The Drunken Bachelorette

For a couple years I worked in post-production of The Bachelorette.  It was as miserable as it sounds.  Watching unedited interviews was tedious and made one lose their faith in humanity.  It was a little interesting hearing other people talk about how it came out in editing.  (I never watched a full episode of the final product,) and to see it parodied on Burning Love, which starred some of the former members of The State.

But one season there was a bit of enjoyment to distract from the tedium; the year the bachelorette was an alcoholic.

The producers always had wine on the set to add to the phony romantic setting.  There were wine glasses often scattered around set, and a glass of wine was always poured for the subject in the interviews, as well as one for the camera person and the producer.  This one bachelorette, I can't remember her name, always had her fill.

She always finished her glass before the interview was over and typically asked for more, which she often got.  However, one day they were slow and bringing her wine, so she reached over and drank from the producer's glass.  She emptied it.  So she reached over and grabbed the camera person's glass.  She emptied that.  All along her voice became slurred and she became more and more belligerent.

Soon she refused to answer any more questions until they gave her more wine.  They said she'd have some after the interview. The producer asked another question and the bachelorette went silent.  They kept trying to get her to answer the question, and she answered back by tapping on her glass.

That was the one season I actually tried to watch some episodes.  It was so amusing.  Most of the time you couldn't tell that the editors re-edited what everyone was saying to match the narrative of the show.  They had even made it look like one woman quit because she had been scorned when the real reason was because the producers were trying to make it look like she needed a man when in actuality she was a very capable mountain climber who was looking for companionship, not someone to take care of her.

But with the drunken bachelorette, it was hard to hide.  She would slip from speaking coherently to slurring her words to back to normal to sloshed.  You could simply watch and see what had been taped later in the evening and what had been earlier.

The American Game Audition Tapes

About a year after I got to LA, I started developing my first movie.  It was a war film about a group of enemy soldiers during the Civil War who stop fighting for a few days and play a series of baseball games.  The movie was first to be called Ball Hill but it was renamed The American Game.  I would wind up spending the majority of my "career" just trying to get it made.

In 2002 a producer named Alex Barder got involved.  Alex was a real character, and I mean that in every sense both positive and negative.  He was sort of the stereotypical producer: shallow, bull-headed, yet charming and determined.  He was obsessed with the script, and he wanted it worked on day and night.  He would sometimes call me late at night or early in the morning to work on a single line.  I would say this was inspiring, but the changes he wanted made typically involved dumbing it down for an audience he believed weren't smart enough to appreciate a thoughtful movie.  He liked to brag about how sophisticated he was because he liked the movie Amadeus.

Despite his drabacks, he did get it almost as far as it ever got in 2003 when he got a casting director involved named Alyssa Weisberg.  Alyssa had left the industry for a little while, and was looking to get back in.  She worked on American Game to sort of re-establish her contacts.  In contacting the agents and managers she knew, she found that they wouldn't send their well-known actors to a movie that didn't have any funding or attachments.  Martin Sheen stepped in to help, and lent me his name as attached to the project.  Suddenly, those agents responded to Alyssa, and sent their actors.

It helped that Alex was claiming that there was an investor.  It was a partial lie.  He had some investors in Florida who said they might invest once he had some names attached.  That's why we needed Alyssa.  The usual catch 22 had been keeping us from moving further because we needed the actors to get the money, but we needed the numbers to even see the actors.  Having Martin and that half truth got us past that wedge.

For two months we saw a long string of actors.  All we needed were a couple celebrities to get the funding, but the agents had required that we audition their other clients first, and Alyssa wanted to get more actors reading to build up her own portfolio.  I took whatever time I could away from work to go in.  We held the auditions on a meeting room in Alex's building, and met with the big names at a hotel in Santa Monica.

After weeks of this process, I started to get a bit confused.  Didn't we have the names we needed to take the next step?  Nothing happened.  And after a few months and we had finished seeing actors, still nothing was happening.  When Alex moved on to another film and came to me saying that Tom Sizemore was interested, I realized he had no plans to do anything with the actors we had seen.  Known to be abusive and on drugs, Sizemore had nowhere near the star power of others we had already seen.  And so I moved on from Alex.  The movie never got made.

Alyssa went on to great fame though.  Alex later told me the story of what happened.  She was approached by a production company that needed to see some actors quickly.  They didn't have time to go through the audition process, so they wanted to see actors who had auditioned for something else.  She showed them the tape from The American Game.  The producers picked the ones they liked and brought them in for further auditions.

The show was Lost.  Alyssa became the casting director for JJ Abrams, and many of his projects have been cast off of the audition tapes of The American Game.

Why '80s Movies Were So Good

Today, the film industry is wrought with movies trying to relive the glory of the '80s.  You would think it was a golden age, one that is to be relived again and again.  To be clear, this happens every decade where the nostalgia of 30 years prior is glamorized.  It was no coincidence that one of the top shows of the 2000s was That '70s Show.  And in the 1980s, one would think the 1950s were being relived.  This was even the joke in Back to the Future II when Marty goes into an '80s restaurant and it looks like a '50s diner.

But there was a specific quality to '80s movies which made them worth remembering; what inspired so many of us to want to become filmmakers.  What's crazy to me is that, despite all the '80s remakes, producers can't seem to figure out what that formula was.  The basic element of why they were special eludes them.  And yet it was simple.

THEY WERE ORIGINAL!

Despite the '80s copying so much of the '50s, the movies made during that era were still mostly original.  The filmmakers of the time certain drew from the past for inspiration.  Star Wars and Indiana Jones, perhaps the two biggest tentpoles of the decade, were derived from old serials, but they were not remakes of old serials.  They weren't "properties to be exploited," they were original stories that took elements from the past to improve their stories.

Today, when studios try to remake an '80s film to recapture its glory, they are missing the basic element that actually made it special, it's newness.  If you want to truly recapture the '80s, do something original.

Audition Tape of The State

Sophomore year of NYU filmschool, students used to have a pair of classes called Sight and Sound Film, and Sight and Sound Video.  There's probably a similar, yet altered version of it today.

These classes were the true immersion part of film school.  In the film part, students broke into teams of 4 and each made 5 films while assisting the other 3 members on theirs.  That led to 20 films in 1 semester.  In the video course, you did this, plus you worked on 3 live events while working on every other student's live events.  Needless to say, it was an exhausting year; but it was the year you learned the most, and the basis of the whole education.

As my final live video project, I had decided to gather the most funny people I knew to perform an improv session.  Seeing the show No Activity today, I realize that was sort of the concept I was going for.  I had approached a few already who were interested, but when I got to Kerry Kenny, who lived down the hall from me, she told me that the members of her comedy group The New Group, were looking to do an audition tape for MTV's upcoming show You Wrote it, You Watch it.  She asked if we could just tape one of their sketches for that.  I said sure, and adjusted the plans accordingly.

The video at the bottom was the result.  They sent the tape in and got the job.  That later led to their own show The State.  I contacted them as I was graduating and asked to be a part.  David Wayne, who was in charge, at first responded, but when he found I was searching for work, he suddenly started blowing me off.  I later learned that they didn't really have the budget for someone else; but rather than doing the mature thing and simply telling me this, he played the childish game of hiding from me; using the front desk as a screen, and saying he just didn't have time.

I've always believed in the talents of that group, all the way through Reno 911.  But it was very unfortunate that neither David nor Kerry could simply talk to me.  To be clear, I don't believe they owe me anything per se.  They were accepted onto MTV due to their own merits, not because of anything I did directing that video.  But in most aspects of society there is a certain amount of gratitude people have; to pay back to someone who helped them get where they are in the form of at least a recommendation or something.  I've always been disappointed that they couldn't spare that basic courtesy, and to this day continue to blow me off.

What I really should have done was make it a stipulation as part of the video, that if they got the job, I go with them.

Why Watching Online Movie Critics Makes Me Feel Better

Some of the most popular channels on Youtube are movie critics.  Their rise has come because of how much a producer could get with the smaller investment.  A content creator can tape him or herself in a room, or even just record their voice, and let the clips of the movies provide the higher production value.  Since these movies have their own marketing departments, audiences already know what they are.  And since Youtube worked out a fair use clause to utilize movie footage, they could air their reviews and even monetize them.

In some ways I feel guilty for watching so many of these shows rather than searching harder for more original content by people who are willing to take the risk and not ride on the coattails of premade products.  However, I've found that there's something very cathartic about watching the critics slam on bad movies.  There were obvious reasons for this, but as I got to thinking about it, there were more reasons for me that go beyond the usual viewer.

When my own scripts and projects got rejected, I was willing to accept that there could be something better.  Whatever they did choose would probably be a better film, something that I would aspire to with my own writing.  Whenever a film got accepted into a festival mine didn't get into, I thought the same thing.  Then I would watch them...

My discouragement came from the fact that there was nothing to look up to; nothing to aspire to.  What I had presented may not have been perfect, but it was certainly better than what they were choosing.  Added to my frustration was the fact that I was then told that no, I was wrong.  The production companies, studios, and film festivals were right in their choices.  After all, they were the ones in power.  They made more money than me.  Their careers were going great.  They're right and I'm wrong.

Channels like Nostalgia Critic, Lindsay Ellis, Red Letter Media, and Your Movie Sucks beg to differ.  In fact, they've specifically taken on some of the movies that I got rejected in favor of.  Being outside of the industry, they feel no need to conform, or kiss the ass of anyone "important."  They actually scoff at Hollywood's self-importance.

THAT is cathartic.  It may not give me a career or change Hollywood, but it definitely makes me feel better to see movies that are objectively bad and producers who believe they're right about everything get called out on their bullshit.

The Screenplay Formula and Why Movies are so Homogenized

You might hear a lot of people question why so many movies have such a similar tone; as if they're all of the same genre, or made by a few filmmakers with exactly the same tastes.  You may have noticed this yourself and added your voice to the plethora of bloggers, vloggers, and other fans who have expressed their frustrations at how all movies seem alike now.

This might seem a bit like the old man going, "it' ain't like the good ol' days," but there's a strong truth to it, and a reason for it.  As an example, when Star Wars and Star Trek movies came out in the late '70s and early '80s, there was a strong distinction between them.  You went to Star Wars and got an action packed adventure.  You went to Star Trek and got an intriguing mystery.  Even the action scenes were completely different.  In Star Wars you got fast cuts with small ships or individuals shooting rapid fire shots at one another.  In Star Trek you had longer wide shots of large ships laboriously turning on one another while their crews discussed the best way to win.

Neither style was better.  It was like going to a restaurant.  No one wants the same food every day.  If you want Mexican food, you go to a Mexican restaurant.  If you want Italian food, you go to an Italian restaurant.  You switch it up to have a variety.  Hell, even films made by the same director had very different feels.  Take for instance Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark versus Jaws.  Their tone and style was so different that they seem like they're made by completely different filmmakers.

But now you could replace the title of one film with another and hardly anyone would notice.  In computer gaming terms, it's like changing the skins.  So what caused this?  Well, there are numerous theories, and I'm sure many of them have truth as any subject of this magnitude will naturally have a lot of answers.  But I've come to believe there's one overall reason.

Screenplay formulas.

For decades, filmmakers and theorists have been trying to narrow down what makes a film "work."  Understanding this will cause filmmaking to be less risky, and solve psychological mysteries of taste.  So people set about writing books on screenwriting, observing what has been respected and loved in movies, and trying to capture the reason for the magic in them.  The result of all this research was a multitude of formulas.  Books from Adventures in the Screen Trade to The Foundations of Screenwriting to Story to the Writer's Journey all try to identify the genie in the bottle.

These books do provide a basis for good practices in screenwriting.  For instance, they remind a writer to not linger too long in their introduction of the characters and the situation.  They provide guidance on moving the plot forward, and ideas for creating dynamic story beats.  These are positive guidelines to follow.

The Hypocrisy of the Academy Award Popular Film Category

This year the Academy Awards tried to add the popular film category; an attempt to appease viewers that ultimately got mocked and failed.  This category is widely seen to have been added because of two things: the popularity of Black Panther, a bandwagon upon which the Academy wanted to jump without actually considering it for best picture, and lower ratings of the show in general.

I'm actually not going to talk about whether or not Black Panther deserves to win, or even a nomination.  It was a very good movie, and it also had some glaring flaws.  Most of all, though, the whole subject of its merit brings out the absurdity of what a "best picture" is.  Can we really declare a single movie to be the best when there are so many genres and styles?  Isn't it like comparing apples and oranges to a degree?

But what I find particularly ludicrous is the hypocrisy that created this apparent need for a popular category.  The idea that something popular needs a separate category from best implies that if something makes a lot of money, it is inherently inferior to something that doesn't make a lot of money.  While certainly the motivation for wealth can be separate from the motivation for art, the idea that something that is popular can't be great is the very wrongful thinking that caused Hitchcock to never win a regular award, and why one eluded Spielberg for so long.

But what of you, Academy Awards?  Isn't the major reason why you're doing this so you keep your audience?  We all hear you every time you complain that the audience numbers are shrinking.  If the Academy Awards really believed that art and commerce are so separate, why are they so concerned with their own ratings?  It seems to me that if you're going to frown upon popular films that make money and smugly hold films that don't on a pedestal, then you shouldn't be so concerned about your own wealth.

But if ratings are so important, maybe stop looking down on those producers who are literally doing the exact same thing as you.

The Hollywood Reporter and Titanic

I worked at The Hollywood Reporter as a temp for a couple years.  While there, I listed films that were being made, as well as box office results on Mondays.  The most interesting of these was when Titanic came out.

First, as it was coming close to release, everyone was certain it was going to be a failure.  I mean everyone, including people who would deny it today.

One might think that this was proven wrong on opening weekend, but it wasn't.  Titanic was not a huge success when it released.  In fact, its initial numbers were... adequate, but certainly nothing amazing.  All those reporters and editors who had predicted its failure chuckled and went on wondering what would be the next big film to come out to fail or succeed.

The next weekend, Titanic did just sort of okay, and they dismissed it.  It was slowly sinking, just like the ship.

The problem is, it stayed put more like a buoy.  The following weekend it did okay.  Then the next weekend it did okay.  Then the next, and the next.  It stayed at about 20 million each weekend.  That's not great results for an opening, but for a fifth week, sixth, seventh... unheard of.  It just kept making a basic, steady amount of money, never dropping.  And from remaining like this for such a long time, it wound up being the largest money maker of all time.

It should serve as a lesson to those who only look at opening weekend box office, but does it?  Most assuredly not.

Titanic's Special Effects Team Expected the Film to Fail

A few years after I had graduated, NYU invited alumni in LA to go visit a special effects studio called Digital Domain.  The company had offered the tour to us, and it was a fun time.  Digital effects were new, so it was unusual to see so many computers creating the images.  The one I remember passing was a sailboat being passed by the Titanic.

We went into one room where they had very recently done the effect of the Titanic hitting the iceberg.  The model of the ship had been attached by a chain to one truck, and the iceberg was attached to another truck by a chain, and the two trucks drove quickly in opposite directions, crashing the two props together.  So high tech!

Afterward, they took us into their meeting room, which they called "the whale's belly."  It was a big wood structure that was supposed to look like a whale's belly.  There, they told us the real reason they wanted to give us this tour.  They closed the door and were very secretive about it.  They said the movie they were working on was going to fail miserably.  They had been working for James Cameron for a while, and they believed this was going to be his downfall.  When it happened, they were prepared to start their own production company, and they wanted to have projects ready to go.

Since they were a special effects studio already, they wanted projects that would heavily involve special effects.  So they asked us to gather up our ideas for movies and/or TV shows that would involve a lot of special effects.  I immediately started thinking of something.  It made sense to do so; after all, it had been Star Wars that got me interested in making movies to begin with.

I began running this through my head, and I continued to think about it as we went to dinner at The Rose next door.  What I came up with were the very first inklings of the ideas that would become Relic Worlds.  It was nothing like it's become since then, but it was the initial idea.

I pitched the concept with some scenes and a summary to them soon after.  The man who had initially told us to pitch ideas to him, Steve, responded saying it sounded good, and he wanted to speak with me further about it after the release of the movie.

Titanic, of course, wound up being a huge hit.  Steve stopped responding to me; and to this day, I'm sure he denies ever having said Titanic would fail.

M. Knight Shyamalan Martial Arts Pic from NYU

When I was at NYU I was hired for a short time to take photos around campus.  Supposedly it was for a yearbook they were doing, but I don't remember seeing any such yearbook.  At any rate, it was experience and a small amount of pay, so I did it.

At one point I was photographing the fencing team, a sport of which I partook.  A small martial arts class took place on the other side of the room, and the coach approached me and asked me to photograph his team.  I did, and I exposed the photo and sent it on.  I don't know if they used it or not, but years later I noticed something interesting.

I read an article that said M. Knight Shyamalan had been in a martial arts class at NYU.  I thought, hmm, I wonder... I looked at the photo and found that he was in the martial arts pic.

Crashing Billy Crystal’s Party

I was working at Universal Studios in the late ‘90s filing contracts, and sometimes I saw strange things when I would leave.  Once I had a couple friends visiting for some reason.  I don’t remember for certain why they were there, but I remember one of them was a costumer, so I think I was introducing her to someone.  Anyway, I had a really crusty car at the time.  When it moved it sounded like it was having a perpetual fart.  It was barely holding together, having rust all over, several colors of paint, and a window that was being held up with a stick.  There was even writing on the back, “OBO” which stood for “Or best offer.”  It had said “900 OBO” but I had wiped off the 900.  I couldn’t get the rest off, so it remained, and the car became known as Obo.

As we were leaving, we got stuck behind a line of fancy black cars, many of them limos.  They were stopping in front of the Europe part of the backlot, letting people off, then continuing forward.  When we got to the front, valets opened the doors and rushed, almost pushed, us out, then one took the car and “sppppppp” sped the car away.  We were all dressed better than the car looked, so we sort of fit in with the suit and tuxedo clad men and women in their fancy dresses, so we strolled into the event.

There were tables with large meals on them, so we sat down to eat.  Pretty soon, Billy Crystal stepped up to the mic at the front and began speaking.  Soon we realized we had stumbled into a charity event and eating plates that were costing others thousands of dollars to attend.  We felt guilty, (but not too guilty to have another course or two,) so we eventually wandered off.  We walked up the hill toward the suburbs area.  During the day, it was hard to go up here because the tour trams went through, but in the evening, it was an easier walk.

We got to a point where we could see a huge cliff wall that had been built over the water where actors were climbing around.  They were shooting Jurassic Park 3.  I knew it had been written lately; I had don’t the paperwork for the writer’s contract.  It had been Alexander Payne, an acquaintance whom I had met a few times at the Nebraska Coast Connection.  It was a bit depressing to see how many hundreds of thousands of dollars he was being paid for something he wrote over a weekend, (we did the paperwork on a Friday and the script came in on a Monday,) but I needed to get over that and focus on my own work.

We weren’t there long before someone found us and told us we couldn’t hang around, so we strolled back to the event which we passed through to return to my car.  I gave the ticket to the valet and waited.  It was quite a while before we heard “sppppppppp” in the distance, and after several more limos and fancy black cars passed by picking up their wealthy patrons, my little crusty Obo pulled up and we climbed inside under the judgmental gaze of those around.  Then we scurried out of there, the car sputtering fumes and going “spppppppppppppp!”

Beginning Film School at NYU

Having grown up in Nebraska, switching to New York City for college was an obvious culture shock.  However, it never felt as strange as many people thought it would be for me.  I was ready for a change, and I was ready to learn a bit about filmmaking.  The most education I had had was a class run by someone who believed nothing good had been made since Casablanca.

Ironically, a film had come out the summer before I went off to NYU called The Freshman.  This was not only a wild coincidence because it was about a young man starting college, but also because he was beginning school at NYU studying film.  I wondered how true it was going to be for me, especially in regard to the teacher who was so obsessed with The Godfather that he couldn’t talk about anything else.

I had some teachers like that, but more on that later.

The screening of The Freshman I went to was empty, as though it was a private screening for me; a warning.  I didn’t know how to take that, and I still don’t, but it was something that stood out.

The other movie that ultimately had a lot of meaning for me about that time was Pump up the Volume.  I saw it while on the way to New York.  My dad and I stopped off for the night in Pennsylvania.  He wanted to see something I wasn’t at all interested in, and he wasn’t interested in my Christian Slater movie, so we agreed to meet afterward.

At the time I thought Pump up the Volume was just an okay flick.  But on retrospect, it was very foretelling.  The story is about a young man who runs an underground radio station, broadcasting his views on life that really connect to other teenagers.  The FCC comes down hard on him for illegally broadcasting, and he sends a message to everyone to make their voices heard.

This movie could not be remade now because the concept of getting your voice heard is taken for granted.  With Youtube, podcasting, blogging, and all sorts of other ways to get your voice heard, the idea that you once had to go through a filter is gone.  But that really characterizes the difference between the world I was trying to break into as a storyteller at the time, and the world today.  In the 20^th century you had to ask permission to get your story told; permission from a movie studio or a book publisher or a magazine or a film festival.  That changed throughout the 2000s.  IFilm started to change that on the internet, but failed when they decided to become like the film festivals.  Little did they know that people were tired of that mentality, and they went by the wayside in favor of Youtube and blogs.

Now Pump up the Volume seems almost quaint the way it seems to state the obvious.  But one has to understand that those dark days of entertainment are only a very few years behind us; and the movie should serve as a warning of what it could become again if we ever regulate these free markets again.

The Extras Scam

People are told that one of the gateways into the film industry is through being an extra.  You pay your dues in the background of other movies while you make contacts and get to know your way around.

When I first moved to LA in 1995, there were a number of these agencies you could sign up with that had their own ways of finding you work.  Some of them charged a fee up front for you to sign up with them, and they took a very small finder’s fee whenever they got you work; others took no fee up front but got a larger percentage with each job they found you.

Over the years these other agencies dwindled until only a few remained, and only one truly dominates the industry, Central Casting.  Central was a company that charged an upfront fee and took a small percentage of your paycheck.  There was also a yearly fee to remain in their databank.  They made huge amounts from starry eyed hopefuls like myself who had been told this was the gateway to working in the film industry, and by offering our services to multi-million dollar movies for minimum wage.

In order to get work, we had to call in and wait through a long list on an electronic message saying what types of people they needed the next day.  You had to call in over and over, waiting for several messages hoping they needed your type.  If your type didn’t come up, you had no work for the next day.  Of course, you had to give up taking any other work, and when you did get on a set, you were paid so little it didn’t come close to making up for the days you didn’t get anything.  And we continued to pay our fees to remain with Central Casing year after year.

But this is what we were told we needed to do, so we kept doing it.

Then in 2011, the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office started cracking down on extras casting companies that charged up front fees.  This issue had come up when there was a scourge of complaints from people who had paid to be included in services but never received work.  Being at the height of the Great Recession, the issue was much more serious, and agencies were required to provide true employment services like in any other business.

In some ways, these agencies were caught in the middle.  Movie studios and production companies have a long history of shafting employees at the bottom.  While they make movies and shows chastising the wealth gap, they have the largest disparity in payment.  Their “above the line” stars, producers, etc. will make millions while the “below the line” extras and production personnel make minimum wage or less.  They are infamous for having an over-abundance of unpaid interns who are supposedly lucky to be there and are “learning” the craft as they get their bloated employers coffee.

It was these studios and companies which were pressuring the extras agencies to provide them with cheaper and cheaper labor, all along expecting fancy offices in the wealthiest areas of town.  So the extras agencies had fallen in line to remain open, passing on the charges and low pay to their employees.  But after the City Attorney’s crackdown, many had no choice but to shut their doors.

But not Central Casting.  They were big enough to last a bit longer; long enough to come up with a different solution.  Recognizing the annoyance of their employees needing to call in to find out about work, they began to provide a service that could call in for you.  No longer would you need to sit on the phone for ten minutes at a time wading through listing after listing, then having to call in again a few hours later if there wasn’t anything for you.  Now you could get a call-in service to do all that for you, and they would call you to let you know you have work.

Of course, this could all be bypassed if Central Casting simply placed their listings online so people could see at a glance if they fit anything.  Or, god forbid, they could do the casting and simply call the people they felt were appropriate for the parts, rotating in actors who hadn’t worked the day before so everyone gets even amounts of work.  But Central Casting isn’t going to bother with all this, you know why?

Because the call-in service is even more profitable than the original payment to register.  While it used to cost about $25 to register and the same to renew each year, it now costs $70 per month to get the call-in service.  Of course, you can choose to bypass the call-in service and call in each day yourself, but you’ll find that there are only very obscure and extremely specific listings; such as little person with a nose ring and a tattoo on his neck, or people who are missing limbs.  Occasionally they’ll offer jobs to people who have fancy, classic cars, but let’s face it, you aren’t getting any of those on an extras salary.

This is because the call-in service gets the listings first.  They fill it with their list of customers who are paying $70 a month, and the only listings that are making it to Central Casting’s messages are the obscure ones the call-in service couldn’t fill.

This obvious scam only gets by the City Attorney’s Office because they opened the call-in service under a different name, Extras Management.  It’s not particularly subtle, however, as the management office is directly across the street from Central Casting, and they even tell you at Central Casting when you register that you should go over to Extras Management and sign up to ensure you’ll get work.

Of course, work is not assured.  In fact, even when you’re called onto a job, it’s still not certain.  Even though you must have your schedule cleared for the day of a shoot, accepting no other work, if the production company decides to cancel, they can do so, even up to the last minute, and you are not compensated.  This means that, from the moment Extras Management calls you, you cannot accept any other work.  You must be available for the shoot, and you must show up.  But if the production company changes its mind or falls behind schedule, it can cancel your job, even if you drove clear across town and turned down other work.

What’s worse, they can require that you clear your schedule for several days, then decide they don’t need you after the first one, even if it’s too late for you to find other work.  This was exemplified in a heartbreaking way on a set I was on a while ago.  There were over 50 of us who had been told we had three days of work.  We all showed up and worked through a hectic schedule, standing out in the hot sun and trying to get shade since they didn’t have an air conditioned area for the extras.  (Of course they had plenty of air conditioned units for the “above the line” people in this show that made fun of elitism, but nothing for the extras.)  After 5:00, when it was too late to find other work, we were all told they wouldn’t be bringing us back the next day.  I’ve never seen so many people break down in tears.  I’m certain that if you were to watch that episode of the show and look into the background, you would see a plethora of wet faces.

This was during the Great Recession.  Many of these people were counting on the work to pay for rent.  This was near the end of the month, and several said they would now be evicted because they had no chance of making rent.  Some smuggled craft service food off the set because it would be all they would have to eat.  All this while the producers who made these decisions were going home to large houses and hefty paychecks for making a show deriding greedy rich people.

Oh, and by the way, Central Casting still pays only minimum wage for the days you do work, and they take a percentage out for themselves.  This means that the $70 a month one pays Extras Management isn’t even covered in one day’s worth of work.  It takes a day and a half before you become profitable.

It is a shameful racket, one that Central Casting profits from under the table.  One might have hoped Schwarzenegger might have done something about these practices when he was governor, but he was part of that “above the line” elitism that never sees the suffering of those at the bottom.  He had the air conditioned room that never even saw where we were.

Running Into Spielberg in Vegas

When I moved to Los Angeles in 1995, my mother was moving to the area as well.  She and my father had just gotten divorced, and she was starting where she had left off when she married him in the ‘60s, Loma Linda.  I had met some people who promised to help me get my career started; I just needed to get out to Southern California.

My mom and I were driving in a two van caravan; her in a big mover, me in our family van.  This was the days before cell phones, so when we wanted to chat, we either needed to pull over, or I had to run over to her at a red light.  At one of these interchanges, I accidentally locked myself out, and when the light turned green, I couldn’t get in.  Luckily, my mom had a spare key, and as cars drove by honking, I ran over and got it from her.

I was listening to audiobooks along the way, and as we pulled into Vegas, I was finishing The Diary of Anne Frank.  Great material for Sin City.  As such, my mind was wandering and I was looking down at the sidewalk rather than up at the bright lights.  I remembered something from Schindler’s List and was about to say to my mom “In Schindler’s List…” when I smelled something rank.  I stopped, looked up, and found myself face to face with a drunken stranger I had almost run into.  He was talking to someone beside him as he stared at me, wondering why I had almost plowed into him.  He was wavering a little on his feet, and had clearly drunk a lot.  The smell I had detected was his alcoholic breath.  And it immediately dawned on me.  This was Steven Spielberg.

I froze in place, unsure what to say or do.  My mother hadn’t noticed.  She was further down the sidewalk unaware what I was doing.  Then the light turned green for Spielberg and his friends and they walked across, leaving me behind.  At that moment my mom finally realized I wasn’t with her, and came back to me, asking why I was slack-jawed.  I pointed at the street, at the man in white pants, and said, “Spielberg.”  She looked and recognized him and said, “huh.”

I took it as a good omen, and was walking on cloud nine the rest of the day.  Screw Vegas, I just saw the most successful filmmaker in history on my way to the city of movies.

The First Time I Learned About Star Wars

My first movie experience was almost Star Wars.  I was six years old and my father wanted to take me to this new science fiction film.  But my mother, being a responsible parent, stopped him and said that he should watch it first to see if it would be appropriate for someone at my age.  So my dad took my brother to see it while my mom took me to see Benji.  Yep, my mother’s sense of responsibility made Benji my first movie rather than Star Wars.  Damn you good parenting!

My mom, sister and I got home first and we were in the kitchen when the door opened and my brother rushed in with his eyes wide.  My father was right behind him, his own eyes wide as well.  It was as though he had just seen a ghost doing gymnastics.  He told her that I had to go see this movie.  Not should, had.  Still being the responsible parent, my mother asked if it was age appropriate, and he vigorously nodded his head.

Soon after, we went to see it at the Stuart theater in downtown Lincoln.  It was a former stage theater from the days of grand productions.  It looked more like an opera house, complete with deep cushioned, plush, red seats, and etched mirrors in the lobby; and it played only the biggest movies.  I remember only bits and pieces of watching it.  In particular, I remember that I didn’t know what “terminate” meant, and when my mom explained that it meant to kill, I couldn’t believe they were thinking about killing Princess Leia.  It was the first time I remember feeling fear.  I didn’t understand yet that the good guys general win these movies; my exposure to television thus far had often been football, and in that, either side could win.  So I truly didn’t know that the rebels would win.  (Oh, spoiler alert.)

I also remember going to the bathroom during the scene when Obiwan Kenobi turned off the tractor beam, so I didn’t understand why the characters were able to leave.  For some reason I remember another older black kid in the bathroom with me.  I think I remember this because it was one of the first times I was using a bathroom alone, and I didn’t know how I was supposed to react to a stranger in a bathroom.  I wasn’t nervous with fear, I was nervous about my manners.  Am I supposed to look?  Am I not?  I think men and women react differently to bathrooms; we never get over our fear of looking at one another while in them.

After the movie, I remember going to the apartment buildings my dad owned and jumping in the pool.  We had taken a family friend, Jon, and he and my brother Trevor were reenacting scenes, especially the one in the trash compactor as though the walls were going to smash them in the pool, and the snake creature was underneath.  I remember one point when Trevor said, “we’re all going to be a lot thinner” and Jon responded, “At least I won’t have to iron my clothes anymore!”

In the years to come, it would prove to have an impact on me as strong as my dad predicted; especially with the toys.  My best friend Ryan and I collected as many figures as we could and created stories with them.  This became my first efforts at storytelling.

And then my father purchased making of documentaries on laser disk.  I began watching them over and over and over.  I was obsessed with how people made images that went on the screen; how storytelling could be visually explained, and how those images stirred the emotions.

Tales of a Failed Filmmaker: Stranded in Park City

I was traipsing through the fresh snow of Park City, heading through the darkness and drifting snowflakes toward my car in the parking lot.  It was the middle of the night, and the snow had been falling since 10.

I had seen it when it started.  From outside a club along the main street of town, the tiny white dots dancing toward the ground highlighted in the glow of the old fashioned lamp posts.  The white sheen of the streets got trapped by the walls of the quaint buildings, creating an all-too-perfect glow, like a painting of small town America.  Next to me, someone posted the results of the winners of the festival.  At the top was someone named Morgan Spurlock for a documentary called Supersize Me.  It didn't seem important at the time in January, 2004, but in retrospect I realize I was the first person in the world to learn that this groundbreaking film had been the winner at the festival.

I had been invited to the club by two women with whom I had shared a shuttle bus.  I shouldn't have been surprised that they didn't show up, though I later found that I had probably gone to the wrong club.  It was just as well.  I needed to head back to LA, and I had only enough money to pay for the gas to get me there.  I had a check waiting for me at home, but my ex-girlfriend, who had not yet left my apartment even after more than two months after breaking up with me, refused to help out by depositing it.

I had risked everything to go to Sundance.  I didn't have a film in the festival, but I did have a movie being developed.  We had met with a bunch of well-known actors, and Martin Sheen had offered to be a part of it.  I just needed investors, and Sundance was a way to get to these investors and production companies without being blocked by what I called the red velvet rope.

I had made some important connections, and now I just needed to get back to Burbank with them.  The snow was starting to come down hard now, and I needed to get off the mountain before I got blocked in.

That's why I was so horrified to see a tow truck with a small white lump on its back, my car, driving out of the parking lot.  I screamed in panic as I chased after, cutting across a nearby lawn to try to cut it off.  Much to my surprise, there was a hidden dip into which I suddenly sank up to my chest.  Stuck, I tried to push forward anyway.  But I could do nothing but helplessly watch my car be carried away into the darkness.

I was helpless, alone, more than half buried in the snow in the darkness of the middle of the night.  I was lower than the lowest point.  This is where a lifetime of trying to make it in the entertainment industry had led me.  Hundreds of miles from home without a car, no way to get to it, and not enough money to get it out and drive it home even if I did.

As I floated there in the snow in shock and hopelessness, my mind began to wonder how I had gotten there.  What choices had I made that brought me to this point that was lower than I expected life could ever get?

I will be exploring these choices, and my experiences, in this blog.  Whenever the title begins with "Tales of a Failed Filmmaker" I will be telling these stories from a journey of 25  years of trying to make it in the film industry, and failing.

I'm beginning this story now because this month, (in fact, this day,) marks the 20th anniversary of my arrival in Los Angeles.  I will not be telling this story in order; it would take too long to get to more recent tales, and I know I'll be remembering things out of order along the way.  So each story will be from a different point in time, and I'll do my best to explain the dates where I remember them.