Newsletter #2

Today I became a legal California driver. I bought my car, an '82 Toyota Cressida, from the golf pro at the Wilshire country club, a real nice guy who proved his integrity by reimbursing me for the smog test after I told him that it was his responsibility to test the car before he sold it. The car is in great shape, but looks rather crappy -- particularly the paint job. I got it for $1200 and so far have changed the oil and tranny fluid and that should be enough to keep it going for a while. It passed the smog test with flying colors, which is a good indication of a sound engine. Best of all it has a bitchin' radio with a working tape deck, I even inherited the previous owners tape collection, this morning I was listening to the Stones.

Car/Star stories:

1) driving down Mullholland, I passed blonde woman in white jogging togs walking briskly along the roadside. I pulled off at an overlook up the way and heard her walking by, she seemed to be talking to herself. When I got back in the car and repassed her I noticed she was carrying some folded paper in her hand. I slowed to check her out and could clearly hear her familiar voice, then I saw her face -- it was in fact Sally "Hot Lips" Kellerman, apparently rehearsing a monlogue as she took her Sunday morning stroll. She still looks pretty good.

2) cruising along Sunset, passing through Beverly Hills, a yellow Ferrari gets on my tail and starts crowding me. I'm thinking 'who the hell is this hotshot?' I pull to the right and as we get up to the stoplight I look over to see what kind of jerk is driving the fancy car. It is Nicholas Cage. The light turns green and Nick takes off like a rocket. I attempt to follow, curious as to where Nick might be headed, but two tight curves later the Ferrari is nothing but a memory.

Most of this week, I've been cruising around Hollywood looking for apartments. I saw a really nice one right up the street from Brian's place and submitted an application but the guy called and said it was rented to someone else. He said he had another one in mind for me but hasn't called back. There are some nice places and good deals available, I just hope I can get one of them. Meanwhile, today I am going to look at a place in Beverly Hills, which is a share in a house with a woman named Sophia. The rent is good and the location would be perfect for temp work. Although, I was kind of looking forward to having my own place for the first time in my life. We'll see.

Speaking of temp work, I signed up with an agency here that does paralegal staffing in the West LA area (Century City, Westwood, Santa Monica etc.) They had me take a spelling test, grammer test, vocabulary test, typing test and two word processing tests -- all timed. In the middle, between two of the tests, I had to run out and feed quarters to my parking meter becaue my two hours was about to run out. Fortunately, I got 100's on grammer, vocab and word processing and a 90 on spelling -- they wouldn't tell me what I missed, but it shows you what spell-check has done to me. I typed a 31 wpm with 1% error. I haven't taken a test in a long time, I was sweating like crazy. They were very impressed with me and said the would try to get me a job soon. Minimum pay is $15/hr. which should work out very well.

This was the week of tests and forms, fees and applications: on today's driving test I got four wrong (passed) but I was sure one of the ones they marked wrong was right. I went back and checked the manual and I was in fact correct -- when making a U-turn, you begin from the center turning lane, not the left hand lane. I also filled out an application forms and paid fees for auto insurance ($108), auto registration ($55), the apartment ($10), temp employment (no fee) and driver's license ($12).

I had a meeting two weeks ago with Jude Schneider (Dreamworks) she spent almost two hours with me going over Echoes of the Mekong. She felt that it was not very commercial and not a good sample to pass along to an agent. I was very grateful for her advice and attention but wasn't sure why she was spending so much time on this script when I had given her Red Herrings which was the 'commercial' script she asked for and has been getting rave reviews from all quarters. I asked her if she had had a chance to look at RH and she looked confused. 'Remember,' I said,'this is the other script, not the commercial one.' She looked up RH on her computer and sent her assistant to go dig it up. She then promised to try and read it over the Thanksgiving weekend. I haven't heard from her yet, but I am not putting too much pressure on her since she has gone way out of her way to be helpful to me.

My buddy Bill at Ed Decter's office (Something about Mary) keeps telling me that he will get to my script "this week, I promise" They are very busy putting together two TV pilots for Warner Bros. Since I happen to have a couple of TV spec scripts, I asked if I could send him one. Now he has two reasons to apologize to me when I call him to see if he's read my stuff yet.

Paul Schiff is very busy getting his new Bill Murray movie 'Rushmore' into theaters in NY and LA for one week this month to get Bill M into the Oscar nomination pool. I've been pestering his office quite frequently and the other day, I think I became an annoyance -- I got a weird reaction from Paul's assistant who said "You called twice last week" in a voice dripping with attitude that reminded me of David Spade's character on SNL. The next day I called back to apologize for harrassing him and said I was trying to follow advice given me by other writers, but that I was not very comfortable badgering people. He said he understood and that, of course, they were very very busy there. I found out his name (Jason) and told him I will try to be patient and wait my turn. He thanked me in a voice devoid of attitude.

I wrote two TV scripts for David Kohan and sent them in. Haven't called him yet -- next week. Ran into a guy at a Thanksgiving gathering with my cousins who writes for a sitcom on Fox. He was really cool and offered to look at my scripts and show them around if possible. He's out playing golf right now with Cousin Clay, so I don't need to harrass him -- Clay will harass him enough for the both of us.

Had a couple of good hangs with Brian. We checked out Malibu one evening, waves were small but there were folks riding them anyway (not us). We ate in a a pizza joint that was showing a video on the history of Malibu which was really cool. I kept saying to Brian, 'they should make a movie about this' he kept saying 'you should write it'. Last week we went to Coldwater Canyon Park where Brian's firm is designing some buildings for the "Tree People" I of course said, that's an awful lot of buildings for only 'tree' people. It's another beautiful canyon park with lots of trails and amazing views. Brian is doing well but still has the lingering effects of the nasty long-lasting flu bug that was going around here this fall. We also saw our friend Mary Schmidtberger in the new Woody Allen movie, she was great but the film was medicore.

Tricia Kiley and I went to a screening of a short film by a director from Wes who read RH. His film was pretty funny, almost in the same vein as RH. He wrote directed and produced it himself. He said he wants to talk to me about my script, but he's been so busy... Tricia is working at ABC daytime, which is also in Century City, so perhaps if I get a temp job there we can do lunch.

Still waiting for the big break. Have yet to get connected with any agents. I was hoping to get that set up before I have to start working full time, but money is low and time is running out. By next month I should be in an apartment and working in a law firm. There are still a couple weeks left, though, for something exciting to happen.

Happy Holidays to all

Newsletter #1

Met a girl named Molly at a party in Venice last week. She's a costume designer for a show called Pacific Blue. She gave me her number but I've been having trouble getting her on the phone because she keeps weird hours. The other night I called and got her voice mail so I hung up, A couple minutes later the phone rang, it was her -- she heard her call waiting and hit *69. She said she thought her boss was trying to call her, but I think she was hoping it was me. Anyway she's busy this weekend, so I'll have to try again next week. Next week promises to be a busy one, so I'd better rest up.

Dan Haar, an old Wesleyan stalwart, was in town on business last week. It was great to see him. We met at Art's Deli in Studio city, my newly chosen hub. While we were there his friend Milo showed up. She's a cute local who he met at some conference. Milo became our tourguide, showing us the art museum and the tar pits then taking us up to the Griffith park observatory. While we were observing, I remembered that I was supposed to meet Tricia (I had a meeting a Paramount that was cancelled and she lives right up the street from there) We called Tricia, who was dutifully waiting for me and we all four went out to dinner in Tricia's neighborhood (Beachwood) then went back to her place for some wine. Somehow I managed to leave my single-use camera behind when we left Tricia's. (Classic Freudian leave-behind). Darn, guess I'll have to go back. Hmm, maybe she'll add a few snapshots of her own, nudge nudge, click click, grin grin, know what I mean?

Milo told me to give her a call if I'm ever in Studio City again and I can buy her a drink. Dan spent the night on her couch and the next day the two of us went to Farmer's Market for lunch, before he caught his plane home.

Meanwhile I'm still sick. Can't seem to shake this damn flu thing. Talked to Brian and found out that everyone in his office who went to the party that weekend (the architect party in Venice with all the beautiful women, where I met the adorable Molly) anyway, everyone at the party got sick, including Brian. So I'm still sleeping 12-20 hours a day, now it's thursday, and the phone rings and it's this producer guy (Chris) who I saw last week. Fortunately cousin Clay wakes me up and hands me the phone. Now I'm still half asleep and the producer's telling me he already read my script and it's 'very strong writing' and all this good stuff and I'm trying to take notes and respond coherently. Of course he says, they don't do comedies (he works for Tony and Ridley Scott, they do blockbusters) but keep at it. Now comes the time when I'm supposed to say, 'Do you know any agents you could recommend me to?' Since that is my main purpose in doing all of this. But instead, I say, 'Would there be another kind of movie that would be more suited for your needs?' or something. And he says 'Like what?' Like an action thriller about a former CIA agent whose being hunted in connection with the mysterious death of a retired CIA director???? He says, send it over. So I'll ask him about the agents next time. Somehow, even in my sleepy stupor, I couldn't resist getting in that pitch.

Saturday, Halloween, my favorite holiday (guess why) I layed low. Sunday I took my cousins out to dinner.

Monday was of course, my thirty-ninth birthday. I went running in the morning and felt great. Came home and got a call from a director who's looking for material, so I went right out and made another copy of the script and sent it to him. Got phone calls from home and a couple of shirts (white from mom, black from cousin Norma).

I also get a phone call from Lauren Lazin, calling from a car phone on the way back from an MTV corporate retreat. She sings happy birthday and tells me she is proud of me. And by the way, she comes out to L.A. all the time. Where'd she get my number? Where else, from Beck Lee. Who, last time we spoke, told me that Lauren was engaged to a suitably Jewish male. But despite my leading, but non-specific questions, she made no mention of impending nuptials.

Tuesday the meeting at Paramount was rescheduled. Met with a guy who works with a woman who happens to be married to a very succesful screenwriter named Paul Attanasio. So while I'm there, I tell the guy (Ned) that my good friend Kevin went to high school with Paul and claims to have saved his life. Ned thinks this is very funny. As we're leaving Ned's office we run right into Paul Attanasio. Ned tells him I know a friend of his. I say, yeah Kevin Osborn told me he saved your life. Paul looks confused. How did he do that? I say, something about not letting him drive on graduation night. He says O.K. So how is Kevin? I give him the rundown. He goes, didn't he have a sister? (They always remember those Osborn gals) I say yeah, in fact his sister Barb lives in Santa Monica. So I open up my handy notebook where I have Barb's address and right below it is Paul's address (in Beverly Hills). Next to Paul's address is a note that says "KO saved life -- took away keys" I point the note out to Paul and say "See!" He laughs and says "Oh yeah, I was really loaded that night." He says "tell Kevin I said hello."

Of course now I have to stop by Tricia's (since it's right up the street) and pick up my camera. She's there, luckily, and hungry so we go out to dinner and talk about California politics and the movie biz. She tells me about a movie this guy told her about the other day. (She's going for a job at Castle Rock and interviewing with this guy who just finished making a movie with Paul Newman -- turns out the guy I met with last week [Chris] just finished making the same movie, apparently a sequel to The Verdict). She tells me the story of the new movie and it's almost identical to the movie Ned just told me that Paul Attanasio is making at Paramount. I'm starting to think this is a very small town with very few original ideas. Anyway we get back to her place and I pick up my camera and she says she almost took a few pictures with it for me. I'm thinking, damn I should have left it another week! But she meant pictures of the Hollywood sign, which is quite plainly viewed from the corner of her street. Not exactly the shots I was hoping for, but still a nice thought.

When I got home I called the lovely Molly and made plans to see her this weekend.

So now it's wednesday, this morning I met with a guy who has a hit TV show on NBC. I went to his office at CBS Studios in Studio City. I did in fact call Milo to meet her for "coffee" but she was "busy" doing "homework" and offered me a "raincheck". The TV guy (Will and Grace) offered to help get me a TV agent but first I have to write two TV spec scripts. After the meeting I was driving out and passed by the 'New York Street' they use for exteriors, most extensively on Seinfeld. I parked my car there and got out and took a picture of the deal-mobile on the set of Seinfeld. It was a hoot.

Yesterday, I went to the Writer's Guild and sat in their library reading scripts from Frasier and 3rd Rock. Had lunch at Farmer's Market again (right across the street), drove by Paramount on the way home and took a picture of the famous entrance gate (it's the only major studio that's still in Hollywood). Called Molly last night but got her voice mail. I left a message this time. Did get an email from Lauren, though. She said to send her my TV spec scripts, since she knows lots of TV agents.

Went running this morning to clear my head and shake off this lingering flu/cold. Now it's time to start writing my TV spec scripts.