Lizard Season

This week has been a frantic one. A good thing, in my humble opinion, as it means I've actually got stuff to do rather than idly getting fat and watching films. This week has also been a week of meetings. I know it sounds very "Annie Hall" but it's sort of the name of the game out here.

"Yay, corporate friends!"

I have been steadily getting my reel out to agents around town and, as a result, scored a few meetings. Already I've learned that meeting with people, in the formal sense of the word, is a delicate art in itself. Particularly when it comes to agents. Both of you are painfully aware that you need each other, yet neither of you wants that to ever become apparent. Thus the trick is to appear like you have better things going in your career (which of course, you haven't or you wouldn't be here in the first place) but remain interested and delightful enough so that this agent will want to fall all over themselves to make you, and by default them, rich and successful. The ironic thing is that the person across the table is doing exactly the same thing. A good old fashioned stand-off. My technique, of course, is to drop awkward clangers time and again and embarrass my way through the whole charade. It remains to be seen if this method is successful.

One meeting with a particularly lovely lady lead to one of the more awkward moments of my life. She decided that we should have a viewing of my reel in her office as she couldn't quite remember me from the dozens of people she'd seen that week. As soon as it started, every swear word out of my filthy little mouth rang around the silent room like a church bell. The high(low)light being the hearing of the immortal words "I'll fuck around and hit you with the Hennessey dick" at excruciatingly high volume. A little bit uncomfortable, to say the least.

The rest of my time has been spent either working, sitting in ungodly amounts of traffic, reading inspirational shit, or trying to set up meetings with sound people to fix my as yet unfinished short film. Such is the ferocity of competition here in Los Angeles that within two days of me placing an ad on Mandy.com, I had received 92(!!!) responses. Nine. Tee. TWO! People from as far as Osaka, Japan wanted to work on my film. Just absolute global economic meltdown madness I tell thee! Still, I've got my first round of 'interviews' tomorrow so I will finally find out whether my problems (the cursed fridge noise etc.) are mendable or whether a re-shoot will be in order.

Either way is fine with me as I've been steadily working and finally bringing in some cash. At least I was until I got bored yesterday and decided to invest in a new iPhone 4. Now, I've never been one for popular fads, or indeed being always reachable by phone/email/carrier pigeon etc, so I have always resisted the urge to invest in an iphone - also for the fact that anyone I know who's got one can't let go of it for more than 5 minutes without having a panic attack. However, now that I'm in possession of one, in the words of William Shakespeare himself...it is the bollocks! I could honestly blather on all night about the excellence of this product in literally every single imaginable way, however I'll just say that the best thing is the Hipstamatic app I downloaded. It's so good it can make the most crooked, downtrodden door (like the one on the roof of my building) look like this:

Remarkable really.

So, the good news is that I'm busy and lots of things are simmering away nicely. The bad news is that I feel not an ounce of Christmas cheer. As anyone who knows me knows, Christmas is typically my favourite time of year...by far! From the age of 5, when I caught my grandad sneaking into my room dressed as Santa (in truth, despite the denials of my family, I'm pretty sure it was the real thing) I have been hooked. I just love it.

However, this year for the first time in a long time I won't be returning to London for the occassion, thus meaning my first xmas in LA, which so far is about as festive as an Al-Qaeda training camp. It's just weird to be wandering around under blue skies, wearing a t-shirt. I don't like it, not one bit. And call me a curmudgeon but I'm not really a big fan of the whole "isn't the weather great here in southern california?" thing either. One season. That's what we get all year round. It's not right! I can already hear my English bretheren, knee deep in snow as we speak, screaming at me in anger. Fine, I'll take the sun. I'm just saying that being here all year it starts to feel like The Truman Show after a while. If the Truman Show had gang violence and extreme poverty, of course.

Oh well, I suppose I'll try and enjoy it. If I must.

Peace,

JB.