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My Wasted Life - January 23rd, 2008:

It's the anniversary of my father's death. That's a happy way to start things off. What can I tell you... life sucks sometimes.

Anyways... I said I'd try and keep this thing a little more up to date... so let's try and at least start twenty-oh-eight the way we mean to go on... even if it don't continue like that.

Being the 23rd day of the year means we've already chalked off more than three of the fifty-two weeks alotted to us by the vagaries of the julian calendar (julian/gregorian... I'm never sure).
Something must have happened out there... mustn't it?

23 Days Later...

Started the year, as you know, with grand aspirations of finally getting my lazy ass in gear to write this earth-shattering expose of how my life passes in a calendar year. Unfortunately... we're 23 days in and I ain't written shit about it (see the Jan 18th update for part of the cognitive dissonance behind that) but tomorrow is another day and hopefuly before that 'nother day dawns, I might get round to catching up on where we currently stand.

I've been looking at this page - staring at it until my fading eyesight fades even further - and I'm not entirely happy with the layout or color scheme of things round here. The design kinda works and is much easier to handle than the layout I used on some of the other sections (although by the time you read this I might have updated those in which case this point is moot) but it takes so much time and effort picking a style, futzing with the html or xtml or php or whathaveyou, that I think by and large I'm gonna stick with this as it seems to navigate fairly well and to be honest (which I've been told is the best of all policies) it'll remove another procrastinatory barrier between me thinking and actually doing - and anything that brings those two disperate elements closer together cannot be anything but a good thing.

Of course... if I maybe actually got down to the bidness of writing what I am supposed to be writing instead of all this waffly bullshit stuff... we'd be so up-to-date I'd be writing about things before they even happened!

2008 Begins Here Baby!

No, seriously... it does. Here's how it's gone thus far.

2007 was my busiest year in the business so far (check out the 'movies' section to find out more). That's a cause for some celebration, no? I guess. It kept me too busy to update this place, so that wasn't so good - but the busy-ness of the business is/was a double edged sword.
You see, just because you work... don't mean you are making a lot of money. In many cases the two things seem to work in such diamietrically opposed fashion that you begin to wonder whether you weren't actually better off sitting around on your ass bemoaning the fact that you got nothing to do.
So that's by way of a little scene-setting. 2008 began off the back of a good/bad year.
I'd never been busier... but I'm pushed to think of a time when I was more broke.

I was also coming off the back of a brutal shoot overseas. Now if you've never done it before, it's difficult to imagine what it's like. But production is an all-consuming affair... it kinda devours your life for the time you do it... and so the point where you come off a shoot is a bit strange - to say the least.
It's a bit like your first few days back home after a vacation... it just doesn't feel 'right' - you're not quite back where you should be... life takes a few moments to sink back into the routine you left behind - and that's especially true of the time immediately following the all-consuming life-suck that is making a movie... and even more so after one as physically challenging as the one I'd just stepped off.

So Xmas and New Year was a kinda fuzzy, blurry kinda zombie-like return to earth... and just disappeared by with a lot of sitting around wondering what to do and how to approach the forthcoming year.

2007 had been busy but financially challenging... 2008 needs to be as busy but work a little more in my favor on certain other levels.

One of the goals I'd set myself was to complete a script. Nothing spectacular about that I hear you say... but you know my prediliction for doing sod-all and this script in particular was a bit of a doozy.
If I'm honest.. I've been writing this script for about 10 years. Oh boy... when I told you I was slow... you have no idea. Now that's not to say it's taken me 10 years to get from page one to the end - the script had existed in short story form for many, many years... and there had been more than one version of a screenplay which had managed to attract the interest of a producer/director.
Now this is where I always run into difficulty in terms of writing about these things.
I hate announcing stuff before it's actually happening and hate getting stuck in the 'what happened to...' line of questioning that inevitably follows when things don't pan out as planned or as quickly as planned.

It all goes back to when I was first attempting to gain entry into this crazy business many, many moons ago.

My mum was my biggest fan and cheerleader and so was extremely interested in how I was doing and what was going on... so I'd keep her updated... tell her about every (since they were so few and far between) returned phone call or promise of a meeting or feigned interest, or actual meeting. Of course... the majority of these leads went absolutely nowhere... but there was always the 'what about that job..?' 'whatever happened with that company who said they wanted to see you..?' question that I just hated having to answer by explaining that nthing had come of it or that they'd decided to go in 'a different directoin'. I think I projected a lot of my owndisappointment and (seems a crazy word to use) embarrassment at getting nowhere... and so instituted a policy of "don't tell and they won't ask" - which seemed to fit very comfortably alongside my general dislike of talking about myself and has kinda become de-rigeur these days.

So anyways... blah, blah... bleedin' blah...

This script had existed in several incarnations for a long time, sufficient to have gained interest that was supposedly in the process of attracting enough money to convert 100 pages of script into one bona-fide movie. And wouldn't that be nice?
Of course, that's what''s supposed to happpen. 2007 saw numerous emails and phone calls flying around the world but by year end, we were no closer to going into production than we had been a year prior... or the year prior to that... or the year prior to that... Bummer.

But you can't let that kinda shit get you down. Well you can try not to. So... the interested party began suggesting (or at least responding to suggestions) about pursuing other (hopefully more concrete) source of finance. Of course, for dear old me, the downside was that it was generally agreed that the script we had was kinda old and out of shape and although sufficient to continue discussions with people already kinda vaguely onboard... might not be of sufficiently commercial or current status to be a useful tool to go get fresh financial blood.
All of which is a long-winded (no kidding) way of saying... a new script was required.

Now... I have a writing partner - which is a very good thing as they're very talented and good at pushing me to get off my ass and do what needs to be done... but they had already take the driving seat on two other scripts of ours in 2007... which meant that the onus for completing this script fell squarely onto my shoulders.

The slightly embarrassing bit to all of this is that I'd kinda promised that I'd have this rewrite done by the new year - unfortunately the new year in question was 2007! So by the time I dragged my sorry ass back to Los Angeles, I was a year behind schedule.

So... best get writing I suppose.

Easier said than procrastinated my friend.

You see, while I'd been out of the country something happened in Los Angeles that isn't exactly rare... but kinda uncommon. It rained.

I know... I left the UK to put all that precipitation behind me. But it does rain here sometimes and in December, it rained - and busted the heating system for the house which is, as is sometimes the case... up on the roof.
Now, by all accounts, the dude what came to try to fix it, at 11pm no less, did the decent thing. He took one look at the rusted old wreckage on the roof and said "I can fix it for tonight, but it'll cost a lot of money and it'll break as soon as it rains again." So... rather than piss away good money on bad equipment, the decision as taken, leave it alone... we'll get by.
So I came home to a somewhat chilly house... I know... Southern California chilly... yes... it fucking is... really fucking chilly, especially in my house!

It sounds wimpy and whiney to say it... but when you hate sitting down and writing... it's even harder when your hands are so cold that your fingers hurt. I know there are far greater problems in the world and for fuck's sake, it's Los Angeles... it's not like I live in Alaska!!! But it's cold and it sucks!

So... money is required... not just to repair/renew the now defunct heating and air-conditioning unit sitting on the roof - but what to do? All the money earned in 2007 had been swallowed up on 2007 bills... which meant, new year... new financial crisis.

So... let's go get a job. I could actually try and charge for every time I write the word "so" - yes, it's as annoying for me to write as it is for you to read...so... err... yeah.

I know... script + completing it = money. Of course. No one would ever waste a dollar on the lottery if they didn't think it might win them a fortune - but you got to write the damn thing first... and with between one and more than ten years invested in a project that had generated precisely zero income... the motivation for my poor little icy fingers wasn't necessarily what it should be.

So how about a production job? Good call. I did ten freaking productions last year... they might have netted me not nearly enough money to repair the heating... but fuck it. New year... new burst of cynicism!

Okay... where to get a production job on January 1st during a strike by the Writers Guild of America that was slowly stopping all production in and around my beloved city of Los Angeles.

Craigslist!

I shit you not best beloved. I got my best payday of last year from an ad on the mighty list of craig. So I looked... and also on the dot com of mandy... but found - fuck all.

to be continued...