Update, podcast and a piece of advice

My podcast is up! Here's all the information I'm too lazy to type out for myself: http://www.scriptdoctoreric.com/2012/04/scriptcast-42-emily-blake-strikes-back.html

This episode was really long. The one they posted on ITunes is trimmed down from the original broadcast, and it's still really long. I am a tangenty individual. But we had a grand time. I love these guys and I am always up for talking about what makes scripts work.

Meanwhile, I haven't actually written any screenplay pages in months. I've been working on treatment after treatment but not any scenes. Last weekend I kicked off the first few pages of a new script and it was fun. This morning I cranked out the first big action piece, and the words just flowed. It's like they were backed up behind the fence and then I released them into the world. Feels good.

Writing is fun. Now if someone would just pay me to do this, I'd be golden.

The best thing about having a fiance who's in law enforcement is that he's always got clever and realistic ways to pull of action sequences. He's like my action scene consultant. I say to him, "Beefcake," says I, "if you were trapped in a mine and needed to get past some bad guys to get to the entrance, how would you do it?"

And then he'll give me a three-hour lecture on different procedures and what kind of weapons would be best.

Sometimes I'll be like "Hey Beefcake, what kind of gun would you use to shoot zombies if you were trapped in a mine?"* And he'll give me a list of possible options.

Plus he has friends in like EVERY branch of law enforcement, so if I ever need to know about some procedures I can just find someone to ask. It's a pretty sweet deal for me.

So if there's one piece of advice I could give to writers in search of a career in action films, it would be to marry a law enforcement agent who really likes talking about how to shoot shit. And get him to take you shooting because it's fun, even if he does get embarrassed when I pretend I'm shooting zombies with the shotgun.



*I am not actually writing a story that takes place in a mine or anything about zombies. But maybe I should be.

Do not buy from Southern California Auto Sales of Fullerton

Since it's Saturday I'm going to break my self-imposed rule. I try hard to make this about only movies or teaching, and I really really try to stay on movies and screenwriting with minimal posts about teaching. But today, I must stray from my mission because when something like this happens you can't ignore the fact that you've got a public forum in which to express your grievances.

In February the Beefcake decided to buy a new car because at the time he drove a piece of shit sedan he had beaten into the ground over years of doing a job that involved driving all over LA and its surrounding areas, a job he has replaced with one close to home. Since he teaches a free workout class in a park every Saturday morning he wanted and SUV in which to load all his workout gadgets, and since we're both fans of the Earth and its accouterments, he decided to buy a hybrid SUV.

Don't give me any lectures about the batteries. I researched. They recycle them now.

There are 4 hybrid SUVs on the market, the most affordable and easy to find being the hybrid Ford Escape. I did some research. I found one with 50,000 miles on it at Southern California Auto Sales, which is based in Santa Ana but has a location in Fullerton on Euclid Street.

Allow me to repeat, in case anyone is interested in buying a car at Southern California Auto Sales in Fullerton, that's where it is. On Euclid Street.

The Beefcake bought the car and we drove away, happy as Larry. He loved it. Leg room, space for his weight lifting gadgets, a quiet little engine. He donated his old car to Goodwill, which was able to get over $2 grand for it. So in one fell swoop he helped out some poor people and got an Earth friendly vehicle.

And he payed the price.

Last week the engine began making a knocking sound. At first we didn't know if anything was wrong because it has a hybrid engine, and does anyone really know what that sounds like when things go bad? So finally Saturday the knocking got worse so he took it to the Ford dealership. Because it's a Ford and there are still no hybrid mechanics in town.

So kids, if you're looking for an up and coming job, we are in need of hybrid mechanics. Every mechanic I talked to was sorry they couldn't help an appalled that the dealer wouldn't.

The Ford mechanic said The Beefcake needs a new engine. A brand new $5,000 engine. For his four-year-old car with 50,000 miles on it that he just bought in February.

Southern California Auto Sales in Fullerton told him he was "110 percent responsible" for the engine and that he should have gotten the extended warranty. They said they changed the oil, but how were they supposed to know it had an engine problem?

He called Ford. They agreed that it's a shitty situation, but they can do nothing.

He's calling the attorney general's office and writing to Ford and doing a few other things, including considering small claims court because a close family member is a corporate attorney, but in the end he may have to fork out $5 grand for a new engine for his three-month old Ford Escape Hybrid.

We were going to buy a house this year. We've been saving and saving and I've been pulling myself out of debt so we could buy a house in time to beat the cutoff for the tax credit. This was enough of a dent in our savings that it has seriously affected our housing search.

Southern California Auto Sales of Fullerton nearly cost me a house.

So if by any chance you ever consider buying your car there, don't. They have no problem selling you a lemon and then telling you to fuck off when you ask them to pay for the damaged goods.

Thoughts on the film: Star Trek

Just like so many other people, I saw Star Trek this weekend. A lot has been said already by various people all over the Internet, so I'm just going to make two specific points.

First, one of the trailers was for GI Joe. This trailer looked so phenomenally stupid I was amazed it was released to the public. When your trailer editor can't make your explosion-heavy film look good you have a serious problem. Oh look, they destroyed the Eiffel Tower again. Never seen that before. And look, every single character kind of looks the same. I didn't see the different personalities from the show. I saw like three characters I vaguely recognized and a bunch of other generic things I've seen before. And I'm not the only one. When the trailer ended, laughter ran throughout the theater. Not awe and comments about how people wanted to go see it - actual guffaws over the silliness. See for yourself:

GI Joe trailer

I'd post it directly but I can't get Youtube at work.

Okay so there's that.

Then we watched the movie, which was the opposite of that. Moving, fun, exactly what it was supposed to be. It had plenty of references for the average fan but it wasn't one long inside joke. The Beefcake, who is not a Star Trek fan and not really a fan of sci-fi at all, did not hate the movie. Believe me, that's high praise. If it's not Robocop, he hates it.

I knew like five minutes in when I was emotionally moved by the birth/death scene that I was gonna like this, but there was one particular moment where I realized just how well this was written.

Spoilers from an early scene:

At one point Kirk, Sulu and some guy in a red jumpsuit (Yep, red. Guess what happens to him?) are on their way down to the planet on their first away mission. Sulu volunteered because he claimed to have combat training. Kirk asks him what his combat training is, to which he replies "Fencing."

And you laugh. Oh dear, fencing. He'll be useful. Well Kirk, I guess it's all up to you because we know Red Shirt over there won't be around long.

Then they get down to their target and Kirk ends up in a fight to the death and here comes Sulu, and just when this Romulan comes at him and you think he is totally screwed, he reaches in his backpack and pulls out a retractable sword.

And you go "Oh. Fencing!"

Textbook screenwriting. You thought that was a throwaway line for laughs, but Sulu turns out to know exactly what he's doing, and it gives us a badass sword fight on big platform filled with firey things. I think that was my favorite moment in the movie.

End spoilers

The whole thing was fun, really. It was pretty tight. There was one chase-through-snow-by-alien-creatures sequence that brought up not-so-fond memories of the useless underwater chase from The Phantom Menace that could have been cut waaaaay down, and there was this thing in the water tubes that seemed sort of random, but other than that the story was very clean and moved along at a good clip.

In short, as my students would say, I likeded it.

How I spent my weekend

I didn't post Friday because I was away this weekend.

You know, sometimes you look at the note from a substitute and you can just tell they are a complete idiot. People, don't become a sub unless you have some balls. "I am not accustomed to students rifling through a teacher's desk" he says.

Neither am I. Why the fuck was he letting them do that?

Anyway, After I was sick that one day, which is why I took a sick day of course, I got well just in time to go to San Francisco. My absence from school is in no way affiliated with my trip, Mr. Principal.

Anyway, some people like to make big elaborate plans and itineraries and such when they travel. They like everything to be smooth and organized and chaos free.

Not me. I usually make hotel reservations just to make sure I get the best deal and then go from there. There's always one or two things I'd like to do, but nothing on a set schedule. When I visited Paris for the first time I just walked to what I could see. I'd see something interesting in the distance and then I'd walk until I got there to see what it was. Note to anyone who plans to do this: The Eiffel Tower is visible from several miles away. You should probably take the Metro or you might end up crawling back to your hotel room.

Don't tell my mom, but I've stayed in some real crack dens because of the fly-by-night planning method. Once, Ex Boyfriend and I stayed in the nastiest, cheapest motel in town where actual drug dealers were doing business in the room below. The hotel manager was so happy to have us that he gave us a giant candle thingee to take home at the end of our stay, although I spent the entire drive back pondering the possibility that it was actually a bomb and the hotel manager was a terrorist using us to blow up the infidel-filled Los Angeles. This is probably why I write action movies.

In San Francisco The Beefcake and I wanted to do two things: Go to Alcatraz and walk on the bridge. Now Alcatraz was awesome because The Beefcake has some pull in certain things, and we got to see parts of the island the rest of the visitors did not get to see. We are in a lot of people's vacation photos, I'm sure. So that went well and I learned a lot of things.

But the bridge - ah, the bridge. First we couldn't figure out the bus routes because they're not as well marked as one would hope. They have much better public transportation in San Fran than LA, but much less information about where that transportation is going. But that's okay because every single person we met there was nice. It was kind of weird. I've never been to a place where people were so goddamn friendly.

Anyway so we finally found the bridge at 6:45 and as we started to walk across it a loud, disembodied and angry female voice yelled out "Those two people going on the bridge, you need to turn around. You are not allowed on the bridge at this hour."

So we turned around after our scolding and pondered what to do next, and while we were pondering the disembodied voice basically told us to go fuck our mothers. Actually, she said if we had a problem with it we could call somebody and they could explain to us how to fuck our mothers. Actually, that's not what she said but it was kind of like that. We were just looking at the bridge and wishing we could cross it; we weren't planning the mutiny of which we were suspected.

Apparently they close the bridge at 6:30 so people won't jump off at night. Jumping off during the day is preferred.

After we left the hotel the next morning we drove over to the bridge to walk it in the day time, but then the rains came. It was like living in a fucking rain forest with the rain and the more rain and the goddamn windy rain. And we were like "Fuck a poncho," and I remembered when I was standing in front of my apartment with an umbrella and Beefcake was like "We don't need that," and made me put it back. Even though it took up no space in the car.

That dude is weird.

We walked about a fourth of the way down the bridge before we turned around and came back. Sheets of water fell right off the bridge over the swarm of ducks that was partying in the rain. My swede coat is no longer the same shade of brown. My socks were soaked through and the hood on my sweatshirt was still wet when we arrived in LA 9 hours later.

But that's what stories are made of. Sure, we could have gotten there on a sunny day and walked across the bridge and back, but then that's all there would be to it. "Did you go on the bridge?" people would ask, and we would say "Yes, it was nice." But now we can say "Yes, dammit, and we got soaked and scolded and couldn't see shit because it was all wet everywhere. And there were ducks."

That's actually why I travel, I think. So I can see the crack dens and the rain-soaked bridges and get lost in the middle of nowhere and explore the world around me in a way that will give me stories to tell.

The Beefcake likes it

The Beefcake (my boyfriend for the uninitiated) doesn't watch very many shows with plots. He prefers Discovery Channel type stuff like Man Vs Wild and Human Wrecking Balls and Destroyed in Seconds so I spend a lot of nights learning about destruction and survival. We like to see what kind of sweater Ron Pitts will wear today on Destroyed in Seconds and we also like to predict which kind of destruction it will be in each episode. It's always some combination of race car crash, boat race crash, some kind of natural disaster, and an industrial explosion.

But I'm not satisfied with standalone explosions. I like my explosions to be plot related. So I've spent a goodly amount of time trying to figure out what The Beefcake will and will not tolerate watching.

His main beef (haha I said beef) with plot dramas is that they take themselves too seriously. He cannot sit still for 24 because Jack is always so damned intense. He's got a point - when's the last time anybody on 24 made a joke? There is no Chandler Bing at CTU. And don't get that man started on the ridiculousness of Prison Break.

He tried valiantly to watch Battlestar Galactica, but after listening patiently to my explanation of the storyline for quite some time he finally told me to just watch while he played with the cat. We had a similar experience with Lost, although he's willing to put in a little more effort on that one because he used to like Alias. But Lost is confusing even for those of us who've been there for every episode.

"Stop explaining," he said to me last night. "Every time you explain I get more confused."

Beefcake doesn't like sitcoms much either because they're fake. They go the opposite direction in that they don't take themselves seriously enough.

This is why he loves Leverage. Leverage has a sense of humor and is easy to follow, but has deep character development and theme. Plus, explosions. Seriously though, is that not the best show on TV right now? I think I have fallen in love with Aldis Hodge.

I've been trying to think up other shows he might enjoy. I need to introduce him to Burn Notice, I think. I tried Psych and he doesn't hate it, but the campiness is a bit overwhelming. He'll tolerate Life on Mars but he feels like Life is too procedural. He doesn't mind Supernatural, probably because we both agree that Jensen Ackles is cooler than squeezy cheese.

I'm grateful that The Beefcake is patient enough to watch the shows at least once, and I'm even more grateful that he doesn't like football. Still, there's only so many car race crashes I can watch before I want a backstory, so I'll keep looking for good shows he won't mind watching.

Getting around to The Shield

I have a confession to make. I never watched the last season of The Shield.

It's sitting on my DVR, in its entirety, just waiting for me to get around to it and mocking me every time I go to select something to watch.

It all began when I didn't get time to watch the season premiere. By the time I was able to get around to it, there was a second episode already recorded. I thought about it, then decided I just wasn't up for The Shield. And than another week went by, and, well, I decided to just wait and have a marathon some day when I was more in the mood.

The Shield is one of those shows you have to be in the mood to watch. Or Battlestar Galactica and Lost, too. You can't really just plunk down with some essays to grade and casually glance over at those shows the way you can with an NCIS or a Law and Order or even The Daily Show. You gotta pay attention to a serious drama.

And with The Shield, you have the added bonus of a grim view of humanity. Sometimes the dark nature of The Shield just makes it hard to drum up the energy to watch it.

I loved The Shield. I still remember when the very first commercial stopped me and my then roommate cold in our living room. It was played backwards, and you learn at the end that this guy had just shot a criminal in cold blood, and that the guy was a cop. A cop who looked a lot like the Commish. We were plunked in front of the TV for the premiere. We didn't even wait for Tivo to frontload, we watched commercials and everything. And Former Roommate NEVER watched commercials.

But it's tough to work up the investment in an episode of the show because it's just so grim and complex. It's effected my ability to watch other shows too. I tried to get into Sons of Anarchy but it was just too heavy and knowing I already had The Shield backing up on my DVR made me quit recording it. I did watch The Riches, but it suffered the same fate as The Shield. I think I finally watched the last season about three months after it aired.

So maybe it's just FX shows. But even though I do watch Battlestar Galactica within the next week, I always end up waiting until I can pay careful attention.

So tonight I turned on my TV and saw that I was recording both Leverage and DEA, shows The Beefcake likes to watch. I can't watch them until he gets here tomorrow, so as I was scrolling through the shows and movies I already had recorded, I remembered The Shield. And now I'm watching it.

But I'm only writing this post between important plot points because this shit is intense.

Neal McDonough is totally stalking me

Neal McDonough lives in my neighborhood.

A little over a year ago one morning I was discussing with Ex Boyfriend how awesome Neal McDonough is. I don't remember how he came up - I was probably explaining something about Band of Brothers. Anyway, I love the guy. He always carries a lot of poised and intelligence mixed with a tough guy exterior, which is my favorite kind of person in the whole world. Even when he's in things that suck, which is kind of a lot, he does not suck.

So anyway, a little over a year ago I had a conversation with Ex Boyfriend about the level of Neal McDonough's awesomeness. Then, not an hour later as we walked through the parking lot that is the Larchmont farmer's market, WHO THE FUCK DO WE SEE?

That's right. Neal Fucking McDonough. He was blocking traffic with a baby carriage so he could talk to a bunch of screenwriters who he kept saying very loudly were all screenwriters.

I stood there, supposedly admiring the hummus on the table before me, squealing a bit with joy. Neal McDonough's friend caught me and laughed. I eventually pushed by the baby carriage and went on my merry way, only to walk right past Kevin Weisman like thirty seconds later. I had not been talking about him that morning, but I do own Alias season 2 on DVD so that was cool.

Okay anyway, so just last night Beefcake and I watched the film Traitor, which also stars Neal McDonough. I went on my usual rant about how awesome he is, complete with story about how I saw him a year ago at the farmer's market pushing a baby carriage with a male friend, at which point of course Beefcake said he is gay. because Beefcake thinks everybody's gay. But he told me I should have said something at the farmer's market that day. It's not like he's an A list guy. He's a successful actor, but most people probably don't know him by name so maybe he'd like to be recognized.

So today I rode my bike to Pavillions and WHO THE FUCK DO I SEE WALKING DOWN THE FROZEN PIZZA AISLE?

OMG. Neal McDonough.

I picked up the phone to dial the Beefcake but my phone was dead. I was on my own.

I put stuff in my basket, plotting out what I'd say if I ended up behind him in line.

Then I got my chance. I grabbed my last item and stepped up to the checkout lines and there he was, right at the end of one with a shitload of groceries.

So I stepped up behind him with my basket and stood for a minute while he unloaded his goods.

I leaned forward.

"Do you hate it when people recognize you?" I said.

"Kind of," he replied.

"Oh," I said. "Then I don't recognize you at all. But if I did recognize you, I'd probably think you were awesome."

He smiled.

"Thank you. If you recognized me, I'd be flattered."

We stood for a minute, watching the lady in front of us fiddle with her coupons.

"So are you an actress?" he asked.

"Writer," I said.

"Have anything produced?"

"Not yet. Still trying to break in, I'm afraid. But I'm getting there."

"What are you working on?" he asked.

"Zombie script. But not a horror. A big budget action pic about a family of survivors in a zombie filled world."

"That sounds like something I'd like to read. Can I read it?"

"Of course! Hell, you'd be absolutely perfect for the lead."

He wrote something on the back of a business card and handed it to me.

"Here. Send it to my agent. His email's on the back."




Sigh.



Actually I just got in the line next to him, occasionally spotting his unkempt blond hair over the rack of gum between us. He had a shitload of groceries and I was not going to wait in line for that.

Easy research

I like hanging out with new people because when you hang out with new people you learn new things. Everybody's an expert on something.

I've dated a geologist and a rock musician and a welder and an aspiring stunt man and a guy who didn't have any hobbies at all, but for most of those people I was able to learn lots of interesting things. I saw Dante's Peak and a bunch of shitty emo bands I had to pretend I liked and did not weld anything but I zapped myself in the leg with a stun gun and sat around and did nothing.

And now Beefcake has the most interesting hobby so far. I don't have to fake interest like I did with the emo bands.

Beefcake is into a particular type of contest I didn't really know anything about before I met him, but now he's exposing me to it on a regular basis and I am fascinated.

But the coolest thing about this is that NOBODY has mined this area for stories. Before Christmas I looked all over for a movie or book on these contests to give him and I came up with a big goose egg. Actually that's not true. There's one ghost written autobiography nobody's ever heard of and one shitty looking amateur documentary.

The field is wide open, my friends. Wide fucking open.

The problem when you write about contests, though, is avoiding the obvious story cliches: the big come-from-behind victory or the Rocky I-just-proved-I-could ending. Redbelt managed to get around that by being a story about a man whose mission was to avoid the ring entirely. I need to find something like that, something that makes this unlike other movies about a competition.

My plan is to let it come to me. I'm still fixing Not Dead Yet and after that I'll be fixing Fear of Clowns so I have some time before I can start working on this. (I'm putting the vampires away indefinitely because I have a feeling we are about to be inundated with vampire scripts.)

In the meantime, I'm going to go to at least two more contests and visit the players while they train and listen and learn. And I'm hoping something will click and suddenly there it will be: THE STORY.

See, this is how you do it. Write about a topic on which your boyfriend is an expert and the research comes to you.

Christmas in LA

Everybody's planning to vacate the town. Coworkers are packing up, the Beefcake is driving a different person to the airport every morning, the freeways are empty.

I love when the freeways are empty.

Everybody keeps asking me if I'm going home for the holidays and when I tell them no their eyes bug out and they stare at me, incredulous.

But EVERYBODY goes home!

On Christmas day I plan to go to the mall to see Benjamin Button and I bet there won't be anybody there. Hell, I can go to Target on Christmas Eve and it will be like a regular shopping day. But not Wal Mart. Don't go to Wal Mart on Christmas Eve because the people who don't leave town are the same people who go to Wal Mart.

Anyway, if you drive down the street it is empty. This morning on the way to work I had normal traffic on the streets, then when I hit the 10, NOTHING. Usually it's packed but today it was a breeze.

So while everybody else is crammed up with family visits and packed malls and snowy roads, LA is a ghost town. I love when it's a ghost town.

My family always has appetizers on Christmas Eve then plays a board game, so this year Best Friend will come over and we're going to eat my appetizers and play Wii. She's Muslim so her family won't miss her. Then in the morning after Beefcake and I do a gift exchange he has to go to work so that's when I'm heading to the movies.

Benjamin Button just feels like the perfect movie to watch alone with the Jews and the Athiests on Christmas Day, don't you think?

Anyway, I have a three foot tree and a scented candle so I'm ready. Merry Christmas!

Thoughts on The Wrestler, Once Upon a Time in Hell, and Grand Theft Auto

Saturday the Beefcake and I went to see The Wrestler at the Arclight.

There's this really, really long moment after the film fades to black before the credits come up and it is completely necessary so we can all gain our composure before we have to start concentrating again.

"That was a good movie," was pretty much all I had to say when we left the theater. I didn't want to ruin the film by overanalyzing it.

But then a little while later we started to talk about it and I said there was a bit of point-of-view violation. And then I couldn't think of anything else to complain about. It's just a fucking great movie. Much like Mikey, The Beefcake hates everything that isn't Robocop, but he loved the hell out of The Wrestler.

This weekend I also tore through three screenplays. I'll get to Inglorious Bastards later, but I also read Once Upon a Time in Hell and Grand Theft Auto because I really enjoy being depressed about the human condition.

Both of these scripts were well constructed and both were really violent tales about revenge and greed and women whose men treat them like shit. Once Upon a Time in Hell is not quite as clean a read - there were parts where I was a little confused as to what was going on, mostly because Brian McGreevey & Lee Shipman change people's names regularly depending on how they've been described. For instance, they'll start out by calling a guy "MAN" then later somebody will call that guy "PORKY" so they'll change his name to that, then later on we'll learn that his real name is "BOB" so they'll start calling him that. That's not literally what they did - nobody's named Porky - but that's sort of how it reads. Once Upon a Time in Hell also flips back and forth between past and present so frequently that it gets hard to follow the timeline.

Very mild spoilers follow.

The story itself is pretty good - really gritty and violent, as the title would imply. The young son of a mobster is ready to begin a promising career as a lawyer with his beautiful fiance at his side when his brother betrays him and takes everything he had. Which of course leads to some pretty nasty revenge.

The movie has one of those "happy" endings that's sort of like "Oh. Everybody's fucked but they're kind of okay-ish for now. yay."

I also read Grand Theft Auto.

Dude.

Usually when you get a video game adaptation it blows big fat goat chunks because they either have to blow off the game aspect to make a good story or they try too hard to make it feel like the game so that the story sucks (*cough* Doom *cough*).

But Grand Theft Auto, written by Jason Dean Hall, felt like both a solid story and a transfer of the video game. Our protagonist, Emile, is a reformed criminal and drug addict trying to make it right by working a legitimate job as a repo specialist, but it seems like everything in his life is in foreclosure, so he gets back into his old life for one more job.

Then the shit hits the fan. Drugs, gunfire, lots of stolen cars, a helicopter, a naked lady, cops, Yakuza, Mongols, decapitations, betrayals, suicides, you name it the shit's in there. But somehow it all feels organic to the story.

I think what works here that felt a little forced in Crank - it has pacing like Crank or Shoot 'Em Up, fast as fuck - is that our protag is not just trying to get away or maintain, he's actually on a mission, a mission with a clock. This film is GO GO GO from the second you hit the first page. Usually when I read a screenplay I get sleepy in the middle and have to break before I can finish it. Not this one. This puppy was rock 'em sock 'em.

I'm not sure which one I want to read next. Maybe Butter.

My Halloween costume

I love Halloween. How could you not? You get to dress up and be somebody else for a whole night. It's the only night in the year when you can get away with dressing like a complete whore and not sustain any weird looks. Guys can feel good wearing dresses.

For me, I always try to go as a fictional character I admire. Well, in the past I did. I've been Buffy three times and a Jedi twice. I was Trinity once too.

Two years ago I was trying to be the Heroes cheerleader but I waited too late and at the last minute I couldn't find the right costume so I ended up buying an outfit from Frederick's and going as a Poodle Skirt Girl. It was lame. It also broke my Halloween Costume Rules - make it comfortable, make sure it has pockets, and make sure it's something you'll disassemble and wear again in a practical setting.

Last year I went as a boxer. That was pretty cool. A lot of drunk guys in WeHo tried to fight me. I think I really hit one of them pretty hard by accident. Throughout the night I sort of developed this smiley pose and tapped people who tried to box with me. It went with my rules because it was super comfortable and I had pockets. And I didn't have to buy anything new, although I did use it as an excuse to buy a new sports bra. It's blue.

This year I was supposed to go as a prison guard and Beefcake was to be my prisoner. But he got all rulesy on me about buying an inmate costume that he'd never wear again.

So the other night I was sitting there looking at his muscular ass, trying to figure out what he could be. Gladiator? No, he refuses to wear a skirt. Hulk? He ain't painting his skin green. Conan? I forget why Conan was unacceptable.

Then I said - hey how about the Terminator?

And then I was all OMG! I can be Sarah Connor!

Costume perfection.

So we're going to be T2 tomorrow night. I bought some BDUs at California Surplus Mart, where the clerk told me he thinks they bought Sarah Connor's costume there for the movie. He also said they buy stuff for the Night Rider show there. I can see why. If you're looking for costume stuff for a military film that place has everything.

Anyway, I bought my uber comfortable pants and tomorrow night I will be Sarah Connor. Movie Sarah Connor, not TV Sarah Connor.

I love being a badass fictional woman. There's just something fun about putting on a persona for the night and working it while you consume many beers. I think Sarah's a hard drinker. And if anybody tries to get out of line the Terminator and I can bust out some moves. I learned a new throw a few weeks ago and I'm dying to try it.

What are you for Halloween?

Vacay

As you read this I am either on a plane or sunning myself in Puerto Rico. Suck it.

Best Friend's parents have a time share so we can stay for a week for free in a luxury resort near San Juan, a place I have never before been. I bought a new shirt for the occasion.

As soon as I leave Puerto Rico I'm flying to Raleigh to visit the folks for a few days. It was only an extra $60 to make the detour, which is way cheaper than taking a whole new trip for Christmas. However that does mean that for the first time I'll be familyless on Christmas, and since the Beefcake has to work until 10 pm I'll be dancing around my 3 foot tree with the cat, singing "Oh Holy Night" at the top of my lungs all day as I play Trivial Pursuit with myself and eat pigs in blankets.

But I digress.

I can post from my mom's house, but I'm not sure what kind of access I'll have to the Internet in my luxury condo, nor do I think I'll want to bother with the rest of the world while I'm relaxing in the hot tub, ignoring the hot Puerto Rican dudes as they walk by because my boyfriend can deadlift over 500 lbs and that is not jealousy you want to awaken.

My point is, I'll be gone for a while but I'll be back on the 12th. Don't go too crazy.

Moments Before

The past couple of weekends I've been witnessing a crew film a web series starring The Beefcake called Moments Before.

This is my favorite. The Long Weight:


There's also two that were shot earlier. A Plate Too Far:


and Remote Destiny:


There are several more to come. I find them hilarious and they're only at most a minute long.

Directing: part 2

This weekend I watched some friends film again.

Okay, I watched Beefcake's friends film. We were supposed to go to the beach but there was filming for a couple of hours before we went that of course turned into an all-day event. I had fun anyway, even though I felt at times like I was getting in the way. For a while I was in charge of the air conditioning, so I feel like that made up for the two times I ruined a take by chortling.

Anyway, I realized while I was watching them shoot some YouTube footage that these guys are a pretty laid back crew and they own their own equipment and all they really need is material to shoot.

And it just so happens I have a cheapass script ready to go. The boxing script is ready but it's expensive to shoot and will take a lot of work so I'm slowly putting that together. But I have another script called "Guthrie" that I have long wanted to shoot. The script is just about as cheap as a short can get. I would just have to rent a studio apartment for a day.

Then this morning I was looking around Beefcake's apartment and realized that if I rewrote the script a bit I could turn the studio into a single and BAM, there's the location for the short. It's even messy enough that I don't have to do anything to it except move a couch around. And if I use those guys for the crew - this could cost me a cool $100 to shoot and still be good enough to put into festivals.

So even though Game Night is apparently in infinite post production, I might be able to shoot and edit myself a second film in the mean time. All I have to buy is food and a big sheet of green material and a cop uniform. I'm already cast and everything.

So I'm gonna make a movie again.

Failed again

Well I didn't win the John August thing. This week John August put up another scene challenge - this time it required the use of a fork, a photograph and a phobia. I haven't been able to set up scrippets yet so this will have to be ghetto style.

FADE IN.
EXT. CHILDREN'S BIRTHDAY PARTY - DAY
Loud music, children's laughter. Kids run like roaches all over the grass in some exhausted lady's backyard, surrounded by parents who have given up trying to corral them. A CLOWN bends some balloon animals for a small CHILD.

A 30-something man dressed in black and and out of breath, ROGER, appears at the entrance to the street. He pauses, looks around, then slips unnoticed into the party.

A woman in her twenties, SANDY, appears in the same street entrance, also out of breath. She scans the party. She see the Clown. She flattens herself against the wall and breathes deeply, eyes closed. The Child comes up to her, waving around his balloon donkey.

CHILD
Hi.

SANDY
Nice... what the hell is that?

CHILD
It's a donkey.

SANDY
An ass? He made you an ass?

She looks up, steadily breathing, at the clown.

SANDY
I fucking hate clowns.

She steels herself, then creeps into the party. She grabs a FORK from a table full of cake. She walks around the Clown, careful not to get too close. She scans the rest of the party, looking carefully through each adult she encounters. Then she sees Roger. They make eye contact.

Roger backs away slowly, looking around for a way to make a break for it. Sandy gets closer. Roger rushes over to the Clown and hides behind him.

SANDY
Fucking clowns.

She takes several deep breaths as Roger looks to the street exit and back to Sandy, who is up on her toes, ready to give chase. She dares not go near the Clown. The Clown turns to Roger.

CLOWN
Would you like a donkey?

ROGER
Fuck off, loser.

CLOWN
Well, I... I don't...

ROGER
Shut up.

He pushes the clown at Sandy, who screams. The children scream. Roger runs to the street. Sandy stabs at the Clown with her fork. The Clown screams. Everybody screams. Sandy pushes the Clown and chases after Roger. Right as he's about to get to the exit she catches him and knocks him to the ground.

SANDY
Where is it, Roger? Give it!

He tries to push her off. She clocks him in the head.

SANDY
GIVE IT!

She digs in his pockets.

ROGER
Help! Help!

The parents watch, drinking margaritas in plastic cups. Sandy pulls a POLAROID out of Roger's pocket. She looks at it. In the photo, Lindsey Lohan sunbathes naked in her backyard. Boobies are present.

SANDY
If you come near Lindsey again I will fucking kill you, you giant piece of crap!

She leaps up and runs out of the party. The Child comes up to Roger.

CHILD
Did you see my balloon?

FADE OUT.


First of all, I wrote it in five minutes. I probably should have put more effort into that.

I chose one of the most common phobias in the contest - clowns. But look, other people who used clowns, Coulrophobia is my ACTUAL PHOBIA. I am actually terrified of clowns, unlike a lot of the people who wrote about them. I'm not talking "Clowns are creepy" or "I don't like clowns." I mean clowns make me hyperventilate and panic and possibly run like hell.

And while we're on the subject I would like to commend Beefcake, who asked me the last time we passed a clown up in front of the Kodak if I'd like him to "Beat the clown up." I did not take him up on it that time, but it's good to know he's prepared to commit clownicide if necessary.

Anyway, I also used another common occurrence in the contest - stabbing someone with the fork. But look, I had to incorporate violence somehow because that's what I do.

At least I had a female protagonist. Most people didn't even include girls.

And just now this minute I thought of an actual event from my life that did indeed involve all three of the elements in the contest. In retrospect, I should have just written up that scene. Maybe for shits and giggles I'll write that up tomorrow.

Alas.

Get busy learning or get busy being bored

I'm back. I went to Big Bear for the weekend. It was weird seeing stars and sleeping without the sound of traffic rushing by. But now I'm back to the constant hum of car horns and helicopters. Home.

After about three different nightmare discussions with various Indian Dell employees who all told me there was no way they could ship me a $12 part unless I gave them a skin graft and my social security number and the proposed name of my first child, I finally got one guy who was like, "Oh yeah no problem."

Dell, you are a stupid, stupid company.

Anyway so now I'm finally getting my cable, which is great because I've been using my old Acer laptop and every day something new stops working. Today my back buttons have stopped functioning in Firefox and there are no bookmarks.

As a result I haven't been able to write at all for the past few days. That hasn't been a major issue since I've been in the wilderness for four days, but now that I'm home and don't have to work for eight weeks I'd really like to finish my script. I keep staring at my Dell longingly as it rests in the corner all alone, dreaming of the AC current it needs to survive.

In order to not waste my time I've been studying. I'm reading Eric Lichtenfeld's Action Speaks Louder, a book about the origin and development of the modern action film. As I've been reading I've realized how many of these films I never saw, so I'm going through them one by one as I read. I'm learning all kinds of things about symbolism and technique that I would have learned in a film school class. It basically means I'm taking my own class on action for way cheaper than tuition and without having to drive anywhere.

It is my goal to see if I can go a whole week without driving anywhere and to use my bike to get around the city. Fortunately the Beefcake lives about two minutes from me, because if he was in the valley I think we'd have to break up.

Anyway, I'm going to begin my education with Dirty Harry in a moment. Yes, I've never seen Dirty Harry. Beefcake likes to make fun of the fact that if the film was made before 1980 I probably haven't seen it, so I'm attempting to remedy that situation one old movie at a time.

I've seen Taxi Driver and The French Connection and I've already made a big deal about how much I love Three Days of the Condor, but what else should I see? I can't possibly go through all the films listed in the book in the next few weeks but I can see a few. What would you pick for a favorite old action flick?

Sharing is caring

Whenever you start a new relationship one of the first things you have to do is the old film exchange. I always bust out Firefly and Buffy episodes and yell "Ooooh! This one! You have to watch this one!"

The kind of guys I date have always already seen my favorite movies so it's the TV I have to show them. The kind of guys I date don't generally watch TV but when I show them what I love they usually get into Firefly pretty quickly. Buffy is a harder sell.

For me, it's always some action movie. Ex-Boyfriend made me watch Con Air an absurd amount of times, and I'm still convinced it was my refusal to stop making fun of Nick Cage's mullet that got me dumped.

So this time it's gonna be Conan, The Way of the Gun and The Wild Bunch. Two of them are sitting on my table right now on loan and the other is in my Netflix queue. I'm also pretty sure I'm going to end up watching a lot of Robocop. Fortunately I like Robocop a lot more than I like Con Air.

Back in high school it was music. I knew about emo long before Dashboard Confessional came on the scene because one of my exes was a major Promise Ring fan. I remember the day he introduced me to Sunny Day Real Estate. I also remember the day another ex played me my first Sublime song and how happy it made me feel.

I still learn new music, but most of the guys I date don't listen to all that new gay shit. They listen to classic rock because they're men, goddammit.

It's one of my favorite parts of starting a new relationship - that moment where the other person gets all excited because they want to show their favorite films with you so you can share their love.

So they introduce me to the films they love, manly films with manly protagonists and lots of guns and muscles and explosions. Which suits me just fine.

Does your mother know?

Everybody and their mom is talking about The Dark Knight today and god knows I want to see it too, but I've got something else on my mind right this minute.

Mamma Mia.

Yes, the ABBA movie. Today this movie is a bittersweet film for me.

When I was a little girl my mom used to teach sign language to teenagers by using ABBA songs. This was before the Internet and before CDs and Itunes and other such nonsense, so we listened to records, then eventually upgraded to tapes. So Mom had to listen to each song over and over and write down the words so she could figure out how to sign them. And I helped.

That means I know how to sign bits of "Dancing Queen," "Take a Chance on Me" and "Knowing Me, Knowing You" among others. Just bits, though. Oddly enough I can also sign the chorus to "Three Times a Lady."

But this is about ABBA.

There was a brief period when I was in college when my mom and I spent a Christmas without Stepfather. Now I love Stepfather, but he was always kind of an anal bastard about decorating the tree. Every light had to be just so and every ornament had to be perfectly placed in the right spot to impress anyone who walked in the door, and if it wasn't exactly right he'd tear everything off the tree and start over.

So this one year when Mom and I got to decorate the tree we had a field day. We threw the lights up all willy-nilly, we put ugly ornaments in front, we mixed colored lights with white lights with blinky lights and had a good time doing it. And we listened to ABBA. Specifically "Does Your Mother Know That You're Out" over and over and over all afternoon.

One year for Christmas my parents bought me the three disk ABBA greatest hits set. The next year for my mother's birthday I copied them onto tapes so she could listen to ABBA in the car.

I always wanted to go see the live musical with my mom but it just kind of never came up.

So when I saw ads for Mamma Mia show up on TV I got excited.

The other day when Officer Beefcake and I were eating pizza on Larchmont some promotional weirdos for the movie marched by with a boom box and beach balls videotaping themselves singing "Dancing Queen." Of course I immediately chimed in and may have ended up on the video, which is probably a special feature for the DVD so, you know, I might be on there. Officer Beefcake was disgusted because beefcakes are morally opposed to ABBA. They prefer Van Halen.

So I'm all excited about Mamma Mia. It's the perfect movie for me and my mom to go see together.

Except that Mom lives in North Carolina and I live in Los Angeles. So today, for the first time in almost four years, I am homesick.