Miscellany

Pernod, the French anise-flavored liquor, is a fantastic addition to any kind of mussel/shrimp/scallop dish. I've already steamed up some mussels with good results, and I have high hopes for its next use. However, I have yet to find a way to consume the stuff in a glass without wanting to shave my tongue afterwards. My first taste was, hmm, very reminiscent of Triaminic brand children's cough syrup.

And now, a long overdue follow up on my conversations with various relatives w/r/t to what exactly is the deal with this writers' strike.

In these conversations, I have frequently explained the concept of force majeure. Said principle allows one or both parties in a contractual agreement to withdraw from said agreement without financial penalty. Among the various act of god clauses in the standard deal contract, most industry contracts also specifically mention that a strike of eight to ten weeks will also trigger force majeure.

You have to understand is that virtually everyone and everything more important than a stapler has a studio deal. I worked for a company in Santa Monica that was funded completely by a deal with Disney (21 miles away in Burbank.) The next office over belonged to David Duchovny and Tea Leoni's production company -- a small organization that was, most likely, entirely funded by a deal with one of the big studios. Once upon a time, the film industry ran on the studio system; now it runs on deals. And all the deals, ultimately, go back to one of the big studios. (Disney, Sony, Time Warner, NBC/Universal, Fox and Viacom. That's six right? I think that's all of them.)

At this point in the story, I tend to use Mr. Cuba Gooding Jr. as a hypothetical individual with a hypothetical deal which perhaps his studio would like to terminate, rather than continue to pay him millions of dollars for such films as "Snow Dogs." I mean no offense to Mr. Gooding Jr. I'm sure his contract is in good standing and no one has any interest in releasing him from his deal.

And now, at long last, the relevant information. Futon Critic has a list here of Very Nearly All the TV Deals There Are. It doesn't even scratch the surface of the various film deals. From what I can see, 50 deals were canceled in the last week -- and that's just on the TV side.

Quite a lot of the details are fuzzy, but for example, Liz Astrof, who worked on "Welcome to the Captain" in some capacity, is rumored to have had a two year, seven figure deal. That means, minimum, she was going to make a million bucks a year. But not anymore, because her deal has been canceled.

Now, multiply those savings times the other 49 canceled deals on the list and that, dear friends, is why the AMPTP wasn't in any hurry to wrap up the strike. A month of "House" reruns is a drag, but it's nothing compared to saving several hundred million bucks in contractual payments.

We can only hope that, having thinned the ranks somewhat, the studios are now in the mood to actually make a deal.

Like Air Leaking Out of a Tiny Balloon

The internet is a wonderland, full of nooks and crannies of buttery goodness.

And also some websites that I have put on month- and year-long timeouts. They're still on the internet and whatnot, I just can't go look at them. Because then I will observe the words/actions represented on said blogs, and have a little World Wide Web Rage Blackout. Which usually ends with me slowly regaining consciousness in a darkened room, my hands clenched around my PowerBook and one or more empty bags of Sea Salt and Vinegar Potato Chips scattered around me.

I may as well say this now, as I cruise past the halfway mark in my third month of daily blogging. Most people cannot post every day to their blog, or worse, post multiple times a day to their own blog, without some portion of mental illness. In my case, I think there's just a smidge of compulsion afoot, but nothing much worse than that. Many, many, many blogs, however, are nothing but a running list of People Who Piss The Blogger Off and Why They Should Be Shot.

(I don't need to name names. You know there are blogs like this. You know you've read them. Don't lie to me. I can smell the Sea Salt and Vinegar Potato Chips on your breath. It's okay. Don't be ashamed. You're among friends.)

Anyway, I have very few really unshakable addictions, but for sure, Blogs of the Mentally Disordered is one of them. So much so that I have to quarantine the links in a folder, label the folder "No! Kate! No!" and then bury it in a subdirectory in my bookmark file. Yes, yes, of course I could just delete the link, but that might lead to googling the blog to find it again. This way, I know right where the blog is, I'm just not reading it.

This is all 100% true, btw. I have such a folder, hidden in a subdirectory. No, I still won't tell you which blogs are on the list. Oh, all right, I'll give you one clue, but that's it. Ready? Tucker Max.

Most such blogs take a tone of deliberate confrontation, if they're not openly striving to produce outrage. At first, I find myself unconsciously forming counter arguments to disprove this or that half-assed observation. Then I start to compose a possible comment for posting. Once I realize what I'm doing, I quickly click away, only to spend the next hour or two still disturbed by what I've read.

In time, and with sufficient immersion in the New York Times, the memory fades, but only until the next time I'm bored and looking for something to pass the time, and next thing you know, I'm reading some lady's description of how she shivved a 16-year-old boy for talking on his cell phone in the Kinko's.

Look, I get my knickers in a twist in just this way, almost daily. For example, I don't believe in holding a table before I've ordered my food -- it's an official rule at some L.A. coffee houses, actually.

When I stroll back towards an open seat, only to see that someone has just snagged said seat while their friend (six people back from me in line) orders for them, I get fucking pissed. Yes, I said fucking pissed. I'm sorry, I know that's a swear, but it really roasts my beans.

But then I let it go, do my thing and get on with my life. I don't frickin' post about every single instance, every day, for my entire life. (Uh, wait, did I post about that Williams-Sonoma thing? I did, didn't I? Okay, but that's still just twice in the entire month of January. And I'm not posting pictures of erstwhile asshats on my website.)

Let's just take a minute to savor the rich irony of how this blog post, which started out being about blogs that are so relentlessly negative and fault-finding that I can't read them, has now turned into a relentlessly negative and fault-finding post about said blogs.

A more cautious or careful blogger would probably delete this entry and start over, but that's not how I roll. In fact, this is the only way I can keep posting every single day: By opening Blogger and typing for half an hour until once again, I seem to have produced a post. It's a daily exercise in dumping out my mental junk drawer, and helps me practice letting go of this non-helpful belief that everything I write has to be awesome.

And on that note: My cat Willa just farted in her sleep.

Good night! You've been a fantastic audience! We'll be here all week! Try the veal!

I Am Kate's Brain

Even though it's the kind of delicious tidbit that inspires many a bumper sticker and novelty t-shirt, it is, alas, a myth that human beings only use 10% of our brains.

I'm surprised this didn't get debunked much, much sooner. On every medical drama, when a doctor checks out a CT scan or an MRI of the brain, the screen is always lit up like a Christmas tree. If we were only using 10% of our brains, the screen should look like the terrain outside a jet window when you fly over Utah.

(Note to readers who may be actual doctors: Okay, maybe the CT or the MRI doesn't track brain activity, but one of those things does, because I saw this documentary on addiction, and they were totally looking at a picture of a guy's brain as he thought about doing crack. And it was lit up like a Christmas tree. So even former crack addicts use more than 10% of their brains.)

Anyway, I knew this already because my brain works even when I don't want it to. This start years ago, during a family viewing of an Agatha Christie mystery. Half way through, I proposed that the murderer was a female character who killed her victim for giving her TB (I think. Or maybe cholera) and causing her to miscarry her one and only child. I was, I think, twelve or thirteen at the time.

I was right.

Since then, it's been the rare hour of television that can completely stump me. My best hope is to have a small drink before turning on the TV, so that I'm working at a disadvantage. After that, there's surfing-and-watching, which distracts me just enough that I don't pick up all the clues. Then, too, there are the people who can bring it every single week. My first day as an intern on "Mad Men," I walked around the room reading the white boards, with my jaw hanging open in disbelief.

(That's right. I knew in March that Peggy was pregnant. And did I say anything? To anyone? I did not. I didn't even tell my MOM. Because I don't believe in spoilers. And also because I signed a confidentiality agreement.)

Sadly, the strike has stripped me of all my usual favorites, and I am reduced to obsessively watching "Project Runway." It used to be that I would never see the challenges coming. It used to be that I delighted in the surprise reversals and unexpected rivalries. Now, unfortunately, my brain has too much time on its hands. Even as the trailer is running for the following week, I know what's coming.

I knew last week would be a candy story challenge. I actually thought it would be Dylan's Candy Bar, but that's because I forgot that Project Runway doesn't deal with one-shot stores owned by Ralph Lauren's daughter. Rookie mistake.

This week, I knew it would be prom dresses. I knew. And I knew the models would be teenage girls.

And alas, I know what next week's challenge will be as well. I wasn't even trying to figure it out, and it snapped into my head. Stupid brain! This is one of my few remaining pleasures and you had to ruin it for me! That's it. We're going straight to the bathroom to do a couple shots of Nyquil until you learn your place around here.

I won't spoil it for anyone else, but just for posterity, I will "inviso-text" it below. So if you want to see my guess, or come back next week and see if I'm right (which I'm hoping I'm not), highlight it with your cursor.

SPOILER ALERT! READ NO FURTHER!




Next week's challenge: Making an outfit from materials found/taken from the contestant's apartment.

Christmas Miracles

1. My long lost scarf arrived from Ireland. Technically not the lost scarf, but a replacement, yet I feared that it had been eaten by Customs and would never arrive. But no, it came yesterday afternoon.

2. With six hours of sleep, three caffeinated beverages, some sea salt and vinegar potato chips and the final hour of "The Winslow Boy," I managed to finish a draft of my rewrite homework.

3. Somehow, I am still awake and able to function well enough to do laundry. Which is a godsend, because I am down to my last pair of clean knickers.

4. MG has taken fantastic care of me through these last arduous weeks. This is not so much a miracle, as he is the best partner a girl could hope for, but in the spirit of being grateful for all the little things, he definitely belongs on the list.

5. I had two dollars discretionary money on my student ID and the film school's coffee stand was a) open, b) equipped with a working espresso machine and c) stocked with skim milk, so I could purchase what might be my very last medium non-fat latte for some years to come. It will be three years this February that MG and I sat on a bench outside Lucas, waiting for the school tour to start, when I decided to see if I could find a bathroom and discovered the Lucas Coffee Cart. Never in my life have I felt such a powerful desire to enroll in a school, as I felt at that moment.

6. Barring complete disaster, I have in fact finished my MFA. Only thing left is to get the fancy document in the mail.

Oh Dear God...

Pages written today: Zero.

Number of carb-craving vampires living in my stomach, whispering dark suggestions about an idiotically ill-advised trip to Pizzeria Mozza for a fungi misto special: One.

Hours remaining until I must stop writing, print the script and drive to campus: Twenty-two.

Number of remaining hours I will undoubtedly end up sleeping: Eight.

Therefore, remaining hours to work on this script: Fourteen.

How fucked I am right now: Very.

One Woman Dares to Ask...

Can you write an act and a half of a screenplay -- say, 50 pages or so -- in twenty-four hours?

Watch this space for the answer!

Drink the Kool-Aid

When all else fails, I write in front of the television.

On the couch, coffee at hand, laptop fired up, TV on. I need all four things -- the TV on when I'm at my desk just makes me turn around in my chair. On the couch with no TV and I surf the internet for hours. No coffee means I have to go get coffee. Laptop, obviously, because Final Draft doesn't work with a legal pad.

I'm not proud of this. I know better than to work in front of the TV. But no kidding, it works. I should stop fighting the idea that it's wrong and just give in -- maybe I'd be closer to 90 pages now.

But it also has to be a very specific kind of television. It has to be something I actually want to watch, which unfortunately for MG rules out football and UFO documentaries. Entertaining but not especially good movies on HBO are best. I did three pages watching "The Departed" and seven pages watching "Live Free or Die Hard."

(You may be saying to yourself, ten pages in four hours of movies? That sucks. And my grown-up brain agrees with you. It's not great. But its a fuckload better than zero pages in four hours of sitting at my desk, which is my grown-up brain's idea of a good work space. So I'm gonna go with my nine-year-old brain's idea of a work space for now.)

Some television I refuse to watch while writing -- "30 Rock," "House," "Reaper." Shows that I intend to watch with complete focus. And some shows, even though I don't like to admit it, are a little too terrifying/enjoyable to keep me company at the laptop.

Specifically, "Project Runway." I must have mentioned this before, that Tim Gunn is like the boiled down concentrate of every departmental chair, every professor emeritus of every MFA program in the nation. He's serene but interested, wise but fallible. (I read in the NYT, shortly after Liz Claibourne hired him as creative director, that the job enabled him to finally move out of a typical small NY apartment, which fits as well.)

The writers... I mean, designers, break my heart. They have such hopes for the future; they know what they do well; they know what they love. And they do the best they can to meet the challenges, never knowing if they've succeeded until the moment of truth.

Virtually every designer smiles and nods at his/her model on the catwalk, momentarily in love with their work all over again. The smile doesn't slip away until that horrifying moment when Michael Kors looks you in the eye and asks what you were thinking with the six foot long train.

Still more horrifying are the interviews with the designers who are OBLIVIOUS to the giant mistake directly in their path. Their colleagues see it. Tim Gunn sees it. But the smitten designer is so in love, so consumed with their plans, that they're blind to any and all possible problems.

Those moments send me reaching me for the Tivo remote, because in my frail state, I can't really take too much of what, bluntly, is full-on Kool-Aid Drinking. In fact, all creative endeavors contain hours and hours of Kool-Aid Drinking, but you don't know it at the time. And for all we know, it will turn out to be delicious, tasty Kool-Aid that will make us the envy of all our friends.

But, alas for reality television, you can't make an hour-long show out of nothing but calculated gambles that pay off brilliantly. Somebody has to fall on their face. And what every creative person fears, as they sit on their couch, typing away; or stand in their studio, studying the canvas; or strum a few chords and look at the scribbled lyrics they've got so far --- what we all fear is that this is the time we fall on our face. Yet if anything is gonna get done, we've got to set that fear aside and do the next thing. And the thing after that. And the thing after that.

New Page Count

Forty one.

Nobody's saying they're good. Nobody's saying they're readable.

But there's forty one pages with stuff written on 'em, and I say: Thank frickin' God.

Oooo! I Am The Ghost of Crappy Writing Yet to Be! Oooooo!

Weird thing. Woke up one day last week, maybe Thursday, with one perfectly clear thought in my head: Everybody knows, looking at the "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" poster, that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie don't die. Not even close.

A brief side note: I never need to see MAMS ever again. Which is weird, because it should be my idea of a perfect movie. But it lacks...something. Hmmm, I wonder what.

Then I thought of something Joss Whedon likes to say, that he'd rather a viewer were upset about the death of character, than if they just went "huh" and kept watching.

I might have put it together then, but the truth is, Mr. Whedon is extremely good at killing off characters in a way that rips your still-beating-heart out of your chest, throws it on the ground and then kicks it into oncoming traffic. If you've seen "Serenity," you know what I'm talking about, but similar stuff goes down on every Whedon joynt.

(Side note: What does it look like when Spike Lee and Joss Whedon team up? Just something to think about.)

Next day, I guess Friday, I had a dream that my dad ran Lucasfilm. But he wasn't George Lucas, he was my dad. And Lucasfilm appeared to be inside the Warner Bros office tower where I used to intern for "Smallville."

Anyway, my dad, good guy that he is, had greenlit one of my scripts. We stood in the back of a test screening, watching scene after scene of all the stuff I love in movies -- girls kicking butt, unexpected love interests, last minute saves. But it wasn't any fun to watch. Because it was safe. I hadn't put anyone in jeopardy, once in the entire film.

(See if you can think which Lucasfilm productions might suffer from the same problem. I'll give you a hint. They're about a group of characters, about whom we know which ones live and which ones die. Just saying.)

So I woke up, more than a little horrified by the thought that my dad had put his career on the line to make a film without any recognizable danger or stakes. And right then, I felt a profound rush of gratitude that I was only on page 10 of my rewrite project and would, thankfully, have time to repair matters.

I am also grateful that my subconscious, sensing that the first lesson didn't quite take, went ahead and sent a second telegram, just to make sure.