I must be feeling more acclimated to this area; I want to take a nap.
Last night I felt like such a dork. I wrote in yesterday's entry that every day I was going to ask what had I done for my career that day. And, of course, I hadn't done anything. I tried to give myself a break and say that hey, it was only my first week here.
During the day, however, I had left a message at the phone number I had for a friend of mine from De Anza film classes who had moved down earlier in the summer. (As the answering machine message was completely generic, I had no idea if the number was right or not.) Edgar called me back and we chatted a while about what he's been doing, which is an internship (read: unpaid labor) at a production company. We talked about getting together for lunch on Friday.
"How fast do you read?" he asked.
I thought that was a question out of left field, but I said: "Pretty quick."
The company was looking for readers for scripts. You have to read the script, write up coverage, and give it a pass or accept. You don't get paid much (about $20 a script), but it's a great way to see what's out there and to meet people.
I said, "Sign me up." On Friday he's going to give me a basic run-through of what I'd have to do.
So I did do something for my career yesterday.
Today I drove over to West LA to meet my friend Allison for a movie and lunch. I had the joy of backed up traffic on the 405 and the stupid things drivers do to go that much faster. I wonder how much medicine is prescribed for high blood pressure around here.
We went to go see Basquiat, that suffered from the auteur pretensions of its director, painter/artist Julian Schnabel. Schnabel decided not just to direct but to write the screenplay and the music. I didn't notice if he catered the meals as well, but he did hire at least five members of his family as actors. Both Allison and I were disappointed by this film, which was meandering and pointless -- we see individual scenes that are not very interesting on their own, but then we have to string them together somehow to form a coherent whole. Is Basquiat deeply affected by racism? How bad is his drug habit? Why did a middle-class kid end up sleeping in a cardboard box? Is there any point to the repeated image of the surfer? The movie's a mess.
Afterward Allison said, "I can't believe Siskel and Ebert liked that movie," and I came up with the Hand of the Mouse conspiracy theory: the movie is distributed by Miramax, Siskel and Ebert's show is produced by Buena Vista Television, follow the dots. I have no idea if this is true, but it's better than thinking they liked it.
We had lunch and discussed her upcoming PhD program. She's going to study music composition and theory at UCSD. Two years of coursework, two years of working on the dissertation. Evidently she keeps running into people who think that music is as easy at the chord structure in a pop song (kind of like people thinking writing is easy because they know the alphabet). The attitude that music is trivial irks her, because it diminishes her accomplishments.
Darin called last night after he got in from dinner. He calls me every night after he gets in. We don't have long conversations or mushy chats -- we mostly say what we did during the day (he has a headstart by reading The Paperwork) and we end by saying "I love you." We both have no desire to indulge in anything akin to phone sex. I think we'd both feel ridiculous. I feel much closer to him knowing what's going on in his day. And soon I'll have something more to be telling him too, thank goodness. I feel so boring right now.