Another Day Another Goodbye

Sorry for the lack of a post yesterday. We were in San Francisco scouting out locations for the Prostitution movie. I was planning to post after we were done on the plane on the way back but a medical emergency halted that. Well, I don’t know if I would call it an emergency but it seemed pretty intense when it happened.

Have you ever done something and then afterwards you wonder why the fuck you did it? You think…did that serve any purpose whatsoever and what was I trying to accomplish by doing that. That happened to me yesterday, and I still don’t know why I did what I did. And now all I have to show for it is a hospital bill and hopefully not a lawsuit.

We had a good majority of the production team on location as well. On the plane on the way over, the cinematographer said something that pissed me off. He said that he didn’t like the films ending and then he referenced a movie done by one of competitors as an example of a good ending.

I didn’t want to hire this asshole in the first place, but he came as a packaged deal with the director on the film. Agencies won’t give you anyone anymore unless you buy the whole package. We stopped by a little French Cuisine restaurant on the way back, and he says that if it were up to him he would have casted the movie differently. Finally, I snapped off and told him to shut his damn mouth or he would be out of the project for good.

He told me that I didn’t have the power to put him out of the project because he was attached with the director. He said I didn’t want to ruin my relationship with the agency. Do you think I give a shit about an agency? An agency? I told him if he said one more word he was gone. He quickly turned away and started to walk to the bathroom. I heard him mutter something under his breath that consisted of me being a hack.

As soon as I heard it I picked up the saltshaker on the table and chucked it at the back of his head. I saw the whole thing in slow motion and it spun end over end until it struck him right in the cranium. A saltshaker (stay with me here) a saltshaker split his head open and required nine stitches. The doctor told us later that the gash was further complicated by the amount of salt that fell in his wound when it struck. True story.

So, he’s off the project, and we’re in negotiations to bring the director back. At this point I don’t really give a shit. I just wish I’d thrown the pepper to save some money.

So Many Questions

I have a lot of people ask me: What was the first movie you remember seeing in theaters? That’s easy. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. How about that for an interesting concept: There is this ooze, and it leaked on these 4 turtles and a rat that somehow already knew jujitsu, and it made them grow to human size, then the rat taught the turtles how to fight, and they constantly kicked the ass of this guy who loved to wear shards of metal. You think Marijuana was involved in that creation? Who cares…when I was six, those fuckers were so badass. I dressed up as Leonardo for Halloween four years in a row. I know, I know, four years. I could have been a different turtle each time. But Leo was the assumed leader of the bunch, and blue is my favorite color.

Anyways, I think a better question to ask your favorite director when you see him eating lunch at The Palm is: What movie made you realize that film was art? If you’re going to interrupt his meal, you might as well go for the gold. Find out his core influence. Who gives a shit that my mom took me to see TMNT for my sixth birthday. It wasn’t because of that movie that I am where I am today. I was six. It was because I continued watching tons of movies throughout my life until I got to Donnie Darko. That’s when I realized that I wanted to make movies. I don’t really care to get specific, that movie just knocked me on my ass the first time I saw it. Every director has “that” movie and it’s different for each one of us.

“That” movie is usually different from our favorite movie. At least mine is. My favorite movie is always changing, but I constantly juggle it around with the same five or six movies that I’ve once been quoted saying was my favorite. You have to be careful what you say when you’re asked that. Every time I’m out with someone new, I inevitably ask out of curiosity what his or her favorite movie is. I was out on a date once, and the poor girl said her favorite flick of all time was Harry and the Hendersons. I didn’t know what to say. I took her home right after dinner, and haven’t talked to her since. It’s not like she was missing a limb, or had bad breath; she merely had shitty taste in movies. What a nerdy form of shallowness I have. I guess it’s a good thing I’m in therapy.

AJ

Movie Magic

I swear I’m like a little kid when it comes to watching movies. I still love going to the movies, watching them at home, and reading about them at work. It never gets old to me and I never want it to. I was scared that the magic of viewing movies would go away when I first moved out here and started working as a PA on sets. When most people are around all the drama, stress, and other bullshit that goes into making a film, they tend to think of only that when they are watching the movie. I worked my way up from production assistant and eventually started directing. I’ve had a few disagreeing moments with people on my sets that turned into small fights. But, because of those fights we pushed harder to get the shots, resolve our differences, and make a brilliant movie that we all believed in.

Believing in a movie is everything to me. Studio X makes anywhere from 8 to 12 movies a year, and I only direct one of them. I get first pick from the scripts as they come in and always pick the one I believe in the most. People often assume that I pick the one that’s going to bring in the most money, but that’s not the case. At this stage in the game I don’t care about that. I’m CEO and Co-Chairman of this place; I’ll see money from all the films no matter how little I’m involved.

In an effort to remain anonymous, I can’t really say which movies I have picked in the past years versus the scripts I’ve passed down to up-and-coming directors. I usually pass on comedies, unless it’s something extremely clever like Little Miss Sunshine, or Stranger Than Fiction. I also always pass on comic book movies. Those things will effortlessly make their money back from the books already existing fan base, and I don’t want to be held accountable for their virginity any more than I have to. Chick Flicks and Romantic Comedies are also a no go. I can’t involve myself with a film that will only work depending on how bad the audience actually wants to see those two actors having sex.

That leaves everything in-between for me. I like things that are different. So I will pick a script that could either suck really badly in the hands of someone who didn’t know what they were doing, or be total genius if crafted by someone who cared about it and believed it could be great. That’s how I got where I am today. I take a stack of papers with words on them, and turn it into a visual masterpiece that everyone can appreciate. That’s weird that I said that, I just received an email from Friend and the subject title was “Visual Masterpeice.” However, I’m sure it’s just another forwarded video clip from pornbloopers.com.

AJ

Terminated

We all say stupid things. The only problem is that some of us get fired for saying stupid things. I hired the son of one my of wife's friends from a charity organization. He's been working in the mailroom here for two weeks. Not a bad kid, but I kept having this feeling like he really didn't have what it takes in this business. I've kept him around because his dad owns one of my favorite pizza places down in Santa Monica. I send him out to get me lunch every day, and ironically I always want pizza. Ever since I found out, I've been ordering the weirdest pizzas.

Anyway, this morning all of the assistants and I were talking about actors and actresses that have either gained or lost lots of weight for movies. Ok, so I wasn't actually talking to them, but one of my assistants told me about it. Everyone mentioned their favorites and who pulled it off the best. So it gets over to dumbass, and he says that he thinks Eddie Murphy did an unbelievable job in the Nutty Professor. He goes on to ponder how anyone could gain that much weight that quickly. I wanted to punch him in the face. I did the next best thing and fired him. Now, I'm just wondering what to get for lunch.

LD

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