I’ve written before about being a freelance reader in Hollywood — it was my first job in the industry, as it was for many screenwriters. It’s been almost ten years since I’ve written coverage, but looking through Scott the Reader’s own explanation of his job, it seems that not much has changed.
Not even the pay: $50 a script. Adjusting for inflation, that sucks.
You can read Scott’s recap here.
Now that there are several screenwriter-oriented blogs, I thought I’d take a moment to examine the six-degrees of separation quality among them.
Or perhaps I just want to revel in the fact that I’m the Kevin Bacon of screenbloggers.
★ I Find Your Lack of Faith Disturbing
This is how I met Josh Friedman: When I bought my house, my agent said, “Oh, hey, Josh Friedman lives down the street. You should knock on his door or something.” Like’s it’s Mayberry. But one day while I was walking my dog, I said what the hell, and introduced myself.
As it turns out, Josh and I grew up in the same town: Boulder, Colorado. He went to the cool high school downtown, while I went to the preppy high school up on a giant hill, literally looking down on the town.
Josh and I had the same agent starting out, sort of. Mine was an actual agent. His was the young woman who answered the actual agent’s phones.
Josh lives in a bigger, fancier house than mine, covered with vines. (Like Madeline!) Actual famous people grew up in Josh’s house. Honest. Meanwhile, I sold my house to Michael Rappaport.
My moving had almost nothing to do with Josh and his monkeys.
I suspect Josh’s blogname for me will be some derivation of Ned Flanders, pesky do-gooding neighbor. Although it’s pretty egotistical to think he’ll ever write about me. (bashfully twisting foot.)
Craig Mazin and I have the same agent. One day, my agent says, “One of my other clients has some questions about your website. Is it okay if I give him your number?” I say sure.
Craig calls. He asks about how I set up my site. He really wants to know how I got the brad graphic to float over on the right-hand side. (Answer: voodoo.) It’s only after a few minutes of conversation that he mentions that he’s at the hospital, because his wife is in labor.
Now that’s dedication. Or avoidance. It’s something.
To this day, I’ve never met Craig in person.
I first encountered David Anaxagoras’s site through a comment he’d left on a post. Apparently, he was significantly influenced by my site, but his layout and such is actually quite a bit smarter.
In fact, I stole these quotation marks from him. I have not poached his progress bars, but that’s only because I haven’t thought of anything worth charting.
I ended up meeting David when I spoke at his screenwriting class. He’s a good guy.
As for the other screenbloggers, I have no juicy dirt to spill. I only know them by their URLs.
This past May, the New York Times had a very nice profile piece on me in the Arts and Leisure section, written by Bob Baker. I liked it. Many people called to say they’d seen it. And that was that.
It was only as I was sifting through the referrer logs on Friday that I noticed Bob Baker has his own website, and that he’d written a detailed explanation of all the editing that went into that story, complete with three different versions of the article. It’s sort of like a DVD extra, print-style.
My undergraduate degree was in journalism, so I’m used to stories being heavily rewritten. But as the subject of the article, it’s weird to see a lot of the quotes that got dropped. I remember saying them, but since they didn’t show up in the “official” article, they don’t feel quite real. They never made it to ink.
You can see all the versions of the article here.
Yesterday, I saw The Constant Gardener.
My quick review: I respected the filmmaking, but I can’t say I loved the movie. Throughout the entire film, I was so far ahead of the Ralph Fiennes character that I found myself thinking more about African theatre, diplomatic passports and shallow-focus lenses than what exactly had happened to poor Ralph’s wife. However, I’ll probably see every movie Fernando Meirelles makes. He’s terrifically talented.
More interesting than the movie itself was the film-going experience: it was my first outing to a Monday Morning Mommy Movie at The Grove.
The whole Mommy Movie concept is pretty basic. Every Monday morning, the theatre shows one of the new releases. Generally, it’s not a kid’s movie — last week, it was The 40-Year Old Virgin. Parents are allowed — encouraged — to bring infants. The theatre lights aren’t turned down all the way, and there’s table set up for changing diapers. There’s also a stroller-parking area outside the theatre.
Depending on whether or not you have a baby, this is either the best thing that ever happened, or a quick descent into Hell. I don’t think anyone accidentally bought a ticket for the Mommy movie, but if they did, I’m sure they quickly got their money back.
At first, I thought I wasn’t going to be able to enjoy the movie over the constant din of fussy infants, but it’s amazing how quickly you tune it out. It’s all a matter of expectation. If you expect a quiet movie theatre, one crying baby will ruin it. If you expect noise, it doesn’t bother you a bit.
One phenomenon I hadn’t expected was the seven-minute rule. I don’t know if it’s really seven minutes, but next time you’re at a dinner party, pay attention to the ebb and flow of conversation. About once every seven minutes, it gets really quiet for some reason. Then in starts up again.
It turns out, the same thing happens with babies. One minute, the auditorium will be filled with cries, then it will suddenly get quiet. It’s spooky. And welcome.
The whole think struck me as a particularly ripe arena for a Wedding Crashers-style comedy about guys looking to pick up MILFs, since it would be so easy to strike up a loaded conversation about onesies, breasts, and butt paste.
For the record, “Mommy Movies” is pretty heterosexist, but I’m not getting up on my soapbox. There were only a handful of dads in the audience. Most weeks, I’ll be one of them.