THAT'S THAT
I wrote all this at 2 in the morning and didn't proofread it. Enjoy.
Let's get one thing straight: I'm only posting right now because I feel obligated to. For the last few weeks I've been planning a fairly long entry about Los Angelos traffic/things that have occurred to me while sitting in LA traffic --as nearly an hour a day gives me a great deal of time to think-- but now I've decided that I don't feel like it. Given recent events, talking about the irony of sitting in gridlock beside a cross-street named "Ozone" or calculating my odds of hitting a BMW heaven forbid I get into an accident just seems pointless. Just so you know, it's somewhere around seven percent, with odds getting slightly higher if I go into Beverly Hills or Hollywood.
But anyway, that's not what I'm going to talk about. No, I'm actually going to talk about...
THE DIRTY LITTLE SECRET ABOUT FRUIT...FRUIT SUCKS
Being an intern isn't as great as it's made out to be, especially if that internship is unpaid. Sure, you get to glimpse into your future career --hopefully--but other than that you get nothing, as you're basically a slave for the people that work there and actually get paid. Up until recently the only internesque work I've had to do is copy scripts and deliver mail, and even that isn't so bad since it's essentially work that the exec's assistants have to do and just pass on to me. I also have to watch incredibly shitty movies and read even worse scripts, but somebody's gotta read them and it might as well be me.
I suppose other than not getting paid, it's not that bad of a gig, but the other day I had to...
YOUR BOSS MAKES YOU DO HIS LAUNDRY? SOUNDS LIKE A SHIT JOB TO ME.
I was sitting at my desk getting ready to write a blog entry about writing a blog entry at work --oh the irony-- when Tracy (being the girl who hired me) tapped me on the shoulder and asked if I had my car. I said I did, and she informed me that it was my task, since her car was in the shop, to pick up her boss's dry cleaning.
So I went, and I picked it up, and I got a two dollar tip from the head of acquisitions. And although it was cool, in a way, to handle an important person's clothes, it was the first time I ever really felt like an intern.
Which was a feeling that didn't go away when I had to go to Starbucks less than an hour later. For the record, I hate Starbucks. It's not just that there's one on every other corner, and it's not even really my decision to hate everything that everyone else seems to love (i.e. The Simpsons). It's just that Starbucks frightens me in a very real way. Where I come from, coffee is coffee. You run some water through some ground up beans, and you get this black stuff that you can put sugar or cream into, or, if you're so inclined, you can just drink the black stuff. You don't have to give it fifteen different names, and you sure as shit don't have to put foam or whip cream over the top of it.
Coffee is to keep you awake. Nobody drinks it for fun. If you want to drink something that tastes that bad for fun, stick to beer.
I EAT LUNCH BY MYSELF IN THE ALLEY BECAUSE EVERYONE HATES ME
I don't think that's the exact quote, but I'm too lazy to play the episode or look it up, and you know what I'm getting at so just smile your little "I know the quote and you don't" smiles and keep it to yourselves.
Anyway, I've been working for three weeks, and today was the very first day that I've gotten to eat with someone. This doesn't necessarily reflect poorly on me. That whole "let's do lunch" thing that you hear people say all the time in movies, yeah that's a real thing. The people that I work for either have meetings or screenings every day during lunch. And since I don't really know anyone outside of the people that I work for, this rules out the possibility of eating with someone.
That was until today when the new guy showed up. Some of you might question the appropriateness of me, who's been working there for only three weeks, calling someone else the new guy, but considering it's only a ten week internship, I feel I'm entitled. The new guy's name is Brian, and he goes to Middleton or Middlebury --there's a 'middle' in there and it's in Virginia-- and he's a biology/theatre major. Something that, rest assured, I'll get into at a later date.
DAD, HE'S FUCKING FAMOUS
Maybe I've been doing it ever since I got here or maybe it's a new habit I've gotten into, but I find myself constantly searching for celebrities. The thing about this is that when you're looking for one, you're going to think that you see them all the time. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy kinda thing. Plus, the environment is such that anyone, literally anyone, walking down the street could be famous. For instance, if you pass Curtis Clay on the sidewalk in Missouri, you're like 'holy shit that dude looks like Matthew Lillard'. Whereas if you see Curtis Clay in southern California you're like 'holy shit, was that Matthew Lillard?'
This bothers me, and I can't seem to figure out why.
AND BOOM GOES THE DYNAMITE
Yesterday was the annual four on four basketball tournament. To be entirely accurate, it wasn't really four on four. It was three on three and each side had to play a girl. If one of the teams didn't have a girl, then they had to play three on four. I don't know about you, but I find this incredibly sexist. Not that Sheryl Swoops is working down the hall or anything, but some of the men flat out sucked.
And by the way, there was a woman playing on the acquisitions team who played in college. Not only did she go to college but she went to the finals in '97 and lost to Tennessee. I think she said something about going to school in Virginia, but my roommate would more likely be able to tell you what school she played for. Sure, I would have asked her as she was sitting beside me, but I was a little intimidated.
She coulda killed me.
Not that it mattered where she played. We got our asses handed to us. And no, I didn't play. I watched with the rest of the girls.
I WISH I COULD SPEAK WHALE
Not that I have a big ego, or really enough self-confidence to say that I have an ego at all, but I like to think I know a lot about movies, which is to say that I know about movies, directors, writers, and even a producer or two.
But reasons passing understanding, whenever I step into work, I feel like a fucking rube. Maybe it's because everyone talks fast and my midwestern drawl is a little slow. Or maybe it's because I'm a college student in a sea of thirty/forty-something professionals. Or maybe I'm just not as good as I think I am, but when they start talking about who picked up what movie from where and what actors are working with what directors, I swear to God, whose name I do no know, that they're speaking another language.
Maybe it's because it's a Canadian company and I've never been to Canada...in fact I enjoy calling it Canadia because I think it sounds better. But in all liklihood it has nothing to do with that. It actually has nothing to do with any of the reasons I already mentioned. The fact of the matter is, I'm psyching myself out.
I know what they're talking about. I know the actor's names and the director's projects and I even know what it means to pick something up on a pre-buy. It's not a matter of ignorance. It's a matter of confidence.
I can totally speak whale.
DID YOU HEAR WHAT THE FUCKING CLERKS GUY SAID ABOUT THE SUPERMAN SCRIPT
At first I was a little intimidated about reading scripts, but then I realized that the people I write coverage for aren't interested in my opinion, as much as they're interested in the synopsis. I take two hours reading something, and another hour and a half summarizing it in a page, just so that the people who matter can get the gist of a story in five minutes. From what I understand it's an important service.
But then yesterday I was suddenly confronted by the reality that my opinion, from time to time, does actually matter. You see, the acquisitions people get 10-15 movies a week from small production companies or college students or other random people who are looking for a company to distribute their movie nationwide. Nine-hundred and ninety-nine times out of a thousand, these movies aren't even worth the dvds or tapes they're recorded on, and thus, it fell to me to watch some of these movies.
And I did, and they were all terrible --The two Adams, Caleb, me, and a handful of fourth graders could do a better job over a weekend and still have time to watch The Godfather-- and of course I told Chris (acquisitions coordinator for those of you keeping score at home) that all the movies sucked and that me and my friends and a cavalcade of fourth graders could do better and still have time to watch the Godfather and he said:
Chris: Thanks. You saved me a lot of time.
Me: No problem.
Then Chris grabbed the phone as I went back to my desk.
Chris: (shouting over the cubicle that's in between our's) Yeah, you helped me ruin a lot of people live's today.
Swear to God, that's what he said. So I responded with a very sophisticated...
Me: What?
Chris: These guys that sent in the movies. They went to film school, they're trying to live the dream, and I'm about the call them all and say that we're passing on their films...err movies.
Me: Because I told you they sucked?
Chris: Because you told me they sucked.
So as it turns out, I helped make some people sad the other day. Although I felt kinda bad at the time, I keep going back to something that Chris said about a week ago.
He had gotten this script from some random guy about a group of teens being stalked by the devil inside of a cemetary --yeah, you read that right-- and I told him it wasn't very good. He said "okay" and I asked "So, are you gonna call him or just let him hang?" "What do you mean?" he responded to which I explained that I read in magazines and such about how all these people send their stuff into studios and then never hear back. Thus, I was just wondering whether or not he was gonna get back to him. Chris said "probably not" and when I started to walk away, fully willing to accept that answer, he tacked on "Somebody's gotta let them know sometime. You can't call everyone. A call means encouragement. This isn't a place for everybody."
He was right. And if those movies that I watched weren't good, then they weren't good. It's not my fault I said they were bad. They were. I didn't kill those guy's dreams. They killed their own dreams when they made shitty movies. In fact, some of those movies were so bad, that I don't think the filmmakers even had dreams of making movies anyway. I think it was something they did with their friends over a weekend in between screenings of the Godfather films.
One final note on this, I get a weekly email newsletter as part of this magazine I have a subscription to. The first section of this newsletter is quotes, and I thought one of the quotes from last week was fairly appropriate.
It's from John August, writer of Big Fish and Go. He said:
"I worked as an intern-slash-reader at a little Paramount production company during my first semester of graduate school, and the contrast between the crappy scripts I read there and the great scripts I read for class was really illuminating. And encouraging on some level. I knew I could never write as well as Lawrence Kasdan, but I could easily write better than the schmucks I had to write coverage on."
Yeah...me too...
I GOT A GOLDEN TICKET
As many of you know, I got my first ticket tonight, and by ticket I'm referring to the ones handed out by men in uniforms while you sit in your car being laughed at by passersby as red and blue lights bounce off the surrounding buildings.
Yeah, one of those. I love tickets.
Long story short, I was driving along and two policemen on motorcycles pulled out in front of me. Somehow it was my fault, as I didn't yield to emergency vehicles. Rest assured, once I realized there were two motorcycles in my way, I fucking yielded all over the place.
Also, as many of you know, this is the perfect capper to what I'm dubbing "the worst two weeks of my life." I really do need work on my names. But anyway, let's recap what's happened in the last two weeks.
1. I broke a television that wasn't mine.
2. I scratched/dented my new car.
3. I thought I was dying of a stroke (for a day)
4. I thought I was dying of a heart attack (for a couple days)
5. I paid $40 for a haircut.
6. I still have this pressure on my heart that can't fully be explained
7. The whole ticket thing
Now that I type all that out, it doesn't seem like much, but I assure you it all sucked.
Anyway, I'm spent.
Next time, I'm gonna talk about the ultimate filmmaker...that is unless I change my mind.
I'm prone to whimsy.
I need to go to Utah and I need a jet engine heater. Oh how I love the Sant.
I wrote all this at 2 in the morning and didn't proofread it. Enjoy.
Let's get one thing straight: I'm only posting right now because I feel obligated to. For the last few weeks I've been planning a fairly long entry about Los Angelos traffic/things that have occurred to me while sitting in LA traffic --as nearly an hour a day gives me a great deal of time to think-- but now I've decided that I don't feel like it. Given recent events, talking about the irony of sitting in gridlock beside a cross-street named "Ozone" or calculating my odds of hitting a BMW heaven forbid I get into an accident just seems pointless. Just so you know, it's somewhere around seven percent, with odds getting slightly higher if I go into Beverly Hills or Hollywood.
But anyway, that's not what I'm going to talk about. No, I'm actually going to talk about...
THE DIRTY LITTLE SECRET ABOUT FRUIT...FRUIT SUCKS
Being an intern isn't as great as it's made out to be, especially if that internship is unpaid. Sure, you get to glimpse into your future career --hopefully--but other than that you get nothing, as you're basically a slave for the people that work there and actually get paid. Up until recently the only internesque work I've had to do is copy scripts and deliver mail, and even that isn't so bad since it's essentially work that the exec's assistants have to do and just pass on to me. I also have to watch incredibly shitty movies and read even worse scripts, but somebody's gotta read them and it might as well be me.
I suppose other than not getting paid, it's not that bad of a gig, but the other day I had to...
YOUR BOSS MAKES YOU DO HIS LAUNDRY? SOUNDS LIKE A SHIT JOB TO ME.
I was sitting at my desk getting ready to write a blog entry about writing a blog entry at work --oh the irony-- when Tracy (being the girl who hired me) tapped me on the shoulder and asked if I had my car. I said I did, and she informed me that it was my task, since her car was in the shop, to pick up her boss's dry cleaning.
So I went, and I picked it up, and I got a two dollar tip from the head of acquisitions. And although it was cool, in a way, to handle an important person's clothes, it was the first time I ever really felt like an intern.
Which was a feeling that didn't go away when I had to go to Starbucks less than an hour later. For the record, I hate Starbucks. It's not just that there's one on every other corner, and it's not even really my decision to hate everything that everyone else seems to love (i.e. The Simpsons). It's just that Starbucks frightens me in a very real way. Where I come from, coffee is coffee. You run some water through some ground up beans, and you get this black stuff that you can put sugar or cream into, or, if you're so inclined, you can just drink the black stuff. You don't have to give it fifteen different names, and you sure as shit don't have to put foam or whip cream over the top of it.
Coffee is to keep you awake. Nobody drinks it for fun. If you want to drink something that tastes that bad for fun, stick to beer.
I EAT LUNCH BY MYSELF IN THE ALLEY BECAUSE EVERYONE HATES ME
I don't think that's the exact quote, but I'm too lazy to play the episode or look it up, and you know what I'm getting at so just smile your little "I know the quote and you don't" smiles and keep it to yourselves.
Anyway, I've been working for three weeks, and today was the very first day that I've gotten to eat with someone. This doesn't necessarily reflect poorly on me. That whole "let's do lunch" thing that you hear people say all the time in movies, yeah that's a real thing. The people that I work for either have meetings or screenings every day during lunch. And since I don't really know anyone outside of the people that I work for, this rules out the possibility of eating with someone.
That was until today when the new guy showed up. Some of you might question the appropriateness of me, who's been working there for only three weeks, calling someone else the new guy, but considering it's only a ten week internship, I feel I'm entitled. The new guy's name is Brian, and he goes to Middleton or Middlebury --there's a 'middle' in there and it's in Virginia-- and he's a biology/theatre major. Something that, rest assured, I'll get into at a later date.
DAD, HE'S FUCKING FAMOUS
Maybe I've been doing it ever since I got here or maybe it's a new habit I've gotten into, but I find myself constantly searching for celebrities. The thing about this is that when you're looking for one, you're going to think that you see them all the time. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy kinda thing. Plus, the environment is such that anyone, literally anyone, walking down the street could be famous. For instance, if you pass Curtis Clay on the sidewalk in Missouri, you're like 'holy shit that dude looks like Matthew Lillard'. Whereas if you see Curtis Clay in southern California you're like 'holy shit, was that Matthew Lillard?'
This bothers me, and I can't seem to figure out why.
AND BOOM GOES THE DYNAMITE
Yesterday was the annual four on four basketball tournament. To be entirely accurate, it wasn't really four on four. It was three on three and each side had to play a girl. If one of the teams didn't have a girl, then they had to play three on four. I don't know about you, but I find this incredibly sexist. Not that Sheryl Swoops is working down the hall or anything, but some of the men flat out sucked.
And by the way, there was a woman playing on the acquisitions team who played in college. Not only did she go to college but she went to the finals in '97 and lost to Tennessee. I think she said something about going to school in Virginia, but my roommate would more likely be able to tell you what school she played for. Sure, I would have asked her as she was sitting beside me, but I was a little intimidated.
She coulda killed me.
Not that it mattered where she played. We got our asses handed to us. And no, I didn't play. I watched with the rest of the girls.
I WISH I COULD SPEAK WHALE
Not that I have a big ego, or really enough self-confidence to say that I have an ego at all, but I like to think I know a lot about movies, which is to say that I know about movies, directors, writers, and even a producer or two.
But reasons passing understanding, whenever I step into work, I feel like a fucking rube. Maybe it's because everyone talks fast and my midwestern drawl is a little slow. Or maybe it's because I'm a college student in a sea of thirty/forty-something professionals. Or maybe I'm just not as good as I think I am, but when they start talking about who picked up what movie from where and what actors are working with what directors, I swear to God, whose name I do no know, that they're speaking another language.
Maybe it's because it's a Canadian company and I've never been to Canada...in fact I enjoy calling it Canadia because I think it sounds better. But in all liklihood it has nothing to do with that. It actually has nothing to do with any of the reasons I already mentioned. The fact of the matter is, I'm psyching myself out.
I know what they're talking about. I know the actor's names and the director's projects and I even know what it means to pick something up on a pre-buy. It's not a matter of ignorance. It's a matter of confidence.
I can totally speak whale.
DID YOU HEAR WHAT THE FUCKING CLERKS GUY SAID ABOUT THE SUPERMAN SCRIPT
At first I was a little intimidated about reading scripts, but then I realized that the people I write coverage for aren't interested in my opinion, as much as they're interested in the synopsis. I take two hours reading something, and another hour and a half summarizing it in a page, just so that the people who matter can get the gist of a story in five minutes. From what I understand it's an important service.
But then yesterday I was suddenly confronted by the reality that my opinion, from time to time, does actually matter. You see, the acquisitions people get 10-15 movies a week from small production companies or college students or other random people who are looking for a company to distribute their movie nationwide. Nine-hundred and ninety-nine times out of a thousand, these movies aren't even worth the dvds or tapes they're recorded on, and thus, it fell to me to watch some of these movies.
And I did, and they were all terrible --The two Adams, Caleb, me, and a handful of fourth graders could do a better job over a weekend and still have time to watch The Godfather-- and of course I told Chris (acquisitions coordinator for those of you keeping score at home) that all the movies sucked and that me and my friends and a cavalcade of fourth graders could do better and still have time to watch the Godfather and he said:
Chris: Thanks. You saved me a lot of time.
Me: No problem.
Then Chris grabbed the phone as I went back to my desk.
Chris: (shouting over the cubicle that's in between our's) Yeah, you helped me ruin a lot of people live's today.
Swear to God, that's what he said. So I responded with a very sophisticated...
Me: What?
Chris: These guys that sent in the movies. They went to film school, they're trying to live the dream, and I'm about the call them all and say that we're passing on their films...err movies.
Me: Because I told you they sucked?
Chris: Because you told me they sucked.
So as it turns out, I helped make some people sad the other day. Although I felt kinda bad at the time, I keep going back to something that Chris said about a week ago.
He had gotten this script from some random guy about a group of teens being stalked by the devil inside of a cemetary --yeah, you read that right-- and I told him it wasn't very good. He said "okay" and I asked "So, are you gonna call him or just let him hang?" "What do you mean?" he responded to which I explained that I read in magazines and such about how all these people send their stuff into studios and then never hear back. Thus, I was just wondering whether or not he was gonna get back to him. Chris said "probably not" and when I started to walk away, fully willing to accept that answer, he tacked on "Somebody's gotta let them know sometime. You can't call everyone. A call means encouragement. This isn't a place for everybody."
He was right. And if those movies that I watched weren't good, then they weren't good. It's not my fault I said they were bad. They were. I didn't kill those guy's dreams. They killed their own dreams when they made shitty movies. In fact, some of those movies were so bad, that I don't think the filmmakers even had dreams of making movies anyway. I think it was something they did with their friends over a weekend in between screenings of the Godfather films.
One final note on this, I get a weekly email newsletter as part of this magazine I have a subscription to. The first section of this newsletter is quotes, and I thought one of the quotes from last week was fairly appropriate.
It's from John August, writer of Big Fish and Go. He said:
"I worked as an intern-slash-reader at a little Paramount production company during my first semester of graduate school, and the contrast between the crappy scripts I read there and the great scripts I read for class was really illuminating. And encouraging on some level. I knew I could never write as well as Lawrence Kasdan, but I could easily write better than the schmucks I had to write coverage on."
Yeah...me too...
I GOT A GOLDEN TICKET
As many of you know, I got my first ticket tonight, and by ticket I'm referring to the ones handed out by men in uniforms while you sit in your car being laughed at by passersby as red and blue lights bounce off the surrounding buildings.
Yeah, one of those. I love tickets.
Long story short, I was driving along and two policemen on motorcycles pulled out in front of me. Somehow it was my fault, as I didn't yield to emergency vehicles. Rest assured, once I realized there were two motorcycles in my way, I fucking yielded all over the place.
Also, as many of you know, this is the perfect capper to what I'm dubbing "the worst two weeks of my life." I really do need work on my names. But anyway, let's recap what's happened in the last two weeks.
1. I broke a television that wasn't mine.
2. I scratched/dented my new car.
3. I thought I was dying of a stroke (for a day)
4. I thought I was dying of a heart attack (for a couple days)
5. I paid $40 for a haircut.
6. I still have this pressure on my heart that can't fully be explained
7. The whole ticket thing
Now that I type all that out, it doesn't seem like much, but I assure you it all sucked.
Anyway, I'm spent.
Next time, I'm gonna talk about the ultimate filmmaker...that is unless I change my mind.
I'm prone to whimsy.
I need to go to Utah and I need a jet engine heater. Oh how I love the Sant.
