It came from my head. Run!!! Tonight, I finally get to go. I’m going to the Motion Picture Academy! Not the awards, silly, the theatre (yes, the Academy has a theatre, who knew?), but it is for a pretty cool reason. Lemme go back a wee bit where I left off yesterday…So while I was getting frustrated about my agent experiences, I started writing plays. One play got produced, and then another, and then another. And they got good reviews. Los Angeles Times and shit. And they won awards. So boom, all of a sudden I’m a writer. I’m still highly uneasy calling myself that, and I certainly consider myself an actor first, and I really dislike the process of writing, but I guess I am. Again, who knew? To me, the great thing about the theatre is… that which is great about the theatre. The theatricality of it. The freedom from constraints of time, space, linear thought. Therefore, my plays tend to take advantage of that theatricality (if you’re writing theatre in Los Angeles to be discovered and move on to writing for TV or Film, you’re not only dissing the theatre itself, but you’re stupid because only friends, family, lovers, reviewers, and other theatre people will see your play). My two favorite of my pieces are 1)The Coldest War, a play about lost post-Cold War Russian KGB agents, a confused American family, and the Suzanne Summers sitcom Step By Step, and 2)a Christmas play about Scientology and David Mamet called Speed the Bough. Comedies, both. Note: I won’t go into my feelings about Scientology here. Not yet. At parties I literally have to walk away when people start to discuss the wacky "religion" so hip in LA now, because once started on my 6 hour rant, I cannot stop. Go here http://www.xenu.net for now. Read up, kids. So a year or so ago, a play of mine went up for a 7 week run. This was the first piece I had nothing to do with after I wrote it – I’d been in all the others – and as a result (or maybe because it’s more standard and less theatrical than my previous offerings) I wasn’t all that crazy about it. It’s called Not New But Recommended and it’s about a meeting between an actress/playwright and a theatre critic. It came out of my experiences of working as both an actor/writer, being alternately devastated and made ecstatic by reviews, and as a script reader for a Big Production Company, where I rip a script apart as quickly as I can, sitting in my underwear at 1 a.m. drinking a beer, because "I’m only getting 60 bucks to read this crap", not caring that this is someone’s heart and soul I’m casually dismissing (even if generally they are poorly written and derivative hearts and souls). The play opened and was well-received, and I liked it and moved on. Suddenly I get a call from a Production Company and they’ve seen the play and want to buy it from me, pay me money to rewrite it for the screen, and turn it into a film. That was in August. I finished with the 3rd draft of the screenplay, visited the set one day and walked away once more. Tonight I am going to the premiere of my movie at The Academy. I’m a pretty cool, world-weary twenty-something guy, but I have to admit, I’m so excited I could squeal. This is where I let Larry King take over my body for a few minutes. I’ve become more and more antisocial lately. The entire office (unable to support myself Acting and Writing, I have a shitty desk job at a Huge Evil Company who's name rhymes with Gisney) is in the lunch room eating cake for some reason and I’m very happy sitting at my desk alone…The Oakland A’s may be young and have terrible pitching, but watch them folks; they’re fun…I haven’t been food shopping in 6 weeks…in talking about late 90’s sitcoms, my friend Todd and I came up with an axiom: Just Because It’s Wry, Ironic, And Self-Referencing Doesn’t Mean It’s Not Dumb…I love being an "adult". I love having drinks with dinner and renting my own apartment and (grrrrrr…) having to pay car insurance...what ever happened to Jocko, the Duracell Battery Guy ("OY!")?…who has the scarier plastic surgery: Joan Rivers, Sigfried & Roy, Cher, Loni Anderson, Dick Clark, or William Shatner?…do female animals have orgasms…is Jon Stewart working on the Daily Show? I’m not quite sure yet…I’ll pay someone to come do laundry for me…I’m sleepy…
|