For Your Consideration

My landlord, Charlie has his own production company and is president of the Moab International Film Festival. The actual festival will be next April and the Japanese film I mentioned in a post a few days back is the first entry into the competition. We will have a lot more films to screen for consideration between now and the end of the year. Apparently Charlie decided that I at least sort of know what the fuck I’m talking about when it comes to movies and has appointed me to the film selection committee. How fucking cool is that? I’m going to sit on the selection panel of an international film festival. Me. I’m actually kinda psyched about it. I’m sure I’ll have to watch a bunch of crappy films that get submitted for consideration, but still, I think it will be fun… and a nice thing to put on my resume. There’s also a new animation festival here in LA that’s going to kick off in July and I’m trying to get involved with that as well. If nothing else, it gets me behind the scenes at these festivals and will put me in a position to maybe meet some people that I need to meet. A couple of us are talking about going to Sundance in January, but that’ll be as a spectator. I don’t expect Bobby Redford to put me on any of his committees… not yet anyway ;) Of course, I hope to actually have a film at Sundance in 2007 so that’ll give me a whole different perspective on the film festival thing… My script continues to come along. I’m pretty pleased with how the dialogue for the first scene came out. It still needs to be tweaked and will get re-written numerous times I’m sure, but at least I can claim to be making progress. The first scene is with characters I’m pretty comfortable with. They are fairly easy to write for. Things will just get harder from here. I’ve got one character in particular that’s going to be kinda tough to write. He’s going to have a real love-hate relationship with the audience and that’s never easy to do. So getting some of his scenes at least partially written is on tap for this weekend… I was supposed to go to The Canyon Club on Friday night to see The Little River Band, but the movers finally called and said they were ready to deliver my stuff so that plan got axed. Oh well… I finally got my telephone service ordered. Verizon has always been a pain in the ass to deal with when it came to DSL orders. I don’t know why I thought they’d be different when it came to getting a phone line. So after much ado, I have a phone number. It won’t actually work until VZ sends an installer out next fucking Friday, but at least I will finally have a phone then. Unfortunately I’m not serviceable for DSL, but I expected that. I knew there was not a chance in hell that I was close enough to the CO to get it, but still, I was hoping that maybe I was wrong. No such luck. I will try and function on dial up for now at least. Ultimately we’re installing a business satellite system here at the house that’ll be a gig up and a gig down and I’ll be able to hook into the network for that, but that’s a few months down the road. If I have to, I can always get on Charlie’s regular sat connection, but honestly it’s not that much faster than dial up and it’s really temperamental. I lived on just dial up for over a decade. I suppose another few months won’t kill me… Let me clear up something about my post from Friday. I told Michael I was going to write what I did. I needed to write it for its therapeutic value, but that if he didn’t want me to actually post it then I wouldn’t. Or if he wanted me to take it down after he read it, then I would. He told me to post it and he told me to leave it up. No one out there in blogland knows him personally so even though I name names, to some extent it’s still ambiguous. He also said that he fully understands why I needed to write it. There’s one thing I will say about Michael. He definitely “gets” me. He knows I’m a little crazy, but still he usually understands how my brain works and that should scare the shit out of him :) So anyway, no hard feelings there… Not much planned for the weekend. Unpack and write. Maybe try to get out and see “Cinderella Man.” Next weekend my girlfriend Angelina’s new movie opens. Yippee Skippee. “Howl’s Moving Castle” opens on the 10th as well. Some of the reviews I’ve read are saying this one is even better than “Spirited Away.” I can’t imagine that being possible, but I’m sure it will be an outstanding film nonetheless. Miyazaki has never made a bad movie. I don’t expect him to start now…

“It’s all about hiding the crazy and acting like the most confident girl in the room.” – Judy Reyes – “Scrubs”

P.S. - If any of you have not bought Season 1 of “Scrubs” on DVD yet, go do it. Right now. Get up from your computer, go out to Target or Best Buy or something, and buy it. At the every least, put it in your Netflix queue. It’s a great set and the bonus features are outstanding too. This is really the best show on TV right now. The writing is easily the funniest out there. I don’t think they’ve made a bad episode yet. It’s apparent from Season 1 that this show is different from anything else on the air. The cast had their characters down from the first episode. It’s really a great show. Go watch it!