Blog World

I'm not really into sappy dreamer stories but I really feel that I should give a preface before we dive into this. So I am going to do this extremely quickly, one of my best friends and I decided in college that we were going to take over Hollywood. We would have conversations about it until three in the morning. He was always editing something and I was always writing something. Anyway, college ended, and I decided to go to law school to open a few doors because I wanted to produce.

He graduated a year after I did, and he went ahead and moved out to LA or Los Angeles as I like to call it. We made it our mission to write at least eight marketable screenplays before I graduated law school. We never got to eight, but we did sell two before I walked the line. Fair trade I guess. In negotiating, we had a bad ass agent (me) who negotiated a sick amount of back profits and got us on as executive producers. Our little 15 million dollar movie made 175 mil in the US and 325 worldwide. The next movie was written by me about one of my life experiences and he directed it. Add 25 to those previous numbers. If you want to see something cool, write a gut wrenching story based on things that only happened to you and watch millions around the world show their support by showing up to it. The best fucking therapy on earth. Friend and I took our money and pumped it into what we called a production company, which eventually became a studio. We are co-chairman and ceo's, and split everything equally. We have 32 employees now. How sick is that mom who told me to get a job at a big firm? Sorry.

Here we are today. Not every movie we've made has made its money back, but we've gotten close. For every three movies that make 200 mil you're allowed to make one bomb. By bomb, Hollywood means it made its money back but nothing more. Things have gotten very intense lately and Yoga, running, and aikido really aren't doing the trick anymore. My therapist told me that I should blog about my life and my problems because I trap everything inside and never express...you get the picture. So I talked to Friend, and he said his therapist told him the same thing. So we decided to do it together. This is probably not going to make any cohesive sense, and we've decided to just dive right in when something is on our minds. I hope that some of you out there can relate. I know that I have what some might call a dream life, but I'm telling you, we've all got our sets of problems. Please leave comments if you've been through the same thing or just want to drop in and say hi. We're really doing this for the benefit of us but would love to hear from some people out there. My best friend and I will name names when talking about Hollywood but we won't name each other's name...not to the general public anyway. We will refer to each other as Friend and the studio a Studio X. If you really need to know who we are, shoot us an email.

ld and aj

Moving Day

My new place on Comstock is amazing. Not that I didn’t care for my old condo in Westwood, but there is just something about Beverly Hills that makes you feel like you’ve “made it.” I spent over four months looking at places in this area. My friends were all telling me that I was being too picky and should just settle for something nice in Burbank close to the studio, but I’m not on a fucking budget anymore and I refused to let anyone make me feel like they could put a price on MY dream home.

So now that I have it, I hired an ass load of movers to take all the heavy furniture over there from Westwood. I told them not to touch any of the shit in my office. No one even goes in there. That’s where I keep all my personal keepsakes. It’s ridiculous some of the things that I have saved over the passed ten years. I have scripts that never saw the light of day, Awards, Storyboard sketches, and a decent amount of framed photos with me and the actors I have directed over the years along with some really unique gifts they’ve all given me. It’s really quite a lovely shrine of all my accomplishments in the business.


It all fit into three really big boxes. Except for the Autographed Fender Guitar that John Mayer gave me last year for directing his music video. I had to pick up a special case for that over at SamAsh. Also, I didn’t want my photos getting ruined so I put them each into a folder and filed them away into smaller box labeled “Pictures.” I placed that in the backseat with the guitar case.


I had to meet up with my DP on the way to scout a location for the new movie. We start production in three weeks, and I haven’t seen one decent abandoned house to shoot the rape scene in. My GPS wasn’t able to locate the address, so I just parked two streets over and walked. I was gone for maybe 45 minutes and get back to find that someone had broken into my car. I would have usually stayed pretty calm in a situation like this, but instead I freaked because I knew every single irreplaceable item I have ever owned was in my car at that moment.


The first thing I notice missing was the CD player. Wow, what can you hock that for? 25 bucks? They should have tried for the GPS. I checked in the back. From first glance it appeared as if everything was untouched. I paced around the car stepping on the broken glass trying to get LAPD on the phone. I was on hold for 28 minutes before I noticed that the box labeled “Pictures” was also missing. Fuck. Who, besides me, would want a bunch of autographed pictures made out to: “My Favorite Director….” The Mayer Guitar was just sitting there where I left it. Why wouldn’t they steal something that is in a case shaped exactly like an expensive guitar? Some people are fucking idiots.


AJ