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Anyone, Anything, Any $

Last updated on March 24th, 2017 at 06:50 pm

Several months ago I decided the following mantra would define the next year:

“Work for anyone, on anything, for any amount of money.” I still was (am) new to Los Angeles and the entertainment business. I figured regardless of what I did, I’d learn something new. More importantly, a blanket “yes” without regard to my specific interests or career direction would stop the cost-benefit analysis that zips through my head every time it’s time to act. This analysis usually led to choice paralysis, which in turn led to no action at all.

Take away choice and the malady cleared right up.

It’s akin to the Jim Carey movie, YES MAN, only much more degrading, not nearly as funny, and no meeting Zooey Deschanel at some hipster dive bar. Which I suppose makes it nothing like YES MAN whatsoever.

The experiment led to a smattering of entertainment experiences dabbled from every inch of the palette, some great, some less so. But I wouldn’t trade any of those experiences for anything. Not that I loved my first day on set, a 16-hour PA shift for DESPERATE ACTS OF MAGIC — I was surly and miserable afterwards — but I learned a lot, watched some great people work, and popped my PA cherry.

The mantra (“anyone, anything, any amount of money”) led to my first script writing classes with Pilar Alessandra, my first Pitch Fest, my first casting gig, my first trip to the Film Market, and my first production coordinator job. Of course, not every something leads to something else, for a variety of reasons. Sometimes things just didn’t click, or I didn’t make the best first impression. Or I made choices that others didn’t appreciate, which can really hurt you if you get hung up on it.

Other times I did my best, for little or no money, and still no new opportunities came to fruition — another circumstance that’ll hurt you only if you dwell on it. I don’t like to think of this as getting burned (when you do free work, you kinda have to let go of the “getting burned” mentality as you’re working towards the intangible value of good will.) It doesn’t make it sting any less: for example, writing three free coverages for a producer who, after the fact, won’t take your calls or return e-mails. Or reading for a well-known independent film festival and your point person barely bothers to mutter a thank-you before walking away. None of these experiences leave you with the warm and fuzzies.

It’s discouraging if you let it be. If you’re not zoned for the proper mindset, which is: be completely ambivalent and unaffected by your results. Do your best work with zero expectations, and follow it by accepting whatever you get in return, whether it’s a thank-you, more work, or just the experience. Then nothing can hurt you.

Photos Credit: Marian Caraban

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Write-A-Thon

Last updated on March 9th, 2019 at 03:55 pm

Contrary to the title, this post is not about writing.

Let’s start by talking about writing:

The fun of banging on the keyboard every day wanes. It becomes more about the afterglow than the work before it (“love having written, hate writing.”) There are times I enjoy the creating, capturing the moment perfectly in words as I imagined in my mind. These moments are far and few between, however. The majority of the time, writing is work. This isn’t a problem if you’re professional and treat the writing as such — you get up and get it done, regardless of how you “feel” or whether you’re “up to it.”

Recently, my writer’s group took on a unique challenge: our group of six would collaborate to write the first draft of a screenplay — in one night. One single all-night writing session to get from FADE IN to BLACK, dividing the labor equally amongst six people.

We held four meetings in the weeks prior to hash out an outline we could execute within the time frame. The outline was skeletal — we established only the main protagonist’s names, motivations, and back story, and agreed upon three or four settings. It did fulfill the single necessary requirement: get us from A to Z in 24 beats (a serendipitous coincidence, thanks to 24’s unique mathematical properties of being divisible by 3 (writing pairs) and 8 (hours to write.)

The remaining details were left up to the writers and created on the fly. This spontaneity led to moments throughout the night where one person would pose thoughtful questions like “wait, is Whitney impregnated by the demon before or after Adolfi is gored by the alligator?” and other pressing issues that affected theme, allegory, and continuity.

We met. We drank coffee. We conquered. Not in that order.

But we got our draft — a nonsensical, terribly violent yet wholly completed draft.

Take away lessons: this is a good way to get a draft written, but it’s not a good way to write a draft. I’d recommend everyone gives it a try.

Like I said: this post is not about writing.

Setting aside eight hours to stay up all night with a group of people with a single intention (“let’s make some s#%!”) was the most fun I had in this medium in a long time. Throwing down words that made zero sense logically or grammatically in a sleep-deprived state was a small reminder to enjoy the process of creating, not just the event of having created. I’m not talking about those 8-hours, either; I mean the whole process: surrounding yourself with people who want to make something, having the idea of the all-nighter, makingprogress with the outline week by week, anticipating the event as we moved closer and closer, and wondering if we’d manage to get everyone together for eight hours (a miracle in of itself.)

So now we got this draft, and what we’re going to do with it (revise it, revisit it, trash it?) is pretty unclear. I hoped it’d be a rough draft to add to the portfolio but I think even that may be a stretch. It may end up being nothing more than the only souvenir from a night where a group of people decided they were going to make something. And followed through.

That, and this blog post, that isn’t about writing.

Photos Credit: BookMama

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Accountability

Last updated on March 9th, 2019 at 03:55 pm

I never thought of getting a poker game together as such an exhibition. It never used to be; in high school, in college, we’d decide on the when/where/time, and then spend 10 minutes making calls. Within 30 minutes, we’d hear back from 95 percent of the people. In or out. See you there or catch you next time.

You could say those were simpler times. Now, everyone has more responsibility to juggle and things come up at the last minute. Ask any assistant or executive how things are at the office, and they’ll tell you, “oh, it’s crazy busy. Crazy crazy busy.”

Crazy busy is not an excuse for lack of accountability.

Life if complicated, but isn’t that why you have all those fancy apps on your phone? Your iCal and your six alarms, your international text messaging and GPS. Don’t these tools exist so you can make a commitment — yes or no — or if you have to break a commitment, you can communicate in a timely manner?

So what’s with the lack of accountability? Why do people consciously decide they’re not going to bother with a response? Why do we accept the behavior with the admission that, “well, this is how things just are…”?

We see others do it, and that makes it okay
The executives, the agents and all the other power players leverage time as their weapons. Canceling and rescheduling are tools in their arsenal to remind others that compared to them, they’re insignificant. Suddenly, “feeling tired” and “I don’t feel like it” are valid reason to cancel appointments. I remember rescheduling a half-an-hour general interest meeting that’d already been pushed literally, a dozen times — the original appointment was over a year ago.

If a meeting is pushed back one whole calendar year, then (one) the issue at hand either resolved itself and (two) the meeting wasn’t important to begin with. Why not cancel it?

Instead, I push it back another month, without explanation of the logic behind the decision. I bask in the wisdom of the decision, and nod my head as I observe “how business is done.”

Then I emulate the behavior in my personal life, with my personal relationships. If I’m called out on it, I justify my lack of accountability by saying, “this is how business gets done.”

There’s an implied pecking order when it comes to accountability.
The relationship is easy to follow: if they’re higher than you, then you’re the model of accountability and commitment. If they’re lower than you, you remind them of their status by not bothering to respond. That’s not precisely how the train of thought choo choos through the mind, but it’s close.

Every time someone fobs you off, they commit a specific transaction: they bet this show of superiority (“I am so powerful, so well-connected, that I can’t be bothered to respond to you”) is more valuable than any potential retribution (“…and there’s probably nothing you can do about it.”) On a conscious or unconscious level, blowing you off was a justified opportunity cost.

Ease of access translates to an easing of accountability
Our wonderful communication applications put our entire network just a few keystrokes away. That barrier to connect is so low, that in turn, the perceived opportunity cost of failing to connect is non-existent (“I choose to ignore this message because I know if I need something, I can always reach out.”) Plus, generally speaking the “higher” the technology, the more indirect and greater the anonymity. So by relying heavily on e-mailing and texting, we shield ourselves from the emotional consequence: we don’t respond to an e-mail; we cancel last minute via text.

In short, if I don’t feel like an ass for canceling then it’s easier to cancel.

The lack of accountability can be frustrating if you let it be. Is this how everyone treats one another? Is this really how business gets done? You can mope about it. You can get out of the game.

Or you can treat each one of those tiny injustices like chips on your shoulder. They can serve as nettling reminders that you’ve got something to prove — that they miscalculated when they decided blowing you off was a justified opportunity cost.

And then you go do something about it.

Photos credit: fahad Al-Muhanna

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Fairy Tale

Last updated on March 9th, 2019 at 03:55 pm

I’m in the room, exec producer on my right, director to my left, and casting director across the table from me, and they’re swapping stories about girls they’re seeing and asses they’re tapping. I wish I met them years ago to better reap the benefits of their wisdom, because I see it: they can flip a switch the second an actress enters, and suddenly they’re charming, powerful, suave. The switch returns to off when the door closes, and it’s back to the “Vaseline story” about the prostitute in Mexico.

I have friends who’d be great in that room, armed with an encyclopedia of sexual conquests to contribute; guys who can weave sex stories into epics, turning a weekend tryst into an underdog tale, with antagonists and rising action and of course, a climax.

Theirs is a skill set I haven’t refined. When pressed to contribute, I tell them about my girlfriend, Amy. She lives in Ireland. I haven’t seen her in months but she’s visiting for Christmas and New Years. I’ll visit in April, and then she’s going to move to Los Angeles in the fall.

It’s a lovely story. But it’s not what the audience wants to hear. Which is understandable: when you want to see WILD THINGS you don’t settle for YOU GOT MAIL.

The general response is “that’s cute,” which looks like a compliment on paper, but is dismissive and belittling when heard aloud. “That’s cute” is an appropriate response to crazy cats and swearing babies you see on YouTube. Not two people trying to keep a relationship intact from halfway across the world. It’s a backhanded compliment with an unsaid implication:

That’s cute… that you think it’s going to last.
That’s cute… that you think anyone stays faithful these days.
That’s cute… that you think your relationship is a fairy tale, and you’ll live happily ever after.

There’s an inclination to challenge minority status if it’s flaunted, or presented without apology or embarrassment. Unapologetically aligning yourself with the minority is an affront to the status quo. It’s an attack on how others see the world, so they’ll get defensive. They’ll lash out in retaliation, with rebukes or belittlement.

The real insidiousness of their counter-attacks is that it springs from truth as they know it. “Believe, me,” they tell me. “I’ve had the unhappy marriages, the multiple divorces, the legal battles for money, for custody, for the dog. You, you’re young and naive, and what you’re talking about is a fairy tale.”

These are all facts. Irrefutable. I am young and I am naive, and when I tell people about Amy and our relationship that exists 6,000 miles apart with an 8-hour time difference, I wholeheartedly agree. We are chasing the fairy tale.
If you’re not, what would be the point?

Photo Credit: moniellain

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Who Owns Your Collaboration?

Last updated on March 9th, 2019 at 03:55 pm

The scariest part about going collaborative with a project is the realization that once you bring another person on board, once you put out that innocuous question over coffee or drinks or a BBQ sauce stained napkin, “I got this project; you interested?” is that the project doesn’t belong to you anymore.

Now you share the project with your partner. It’s a joint-venture. Doesn’t matter how many nights you slaved over the concept, or how much money you sunk to get it from point “A” to its current manifestation. The scope continues to grow, you add more pieces, you bring on more people, and you own less tomorrow than you did today.

It can be a punch in the gut, watching your collaborators rip apart your meticulously constructed project, fumble with their individual pieces, and tweak that, adjust this, turn that knob and spin this dial, then try to reassemble the monstrosity. Don’t they know?! That’s your baby they’re so callously tweaking and manhandling, with absolute disregard for the sacred “process.”

Eventually, the torture ends. The collaboration is over, and it yields a product. The product is in the can and ready to ship, and so the rights revert back to you, right? You suffered through the butchering, but at least now your baby (your bloated, misshaped baby with 13 fingers and an ear for a nose) is back in your arms, right?

It is… right until the moment you ship. The second you put your project out to the world, it doesn’t matter what the byline reads or screen credit declares or contract states: the project once and forever more no longer belongs to you. Now it belongs to the world. It’s theirs to judge, to hate, to love, to critique, to ignore. If you’re not okay with that, you’re limiting your opportunities to create something greater than yourself.

I finished working on an independently financed television series, where I met a lot of talented people, but at times the project felt like a sinking ship. Production wrapped a month early when we came up short on the money. Once the dust settled and the strike days came and went, we could look past the issues of gross overspending, creative arguments, and constant rescheduling, and see these were the symptoms of the real problem: the project was never a true collaboration.

The project only ever belonged to a single person: the creator, who doubled as an executive producer, who tripled as the financier. He struggled to keep all the moving pieces together, clutching the reigns tightly in his fist, refusing to relinquish even an iota of control. Even as the pieces slipped faster and faster through his fingers, he continued to hold onto the illusion of control, because it was the only way he knew how to respond. It was both frustrating and heart breaking to watch.

I try to bear that in mind as I plunge into collaborations: any project of mine with a chance at denting the universe was never “mine” to begin with.

Photo Credit: shindz

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Headshot

Last updated on March 9th, 2019 at 03:55 pm

Displayed on his laptop was the Facebook photo of someone I barely recognized. His was a good-old boy face, with clean features and a fresh haircut. He carried himself with forced-casual posture — shoulders back and spine slightly hunched — and it screamed American Eagle catalog.

Teddy and Kathy laughed at his modeling photos as they passed the bowl back and forth, him clicking and changing the picture every other toke. Teddy gestured towards the screen. “Look at what Ky’s been up to.”

Ky was a server who started working at the Thai restaurant just before I left. We didn’t talk much: I remember he seemed real country, real green. He mentioned getting into acting and modeling. I could barely place his face on the Photoshopped Malibu Ken in front of me, who went through a wardrobe change and pose shift with every mouse click, the only ubiquitous feature the plastic smile on his face:

Here he is, wrapped in a scarf!

Now, flexing his abdominal muscles!

Wow! It looks like Ky’s ready for a night on the town! Let’s go, Barbie!

They laughed and pointed and laughed some more, half in good-nature, and the other half, not so quite. “Hey, I mean, good luck to him,” Kathy said.

“Yeah, hope he gets something out of these pictures,” Teddy added. Like these dismissive platitudes negated their ridicule, or concealed the resentment laced twixt every laugh, every comment, every puff of smoke exhaled in Ky direction.

I remember doing the exact same thing, once upon a time, while visiting my friends Jenny Beth and Danielle, in Nashville. Late one night and bored, we started flipping through the 30-pictures-deep Facebook modeling album of a former CTY co-worker. He proudly posted a short prelude, explaining that he never considered modeling, but a friend suggested it and he “loved the results.”

The “results” were far more over the top than Ky’s photos, and included super-mega-bonus suggestive captions, like “wanna get nailed?” as if wearing cut-off jean shorts, an open flannel shirt, and a firm grip on the shaft of a hammer wasn’t suggestive enough. Or if clutching a toy jack hammer directly in front of your crotch didn’t slap you across the face with a laundry list of double entendre, one was provided for ease of reference (“I’d hammer you, too.”) We laughed and we pointed and we laughed, until we went through the entire album, trying out each caption in our own sexy voice.

Half in good nature. Half not so quite.

This time around with Ky’s photos, it wasn’t as amusing. I walked out of the room, and the click of the mouse and more laughter followed me into the hallway. Their gaiety hit too close to home. It was a low blow, making the subject of their ridicule someone who was getting started in entertainment. Be certain that anytime you attempt something difficult, something without a proven record, people are lining up their bets against you and laughing as they do it. Rare are the people who wish you the best of luck, and mean it.

Which is helpful, in its own way. Ridicule weeds out those without the gumption to stick it out for the long run. If you can’t handle some razzing at stage one, it’s unlikely you’ll have the staying power to last the seasons, when ridicule melts to begrudging acceptance, and eventually, blooms to admiration.

Still. “Be kind. Everyone you meet is fighting a difficult battle.”

Photo Credit: Shannon Huppin

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Spin

Last updated on March 9th, 2019 at 03:55 pm

There’s a crazy homeless lady yelling obscenities outside my window. I hate callously tossing around words like “crazy” and “homeless”– that could be someone’s grandmother outside – but she’s got a schizophrenic gait to her speech, see-sawing from sing-song to Banshee. That’s the “crazy.” And she parked her shopping cart of worldly possessions next to my car, and is using the rear end bumper as a roof. That’s “homeless.”

Teddy suggests we get out there and tell her to move, but he doesn’t read horror scripts all day, so he doesn’t know any better. There’s always that guy in slasher flicks who approaches the seemingly vulnerable creature, disguised as an old lady or the ubiquitous little girl (equally ubiquitously played by Chloe Grace Moretz.) His hand is outstretched, like he’s about to pet a baby bird. He’s hunched over, his eyebrows furrowed, and in your head you’re screaming “No! Don’t do it! It’s a trick! She’s going to bite your face off!” but he inches closer and closer, unconcerned with your pleas because you don’t possess telepathy and he is inside a television.

He gently touches the old lady, and…

Nothing happens. He smiles…

Right before she rips his face in half.

I will not be this guy.

The alternative to asking the crazy homeless lady to move is realizing that she may be obnoxious, but she’s not doing nobody harm. We should just stay inside our warm, safe apartment, with running water and electricity and cell phones, counting our blessings.

Then get on the cell phone and call the police, and ask them to move the crazy homeless lady.

I prefer this option, though I’m not sure what good it’d do. In Los Angeles, there’s this “live and let live” attitude towards the homeless and panhandlers that still escapes me. There’s a panhandler I regularly pass, stationed right where the “10” empties onto National Blvd. Her scraggly brown hair is tied back in a ponytail, and tucked into her USC sweat shirt. Every time I get gas or groceries, she’s working that corner, though her specific duties vary. Sometimes she’s got her cup in hand, walking down the long line of cars waiting for the light. Other times, she’s flirting with the homeless wheelchair guy, or drinking a 40 out of a brown paper bag.

Yesterday, I saw her at Starbucks, ordering a Frappuccino. It was half-off, part of the Happy Hour special they were running, but still.

Across our apartment, a woman parks her van loaded with cans and bottles she’s collected inside an outdoor garage. Like others, she makes her living hunting recyclables. I never gave it any thought until I overheard her conversation with another professional recycler.  “People look down at me,” he said, “but shit, I ain’t working for no man. I make my own money, and I make my own hours.”

He’s not a recyclables hunter; he’s an entrepreneur.

And what one might refer to it as panhandling, others call hustling.

In upstate New York, you throw an empty bottle on the ground, it’s littering. In Los Angeles, you know it’s going to get picked up: so you call it charity.

In many American cities, employing someone at no pay to keep the coffee machine going and fetching printouts is called slave labor. Here it’s an internship.

If that’s not spin, then I don’t know what is. It permeates from every crevice of our lives, a byproduct of being concerned with how others perceive you. Spin is everywhere and it’s still spreading, bleeding over Ethernet cables and wireless routers, diffusing from our real lives to our online lives and back again. There’s merit in developing the ability to spin, especially when it’s your Facebook or blog account that notifies others of your engagement, your job promotion, or what you ate for lunch.  It’s more fun (and easier on the ego) to spin a post about triumphing over adversity, versus admitting this recent slump of failures has got you frustrated and rapidly losing faith. And why admit you got your heartbroken when a simple “In a relationship with…” toggle box explains it all, and the only thing left to do is untag your former significant other out of your life?

Spin grants us a glossy veneer to cover blemishes. With a click, any defeat can be turned to victory, any failure, a success.  “Be all you can be,” has given way to “be all you’re perceived to be.” This power comes with the very real possibility of losing sight of who we actually are and what we actually feel. Until one day we find ourselves out on the street, babbling schizophrenics all, torn somewhere between our real lives and digital selves.

Photo Credit: Ed Yourdon

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Stories You Were Born to Tell

Last updated on March 24th, 2017 at 06:52 pm

“MODERN FAMILY: there’s a show I feel like I was born to write,” my friend said to me. “It’s like, I can anticipate every. Single. Joke. Before they get to the punch line, I already see the set-up and I know the payoff.”

Makes me think of watching cage fights, with George St. Pierre or Miguel Torres in the ring, and I’m  anticipating the shovel punches and the fist-elbow combo thrown, and when his opponent’s going to shoot or if it’s a deke! and instead follows up with a kick, and I know he does this by avoiding deceits flowing from the hands the eyes the head. Instead, he locks on the hips like Master, and that’s how he anticipates every. Single. Punch.

But recognizing technique while reclined in the barcalounger is not the same as stepping into the ring with 155 pounds of War. And calling out a punch line isn’t the same as writing one.

Recognizing and anticipating puts your skill level a hair above those who blindly consume, and hardly an iota closer to someone who creates.  Recognition is a tool in a poor man’s arsenal; safety scissors amidst scalpels. Before assuming you’ve got the chops for story, ask yourself: can you talk about which parts of the story work (and which don’t?) Can you break it down for people, step-by-step, moving through the story with a clear head and clear vision and clear words as to why this piece fits better over here than over there? Can you see past the words to spot the structure? Why is a show like Modern Family funny? Why does a bit work, not just on the funny haha level, but that deep, resonate in my gut level? Can you break down why some stories feel like discovering a soul mate and others just the cheap fulfillment of a one-night stand?

That’s ARTICULATION.

Go another level, past articulation, down to limbo, and you’ve discovered where real work happens. No liberties here, no staring at the near completed puzzle and saying, “of course the pay-off happens here, where else would it go?”  You’ve CTRL+N’ed yourself to a document so bleak and white it’d give Edith Wharton a symbolic hard-on. Now, CREATE.

That’s the real work.

Yes, story be story. Anyone with years of books beneath their belts and movies behind their eyeballs gots a sense of what that is. Everyone’s got their inkling of the aesthetically pleasing. I look at Starry Night, I’m hit with the vague understanding of its appeal and allure. It doesn’t bring me half a step closer to investing in a Crayola 24-pack and hacking off an ear, though.

Consume. Recognize. Articulate. Create. In that order.

Fortitude and study, that’s what it’s going to take to learn the mechanics, to get a grasp on the science and move from one level to the next. Fortitude and study reveals the magic, and what is magic but some misdirection mixed with sleight of hand, built on a science foundation? Prepare to invest your time if you’re going to articulate rather than recognize, and create rather than articulate. No room for skeptics, neither. No time for rants on “my artistry, hear me roar! unbound by the boundaries of your box, by the man, by rules or convention!” Because art isn’t the doing away of structure, but its understanding: why it works and where it’s limited. Scrapping what fails and retooling the rest.

So where you going to get educated on your reversals, your turning points, your inciting incidents? How you going to study up on three-act structures and the placement of set-ups and payoffs?

By taking classes. Reading screenwriting books and treating the good ones like Testament. By listening to others talk about screenwriting, piping the knowledge of others directly into your brain every chance you get. By reading scripts: piles and piles, spanning across genre and generation.

And most importantly, by wringing out your brain every chance you get, putting pen to page and shedding stories. Even when you don’t think you’re ready. Even if you don’t think this story is ready to be shared.

So that when you find the story you were born to tell… you can.

Photo Credit: Gifford Pinchot National Forest

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Advice

Last updated on March 9th, 2019 at 04:03 pm

“My catchall, general advice to everyone who moves out to Los Angeles is this: if there’s anything else you can do, anything else that’s your calling, go do that instead. It’s a pat answer,” he admitted, “but this is just too hard…”

Which immediately raises the question: why is it hard? Because people will be mean to you? Because the hours stretch long and your social life sums to nil? Because you’ll be overworked, underpaid, and unappreciated – conditions your mother conditioned you into believing you’d skip right over because you were a unique snowflake?

It also prompts the follow-up question: hard compared to what?

When did the resultant response to“too hard” lead to “so don’t try?” Giving up because something is too hard – you attempted, drew conclusions based on the results, and decided to invest your time elsewhere – there’s no shame in that.

But too hard to even attempt?

Easily the worst attempt at advice I’ve ever come across.

Everyone’s journey, — from love to career to family to personal — is just that: personal. To compare how one person experiences joy, pain, and hardship to another is a fruitless exercise. The brilliant academic mind is a tortured soul in social situations that the social butterfly who battles bulimia excels in, while the bum standing outside her bathroom window scrounges through garbage cans of the single mother raising three kids alone because her addict husband couldn’t kick the habit he picked up when he in law school.

Who’s to say what’s “too hard?”

Pursuing your dreams is hard – that’s why they’re dreams; because you gots to stretch and reach and scratch and claw and lie and steal and cheat for them. If you make a living creating art, hustling for every cent, sure, it’s probably safe to say your path is filled with more struggle than someone happy with their nine to five.

But that does not make you a unique snowflake.

Contrary to popular belief, you still are not the hardest working person in your town, or your field. You’re probably not the hardest working person on your block.

Nor does it give you the privilege of passing off bullshit as your own sage adage for the temporary high of superiority and ten seconds of a hard dick you get at the thought of helping a fellow artist with your brilliant insight into the Holllywood machine.

It’s irresponsible to assume fragility, not strength. Individuals are more resilient than they’re given credit for, and we have to make a choice: to be the person who pushes the resiliency of others beyond their limits, beyond what they thought possible…

Or the person who convinces them that, “yes, there’s your limit. Your reach meets your grasp.”

Gotta stretch, baby. Gotta dream. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. Maybe you’ll make it, maybe you won’t.

But at least you won’t leave this earth wondering what would have happened if you never took your shot.

Which would be the hardest thing of all.

Photo Credit: muizei

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Skateboards and Hollywood

Last updated on March 9th, 2019 at 04:03 pm

There’s this moment, right before stumbling off your board, where you ask yourself, “Really? Did I have to try and get fancy right here right now? Were the potential flair points really worth the mouthful of gravel I’m about to eat?”

Then you’re falling.

Then you’re meeting asphalt.

Mucho gusto.
Igualmente.

Tucking, rolling, sliding, anything you can do to keep the wounds surface-level only, because you’d rather not test the limits of your paltry health insurance.

I throw in a prayer, too: please dear sweet Jesus I hope nobody saw that…

“Hey man, you alright?” a man on the sidewalk asked, trying hard not to laugh too loud. Failing to do so.

“Gotta love it,” I replied, my voice suave and steady as I scrapped myself off the ground, and chased my board which was skittering down the street.

In the past I avoided such moments by skating solely at night, when no one could see my bumbling. Or if they did, they wouldn’t recognize my face in the daylight, and would be unable to banish me back to the darkness where I belonged with looks of contempt. There is something embarrassing about being a 25-year-old man-child putzing around on a skateboard — if you’re skating at that age, there’s this expectation that you worked out the kinks when you were young and foolish enough to believe transportation on a plank resting atop four wheels was a valid mode of transportation.

Except I started skating at 24, only after I moved out to Los Angeles. So when I see the young and fearless skaters, attacking the street or vert or their new trick, I can’t help but resent the little assholes and their 20-year head start.

I started my Hollywood writing career the same time I started skating. My first lesson was, whatever you do, don’t admit you want to write. I interned with a management company, and kinda sorta fibbed about my desire to get into management and being an agent, so executives wouldn’t pass me off as just “another writer.” When people asked why I moved to Los Angeles, I gave pat answers: for the weather, a change of pace, etc. I pursued writing like a prepubescent teen pursues masturbation: alone, in secret, with hands furiously working in the dark. Looking back, this might have stifled my creativity but in the long run it’s not a bad move. Strange as it is to move 3,000 miles and not admit the real reason why, it’s a chore to distinguish yourself from the other millions of 25-year-olds with a whole lot of aspiration and dream, but no credits.

The more skating I watched, the more I noticed that what distinguished a skater from the pack wasn’t their execution of this trick or that move, but how they expressed themselves with their skating. The skaters who drew my attention were the ones who said something every time they stepped on the board. Because once everyone reached a certain level, they all possessed the same arsenal of tools at their disposal, and it was how they used those tools that distinguished themselves from the rest. It was more than transportation, more than a spectacle. It was art.

The only way to reach that level is admitting you’re going to take it seriously. That means pursuing your art in the daylight, and being willing to be judged by your work. You have to put it out there. You have to perform, right in the middle of the road, where anyone can see you fall.

Photo Credit: fish’s box

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