The Players Directory
There’s this book, The Academy Player’s Directory, which is a couple of huge volumes with actor’s pictures in them so producers, casting folks have easy access. “Who is Dean Cameron” “Turn to page 387 of Younger Leading Men” “Oh… him… no…”
One has to renew a subscription every year to get their photo in. When I didn’t I received an email:
Dean,
As a valued past customer, we’d appreciate your input.
It would greatly help our future marketing efforts if you would take a moment to reply with a brief explanation as to why you choice not to renew your listing and let us know at what cost would you consider listing again in the printed Players Directory.
Best regards,
Players Directory
So I wrote back…
I’VE GOT NO FUCKING CAREER AND CAN’T FUCKING GET ARRESTED AFTER HAVING STARRED IN A BUNCH OF FUCKING MOVIES BECAUSE THE FUCKING INDUSTRY AND EVERYONE IN IT IS FULL OF FUCKNG SHIT.
Any more questions?
Today, I received this from them:
I appreciate your “honesty.” I’ll remove you from email list.
It’s nice to know that someone reads spam replies.
Writing a Screenplay
I think it’s no secret that I am seriously awed by the guy who does drunkenstepfather.com
It’s totally nsfw and if you just scan it, it looks like a very dirty celebrity blog and, yeah, that’s part of it, but every now and then the guy will write some prose that slays me.
I’ve written him a couple of very fruity fan-email and he wrote me back and now we have a bit of a pen-pal thing going on which invariably leaads to show-biz.
Looooon boring story turned into short boring story… I sent this to him:
HOW TO WRITE A SCREENPLAY
Writing a screenplay is easy. Seriously.
1 your main character is a person who wants something. by the end of the script, the person has gotten something else he didn’t know he wanted.
2 write down 50 ideas for scenes on the tops separate sheets of paper.
3 put them in the order you think they should be in.
4 in the middle of each sheet, write the location of the scene, the time of day, etc… you know in script format:
INT. OFFICE - DAY
Dean is writing an email to a genius.
5 Add some sort of description of where the person is or what the person is doing that illustrates what kind of person he or the main character is. so…
INT. OFFICE - DAY
Dean is writing an email to a genius. There is a pyramid of diet coke cans and unopened mail on his desk. A dog sleeps next to a dog bowl next to a ripped open 50 pound bag of dog food. The phone rings.
6 Then, add the worst dialogue you can that shows what the conflict in the scene is. The conflict MUST advance your story or advance the character… we must learn something in this scene that we do not know. You may only write two lines of dialogue. later you will go back and fill this in and make it better. but first… you are limited to two lines. thusly:
INT. OFFICE - DAY
Dean is writing an email to a genius. There is a pyramid of diet coke cans and unopened mail on his desk. A dog sleeps next to a dog bowl next to a ripped open 50 pound bag of dog food. The phone rings.DEAN
(yelling over his shoulder)
GOD DAMNIT, WOULD YOU ANSWER THE FUCKING PHONE?DOG
You are so lazy. why don’t you answer the phone. the drunken stepfather guy is from the f.b.i., anyway, you has-been!
Dean faints at the sound of his dog talking.
7 You do those sheets until you have all of your scenes written with two lines of dialogue or two lines of description and they can’t be good. you can’t make them good at this stage. so you may have a car chase:
EXT. FREEWAY - NIGHT - RAIN
A car hits an old lady who bursts into flames and melts spiderman’s balls.
The cops cut him off and the driver is scared of spiders because they throw spiders at him.
The idea is to take as much pressure off yourself being good as you can because that’s where everyone fails. they start a script and it sucks (they all do at the beginning of the process and most do at the end of the process, ass well) so they never finish them.
8 finish those 50 scenes… maybe add some… take the ones out that you don’t feel you need.
9 Then, go back and fill in each scene. fill in the dialogue. fill in the description. you’ll have at least 90 pages. you really only need 100. *try* to hit these landmarks:
pg 1-20 set the character on his journey
pg 21-50 throw a bunch of obstacles in his way
pg 51-70 he fights the obstacles but by page 70, it looks as if all is lost
pg 70-90 he figures out a totally new way to win and does. make sure that yu don’t have deus ex machina unless you’ve set it up that it would work. if it does, though, it’s not deus ex machina.
your first draft will suck like country music. you rewrite. make the main character interesting enough for your favorite actor want to pester his agent and the studio to do the movie. then each subsequent draft, focus on one character and make the character interesting enough that a star will want the part. keep rewriting until that’s true of every character… even MAN #1 and WAITRESS.
10 After you’ve made it interesting for the actors. make it interesting for the cinematographers. the wardrobe person. sound, etc.
The key is having enough people waving your script around saying I HAVE GOT TO BE A PART OF THIS MOVIE!!!!!! and then you get 30-90 million for your stupid fucking movie.
That’s how you write a fucking script, sir.
Next caller
Don’t believe it!
If’n you’re in the area…
Please Join Us TONIGHT for the IIG Awards…
Legendary magician and debunker James “The Amazing” Randi will be in
Hollywood tonight at the Steve Allen Theater to receive a lifetime
Achievement Award from the Independent Investigations Group. This
presentation will be made during the IIG Awards, which honor TV and
cinema that promote science and critical thinking.
Among those participating in tonight’s ceremony will be former
Saturday Night live star Julia Sweeney, and actor comedian Paul
Provenza.
Randi was an original founder of CSICOP, the Committee for the
Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, when it formed
in 1976. CSICOP (now called the Committee for Scientific Inquiry)
still publishes Skeptical Inquirer Magazine. He has appeared numerous
times on the Tonight Show, and has been involved in many high-profile
investigations including pretended faithealer Peter Popov, and alleged
psychic Uri Gellar.
Come see this giant of skepticism and critical thinking in this rare
appearance in Hollywood!
Cocktails start at 7:00 p.m.
Awards Ceremony starts at 8:00 p.m.
Admission: $10 benefits the IIG and the Center for Inquiry-Los Angeles
Free parking
Steve Allen Theater at the Center for Inquiry
4773 Hollywood Blvd (2 blocks west of Vermont Ave)
Los Angeles
(323) 666-9797
Oh Canaduh!!!
As part of my nut Libertarian craziness, I did a pro-bono (cough… free… cough) voice over for my crazy friends who want drugs to be legal… imagine, letting free people control what they do with their bodies… which you can see here: The Incarcarex Video
Well, Canaduh wanted their own version except for the first time in history, it’s not a rotten, not-as-good, knockoff of an original.
It’s an actual Canadian version.
Man, I love the multi-colored bong. It makes me to laff.
http://www.blackmustache.com/work/incarcerexCanada/incarcerexCanada01.html
WTC Bounce House Slide
In fifty years, less if we factor time compression, there will be a World Trade Center bounce house. It will be really tall and kids can jump from windows to the bounce house pavement below. There will probably be some really cool technology then so there will be fire and you can feel like you’re hundreds of stories high.
Why is this in your head, you aks?
To wit:
The slut you don’t take to dinner…
Remember her? Or him? That person who would come over at 11 and screw your brains out and then leave. Different than a booty call because she thought that if she hung in long enough, you’d finally see how cool she really was. You’d realize that just because she was available and nice to you… because she actually liked you and thought you were a good guy… it didn’t mean she was less than some idealized girlfriend you had in your head. She was actually one of your most successful relationships, but you never thought about it that way because you were waiting for something *shinier* or something. You thought that it was important that you won a girl over… If a girl was available and ready to hang out, there was something wrong with her.. or she wasn’t impressive or something.
Showbiz is like that.
The people you know and are friends with aren’t good enough to work with professionally. If you’ve worked with them before, that’s all they can do. There’s someone better, otherwise, the person you’d worked with wouldn’t be available. Plus, “The Studio” or “The Producers” have “a guy” they want to work with. Maybe you’ve actually heard of that person… Maybe not. It really just means that their agent has been working really hard to get them a gig and has been calling the head of the network every day for a week. “The Execs” wants you to work with that person because they don’t want to be wrong; It’s the path of least resistance. They’re “excited” about that guy, which could mean any of the following:
- they’ve heard his name more than some other name
- one of their wives thinks he’s good
- the least amount of people don’t not like him
- their boss likes him
- there was just a thing about him in that thing the other day
- he is the most talented person who has ever lived and will change art as we know it
- they have a holding deal with the guy
- they have a development deal the guy
- they’re trying to get a holding deal with the guy and want to prove they mean business!
- someone sent a clip of the guy on youtube this morning
- they think he’s someone else
- he’s fucking someone’s secretary
- “um… i have a lunch in one hour across town… if you say he’s fine… “
Summer School
Last year, I did an interview here at the house for the special features for the 20th anniversary of Summer School. The bride and I watched it and I didn’t come off like a dickhead, which is always my biggest fear. Pompous or pathetic. They didn’t use the “funny” stuff I did like show the thing Carl Reiner wrote that said “If you don’t become a big star I don’t know anything…” and offering to take him on a walk around my estate here in North fucking Hollywood.
That was probably a wise move on their part.
This weekend, the bride went to a wedding in Le Vegas…
digression
Another reason to hate weddings - “Hey, we’re getting married!!! Why don’t you ruin your long weekend, drive in horrible traffic and pay inflated hotel prices on a holiday weekend and give us some gifts!?!?”
/digression #forgive
…so after she left, I figured I’d watch the commentary Reiner and Mark Harmon did.
About 5 minutes in Reiner says “everyone thought he’d break out and hit it big… shame… someone should have done something with him” or something to that effect.
As I shut it off, I couldn’t help but think “Um, Carl Reiner, you know *you* could’ve done something with me.”
Ah well.
That’s fucking showbiz, innit?
I wonder if people would be interested in audio commentary from me and the other people who were in Summer School. I wonder if people would pay for it.
I will be finding out within two months.
oooohhhhhh how very cryptic!!!
Lucky?
I enjoy watching shows like Video Justice, Shockwave, World’s Wildest Videos and other real crappy crap crap crap t.v.
Why in the hell would you call a helicopter pilot whose helicopter crashes lucky? Why do people thank god when their houses are destroyed and say they are blessed? Do they not realize that their house was fucking destroyed?
I consider myself lucky. I’ve never been in a plane crash (if you don’t count that foaming the runway thing) and have never had my home destroyed. I’m lucky. Not a guy who has been hit by an 18 wheeler and been through a year of rehabilitation in the hospital.
Next caller.
entendre?
Great tits cope well with warming
Sylvia Brown
Why the fuck didn’t one psychic predict the 20k dead people? Sylvia Browne says she picks up vibrations about the future.
I’d like to kick her in the balls.