Actually, I'm not Jewish. No one with this much Catholic guilt could possibly be Jewish. No, it's just that this town shuts down on Yom Kippur, because everyone's atoning. Class was cancelled tonight, I couldn't call my contact at the Major Agency.
What I did do today was tape my next project for production class. I'm such a slice-and-dice production type: tailor-made for the Roger Corman production facility. Did they hit their marks? Was the shot in focus? Cool -- next shot. None of this "let's shoot until we get it perfect" crap. Life is short.
My partners on this shoot were Matt and David. David just came back from his wedding -- last Friday he got married (meeting his parents-in-law for the first time!) and he returned yesterday. That's wild. But they kept the wedding short and simple and limited to a few friends. Anyhow, we shot my little video, ate lunch at Wolfgang Puck's (the pizza place in the student food court -- no, I am not kidding), then Matt and David took the camera to film their shorts on the west side.
They brought along a lighting kit to use on their projects and I volunteered to come along to run the lights, since I took the lighting class. Matt didn't think it would be that important but I gave him my number to call me in case he needed me to come over. I cautioned him DON'T TOUCH THE BULBS -- the oil from your skin gets on the glass, and when you turn on the lights the oil boils a heck of a lot quicker than the glass does and VA-VOOM! the glass explodes. Don't do it. Just don't do it.
It's just as well Matt didn't want me to come along -- I started yawning like crazy on the drive home and within seconds of walking in the door I fell asleep. I have a good excuse this time! Saturday night I had insomnia until 5 or so in the morning, and Darin woke me up around 11 or 12 so that we could get over to Fernando's barbecue. I had a little insomnia Sunday night too and we had to wake up very early this morning to get Darin to the airport. (Was that just this morning? Wow. Waaaah. I miss him.)
Right now I'm trying to finish my dialogue exercises for tomorrow. This is by far the hardest assignment I've had so far: three dialogues, with one character being primary in the conversation. For example:
One character lies so skillfully they reveal their own lie in the process to the audience but not to the conversation partner.
Okay, fine. Hmmm. No problem. What's on TV tonight?
Sage (of Coffee Shakes fame) not only keeps an online journal but has a parody of another online journal (called Justine's Ode To Justine) on her page. It's a parody of Justin's Journal, of course, and I read Justine's Ode not really getting all the jokes, so Saturday night, when I had the awful insomnia, I read Justin's Journal.
Note to Sage: you cannot effectively parody that which is self-parody to begin with. Not that you haven't done quite a good job of it.
I kept thinking over and over again: is this guy kidding? Is he for real? He's at USC now; gosh, I could arrange to meet him. (Shudder.) I was completely astounded at this guy's self-absorption and greediness. Yowsa. I can only hope that in five or ten years he'd look back and say, Jesus, what I was thinking? But if he doesn't see it now, he won't see it then. Of course, I have to thank him for being so brutally honest about where his sense of what he's due lies.
At lunch today, we discussed how we want to use our USC connections to maximum effectiveness. USC lets agencies and production companies around town know about our thesis scripts in spring of the second year, so that gets our names out there. What other benefits does this degree confer? (Because a film degree itself ain't going to help you get a job. Don't go there. Don't EVEN go there.)
Matt said he thought he'd write dumb action movies, but he doesn't think he wants to -- or even can now. But he wants to get as much written as possible during these two years. I feel the same way. I think I should work on a trashy thriller or something, just to have an extracurricular project and finish something. The Nicholl contest is almost upon us. (And I don't think I could write a by-the-numbers trashy thriller anyhow, even if I tried to start out there. My sensibility is just too damn weird. Oh, don't act so surprised.)