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
A Message from Kenny (NSFW)
1 Jul
Not gonna lie: these are dark times. The thing that bugs me the most is that I’m never going to find a nice girl. It’s partly because, well– there are a shitload of reasons, but the only one coming from me is that I’m now a machine geared toward getting unprotected sex as fast as possible.
And this definitely does fuck with you. “One becomes as incapable of love as an old slag,” as a brilliant man once said. I’ve become a dating hack. I wear the same outfit every time, go to the same place, arrange the chairs the same way, go for the makeout at the same moment, etc. etc. etc. It’s all so rote that there is no way I could possibly have any exciting discovery about the other person. There is no way you could get in through some little crack in my persona and make me feel anything.
I was contemplating this as I watched clips of Kenny Rogers’ 1982 cinematic masterpiece SIX PACK. In it, Kenny plays a jaded racecar driver who, through a series of contrivances, is forced to take on a group of half a dozen (or “pack” of “six”) orphans whom he catches trying to steal his spare parts. At first incensed and reluctant, he slowly grows to love these lucky children and becomes a father figure to them. Many think that Kenny was overlooked for the Oscar that year, but few know that at a secret meeting the academy decided that lumping Kenny in with inferiors such as Olivier and Brando would only sully his name. And giving Kenny the award would render all future Oscars meaningless– you would simply have to award Kenny the prize again and again each year, for SIX PACK. The film also suffered controversy after sixteen year old costar Diane Lane gave birth to an infant with a perfectly groomed white beard.
A young Lane can’t contain her lustful gaze as Rogers’ musk awakens her steaming pubescent loins. Continue reading
Review: Sexual Congress with Yours Truly
1 JulEx Girlfriend writes:
“…you know I don’t even always like sex with you so much. You micro-manage, you have an adolescent urgency, your penis isn’t that big, and I don’t think my orgasm means a thing to you. But, all that said, kissing you makes my whole body burn.”
Fair enough. Siskel gave it a thumbs up though.
Diary: New Year’s Eve
30 JunNew Year’s Eve. I will have nobody to kiss me on New Year’s Eve. I will have nobody to buy a present for on Valentine’s Day. And really, I don’t give a shit about these things, but when the day actually approaches you become like the punk kid who was too hardcore to go to the prom but then gets a little pang of sadness when he sees all the other kids piling into a limo.
Dog Shit
30 JunWhat would be nice is if dog shit returned to the Earth quickly. You hear about how flies and bacteria are remarkably efficient at bringing nutrients from waste organic matter back to the soil in a grand circle of life, but dog shit, which is just a pre-digested protein bonanza that any self-respecting bacterium should be proud to call home– dog shit just sits there for weeks turning black and encrusted and slowly drying out. So, come on, flies and bacteria. Come the fuck on. It’s like hearing someone bitch about unemployment while walking past 15 help wanted signs.
Kenneth Donald “Kenny” Rogers: The Complete and Unabridged Biography, Chapter One: Birth
29 Jun
Note: this biography is about Kenneth Donald “Kenny” Rogers the golden-voiced and immaculately bearded performer, not the dog.
1938. Small town on the outskirts of Houston, Texas. A rough-hewn town. Out in the cracked Texas plains. Tumbleweeds, cactuses, possibly other succulents. Scrub and chaparral. Low slung bungalows with no indoor plumbing. Instead a pineboard outhouse with a quarter moon shaped hole carved in the door like outhouses always have, that the locals refer to by some quaint vernacular such as “the jakes.”
The type of town that has a sign saying “N*gger, don’t let the sun set on you in (TOWN NAME),” which implies weirdly that they would be welcome in the daytime. N*gger, don’t let the sun set on you here– but by day, enjoy our fine restaurants and shops. Maybe it’s a courtesy. Like, they have vampires that only prey on blacks. 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
Diary 2009: Sara
27 JunThis chick never texted me back. Sara. Beautiful girl. We had a great date. Ended up at her house; we had a Grateful Dead singalong for like 4 hours. I for one had a really good time. And we texted back and forth, and then I sent one kind of stupid text message, and it was over. Never heard back from her. Never will. Maybe I should have called her. But no. You can’t send two unrequited texts and then call her. Maybe I should have called her in the first place. Instead of texting her. Maybe maybe maybe. Every little thing. Maybe it’s something I fucked up in some way. And I would have gotten to have sex with her. But I also would have had to listen to, and pretend to like, her horrible horrible retarded music. Maybe it’s nothing to do with what I did. It wouldn’t have worked out anyway. She works 3 jobs, two of which are at night, and has to spend her days flying around on wires into the mouth of a giant puppet of the Creature from the Black Lagoon, while singing. Every day I have to drive by a billboard of the goddamn Creature from the Black Lagoon and be reminded of her. There is nothing I can do about it now. I can’t text her. Anything I do would just debase myself, make it worse. This is the same shit that happened with Erin. I’m obsessed with it. The only thing that could possibly make me happy in the entire world would be if she were to text me back. Or If I met another, equally hot chick, who didn’t suck as much. Continue reading
Reader Mail Sac: What Happened with Nikol’s Operation and How Is She Doing
26 JunShe started hemorrhaging. They had to stop the surgery. They only got three of the five cancerous lymph nodes out. The other two were too close to blood vessels, and she had been given blood thinner, and she had already bled all over the damn place apparently, and lost so much blood that she was in danger of dying.
So she’s out; she is alive; she is talking and mentally composed. She is at her house laying around in bed all day eating soup and popsicles* and watching HBO Go. The three cancerous lymph nodes being gone is good; it isn’t some bullshit where the surgery was all for nothing. Three fifths of the cancerous mass being gone, like some slave voting compromise. The remaining two they will continue to try to shrink with radiation. Which you should read in the tone of Marvin Gaye singing in “What’s Goin’ On.”
I fucking told her going in: don’t hemorrhage. You’re gonna get on that operating table and you’re gonna want to hemorrhage all over the place, but don’t do it. They need to keep your blood in your veins to finish the operation. And of course, what’s the first fucking thing she does. Stubborn. Continue reading
New Book
delicioustacos 