I hate Hollywood. I hate movies. Or rather, I love movies, but god damn do I hate making movies. Or I hate failing to make movies, which is what a job in Hollywood really is. Get up every day, go in to work early, leave late, and completely fail to make movies. Or fail to make a good movie, fail to make a movie that makes any money, fail to get a script where it needs to be, fail to get a director attached that would make the good version of this one in a thousand good script that you by some miracle managed to find and whip into shape, fail to get an actor attached who could do a role in this script with this director justice and who simultaneously “means enough at the box office” both in America and in certain oversees markets where we will need to presell foreign distribution rights to cover the anticipated cost of publicity and advertising or prints and advertising, whateverthefuck “P & A” stands for, or fail to get that actor interested at the exact time when he is available and the director is also available and a similar movie idea has just made enough money that people with financing, that it’s fresh enough in their memory that making this movie seems like a good idea to them, failing to get this fucking perfect syzygy aligned at the exact right moment so that this package can get together and stay together even though every single element of it, without any one of which you are completely fucked, and every one of which is completely flighty and mercurial and scared and constantly second-guessing themselves and being told do leave your movie and go do another movie by some other hustler who is way better at convincing these people to do things than you; who absolutely needs this person to do some other thing so they will make more money and have a nicer car and get laid more, and this person has no compunction whatsoever about lying, unlike you, which, let it be said, this Hollywood world has not completely stripped you of your humanity; you are still basically an honest person. Which is just another way of saying you are not completely committed to this job in a world where absolutely everyone else is and you really just don’t give a shit. This person got up five minutes earlier and got to the actor or director or financier you need five minutes before you and lied five per cent more convincingly so next time you better get up ten minutes earlier and lie ten I per cent more convincingly and be ten per cent less of a decent human being and suddenly we’re all working some mathematically impossible amount of hours in the day, all of which we spend hustling and lying and setting the best and most human parts of ourselves on fire and chasing some hot comic book that is exactly like another hot comic book that got made into a movie that was, while terrible, a movie that will help absolutely no one and be exactly no one’s favorite movie from childhood in ten years. But something made money last week so now we have to make a movie exactly the same as that one. Even if it’s fucking Kirk Cameron converting the Jews to bring about the apocalypse. Whatever it is. We just gotta get a movie made. Continue reading
More on Work/ Hollywood
28 JunIf I did all the work I was supposed to do, there would still be more work. If I read all the things I was supposed to read– which would be a fucking superhuman feat, let me tell you. Reading twenty scripts and two full novels every week, if you had nothing else to do, would be pretty sustainable, but factor in that it’s the part of your job meant to be done in the off hours, nights and weekends, above and beyond the eleven hours per day that you are sitting on a desk concentrating on work related tasks– and then factor in that the vast majority of this shit just sucks. It would actually be a pleasure to read twenty good scripts and two smart, interesting novels per week — twenty scripts that were cool thrillers you couldn’t put down, or comedies that made you laugh; two novels that actually inspired you and taught you something new about the human condition. Or even a giant mass of hackish works that were nonetheless suitable for moving up the chain in this crass market-driven Hollywood world. But they always all suck, they are always not viable; it all turns out to have been for nothing. Destroying your scant leisure hours with crap, it all turns out to have been for nothing. Continue reading
Jury Duty
6 JunJury duty. I have fucking jury duty. Which I would LOVE, I would LOVE to be on a jury, if I didn’t actually have responsibilities at work. Go in, see a slice of life, you know, a cross section of all of Los Angeles. Watch a video about our founding fathers. Jury of your peers, because the British practiced Roman law where you were guilty until proven innocent and your fate was decided by some aristocratic judge, some fifth cousin of a baronet with a powdered wig on who always sided with whoever owned property. I would love to be on a jury– because whoever walked in, whoever was accused, there is no WAY I am sending that motherfucker to jail. No matter what the crime, no matter how strong the evidence. Sorry. We throw too many people in jail over too much bullshit and some nineteen year old black kid who did something stupid is neither going to be deterred nor rehabilitated by getting thrown in a piss-smelling concrete warehouse with a bunch of dudes covered in tattoos made with sharpened paper clips. You are walking, sir. I don’t give a fuck if it’s the trial of the guy who robbed me. Continue reading
Monday Part 2
4 JunWhy do I feel, on Monday morning, every Monday morning, like I’m headed in to see my fucking oncologist and there is a ninety nine point nine per cent chance that he is going to give me bad news? That it’s cancer of the dick, cancer of the ass, cancer of the face, that it’s too late, if you had come in earlier- that’s always a big part of it- if YOU had come in earlier. If YOU had done this and this and this, if you had read the fine print you would have seen that form 1052X is actually due three weeks prior to the main jury summons delay form and three weeks means we receive it three weeks prior, not that it’s merely postmarked three weeks prior, and by receive we mean it reaches the processing center, not merely that it’s entered the giant aluminum garage-door loading gate on a truck of undifferentiated mail- what good does it do us to have it then, sir? Continue reading
Diary: Weekend Read
3 JunGod damn- you know what I really do not want to do? Is read this fucking book for my boss. Yet another goddamn fucking 400 page book from (REDACTED AGENT) about rich women in New York, wives of bankers who live in the Upper East Side and in the Hamptons, jockeying for status over certain addresses and their ability to hire certain in-demand caterers for their weddings. But oh no, a slightly more old money WASPy family has secured this caterer, or worse still, some noveau riche provincial, or Russian, with much more money than the Jewish but still Spence and Harvard type WASP-assimilated protagonists. I cannot stand to read even one more word about this world. Particularly another word written by a wealthy woman who comes form one or more generations of prosperous artists or novelists. I cannot– this is some hideous punishment, you know, getting this call on Friday and knowing, knowing, that it was either (REDACTED WILLIAM MORRIS AGENT) or (REDACTED ICM AGENT) calling with another book written by a woman in her 40’s who grew up somewhat but not cartoonishly wealthy on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, lampooning in what they think is microscopic detail the quirks of this demimonde, of like, bankers and stuff, and you know, delightfully skewering this world in a way that they think will be relatable to some person in St. Louis whose house was foreclosed on by some financial entity three times removed from the employers of the male side characters in the book, so you know, it’s of the moment. Continue reading
Monday
21 MayFucking monday fucking sucks man, always a horrible horrible day. The most you can ask of this day is that it is not quite as bad as you expected. Like, you swerve into oncoming traffic and a semi is coming and you think “oh shit, I’m gonna die.” Instead you are merely rendered a brain damaged quadriplegic, is what Monday is like. Or you avoid the semi but a soda can goes flying and hits you in the nuts.
I feel like fucking Garfield but I’ll say it: I hate Mondays. I have a case of the fucking Mondays. Tell me why: I don’t like Mondays, etc. That chick who shot all those people and was put to song by Bob Geldoff was really onto something.
Opt Out
12 MayI need to get a new job. And the sole criterion I am going to employ, rather than salary, potential for growth, intellectual fulfillment or any of that bullshit is whether girls work there.
Because that’s the only thing that matters. If you are where the pussy is, life is great. If you are not where the pussy is, life is horrible. And friends, I am emphatically NOT where the fucking pussy is. For how little I am exposed to women, it is a god damn miracle that I ever get laid at all. I must be a world record holder for opportunity/ pussy ratio. Like a one-legged marathon runner. Lots of guys get laid a lot more than me, but I am pulling a pretty god damn respectable time for hopping along with a fucking stump.
The problem is, the way our society is built– what you need to do to be “successful,” to be “prosperous–” the fruit is hanging so high that getting to the respectable middle consumes your whole life. And it starts about forty five minutes after you come out of the womb. You need to work your ass off in high school and get into a good college. People talk about grade point average and SAT’s, you know– as though I worked hard, did well in school and killed that standardized test, now i’m going to get into a good college. Bullshit. All that stuff, those years of labor, homework and toil at the one time in your life when you have social and sexual access to fourteeen year old girls– all that just gets you to zero. All that gets you to the point where you won’t be instantly eliminated from the first round of applicant pool. Continue reading
Diary 2/27/11: Going to the Oscars
10 MaySo: going to the Oscars. Going alone. It’s awesome that I’m going but it fucking sucks that I’m going alone. At first, I was pissed that, you know, if I could have had a date, I would have been able to pull some incredibly high caliber of ass. But then I would have had to keep the party going, get us into Vanity Fair, or Madonna’s house, or whateverthefuck. Now I can just come home. But still– this crazy spectacle, tons of famous people… I mean, I’m glad I get to see it, but it will suck to have no one to lean over next to and whisper to. Maybe I’ll sit next to Hailee Steinfeld’s mom or something. Some woman from Kansas who doesn’t know anybody there either.
Continue reading
The End of the World
4 MayI keep thinking about nuclear disaster. Or some other apocalyptic thing. Tsunami, mega-earthquake, plague– something. As long as you made it through, as long as you were not burned by radiation or given giant infectious pustules– as long as you made it through, and weren’t somehow trapped caring for the millions of others who did have radiation burns and giant pustules– the end of the world world be fucking great.
And this is why there are so many movies about it, books about it– it’s not out of fear. It’s out of wish fulfillment. Just like Harry Potter, Luke Skywalker, Frodo Baggins and etc . etc. etc.–aren’t orphans in their stories because of fear of losing your parents, but because kids wish their parents were dead. That the bumbling, irritating schlumps constantly pestering you with questions that are like cigarette burns on the back of your neck– they wish these people had never existed for them, and that their real mommy were a princess who owned a huge magical castle that you could live in, and would have plenty of space to keep the two of you apart.
But anyway, if the world ended, it would be great. Or at least, if civilization ended. Loot the grocery store for a bunch of food and go up to the mountains and camp. Shoot a deer once in a while. Nice quiet nights by the fire. Find a young woman of breeding age who needs you for protection and couldn’t leave you or she would die. Take over some abandoned cabin and raise a modest amount of livestock and just rawdog her for the rest of your life. Continue reading
The Value of Work
21 AprWhen I was fourteen my mom made me get a job. She was really hell bent on this, as soon as you can start working legally, you start working. I don’t mean to make her sound mean—this was perfectly normal. I imagine someone had made her start working the literal second it was legal as well. On the east coast, at least 20 years ago, there wasn’t an underclass of immigrants doing all the gigs that teenagers could do. You’re fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, you get a job. I wish it were like that out here; you’d see more fourteen year old girls working retail.
Anyway, she made me get a job. And again, not to be mean, and not to make me give her the money or pay rent to live in my own childhood home or any shit like that– I got to keep the money. But just to teach me some lesson about the value of work. Or some other, more jaded lesson. Something about how all work sucks and is useless and horrible and the value that you actually get out of your labor isn’t shit compared to what some rich property owning guy makes, some guy who ninety nine times out of one hundred inherited some position in society where it would be easy to have these things. To own a McDonald’s franchise or whatever. Continue reading
New Book
delicioustacos 