and Happiness and Everything, Part II

One day I awoke, got dressed, and went to work at the video game company. Although this day began like any other day during my salaryman existence, it would not end so.

This was the day that I learned that 1) the future of my employment at the company was in doubt (this was a false alarm, but bear with me), and 2) my relationship at the time was over (most definitely NOT a false alarm). I learned of both within hours of each other. I learned of the first by e-mail.

I learned of the second by instant message.

No, this was NOT the opening of a Cameron Crowe movie. In fact, it was my life. It may not have been the most fulfilling life, in retrospect. But it wasn't bad at all. And confronted with the sudden and immediate loss of it, I was shellshocked.

So I stood up from my desk, left the building, and walked across the street to the Hammer Museum. The Hammer Museum has a wonderful enclosed patio: a cool, white marble cube filled with trees and bamboo shoots. It's one of the calmest places in Los Angeles, and one of my secret hiding places when I need to quietly regenerate. Indeed, I spent a lot of time there when I was working at the video game company. (Nowadays, not so much - my entire life is for quietly regenerating.)

As I walked to the museum, my head was filled with a resounding, endless chorus of panic. Panic exploding into panic. Recursive panic.

I entered the museum patio. Stillness and silence, my favorite trees. I climbed to the second floor balcony, and sat down on a bench. Before me was a giant balcony, cut in the shape of a half-ellipse. I could see the rooftops of Westwood rolling before me. I sat and listened to the wind, felt it against my skin.

Suddenly, I couldn't help it anymore. I smiled to myself.

"This is fucking AWESOME!" I thought. "How exciting is this? And SO dramatic!"

It was one thing to be threatened with the loss of a job, or with the loss of a relationship. But both on the same day? Within two hours of each other? If there was a god, this entity had walked up to the bar and told me, "I done bought them drinks. Bitch, you is MY GIRLFRIEND."

It just seemed so ludicrously operatic, hilariously tragic in the Greek sense. It felt as if powerful forces beyond my control had stirred, and were now rushing to evacuate me from my own life. I imagined angels walking around with walkie-talkies, barking orders to each other; "Operation: To Hell With This Bullshit" was a go.

Clearly it had been decided that this life would not do. And it would no longer continue. Effective immediately.

And for one of only a few times in my life, I had absolutely no idea what was going to happen next. An entire universe of possibilites unfolded before me. I was thrilled.

I had the fleeting intuition that something wonderful was about to happen. Something important.

I enjoyed that thought. I got up from the bench, walked back to the office.

And proceeded to panic all over again.

Some Assorted Thoughts On Life and Happiness and Everything, Part I

A few weeks ago, I was minding my own business in yoga class when my instructor called me to center stage. It was time, she informed me, to learn how to do a handstand.

Let me clarify that: A MOTHERFUCKING HANDSTAND.

I noted the fact that everyone in the room was looking at me, smiled politely, and said, "I've never done that before."

Understatement of the year. My instructor proceeded to tell a long anecdote about her first handstand, which took place in her very first class with a new instructor. She was annoyed with him at the time, but eventually realized that he was offering her a special place of honor in the class. Which was my instructor's roundabout way of saying the same thing to me.

Let me give you some context: this woman is one of the greatest teachers I've ever had in any subject. I go to her class every single day. In that time, I've gained seven pounds of muscle. I've grown out of some of my favorite t-shirts. My back, my shoulders, and most importantly, my heart -- all of these have opened. I feel sturdier than ever, and yet, I feel softer than ever. Something is happening to me, and yoga is only a part of it. And my instructor been with me every step of the way, knowing how far I've come, and how much further I will go. I promise you now: this woman will be a guest at my wedding. (That should preempt any "so why don't you marry her" remarks.)

Anyway, the task before me was a handstand. So I got down on my hands and knees, kicked my feet up, and my instructor adjusted my legs into position. My wrists felt as if they were going to snap in half under the pressure of my entire body's weight. But that's a sensation you often feel with every new pose: like the lady says, what you experience at any level is what you experience at every level. I held the pose for fifteen excruciating seconds, not wholly believing my own strength. The sensation was so intense that the only thing in the universe at that moment was the presence of my own strength, overpowering everything else out of existence.

And then I dropped back down. As soon as I had done it, the first thing I thought was: it didn't count because she helped me. So I immediately tried again by myself. And held the pose for another fifteen seconds. My body and mind went supernova. And then it was over.

I still can't believe it. This handstand, along with many other things in my life, would have been an impossibility nine months ago.

But every endeavor begins with a single action, performed in a single moment.

And now I find myself here.

I Hit My Goddamn Milestone For The First Time Ever, People

Well, I finished my outline. In a record-shattering three-and-a-half months.

The movie feels fast. And mischievous. And - thank goodness - solid. It has problems, it will always have problems, but this is definitely a movie and not a crumpled up sheet of paper in my trash bin.

Last night, I was up until three in the morning, talking to Huili about The New Hotness (this seems to be a recurring phrase in my life nowadays.) He gave me a conditonal greenlight, and I'm going into a first draft in January. That cheering you hear is that of the Rebels celebrating the escape of the first assault carrier.

The eternal question when you're writing a film is: will it cohere? Will all the disparate elements, characters, action sequences bouncing around in my head pull themselves together into a movie that actually works? You spend a lot of time paralyzed by this fear, and in order to overcome it, you think. And think some more. An outline is a way of recording your iterative thought processes as you fuss over every single detail in your head, attempting to align them in some semblance of coherent narrative.

Let me give you the context of this feat. My thesis script in film school took about six months to outline, and even then, the outline utterly failed in its purpose of, you know, outlining. I rushed (if it's possible to call turning in a script a year late "rushing") a very messy script to meet my graduation requirements, and that script now lives in a desk drawer, waiting for someone to blackmail me with it. My next script, the Last Whatever, was outlined piecemeal over the period of about a year, while I worked crunch hours at the video game company. The outline wasn't a failure, but it failed to capture the necessary moments of the completed script. I know this because I undertook a page-one rewrite after a year of working on it.

In other words, I suck at outlining. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. Because I'm of the opinion that a movie that reads well as an outline or treatment, it will suck as a movie. Good outlines and treatments, unlike good movies, are simple and obvious in the way they move from point to point.

The suckiness of outlines and treatments (and of writing them) aside, you do need to have some idea of the shape of your movie before you sit down to write it. Screenwriting has a lot in common with architecture in that there are obligatory structures in a film, just as there are in a building. You may not know where the bathroom is located, nor what shade of paint it will have, but you know you must have one.

Memento Mori

If you've been reading this blog, you're aware that I quit my job about nine months ago to pursue my screenwriting career full time. While I was working, I would often spend time working offsite, going to the library to do research, or writing outlines at a museum cafe.

A habit of mine was to write my cell phone number on my cubicle's whiteboard, so if anyone needed to reach me (which was never), they could dial me up. When I left the company, I unintentionally neglected to erase my whiteboard, leaving my number for everyone's reference.

Since I left, my cubicle has been appropriated by not one, but two interlopers. Nine months have passed. Babies have been born. Nations have fallen. The video game I worked on is still nowhere near release.

AND MY NUMBER IS STILL ON THE FREAKING WHITEBOARD.

Along with a drawing of a Gameboy Micro that a coworker drew in order to explain the design aesthetic it shares with the Xbox 360. "That's how little the place has changed," says the former coworker.

"This is so going into my blog," I say.

My lonely cellphone number, imploring my oblivious coworkers to call me, accompanied only by a poor man's rendition of an obsolete video game handheld. If that's not a memento mori for my former employer, I don't know what is. Allow me to say that I am very happy with my current mode of employment.

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!

The Timeline: 2007

Let's get this out of the way: summer vacation is most definitely over. The timeline below merely covers my professional concerns, an extracurricular activity, and none of my personal life. Multiple areas of my existence seem to be expanding simultaneously, and the timing and scale of the expansion is somewhat unexpected.

This writing schedule would have been unfathomable for me as recently as a year ago, and it's still pretty unfathomable now. But I've managed to make a record amount of progress in very little time, and I can only hope that it will continue. One of the things I've realized about my day is that I still only spend a handful of hours every day engaged in truly productive creative work. The difference is that now the remainder of my day now serves to prepare me for those hours, as opposed to hindering me. More on this in a bit.

December 2006

• Home for the holidays
• Finish Lobsters vs. Butterflies outline
• Wrangle Pillow Crisis outline into acceptable shape for studio overseers
• Go to yoga class

January 2007

• Begin Lobsters vs. Butterflies draft
• Tell everything and everyone else to GO TO HELL
• Continue wrangling Pillow Crisis part-time anyway
• Go to yoga class

February 2007

• Continue Lobsters vs. Butterflies draft
• Begin making travel plans for Europe and Asia
• Do as little work on Pillow Crisis as I can get away with
• Go to yoga class

March and April 2007

• Lobsters! Butterflies!
• Pillows?
• Yoga

May 2007

• Finish Lobsters vs. Butterflies Draft
• Nicholl Fellowships Deadline. Enter. Win.
• If still working on Pillow Crisis, ponder own mortality
• Go to Europe - UK? Spain? Italy?
• Go to Asia - China? Japan?
• Go to yoga class

Summer 2007

• Put rouge on LvB (and Pillow Crisis?) and push onto street corner
• Anticipate of writers' strike and possible spec material feeding frenzy
• Make contingency plans as the money runs out
• Alternately, cancel contingency plans and count stacks of money
• Go to yoga class

The Birds

When I returned home from Dallas, my grandfather was visiting from San Jose, and wanted to go the Indian casino in Oklahoma. Every. Single. Day. It was on one of these trips that I managed to hit a $20 jackpot off a single pull of a slot machine.

On the bus ride to the casino, I saw a sight I hadn't seen since I was a boy riding in the car on the way to school: an impossibly large flock of birds, spinning like tea leaves in a cup, shifting position from one set of telephone wires to another, sitting and suddenly moving, again and again. The birds were struggling to find peace, but found themselves endlessly agitated by some unseen force. I must have seen this phenomenon countless times driving up and down Hillcrest Rd. to school in the morning. And I still have no idea what they're doing, or why they're doing it. I can't even identify the species.

You don't see flocks of birds like this in Los Angeles, and you certainly don't see this particular specimen (like a blackbird, but smaller). Birds in Los Angeles tend to be more solitary, if the occasional blackbirds and sparrows I see in my neighborhood are any indication.

When we returned from the casino, the bus deposited us in the expansive tracts of parking lot in front of a Wal-Mart. The birds had gathered in the countless tiny trees of the countless parking lot islands, and were chittering to each other in a monstrous cacophony. It's utterly lame to describe natural phenomena in industrial terms, but they are the only references I have: the noise sounded like a thousand tiny car alarms going off at once. Conversation was impossible, as was thinking. The experience was one of the most eerie and unsettling I can remember.

Day of the Ninja

Today, in case you hadn't heard, is the Day of the Ninja. An auspicious day to break an unintentional month-long silence, especially if you know anything about what I've up to for the past three months. Also, Naruto is a ninja. Never forget.

The short story is that I've been very busy. Pillow Crisis is back in play with our overseers at the studio, and the Lobsters vs. Butterflies outline is nearly complete. I've watched about 30 movies in the past month, read half as many books, and have spent too much time listening to the Naruto Original Sound Tracks. LvB has seeped its way through my skin and into my bloodstream, as I compulsively spend the majority of my day thinking about crustaceans and insects. Even when I would prefer not to.

Over the past two months or so, I've learned a lot about self-employment workflow. Most of my upcoming posts will concern the lessons of making your own work.

What else? I went home for Thanksgiving, won $20 off a single pull of a nickel slot machine, and managed to not buy any clothes. I caught up with a friend who doesn't read this blog, and he said, "You've had a very exciting year."

And 2006 is a bottle of melatonin compared to 2007. My next post will concern the timeline for the next six months. It involves one newly completed screenplay, brand new negotiations with the studios, Europe, Asia, and some very intriguing guest stars. And these aren't even the possibilities - these are just the ACTUALITIES.