So Far Around the Bend

I need a little help

2009-06-25T12:23:00.000-07:00

An inscription on the label of the bottled tea I am at this moment drinking reads as follows:

"Thomas Paine, Susan B. Anthony, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Though their ideas seemed radical at the time, these free-thinkers were essential ingredients for our democracy. Free radicals in our bodies, however, can lead to premature aging, heart disease, and cancer. Fortunately, antioxidants can counteract those harmful effects. Our tea features three of the most antioxidant-rich ingredients: pomegranates from Turkey, white tea from India, and the super-fruit acai from the Amazon. It's radical in its own way. New ideas never tasted so good."

Absorb that. Okay, now, my questions are as follows: (1) Is the tea comparing itself to Thomas Paine, Susan B. Anthony, and MLK, or to those who would oppose them? (2) Is either one of those options any less totally insane than the other?

Also acai is fucking gross, I don't care how good it is for me.

An actual, unaltered piece of dialogue from a script I just finished reading

2009-06-18T10:08:00.000-07:00

"Listen, I was a total waste of time, then Harriet died, and a light went off in my head. I started helping people less fortunate than me. But you know what? They're the ones who ended up helping me."

Work

2009-06-09T22:02:00.000-07:00

Last week was the first two days of my internship. They went fine.

My boss is a woman named Julia. She's stick-thin, blonde, Australian. Mouth like a sailor. In other words, she seems pretty awesome.

Work so far has consisted of reading scripts. On the first day, I read two scripts that the company is producing. The first, called The Extra Man, is done filming and is currently in post-production. It was written and directed by the pair behind American Splendor, and stars Kevin Kline, John C. Reilly, and some other people. On paper, at least, it's pretty damn funny, although I'm not sure how well it's going to transfer.

The second script has Jason Bateman attached to direct and star. They're trying to get other actors attached - apparently Amanda Seyfried has expressed interest, and I guess Bateman is talking to Charlize Theron. The script, called Too (which if it makes it to release with that title, someone should get fucking fired in my opinion), is a sub-Charlie Kaufman thing about a high-school teacher in a stagnant marriage switching lives with his lookalike doppelganger, a brilliant, Phillip Roth-esque writer. It's not terrible, just really mediocre - there's no moment that it doesn't do precisely what you would expect any movie with that premise to do, and every (obvious) theme is spelled out over and over again in line after line of dialogue. And it makes a mistake that I've seen before in produced scripts that bugs the hell out of me: if one of your characters is supposed to be a brilliant literary genius, but you aren't a literary genius, for God's sake don't write excerpts from the brilliant literary genius's work to quote in your screenplay. That isn't going to work. Thanks.

The other scripts I've read have been for the purpose of what's called "coverage," where I read it and tell my bosses whether I think the script and/or writer should be considered by the company. So far, the ones I've read for this have been scripts by writers applying for the job to adapt certain material that the company has the rights to (one is a graphic novel, the other an autobiography by a war photographer). The one by the guy applying to adapt the graphic novel was dreadful. I mean, just awful. Awful. The two I've read for the autobiography were much better, but still pretty unremarkable.

So I don't think I'm gonna be reading any future Oscar-winning scripts here. Still, who knows, I guess. If fucking Crash can win a screenplay Oscar, why can't a half-assed rehash of Ender's Game in which two lazy video-game nerds have to save the world from an alien invasion?

Today...

2009-06-03T16:45:00.000-07:00

Today it was really drizzly and cold and my allergies were acting up and I sneezed so hard I hurt my neck.

Lame

2009-06-02T16:12:00.000-07:00

So turns out my internship is only two days a week now. And while I'm glad for the free time in the city, there's no way in hell I can afford five days a week of free time in New York City, and also it sort of makes me feel like I've wasted all the money I spent on rent. I'm looking for something else to do - another internship or something; anything - but for now, two days a week. Nothing I can do, so I guess I might as well make the most of it.

Nearly a week in the city now, and there's still not much to report. It's New York. It's big, packed with people, and expensive. First day here I saw Waiting for Godot with Nathan Lane and Bill Irwin, which was pretty awesome. Since then I've basically just been exploring and seeing a lot of movies (too many, probably, at roughly $12 a pop for tickets).

What else? My apartment doesn't have internet, I found out. I can steal it from a distant neighbor, but it's weak and inconsistent and only stays on for like five minutes at a time. Which means internet cafes, mostly. Which means spending more money.

Hopefully more interesting stuff will happen. If it does, I'll put it here. In the meantime:

Celebrity Sighting #2
John Turturro, standing right next to me in the lobby of the Film Forum theater. Nobody bothered him, as far as I could tell, and he waited in line to buy his popcorn like everyone else.

Today...

2009-05-30T16:28:00.000-07:00

Today I saw a man with a ponytail, after complaining to a cashier about how much of a hurry he was in, lecture said cashier - when the cashier explained that the restaurant could not accept a charge for less than $5 so the man with a ponytail could not charge a single cookie - lecture the cashier for no less than 20 minutes about the "fact" that the law "technically" requires that restaurants accept any charge for any amount - this may in fact be true, although it doesn't sound right, but I don't care, because dude, you're not carrying enough cash to buy a single cookie? - and also I guess I should note this was not the kind of douchebaggy man with a ponytail who still wears Megadeth t-shirts with the sleeves cut off but was the kind of man with a ponytail who's totally weird and nerdy and socially awkward and wears a button-down short-sleeve shirt, the front pocket of which being where the man keeps his credit cards, and whose lectures consist of stammering and repeating the word "because" a lot.

This run-on sentence brought to you by my third day in NYC.

So I'm here

2009-05-11T00:16:00.000-07:00

Not much to report as of now. My legs already hurt from walking; my calves are going to be ripped by the end of the summer.

Celebrity sighting #1
Anderson Cooper, in a baseball cap and t-shirt, walking with a man who may or may not have been his boyfriend (Greenwich Village).