Got my meeting

I got dates for my meeting at the cable channel, cleared one with my boss, and am now just awaiting confirmation. Now I just need to get a confirmation from them, and I'm all set for a week and a half from now.

Fingers crossed it goes well.

Three Years

It was exactly three years ago today that I woke up in Las Vegas, climbed into my best friend's car, and continued our cross country drive. We arrived at the Santa Monica Pier around lunchtime. We'd gone coast to coast: all the way to the Pacific. We ordered a couple hamburgers, then started figuring out where we were going to live.

We moved into our new apartment on Halloween evening, after killing a couple hours by going to see my first movie in the Arclight Dome, Flags of our Fathers. We got into the new apartment, dropped our bags, threw on a couple impromptu costumes and walked down Hollywood Blvd to see the spectacle. We couldn't tell who was in costume, and who was just "like that."

I was totally in over my head, but in a good way. I still want to do now what I wanted to do then, and that's write something that will be remembered, that will entertain people, and hopefully make them think a bit too.

I'm happy with my life right now, and I seem to be making progress. I understand the business much better now, and I'm sure that in another three years I'll understand it on a whole other level.

And now year four begins. If this were college or high school, it'd be senior year. And I seem to recall both senior years being both eventful, fun, and a time to grow. Here's hoping for more of the same.

Boss said I can take the meeting

I spoke with my boss about my meeting. He said as long as I thought it was important that I could take it, just so long as it didn't become an everyday kind of thing, since my job is to help them out, not move my writing career forward. Surprisingly he didn't ask anything about the pilot, or ask me to print him out a copy.

Now I'm just waiting to hear back from my friend about when to have the meeting. I'm looking forward to it, because it's the first time I've really been acknowledged as a writer in this town, not just an assistant who is good with story or an assistant who writes on the side.

I know what the odds are about getting something set up, or getting staffed. But I also know that as long as I'm good and keep working, I'll eventually get there. This meeting request confirms that I'm good enough to be working in this business.

It's somewhat fitting that tomorrow marks my three year anniversary of arriving in LA. There are times when it feels like I'm getting nowhere, but I remember when I arrived thinking that I got where I wanted to be within 5 years I'd be happy. So it looks like I'm on track. I've got a good place to live, some decent industry connections, a girlfriend who's also an aspiring writer and a blast to hang out with. I think I'm in pretty good shape.

Here's hoping the next three years are even better.

P.S. Writress and I scrapped the zombie and zombie hunter Halloween costume idea for something better and nerdier. A little more money than I wanted to spend, but I can recycle the costume bits, and if we every go to Comicon they'll be great. To give you a hint, we're two characters from a favorite TV show, and I'm sometimes known as a "leaf on the wind."

Good News, and dilemma

I got an email last night from my friend who works at another management company. Apparently his friend who works at a prominent cable channel read and liked my most recent pilot and wants to set a general meeting with me. As you can imagine I'm pretty psyched about this, since that's the first step toward getting the meetings that get you staffed on shows.

Here's the dilemma: She wants to set a morning meeting during the week, probably around 10:30am. This is a problem with my day job, which is at a management company/agency. I haven't really discussed the fact that I'm a writer with my current bosses in detail, though I haven't gone out of my way to hide it. I'm hoping that if I'm straightforward and honest about the situation, which I had not planned on, my bosses will be cool and let me take a morning off for the meeting. While they do represent TV writers, I've heard my boss say on multiple occasions that he doesn't want to take on another hard sell, which is what I am as an untested writer.

I considered faking a doctor's appointment or something, but not only is that sketchier and more dishonest, there's the added issue that if I do eventually get a position on a show at this network, they'll put two and two together and be upset with me that I was dishonest. I think the best way to go about it is to try and have an honest conversation with them. Hopefully it'll all work out.

This month has flown by

I've been really busy, so this month has gone by pretty quickly. Work is the same. Still plowing ahead on all cylinders for the web series. I think we're ready to cast the male lead now, if not the first five episodes. Next up is writing the next arc (what I'm calling a group of at least 3 webisodes).

Things are going great with the Writress. We geeked out this past week going to see a screening of The Guild and Dr Horrible at the Egyptian theater. A large portion of the Whedon-verse was there, including Joss Whedon himself, so that was a big thrill for me. Interesting note: He still smiles and laughs at his own work. Clearly his first audience is himself, and that's something I can get behind.

We also went to see Nathan Fillion do a Q&A and book signing for CASTLE on monday night. The only bummer was that the jobless people all got there 9 hours in advance, so we didn't get a copy of the book. He was pretty entertaining though, so it was still a worthwhile trip. He's very personable and funny (for example, when he got up to the mic he said in a very hoarse voice, "I'm afraid I've lost my voice" but when he saw the look on everyone's face he said, "Nah, I'm just kiddin" Love that stuff).

My sitcom pilot is coming along as well. Hopefully I'll continue assembling a good portfolio. And if I'm really lucky that will help me get some representation, which is the first big hurdle to making it in this business.

Dumb expressions

It hasn't rained in months, and frankly, LA is getting to be a bit funky. There's so much crap in the air that just parking your car outside for a day leaves it covered in a layer of dirt. I cut through a back alley as a shortcut to the post office everyday for work, and I'm noticing that the alley is smelling progressively worse. It needs to rain, and soon, to clean the city off a bit.

That got me thinking of the expression, "Save a little money for a rainy day." When it rains, I stay inside. I relax and watch a movie, and eat whatever food I have in the house. I don't go out, so I don't spend any money. If anything, I spend LESS on a rainy day. I should be saving my money for beautiful days where I will go out into the world and enjoy life while purchasing tasty food.

One could counter that when it rains you might hang out on the computer and buy crap off Amazon, but that expression is older than the internet, by a lot.

The expression should be, "Save your money on a rainy day" or something to that effect.

Zombieland was awesome

The Cartoon Network exec passed on my pilot because it was too serialized, but I'm okay with it. I still feel very good about that being a strong sample, so I'll keep that on file and keep plugging away at the next projects.

Worked on the webseries a lot on Saturday, and it's coming together. I'm pretty excited about it. After we were done working we came back to Hollywood and saw ZOMBIELAND in Grauman's Chinese Theater (an awesome place to see it for many reasons, some you'll understand after watching it).

I loved that movie so f-ing much. I was so giddy and happy during it that Writress was almost as entertained by my joy as she was at the movie. Fantastic script, brilliant performances, and just a fantastic blast of a fun time in the theater. Clearly Ruben Fleischer knew (despite being a first time director) that making a movie is supposed to be fun. I liked it so much that I set a reminder on Amazon to email me when it becomes available on DVD.

Didn't get into the WB Workshop

I shouldn't be surprised, since pretty much every aspiring writer in town applies to that workshop. And by "aspiring" I'm including people who have been out here working in the industry for over a decade without catching a break. The bummer part of it was that my roommate emailed me to let me know that I had some mail from Warner Bros Television, thinking it would "brighten my day."

Instead, that just got me thinking about the letter for the last few hours I was at work. I was 95% sure it was a rejection, but when you move across the country to make your dreams come true that 5% optimism makes itself heard. So there was a lot of build up to the eventual letdown when I got home.

This morning I finished the rough draft of the first four episodes of my new webseries, and found out that an exec at Cartoon Network is planning on reading my pilot script this weekend, so here's keeping fingers crossed that this weekend is a good time for people to like my work.

In other news, I'm going to see Zombieland tomorrow night, and I'm kinda psyched for it.