Tuesday, June 15, 1999

June Gloom



It all starts with a Catalina Eddy, which creates an onshore flow, that, combined with a low level high and a high level low, traps the marine layer in the L.A. basin producing low clouds, fog and -- you guessed it: June Gloom. Experts are predicting that this year's June Gloom (which actually began last month) may in fact last most of the summer. Which is fine by me, because it makes driving to work a lot less blinding. By noon, however the blistering sun has burned it all away and the rest of the day is glorious.


Met some more cousins a few weeks ago, Clay and the gang took me to a BBQ to meet his cousins on his mother's side -- the Koeppers. They live near the beach up in Oxnard and supposedly have an ostrich ranch out in the valley. I was expecting to sample my first ostrich burger, but had to settle for steak. It was great seeing everyone again, and meeting the Koeppers. Seems the family just keeps getting bigger and bigger.

Beck Lee called and set me up as the eyes and ears of a friend of his who's a film distributor, to check out an unreleased film that was being screened out here at the Director's Guild. The film (called Flypaper) didn't impress me much, and I forwarded my cynical observations to the distributor in hopes of preventing him from making the mistake of investing any money in it. It was another one of these 'trying so hard to be cool' indie flicks where everyone runs around talking dirty, doing drugs, committing crimes and causing mayhem for no apparent reason and without much flair. It was cool checking out the Director's Guild though. It's a real nice little setup.


Haven't heard a peep from my illustrious Wesleyan alumni here in Tinseltown, I did make a round of calls, mostly left messages. I did speak to Ed Decter finally but all he said was 'this is a really busy time' and passed the phone to his assistant. I called one of the agents who supposedly had my script only to find out from her assistant that my script had been "recycled." In other words, they just threw it out without bothering to read it. Still waiting to hear from one last agent and Bruce McKenna, who had given me some great notes on April Fool and wanted to take another look at it. I feel like it's time to write something new, although I still have several scripts sitting around that no one's even seen yet.

About the most exciting thing that's happened lately is that I finally got cable TV. For the first month I get a whole slew of bonus channels, including a bunch of classic and independent movie channels. I'm trying to tape all the good ones so that when I revert back to basic service I'll have a nice video library to fall back on.

I guess I'm not feeling very peppy this month -- could be the endless waiting for someone to actually read my script, could be the fact that I miss my friends and family, could be my dismally unfillfilling go-nowhere job, could be the fact that I haven't had a date since Seinfeld ended, could be living in this tiny apartment surrounded by perverts and morons, could be the staggering futility of a meaningless existence in a world where kindness and sincerity are repayed with betrayal and humiliation, could be any one of those things.

But I think it's probably just a case of June Gloom.

See ya'll next time.
Love, Dick