Saturday, May 27, 2006

The Art of the Meet and Greet

When you reach the lofty heights of sporadic employment in show business that I have people make several assumptions about you. You must have cracked a code, learned the secret handshake or sold your soul to the devil to have achieved even your level of modest success.

(For the record, Satan and I have not done business together, although we have been trading calls.)

For those of you imagining the wild Malibu parties and drug fueled orgies we of working Hollywood are constantly enjoying, I won’t discourage that impression. Just give my regards to President Carter and the rest of the 1970’s. The truth is that day-to-day life of working Hollywood is much more mundane. Most of it pivots around an odd, deceptively simple sounding ritual, The Meeting.

The Meeting can take on several forms, the most common of which is the “Meet and Greet”. Think of the Meet and Greet as a job interview where there’s no specific job involved and the person you’re meeting has no power to hire you. You are there, whether as a writer, actor or director, to meet an executive at a network or studio so when their superiors are discussing prospective writers, directors or actors, the executive can say,

“Yeah, I met him.” And so the wheel turns.

“Meet and Greets” are all pretty much the same. Let’s say you are a new writer that CBS has requested to meet in preparation for staffing season, when new shows are hiring their writers.

The phone call comes from your agent. (How to get one is a tale for another day) You have a “Meet and Greet” with a VP of Comedy at the network, who loved your “Two and A Half Men” writing sample. You hang up the phone, convinced that your rocket to the top has begun. You tell your manager at work that Starbucks can find another barista; you have a “Meet and Greet”!

Your manager smiles enigmatically, wishes you good luck and turns back to typing on his laptop. While leaving, you glance over his shoulder and manage to catch a quick glimpse at his “Desperate Housewives” spec script.

The day of your meeting, you drive to the gate and give the guard your name. He pulls your pass up from the computer and directs you to a parking space, usually nowhere near where you’ll ultimately be going. You park the car and get out. As you walk across the lot to your meeting, you silently take it all in. “Wow, there’s Bob Barker’s parking spot”. “Is that Ted Danson?” “Maybe I’ll run into Leeza Gibbons! That’d be sweet.”

You’ll get to the office of the VP of Comedy. Understand that titles in Hollywood are nothing to be intimidated by. Think of them as ambassadorships. It’s a much easier meeting to take if you think you’re sitting across from the Ambassador to Luxembourg.

You walk into the reception area and give your name. The comely young receptionist gives you a dazzling smile that makes you melt and believe that you are destined to be together forever. That, in all likelihood, will not happen.

You, hopefully, will have arrived promptly. Always a good strategy if tempered with the knowledge that your Meet and Greet will never begin on time. The executive will have calls to juggle, other Meet and Greets that day and more. Like a doctor, their schedule can be thrown off by a single late call or unexpected event. (And like a doctor, the executive will also be suffering from an unwarranted “god complex”)

You will be offered coffee, soda of some kind, or water. Always take the beverage. If possible, have a subsequent request, just nothing exotic or obnoxious. A pedicure, for example, would be going too far. Simply request enough to make them remember you. If you ask for coffee, ask for creamer, but if all they have is the powdered stuff, change to a Coke instead. Show them that their job is to take care of you, even now. But, be charming, always.

Eventually, you will be ushered into the executive’s office. The first question you will be asked is if you need anything to drink, even if you’re carrying your beverage in from the reception area. Leave your first drink in the reception area and ask for another one. Allow the executive to make this gesture for you. Let them enjoy their power. They may not have it next week.

You will enter the office and be faced with what seat to take. Take the couch. Quickly note the personal items in the executive’s office, whether it’s movie memorabilia, sports stuff or pictures of their children and come up with one thing to say about them. “Hey, how about those Red Sox?” “Boy, I really loved Caddyshack 2” “Your daughter’s goiter is almost unnoticeable.”

This is the small talk portion of the Meet and Greet. The executive will ask you about your background, mostly because they like being reminded that people come from somewhere else and don’t pop out of a pod somewhere in the basement of the Writer’s Guild Building. Have a story about the time your crazy Uncle Ernie dressed up in your mom’s prom dress and held up a gas station. Just make it the funny version.

The conversation will inevitably turn to your career, or your aspirations if your career hasn’t begun. Two tips here: 1) Your career goal is to direct/write/act in something exactly like that executive’s most recent success. 2) Resist the temptation to break into sobs and say something like,

“I just want to work. I have no money. I have no other skills. My family thinks I’m crazy.”

(Unfortunately, I learned Tip #2 the hard way.)

The conversation will continue through vague banter about current movies or TV, to more specific discussion of the executive’s current projects. Your passion and desire to be involved in them cannot be oversold. Again, though, any weeping should be confined to tears of rapture that such a comic gem as “My Stepson is a Gay Alien” with Jim Belushi could find it’s way on to their fall schedule and how it would be the creative pinnacle of your career to be hired on that show.

Eventually, the conversation will start to double back on itself. Your first clue will be the awkward silences and the clumsy segues back to topics already covered. “So, from Boston, huh?”

In the real world, when called into an interview, at some point, the interviewer will have gotten all of the information they need and will close the meeting. “Well, thanks for coming in. We have a lot of people to talk to. We’ll let you know.”

That will not happen in Hollywood. Think of the Hall of Presidents in Disneyland. Like the automatons of past Chief Executives (or the denizens of Country Bear Jamboree, for that matter), the executives are on an internal meeting loop that will repeat until you close the meeting yourself, thanking them for their time and getting out of there.

If you don’t, you run a serious risk of an executive malfunction. While there is no actual record of what happens when one occurs, there is a rumor that a small fire at Universal Studios in 1996 resulted when a writer on a Meet and Greet with an executive kept waiting for the exec to close the meeting. The resulting short circuit and fire caused extensive damage throughout the Black Tower.

You will leave the office and drive off the lot. You will call your agent and tell them that the meeting went great. They will promise to check in with the network and get back to you. A couple of hours later, you learn that the executive thought you were “ A really nice guy.” You never hear from CBS again.

You are depressed. You go to your favorite bar. The bartender asks you what is wrong. You reply that you just had your first “Meet and Greet”. The bartender groans sympathetically and pours you a draft, even though you didn’t ask for one.

Always take the beverage. But just the one. You have two more “Meet and Greets” tomorrow.

Sunday, March 19, 2006

SHAKIRA, FERGIE AND BRITNEY

For your basic red blooded guy, the greatest fashion development of the past thirty years is the return of the midriff. We who came of age in the seventies were met by the innocent, hippie "halter tops", which completely disappeared in the black leathered 80'. But, hallelujah, midriffs made a triumphant return in the 90's and show no signs of ever leaving.

They've become imbedded in pop culture fashion (which is a double edged sword for me, a dad of two girls) but with Britney, Fegie, Christine Aguilera and Shakira, among others, "Sexy" has a new standard.

You want "Pouty Psuedo Virginal Slut?" Meet Mrs. Federline. "Skanky, But I'd Fuck Her For A Vial of Pennicillin" Then Ms. Aguilera is more your taste.

Fergie is in her own category. The best singer and the most earned sexy quotient. She's not play acting or pushing it, like the first two women.

But, then there is Shakira. The ethnic quality adds to it, sure, she sings well, and is the most naturally hot, but this is all with a qualifcation. I'm not sure she is of the same species as the rest of the women on this list.

Let me explain. I love pizza. I am from Boston, a fine pizza city and now live in Los Angeles, a pizza wasteland. I recently spent some time in New York and had pizza all over the city, all of it spectacular. But at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge on the Brooklyn side is a place called Garibaldi's (I think)

I ate their pizza. I came to one simple conclusion. Their pizza was so astonishing and singular, that either no one else should be allowed to use the term "pizza" again, or Garibaldi's needs to call theirs something else.

Garibaldi's is the Shakira of pizza. Her unforced, smoldering sexiness, her uindenialable talent.

And that midriff. I'd wax poetic about its sinewy goodness, it's mind and agenda all its own, but that would make me sound insane. Remember John Hurt in Alien? How the creature burst horrifically from his stomach during that dinner scene? I watch Shakira gyrate thorugh a song and I easily believe that undulating somewhere between her rib cage and her navel is a cobra trying to escape.

Good god, she makes Fergie's belly look like mine.

A thought. Does that make Domino's the Britney Spears of pizza?

Sunday, March 12, 2006

WHY FERGIE, WHY?

During the 2004 Presidential campaign I was lucky enough to attend a Democratic fundraiser in Los Angeles. The entertainment was the Black Eyed Peas. I was a fan going in. (And not just of Fergie's midriff) "Elephunk" was a great, infectious album with several cuts that were instant classics.

Live, they did not disappoint. Fergie looked seriously hot, sounded even better and the group as a whole not only put on a terrific show, but their rendition of "Where Is The Love" turned the entire theater into a church. Sensational.

I walked out of there thinking that they had me in their pocket for years to come. So, how did such a great group burn away all of the goodwill they built up with me almost instantly?

Well, a steaming piece of crap called "Monkey Business" was all they needed, as it turned out. The first single, "Don't Phunk With My Heart" was unmemorable except for a video that was more stupid than funny. "Don't Lie" a pretty good single and the video wasn't bad, so there was really no reason to expect the Peas to follow that with a single that combined the two essentials of being excruiciatingly awful and inescapable.

I saw the video - highlighting Fergie with a midriff enitrely covered - should have been a sign, in retrospect - and I watched nearly half of it before I realized that I was watching the Peas. And once I did, it was with the frozen horror of the little kid that approached Shoeless Joe Jackson at the height of the 1919 Black Sox Scandal and pleaded "Say it isn't so, Joe."

I pulled into my garage this afternoon and unloaded my two daughters 8 and 3. The eight year old was singing the newest song that was going through her little head.

"My humps.
My humps.
My lovely lady lumps..."

I closed my eyes and willed the noise to stop, but it was joined by her worshipful three year old sister.

And as they danced arounfd the garage their voices echoed...

"My humps, My humps My humps. MY HUMPS!!!!'

Jesus Christ. Say it isn't so, Fergie.

Saturday, March 11, 2006

DIDJA MISS ME?

I had intended to do an Oscar recap, offering my take on the Awards and Jon Stewart's work...but sadly, I have the same window of interest the general public has...fervent through the first commerical break and dropping like a rock after that. And, once the show ends...by about noon the next day, just about the time Colin Farrell has risen with his hangover, my Oscar hangover is gone.

So, Stewart, very good....weird, tense crowd, Clooney rocked, great speech, coolest guy in town, Stiller, funny, good taped bits, too damn many montages, though and what the fuck?...Crash is best picture? Even threw Nicholson for a loop. Glad it's over - can't wait till next year.

Saturday, February 25, 2006

MY OSCAR GOES TO...

First of all, I love the Oscars. With all of the self congratulatory, overblown elements that come with them, they do really attempt to (and largely suceed) in honoring some of the best work of the year. Sure, it's an imperfect, subjective, apples to oranges horse race, but if you care about good movies getting attention (as opposed to popular movies getting attention) It's a very satisfying enterprise.

(I will refrain for now, from addressing the Academy's blind spot for comedy and the very valid point that by nature of having five nominees that there are grievous oversights yearly)

My favorite element, while most derided by many, are the speeches. All of them in fact, because you are truly witnessing the peak moment of someone's life and that is unbeatble drama. I love watching the dweeb from Iceland accepting his Best Documentary Short Award as much as I love the human drama of the team from Iceland unexpectedly winning Olympic gold in the eluge.

And I love the "stars" speeches most of all, because no matter how big they've gotten or how warped by a career in Hollywood, they all began the same way, watching those Oscars as a kid and thinking about what they'd say if they won one. That is who walks up to get that trophy.

Of course, some of my fondness for that stems from having my speech written since I was fourteen. The categories have changed, the "thank you's" are constantly being revised, but the year my name is called at the Oscars, (or the Emmys or Tony's for that matter) I'll have a speech as tight as a drum.

And that is what life in Hollywood is like when all is said and done. "High school with money" is still the definitive quote but I'd like to add "Community theater on steroids."

My Oscar picks to follow.

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

HOW TIM ROBBINS ALMOST CONVERTED ME TO THE DEATH PENALTY

Michael Morales' now delayed execution has made me examine the death penatly anew. Are the three drugs used to adminster the lethal injection "cruel and unusual" punishment as has been recently ruled?

Well, gee, isn't killing anyone for anything cruel and unusual punishment?

To be clear, I am against the death penalty. It is morally repugnant. Does anyone honestly believe it serves as a deterrent to anything? Does anyone believe that it exists for any other purpose besides "An eye for an eye"? That is a morally unacceptable position for the country we purport to be to hold.

If we have to live with the death penalty, the glacially lengthy appeal process is absolutely essential. I'd champion the cliche that one unjust execution is too many but that ship has long sailed.

But since the moral argument against the death penalty gets no traction, let's look at another fundamental argument of the death penalty proponents. It gives the victim's families and society closure.

I'd submit that the families and society would have closure at the end of a trial in seeing the convict locked away and the key being tossed and not sitting through 25 years of appeals and the torture of seeing the man who killed their child live longer on death row than that child was allowed to walk freely on the earth.

And think of the millions of dollars spent by the government to fund the appeals process.

Cutting the appeals process is morally unacceptable. Killing the "Guilty"is morally unacceptable. Torturing the survivors' families by subjecting them to decades of appeals is unaccptable. Millions of dollars thown down the toilet to kill is unacceptble. The only solution is abolishing the death penalty and replacing it with life sentences, no possibility of parole.

And yet, seeing the film Dead Man Walking almost changed my mind. Sean Penn's character's pending execution for a horrific crime that he continues to deny brings Sister Mary Prejean, anti death penalty advocate, to the prison. Through her interaction with Penn's character, he admits him crime and feels remorse. At the end of the movie, we are to be moved by this redeemed soul walking to his execution.

Now at the end of the movie, I found myself wondering if this "redeemed soul" ever would have reached that point if not confronted with his own mortality . If sentenced to life in prison would his horrific act become, in time, a fuzzy anecdote that he'd share around the yard when asked by a newbie "What are you in for?"

Gee, I walked out of that movie thinking there might be something to this death penalty thing. Hardly the conclusion Mr. Robbins intended me to reach.

Then that morality thing kicked in. Pain in the ass, that. Still makes it all a more complex issue than either side would like to believe.

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

THIS WRITING LIFE (and how to avoid it)

It occurs to me that even as I begin this entry, ostensibly about some overview about my life as a writer, here in Hollywood and more to the point, here inside my head, that this actually servers as a deviously clever procrastination device. I can write about writing for an hour and publish this on my blog which no one reads yet, or I can get to today's pages.

...And the results are in. The pages win, at least for now. Consider this your first lesson.

Sunday, February 19, 2006

MUSINGS ON A SUNDAY AFTERNOON

Welccome to today. Crisp and cold in Studio City CA. Feels more like a fall day in Boston. I think to jump start this little enterprise further, I'm going to regale you with a classic newspaper colmun premise of a string of random thoughts.

(Not that any of those columns ever fooled us into thinking anything other than the writer is blocked and this is just a way to fill a page and keep their jobs.)

Whoever says "There's nothing good on television" isn't watching it.

Not that 1) There isn't a lot of crap and 2) I'd ever tell someone to watch more TV...There are a lot of better ways to spend your time.

But when you can watch, "Deadwood", "Rescue Me" ,"The Shield", "Law and Order", "Lost", "The Office"," Veronica Mars", "The Daily Show", "Reno 911" and "Drake and Josh" - and that is barely scratching the surface, don't use uniformed elitism to justify not indulging in a habit you're better off without, anyway.

Or, in fewer words, don't be a fucking snob.

Continuing on TV...

If your head is still spinning with the "Drake and Josh" reference, try this experiment. Watch two episodes of "D&J" vs any two episodes of "Yes, Dear""Still Standing" or the "George Lopez Show" and tell me what makes you laugh more.

And feel better, Drake Bell, by the way.

Daytime TV --

My "guilty" pleasures? Court shows. (See what I did there?)

Judge Judy - The Queen

Judge Joe Brown? - I rememeber when he used to care.

Judge Marilyn from The People's Court? - I admit it, she and I may be involved in a restraining order in the not so distant future. Funny, tough and... well, I'll say it, hot.

I may need to discuss the last item with my therapist.

How does Maury Povich sleep at night? Besides with Connie Chung, which isn't nearly enough compensation for watching his soul get sucked away by his work on that show, I mean,

Brokeback Mountain - Loved it, believed it when they got together. Although watching two men have sex makes me think of a naked guy shoving a desk through a doorway. Does nothing for me.

And yet, two women making love? A work of art. Go figure.

My best time in a movie theater this year? Chronicles of Naria with my eight year old daughter, Talia.

Biggest disappoinment? Rent.

Loved "Good Night and Good Luck". "Capote".

Most overrated Oscar contender? "Crash". A lot to like, a lot we have seen many times before - "Short Cuts" "Grand Canyon", "Magnolia". And the gears of the storytelling machinery ground a little too loudly, too often. ( "Who's pulling me out of this car accident? Why the RACIST SCARY COP from the other day! Darn the bad luck of this crash!")

Doesn't anyone get the fact that the big deal is not that Cheney shot that guy, it's that this Administration thinks it's such a pain in the butt to inform the public that the second in command of the most powerful nation in the world shot someone.

Maybe red states wouldn't be so sanctimonius if the realized that all of the quality education as well as the tax income that paves their roads came from blue states.

Hey, this was fun...I think I'm going to do this again sometime.

Saturday, February 18, 2006

I wrote this 2/2 because I needed to and, I guess it was the first time I felt "the call of the blog". I'll be funny another time.

MY FRIEND TOM

Last Saturday,my friend Tom died suddenly. Between the time I received the news and now, millions of people have lost someone they loved. But somehow, among the many feelings I have swirling around me is one I had when my daughters were born,

I remember looking at them in a way I still do and wondering, “How has anyone ever experienced this before?” Something so powerful, strange and completely singular? I knew children were born everyday, but to create a life! And those two particular lives! Wow.

And now, my friend Tom is dead. And it is equally hard for me to imagine anyone sharing, understanding or even conceiving the sense of loss and pain that I feel.

Some of it is due to my inexperience with this kind of loss. My father died about three years ago, but I had very little contact with him for a long time. When he passed, and I saw him in the end, it was with a profound sadness I looked at the man with tubes running out of him, laying on a hospital bed. I felt the same way when we moved him into a nursing home, once illness debilitated him beyond the point where my mother could handle him. I cried when I realized his life now fit into the cardboard box we slid under his bed the day we checked him in. But when he passed we knew it was time. Did I miss him on a day-to-day basis? It pains me to realize that I didn’t and I don’t.

When I was a child, I lost both sets of grandparents. I was never close to them. I remember each event as hushed conversations in the kitchen while we kids played upstairs, Again, the sense of loss was minimal.

Sometimes I wonder if the fault is mine. Was I somehow wired incorrectly? Do I compartmentalize so completely so as to be able to stuff these events into a box and shove them into a dark and dusty corner of my brain and lock them away? Me, who cries at the drop of a hat at any movie, TV show or piece of music for reasons I can barely articulate? How can I have so little connection with the passing of my blood?

Then my friend Tom died. I met him through my church choir, though I learned we both wrote for television, and had a deep love for musical theater, sports, cigars and scotch. He was a passionate, tirelessly witty guy, who told stories like no I ever knew, had a big heart, a wonderful wife and a terrific 13-year-old son. Our families had the good fortune to become intertwined. And even as he drew away from the church we attended, we remained friends.

Each Christmas, he and his wife threw a huge soup party where he gave out as gifts Christmas music CD’s he burned that were as eclectic, nourishing and fun as time with him always was.

It is impossible to do justice to the impact he made on everyone. My last contact with him was a comic email that he sent to several of us the night he died, a song parody called “Rough Cut Lady”.With all that is wrong about this event, it only seems fitting that our last communication involved music and comedy, as immense as his gifts were in both areas.

I am part of a large community of people affected by his loss. He had many friends. I was just privileged to be one of them.

Now, my friend Tom is dead. And I will miss him in a way I have never in forty six years of life have missed anyone. And while I know that my feelings are common for anyone affected by the
passing of a friend, they are new to me and I don’t know what to do with them.

I ask friends questions, and then plumb my grief for what? A lesson? Some cliché that will make the grief slide down easier?

This makes me feel vaguely dirty. Why should I gain insight from a loss that hurt so many people? I don’t want to benefit from his being taken away so suddenly and cruelly. I don’t want to feel better about this, ever.

The first thing I heard as this news filtered through our church community was several versions of “God has a plan”. Sorry. I’m not ever going to understand a plan that involves the loss of an individual like Tom. We blessed to have known him are the better for it, but his loss is everyone’s. It is a darker world, quieter, with less laughter and less music now.

So I will hug my wife and my daughters, hoist a glass of Scotch to my friend Tom Amundsen and attempt to reconcile the fact that nothing I believed or thought I knew now makes any sense to me.

Will this get easier with time? I expect so. I will wrap reason and wisdom around me, like a cloak against a sudden, unwelcome chill, remembering the warmth of our friendship and looking forward to the coming thaw. But, I’ll still miss you, Tom. I promise.
My wife and I are watching the Olympics. Apollo Ono is being interviewed. Sigh. My wife gets very excited for the Olympics, especialy the winter ones, being a Maine native who pracitcally grew up on skis. Me, however, I think I must have contracted "Olympic Fever" an infant, because I appear to be immune now.
I've decided I want to blog. I'm not sure why. I know I'll have a lot to say and it will be fascinating, damn it. So here goes...more later