Writers

A couple months ago I sat in on a class where Nicole Holofcener talked. She was so, well, lovely and amazing. She had the knives out for bullshit, especially industry bullshit, she sounded like she had a lot of her priorities straight, she was capable of not talking shit about people or sounding impossibly conceited, she was realistic about what she is able to accomplish artistically vs. paying the bills, she pays the bills, and she writes movies for a living. In short, sitting in a room hearing her talk for an hour and a half or so made me think that it really would be possible to write for the pictures and have a semi-normal life too. A Galadriel phial of hope.

Then in James Bond class the other night this writer came in to talk who was the most poisonous bundle of obnoxious arrogance I have ever learned to hate in such a short space of time. Within 45 seconds of introducing himself, he was mudslinging on Ben Stiller. Names a-plenty were dropped and credit was taken. Particular character names and specific lines were repeated and declared funny, proclaimed unfunny previous to his re-write, and declared funny funny funny once again. The nerd anger was so strong in this man it came off like stink lines in a comic book. Never have I wanted to be a writer less than listening to him.

Just like your mom said, "everyone's different". Let's all raise a glass to not turning into a complete asshole.

Child Actors

I'm producing a thesis film and we're auditioning for the role of Theresa, protagonist's daughter, age 11 to 13. Child actors, man. Wow.

Exhibit A:

The pageboy-haircut bespectacled little dear perches eagerly in her chair. Our director asks her about a musical pageant on her resume. "Yup! It's all about the story of L. Ron Hubbard and it's like a pageant, like a Christmas one, except it's about L. Ron Hubbard and everything that happened to him and there was lots of songs and I sang and it was really cool."

Exhibit B:

Beautiful long curly hair on this kid, who I introduce myself to and usher into the room, only when this child walks up to the director, the words that come out are, "So, I'm a boy and I'm auditioning for Theresa. Did you want me to do the audition in a girl's voice or a boy's voice?" After the stunned silence of Crying-Game shock recedes, our gallant director says, "Uh, just be a boy, man." I spend the rest of this kid's audition trying to figure out if he is wearing makeup or not. Verdict: yes.

Exhibit C:

Tiny six-year-old comes in to read for the part. She's the last audition at 8pm. She can't read yet, so she's memorized the lines with the help of her parents. Her parents inform us that she's been up since 5am because she was shooting another project. Wow, we say, uncomfortable with all of it, the trailer-trash mom who refuses to sit in on the audition, the thought of a six-year-old playing a character written for a twelve-year-old, the thought of how long this kid has been at work already today, "What was the other project about?" Kid: "Child abuse."

Get Down With The Sickness

So those celebrity people had their baby and the paramedics just pulled up outside and took away the pregnant lady across the street. I know cause I stood at the window and watched. All these big burly men in navy blue t-shirts and fire-fighting pants were wandering around and then they brought her out on the gurney. She was lying on her side and they had trouble getting the gurney inside the ambulance. They rammed it into the back of the ambulance again and again and the legs wouldn't collapse and her body was shifting on the gurney every time they drove metal into metal and finally the legs gave way and they shut the doors on her. Then the burly men shook the hand of the man who came out of the house, got back into their ambulance and fire truck and drove away.

If it's gross and scary to read this, think how she must have felt.

In related news, I've decided that this wave of all our favourite celebs getting pregnant is going to give way to all of our favourite celebs breaking their forearms. This may sound bizarre, but I feel like I've seen an inordinately high number of forearm casts on campus lately. It really is a pretty easy leap from pregnancy, in fetish terms. Body modification: check. Pain and feebleness involved: check. Fun to decorate: check. See, anorexia went out because it's not as much fun to accesorize as a baby bump. Sign my cast!

Tidy Math

Was up until 4 going through all the papers in my room. Trying to make this small space into a home office/bedroom for a human instead of bunch of paper/where I sleep, which is really more hamster.

Paper to recycle = approximately one paper grocery bag full.

Headshots = stack 3.5 inches thick

Binders = best invention ever?

Post-its as labels = thank you Romy and Michelle

Sorting and shelving everything to do with 546 = closure

Reclaiming my floor space + small desk with tidy surface + folders, labels, clips and clamps = better than Prozac

The Culture Shocker

So I think a lot of people tend to think I'm sooooper nice when a lot of the time I have to work hard to keep a lid being soooooper bitchy. This is partly because I'm Canadian in America and 1) I'm supposed to be nice and 2) Americans can mistake polite for nice (don't be fooled, Americans! Those Brits who you think are being really nice? They're subtextually telling you to go fuck yourself. Unlike the French, who are actually telling you to go fuck yourself. But I digress).

I don't why I am so annoyed at being thought of as nice. It's not especially bad, I guess. But I also guess that it is: passive, milquetoast-y, feminine, boring, unopinionated, and the prerequisite state for being taken advantange of.

Also, a lot of people at school get me mixed up with this other person who is geniunely nice in a way that I am not. Like, really nice and quite sweet and good at being really accomodating and helpful. I am overjoyed to report she's got some inner rage, and yet her niceness prevails. Lately I feel my inner rage getting away from me.

But perhaps I'm just afraid of what I'll be like if I don't keep the nice shields up. What if during an attack of frustration the shields dropped to 80 percent, then 40 percent, then disappeared altogether? Maybe it's like that time I stopped shaving my legs just to see how bad it would really get. Because, folks, it didn't really get that bad and then I was free.

When It Goes Past Smart And Gets Into Stupid

My head's felt peculiar for the last few hours.

Perhaps this will excuse my irrational behaviour of a couple hours ago when I went into a video store (wonderful anachronistic name, "video store", a misnomer on top of misnomer) to get a copy of Dr. No so I can commence my shitty paper when I realised that half of the DVDs in the store were for sale, for pretty cheap. I was looking in the 2 for $20 and there was nothing good but then there was a rack of 2 for $5 and hot damn, Princess Mononoke was there! And wow, the 2 for $5 section of the store was big and also had Pirates of the Caribbean, which I've planned on owning ever since I saw it three times in the theatre and hey, I can use a copy of Election and wow! so cheap and I had (o this is so embarrasing) 5 DVDs in my hands before I realised I was in the (yeah) rental section and not the buying section.

I'm already the kind of OCD person who, when shopping alone, will go back to browse the same thing nine to twelve times, but this was really above and beyond the irrational call of duty for me.

I hope you all have enjoyed the Canadian spellings included in this post.

If all else fails, you will surely be entertained by this resin-cast Goblin King and his this-is-not-a-Disney-film package.