star-struck

Since entering the world of film, I’ve been lucky to meet a fairly wide array of stars – from those in our own film, to the cast of Lord of the Rings, with a slew in between. And none of them, none of them, have made me half as excited as Leif Tilden.

I’ve actually known Leif for about a month, as he’s the location manager on I Love Your Work. But just this evening, over drinks, I discovered that he played Donatello in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie (and its sequel), as well as Robbie Sinclair in the TV series “Dinosaurs”.

Holy crap that’s cool.

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January 28, 2003

overexposure

“All the conditions necessary for murder are met if you shut two men in a cabin and leave them together for two months.”
— Russian cosmonaut Valery Ryumin

Or if you shut three men in a cramped two bedroom apartment, force them to share one car, and have them work long hours together in high stress situations seven days a week.

It is truly a remarkable thing that neither I nor either of my two Cyan colleagues have tried to stab each other’s eyes out with a pencil. I believe it bodes well for the long-term success of the company.

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January 25, 2003

2k

As I was relaying the ongoing melodramas of shooting I Love Your Work to my parents via phone yesterday, my father observed that success at producing films, like in so many other endeavors, seems to very much hinge on knowing lots and lots of people. With which I whole-heartedly agree. I’m the first to admit that whatever small successes I’ve achieved in my life have almost invariably been the result of being able to pull the assistance of others at key moments.

As a result, I take my contact list fairly seriously. Which is why I’m particularly thrilled to say that I’m about to cross the two thousand contact mark. That’s right, two thousand contacts. Two thousand people I know well enough to trade emails with at least once every six months (my minimum requirement before pruning people from the database).

Which, I think, is pretty good. But it’s all relative – I’ve been told that Bill Clinton, while Governor of Arkansas, had a contact base of some twenty thousand people that he drew upon regularly. I’d better get moving on shaking hands and kissing babies if I ever intend to catch up.

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January 23, 2003

cultural understanding

Knee deep in production for I Love Your Work, and I am sick. Not acutely so. Just with the low-level, long-lasting, flu-like symptoms caused by extended sleep deprivation and high levels of stress.

This, of course, is no surprise, nothing new. The last time I produced a film, I dropped nearly fifteen pounds. Those who know me will attest that I’m not a large individual, am already rather svelte. In short, I don’t have 15 pounds I can healthfully lose.

Similarly, Adrienne Gruben, the co-producer on I Love Your Work (and fast becoming one of my all-time favorite people), recently confided that she had been hospitalized for liver damage after a prior shoot. And she hadn’t been drinking.

There is a word in Japanese, “karoshi,” which literally means “death by overwork.” For the first time, that concept is beginning to make a lot of sense.

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January 18, 2003

a brief respite

Back to New York for a bit of a break before hurling myself into the fires of Hollywood once more for the ever-intensifying stretch that leads to the start of I Love Your Work shooting on January 8th. Too stressed out, jet lagged and sleep deprived for genuine pith or wit, I fall back upon these two passages on that most unique city of angels to summarize my thoughts.

On Los Angeles versus New York:

LA is the loneliest and most brutal of American cities; New York gets god-awful cold in the winter but there’s a feeling of wacky comradeship somewhere in those streets.

– Jack Kerouac, On the Road

On the lovely individuals with whom I’ve interacted thus far:

The men who work in this town, and, to a lesser degree, the women, display behaviors that would undo them in any other profession. Egomania and greed that would disgrace any executive in, say, the insurance or aerospace industries are here rewarded. And even for those who run afoul of the law and are convicted of crimes, there is an apparently bottomless well of forgiveness. “Nobody cares about that shit,” one studio head said recently. “If you’re a money-maker, you could have killed and eaten your own children. It doesn’t matter as long as there is the perception that you can make somebody some money.”

-Charles Fleming, “Failing Upward in Movieland”

Boy, I can’t wait to go back.

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December 21, 2002

a very surreal evening

How to look like the King of Hollywood for four hours:

1. Attend the premiere party for The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, a huge gala event held at Hollywood’s famed Sunset Room.

2. Bring a date for the evening with whom you were set up, who turns out to have been a Maxim cover model.

3. Meet up at the party with LOTR star John Rhys-Davies (“Gimli the Dwarf”), who seems to have been told by his agent that you’re the greatest thing since sliced bread; have him spend much of the evening introducing you as such to the other stars (Elijah Wood, Liv Tyler, Orlando Bloom, etc.), and to agents and execs.

4. Sit, champagne glass in hand, and wonder quietly how in God’s name this is your actual life.

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December 16, 2002

rambling man

In a scant six hours, I head out the door to Los Angeles. Monday officially starts pre-production for I Love Your Work, so I’m heading west to meet up with the director and other producer to hammer out the details of actually pulling together the shoot. It needs to be quick hammering, though, as I’m only out West until Thursday – a stretch of agent and investor meetings bring me back to the East Coast for the weekend. Following that, I bounce back and forth between New York and LA for most of December and January. And then head off to France at the start of February for the world premiere of Coming Down the Mountain. Thrillingly jet-set, I know. But involving an ungodly number of suitcase packings and unpackings (right on the heels of packing and unpacking my entire apartment, none the less). Considering that the suitcase for my six-hours-till-embarkment trip is lying on top of my bed, completely empty, this could be an ugly couple of months.

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December 7, 2002

still bubbling

The internet is a strange, strange place, one where knowing what the hell you’re talking about takes a distant back seat to Google thinking you know what the hell you’re talking about.

Case in point: “Bubble Boy,” VW’s new commercial for the upcoming Beetle Convertible. Since I praised it in a post here about a week back, over a thousand unique visitors have found their way to this site searching for information about the spot. Further, quite a few have emailed in for additional information – What other commercials has the director shot? What film stock was used for the vintage look – to which I’m forced to reply: I have absolutely no idea. None. I’m in no way connected to the shooting of the commercial or to Volkswagen (though my little brother does, in fact, own a Passat). The entire extent of my expertise on the matter is encapsulated in the four previously posted smarmy paragraphs.

Still, such Google-appointed expertise isn’t entirely without benefit. Among the emails I received was one from Billy Briggs, the actor who played the lead in the commercial, who wrote in to thank me for my kind words (and I must say, he took my “poor-man’s Jake Gyllenhaal” ribbing exceedingly graciously.) Doing what any movie producer would, I asked him for a headshot – I’d absolutely love to stick him into one of Cyan’s next films.

Weblog-based casting. Another technology breakthrough brought to you by self-aggrandizement.com.

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December 5, 2002

so little time

On Monday, I head to California. I return the following Saturday. Then, the very next day, I move to my new apartment.

Which means I have exactly the next two days to pack for my trip West and box up the entire contents of my apartment, all the while continuing the mad fundraising push needed to get Cyan’s first feature off the ground.

Sleep is for pansies.

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November 22, 2002

ack!

1. The big, big news: Cyan has selected a first feature. Check out the website for the star-studded details (Adam Golberg, Giovanni Ribisi, Joshua Jackson, Christina Ricci, etc.).

2. As the film begins shooting in a scant two months, I can basically kiss my free time goodbye. I’ll once again be giving up sleeping and going to the bathroom. Every minute counts.

3. None the less, I’ll still be doing my damndest to post here at least quasi-regularly, because, frankly, I still have a large backlog of random crap I’ve been meaning to blog about, and not doing so will slowly drive me nuts.

4. That random backlog includes my ongoing dating escapades. Yes, due to heavy goading from friends, family and longstanding readers, I’ve decided to once again make my love life fair game for blogging. I can’t even begin to imagine the mess this is going to make.

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November 11, 2002