Gutters and Strikes

January has been pretty disconcerting. I expected to come back from the holidays and go right back to just transcribing as my means of income. I've been doing it for a year and a couple months very steadily with only a week or so of drought every now and then and even when that happened I conveniently was able to PA on American Idol. So far the transcribing hasn't picked up to full capacity yet if it ever will. That said I have been getting some minutes, including some rush minutes that will make a very nice paycheck for the amount of time it took me.

In the off days I've been being an extra on TV shows again. So far I've been on Melrose Place, Cold Case, CSI: NY, Cougar Town, and 90210. I also put stuff up on eBay once and it turned out really well actually. I've been doing what I can to supplement because of the lack of minutes from what I thought of as my regular job.

Because of my weird work schedule I've gotten a lot of writing done, it feels great.

The other day I was on the set of 90210, they were shooting on the pier in Santa Monica, and the extras were being held right on the beach basically. I was already having a relatively good day even though I was making minimum wage but when you consider it's for doing literally nothing and eating free catered food all day you can't get too mad at it. Also part of it was getting paid to ride the roller coaster at night with all the lights on over the ocean, usually you have to pay eight bucks to ride it, I was getting eight bucks to ride it basically.

Anyway, that day I got a call from one of the producers at Black Christian Movies. It looks like I'm going to be writing another movie for them and then probably more in the future. I picked up a DVD from a producer on Tuesday, I'm writing another sequel to one of their pre-existing movies. I'm not saying anything about anything yet, just that I'm probably going to have another movie out there in the following months.

I'll keep you posted.

A few posts ago I mentioned having a meeting with the director of Pastor Jones: Preachin' to the Choir. I went on that meeting, it went well but last I heard from him he doesn't know what he wants to do yet (even though I pitched him several things). I'm still optimistic about that contact though because he likes my writing, we got along pretty well, and he did the best Pastor Jones yet by far.

I also stumbled across (and by stumbled across I mean google alerted me to) an interview with the director about Preachin'.

Ash has a recent blog, one of her resolutions is to blog more often so check it out every once in a while.

Here's Summer discovering snow:

I saw these 2009 releases in 2009. The rest of the list (other year's releases and tv shows) is here.

(500) Days of Summer
17 Again
Adventureland
Avatar
Away We Go
Brüno
Brothers
Coraline
Dana Gould: Let Me Put My Thoughts in You.
Drag Me to Hell
Extract
Friday the 13th (2009)
Funny People
Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder
G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
He's Just Not That Into You
I Love You, Beth Cooper
I Love You, Man
Inglourious Basterds
Jennifer's Body
Land of the Lost
Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus
Monsters vs Aliens
Moon
My Bloody Valentine 3-D
My Sister's Keeper
Next Day Air
Notorious
Observe and Report
Paper Heart
Pastor Jones: Preachin' to the Choir
Saw VI
Spread
Spring Breakdown
Star Trek
Terminator Salvation
The Butterfly Effect 3: Revelations
The Cove
The Final Destination
The Girlfriend Experience
The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard
The Hangover
The Last House on the Left (2009)
The Lovely Bones
The Soloist
The Ugly Truth
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
Up
Watchmen
Whatever Works
Where the Wild Things Are


My favorite movie was obviously Pastor Jones Preachin' to the Choir, the script was so good, I don't know why.

You can follow along with my list this year here.

Intervention has been great. There are some awesome episodes this season. "Greg" just came on and I didn't see it but I was so interested when I was doing the footage. I might buy it on iTunes for my plane ride home.

Ash and I will be in Nashville from the 20th until Christmas Eve then we'll be in Maryland until after New Year's. Yeah!

I also transcribed some footage for the pilot of another show from the creator of "Intervention." I hope it and the other pilot I transcribed get picked up so I can talk about them.

Ash and I joined a Pug Club and went to a party the other day. There are pictures on facebook. Summer loved it.


Yesterday I sent out about forty query letters (I already got one "no"). I think I've explained what query letters are before. Basically mine say that I'm a produced screenwriter, here's my info, here's what I wrote that got produced, here are the synopses of the specs I have written. They are supposed to get me an agent or maybe get a production company interested in one of my scripts. Last time I did a round of these a production company (assistant) read Love Bites and said that their company wasn't interested but that it was probably marketable, and a guy also tried to scam me for $600. Who knows what'll happen this time!!!!!!!

Today I have a meeting with the director of the movie I wrote, Pastor Jones: Preachin' to the Choir. He wants me to write something for him. I would be getting paid slightly more than I did for my work for Black Christian Movies. He either wants to buy one of my current scripts, or more likely, give me some plot points and have me write on assignment. I guess I'm reasonably optimistic about getting this job, I talked to him on the phone twice and he still wants to meet with me, I just never want to be excited about anything until I have something signed or a check, etc.

If you have Netflix watch instantly or some other way to watch the short lived sitcom "Worst Week," in the episode titled The Party go to 12 minutes in, where the Sam character is talking to the David character (played by RonReaco Lee from "Sister, Sister") about eating a big eclair or whatever and who is that in the background in HD??? Pete!! I'm shown four times for a total of probably about 30 seconds, it's my best background acting role to date.

I'm up to 223 so far, how are you doing?

So "Intervention" has picked back up and I've been working very steadily on my minutes.



I also worked as, what they call in 'the industry' around 'town,' a day player on "Criminal Minds." I filled in for an Art Department Production Assistant for a day at the "Criminal Minds" office/ set. I basically got people food and looked for jobs on the internet all day but I made a surprisingly alright amount of money for one day.

This may sound like I'm an idiot, I mean I knew this existed but I wasn't sure in what capacity, but the Art Department is awesome. If I knew how to use any illustrator type programs I would try to get into it. The Art Department does a lot of stuff, but what I thought was the most awesome, and this is the part that might make me sound dumb, is that whenever there's anything in the script like a brand or a company or product, etc, the Art Department gets to name it and design a logo for it. I do some of that in my screenplays already, for free!!

This is actually real though:


It makes T-Pain saying that he wants to buy you a drank and take you home with him a lot creepier.

Also, today I had a job interview at an office. That's all I'm gonna say about it for now, you know how I don't like to say anything about anything before I actually have any news. The interview went well, I'm really good at those sort of things like the interview to be a director of one the LAFSC films. If they offered me the job I would have to consider A LOT of things about my current lifestyle. What to do with Summer during the day? (Dog walker?) Do I mind traffic every day for an hour or two? (Not if I have mah podcasts) Can I wear dumb t shirts to work? (Maybe) And other things like that. If I got/ took this job I would have to schedule time to write still because ultimately I want to be a screenwriter, not a professional this-job-that-I-interviewed-for-today-er. The office was really cool and the gentlemen that interviewed me were great though, so we'll see.

My writer's group is starting back up tonight as well after a couple month hiatus. Looking forward to that, I'll probably get some Pinkberry tonight even though it's chilly out (for Southern California at least).

And in reference to my last post, all those feelers I put out for the different jobs, I haven't really heard anything back from any of them except for that interview I was waiting to hear about, which I did get the interview, and now we wait...

"Intervention" has been slow for the past 3 work days so I've been trying to network/ promote myself in all kinds of ways. I applied to a job at Netflix that sounds like the perfect job, watching movies and writing analysis about them, I'm assuming so that Netflix knows whether to carry them or not. I applied for a script coverage job. I sent my scripts to some people. And I entered The Happenstances at the Yellow County Community Swim and Racquet Club the Summer Before Last into the 2010 Beverly Hills Film Festival Screenwriting Competition. I also did some writing on my latest script. So I've tried to keep busy and maybe something will come of the feelers I put out there. I'm still waiting to hear from the management company that was interested in one of my scripts and I'm still waiting to hear if I got an interview with this company that does DVD distribution.

However, I usually send out all kinds of feelers and don't really get any responses so I'm not super optimistic about any of the above. Today I am picking up minutes from "Intervention" and I hope that they'll continue to have work for me since that's a great job.

Summer is 4 months old today!!

She went from this little baby:


To this slightly bigger baby:


She's even outgrown her raincoat!

I added a link to the sidebar here ->
for Cheverladotblogspotdotcom.blogspot.com, my new blog where I comment about my blog.

If that doesn't sound interesting, please don't go. If it sounds interesting at all, go and make sure you read them in chronological order starting from the earliest date to the most recent and read the "What?" sidebar thing first.

I don't think I'm going to use any names, yet, but let me say a couple things.

Last week I sent out what are called Query Letters to about 10 to 15 literary managers/ agencies. The purpose of a query letter is to get an agent or manager to represent you and try and sell your script or set you up as a writer on a project that is in development or something like that. My query letter said I have two direct to DVD features sold, some info about me, and three pitches for screenplays I have written and registered with the WGA. I didn't expect any sort of response but I was just gonna put myself out there and see what was up.

So here's what happened:

On the good side of things, a smallish but seemingly semi-reputable management company/ talent agency was intrigued by one of my scripts and asked me to send a copy to them to read. They should have received the script on Friday or early this week. I'll keep you posted on that. Best case scenario they would want to represent me and help me get screenwriting jobs and that would be awesome.

On the other end of the spectrum, I got a phone call from a private number from a fast talking gentleman who was interested in another one of my scripts. I'm not going to go into too much detail, yet, but he wants to represent me, all I would have to do is send him a $600 advance... As soon as he said that I knew he was shady. When I got his email I looked him up on IMDbpro and his resume was not impressive. Then I googled his name cross indexed with "scam" and dozens of links popped up, not a good sign. Needless to say I am not going to send him any money. I sent him a nice email saying that I would not be sending the "advance" but that he could still read my script if he wanted to and if he liked it he could represent me (which I'm guessing none of those things are going to happen), I was very polite even though he had just tried to rip me off.

If he tries to push the issue or is a jerk to me I'll let you know, that would be semi interesting.

Other than that: Summer and Ash are very well, Intervention is cranking along, and my brother is visiting this coming weekend which is gonna be fun.

I also saw Jesse Eisenberg from The Squid and the Whale and Adventureland at Trader Joe's.

Goodnight.