I hope I haven't given the impression that I don't work well with Michael, or don't like him. I love Michael. My only complaint is that sometimes he talks too much about stuff that isn't script-related. That's it. Other than that, he's perfect.
My second script outline was due yesterday. I'd procrastinated, and had to write almost all of it the night before. I finished around 4:30 a.m. on Tuesday. I had to work in the morning, so I got a few hours of sleep then headed over to Angelica.
Luckily, it's a standing-up job, so being tired didn't really matter. If I had a sitting-down job, I'd be falling asleep at work all the time.
Then I walked over to Michael's office. It was earlier than I usually meet him, and more crowded. So instead of the same dreary room we'd been meeting in the last two times, we had to find a different, equally as drab room.
It was nice, though. I'd been complaining about how hard it was to imagine sitting in that dreary room bullshitting with Michael every week until the end of this script, knowing this represented the rest of my loveless, hard-working life. And then, as if there were a God who took care of all your petty little complaints, I got to be in a new room this time.
Plus, I convinced Michael that we should have most of our meetings over the phone so I don't have to trek to his office every week, and he agreed. "But we should meet occasionally for a little face time," he amended. And I nodded.
Then I sat around for 45 minutes as he read the new outline over and over. He was about as tired as me, and at one point spent 5 minutes on one page. I didn't mind. Now that I was sitting down, I took a nap.
When he was finally done reading, he told me that he liked it better than my last outline. Then he gave me a bunch of advice on it, all of which I agreed with. And then I left, without any pointless talking. All of which makes me very optimistic about working with him and coming up with a brilliant script.
But here's what I was thinking about. Michael liked my outline better this week than he did last week. Which is progress, obvoiusly. But what if he'd liked last week's outline better? That would be a regression, but not too huge a problem at this point as we're still in the very early development stages. But then, what if he liked my next week's outline even less than this one? And what if every week he liked my outline less and less each time?
Eventually he would have to give up on me.
"Which is not what's happening," I thought. "As long as he likes my outline better each week, I should be fine."
Would I though? What if he liked my outline better every single week, but he only liked it marginally better each week? It would be progress, but an intolerably slow one. In that case, if my outline was noticeably but just barely better each week, Michael would still have to give up on me eventually.
So my plan is, make the outline tremendously better each week. And try not to do all of it the night before.
Oh, and Rachel came to town last night. Right now she's in Washington Irving High School, trying to prove she can be a science teacher.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/TV/01/26/tvhunks.ap/index.html
jared pada wacky strikes again
Posted by: brazos | January 26, 2006 at 10:29 PM