Wait a minute – You mean this happens to other people too?!

The words Dead Guy come to mind…

For what or when are you homesick?

Yes, I’ve been holding out on you.

I typed FADE OUT. yesterday on Psycho Ex. Man it felt great. Act 3 just flooded out in a three-day sprint. Sure, there are still big holes and a missing scene or two (maybe) in Act 2, and then the endless rewrites begin, but still. It’s a big threshold to cross. I am psyched.

So that’s where I’ve been – too busy writing script pages to create blog posts. And what pages I have – the first words-on-paper draft (it’s still too early to call it a first draft) weighed in at a staggering 151 pages! So I’ve got quite a bit to cut. And cut. And cut. The good news is that I think all the pieces are there, now it’s time to focus and combine and cut. I’m pretty happy with The Line, it just needs to be streamlined now.

The way the summer stars are aligning, a mid-August completion date looks doable. My current hope is to send a draft to zoetrope.com for peer review at that time. Hopefully this current euphoria will push me all the way through the major cutting ahead.

Okay, back to work. I’ll keep you posted. Well, maybe…

At what age were you most creative?

(Year One of Robb’s Illustrious Career)

Let’s get one thing straight. Television production is about one thing and one thing only: lunch.

It was my first job in the business. I was working on a real TV show, on a broadcast network, with my name in the credits. I was psyched. 

I would soon be crushed. It was the worst job I’ve ever had.

At the bottom of the bottom, I had many duties: phones, drive-ons, filing, getting the latest script pages to the writers, director, and executive producer. But I soon learned that none of these mattered.

What mattered was lunch. My real job was to take care of lunch.

“Lunch” sounds so simple, so uncomplicated. It isn’t. First off, there’s more than one. There’s the office lunch, which is lunch for the writers, producers, and P.A.s. But then there’s the catered lunch for the art department. There’s the stage lunch. There’s the taping lunch. And on very special weeks, the screening lunch. 

Don’t get me started on the editing breakfast.

There’s the old line in Hollywood: “What I really want to do is direct.” Well, what I actually got to do was catering.

TV production revolves around lunch. Why? Two words: powerlessness and control. The largest group in the production office is the writers. Writers are moody creative types who are crushingly self-critical and are convinced they are powerless (I’m not pointing fingers here – I’m one myself). The problem is that they’re, well,… actually correct about this. In the big world of production, writers control nothing. NOTHING. And if there’s one thing that makes perceived powerlessness worse, it’s real, actual powerlessness. But where was I? Oh yeah: writers control NOTHING. Oh wait – there is one thing I forgot to mention that they actually DO get to control: lunch. So when they get in to work and get knee-deep into a series of impossible problems they have to solve but cannot control, where do you think they vent their frustrations and lash out in a desperate attempt to overcome their powerlessness?

Lunch.

The thing about lunch is that it happens every day.

Worst job I ever had.

Now, I see you rolling your eyes. I mean, jeez Robb, it’s only lunch. How bad can it be? It doesn’t sound serious, you say. But lunch is very serious. I saw P.A.s fired for picking up lunch and bringing writer/producers back the wrong salad dressing. This was not unusual.

Plus the show-runner, the head writer, the guy who got to most control lunch, was a monster who made my life a living hell. Okay, that’s too harsh. The Kevin Spacey character in Swimming With Sharks – that guy is a monster. This show-runner, he was more of… well, a spineless weasel. A passive-aggressive spineless weasel. With arbitrary dietary requirements.

Before you jump on that last sentence, let me be clear: this gut did NOT have food allergies. Or health concerns. Or food tolerance issues, or anything like that. Nothing health-related. So when I say “arbitrary” dietary requirements, I mean arbitrary. He didn’t eat meat, except when he did. He ate protein only, except when he didn’t. He would let someone else pick the restaurant we would order from, then yell and scream when the menu had “nothing he could eat.”

And when I say “yell and scream,” I mean real, actual yelling and screaming. This was not unusual.

Yes, I went to grad school for this.

By mid-season I finally gave up. Or got smart, depending on how you look at it. Whenever I’d have to coordinate a big lunch, like a screening lunch or a cast reading lunch or a pre-taping snack/lunch thing, I would just go directly to The Weasel and ask him what he wanted. Yes, this would reward his behavior and be unfair to everyone else, but I didn’t care. I just wanted to prevent the drama and the yelling and screaming. And the firing. Especially the firing. This new system would be foolproof, wouldn’t you think? Wouldn’t you?

Are you kidding?

I went to his office one evening, pitching him three of his favorite restaurants for the next day’s screening lunch. He picked a restaurant and I already had a few options figured out, entrees and sides I knew he usually ordered. All that was left was for him to pick. Once he did I made sure to VERY CAREFULLY give him the recap of what he picked, what I would order, the complete spread all 25 of us would be eating from. I was determined – there would be no surprises the next day, no yelling or screaming. Or firing. The Weasel rolled his eyes – my anality was SO annoying – and condescendingly said yes, all this would be fine. I mean, jeez Robb, it’s only lunch.

When lunch came the next day there was yelling and screaming. He came THIS CLOSE to firing me. There was nothing he could eat. Nothing. This really happened. In front of the entire crew. This was less than 24 hours after he himself chose all the food. 

I later learned from a producer that The Weasel had gone on a no-carb diet an hour or two after our little meeting. After our little meeting where he had chosen platters of pasta and breaded chicken. My job was saved when a P.A. agreed to run across the street and get The Weasel a 100% plain grilled chicken breast – no butter or seasonings of any kind (The Weasel complained that it was dry). This was not unusual.

The thing about lunch is that it happens every day. Every. Single. Day.

I had that job for almost two years. That’s a lot of lunches. I had that job until the president of the production company finally read my script and promoted me. The new job was awesome. It wasn’t a writing job, but it was a lot closer. And some other unlucky bastard had to take care of lunch.

Add this to your Netflix queue: Dreams on Spec. If you’re reading this blog, you need to see it.

A documentary filmmaker follows three aspiring Hollywood screenwriters through the ups and downs of breaking into the biz. Their struggles with writing, the “how long can I do this with my life?” dilemma, the depression/euphoria/prima donna cycle, all that. Plus commentary from successful writers (James L. Brooks, Steven de Souza, Ed Solomon,…) who went through all this and made it. If you’re a Hollywood hopeful, you’ll recognize every minute of it. If you have a family member or friend trying to break in, you’ll realize that it’s not just them – every word they’re telling you is true. Or if you’re just curious and want 90 minutes of immersion into the life of a struggling screenwriter, you’ll get it. It really gets in all the way like I have not seen before. Good stuff.

Check it out. Then come back and comment about it. Great discussion from this one.

(Thanks Christine for the tip!)

When was the last time you surprised yourself?

The public doesn’t know what it wants. If the public is paying your bills, it’s entitled to have you stand up to the thing you do because you alone know. The public doesn’t know. I think you’re going back on your public when you try to find out what the public wants and give it to them. No public knows. As compared to the fine thing they might have. They don’t know what they miss. Show them that thing which they miss. Explode once or twice and see what the reactions are.

- Frank Lloyd Wright, February 25, 1939

It was 2006 or 2007. I was leaving work, pulling my car onto Flower Street, when you zipped by right in front of me on your bike. I had to brake to miss you. I could have sworn it was you. But what would you be doing – at our age – zipping a bike through downtown L.A.? 3,000 miles and 20 years away from home? We made eye contact and you disappeared behind parked cars. I know it was you – you gave me that look. It was 1987 you, the last time I saw you. But it was you.

Are you even still alive? Google won’t tell me.

Last night I had this dream. My two sons (age 9 and age 4) and I had broken into your house. And you were pulling into your driveway and we were desperately trying to get out before you could get inside. But we couldn’t find our way out. You were putting your key in the door and we had to hide from you and get out before you could discover us. You try doing this with the 4-year old whose idea of playing hide and seek is yelling out where he is as soon as you stop counting so you can find him. Terrified of never being found again.

Somehow we made it out and walked past on the sidewalk just as you went inside. But you knew. You knew. You glanced backward and gave me that look again. That look like you knew something I didn’t.

My dad was in the military when I grew up so we moved around. Not nearly as much as some do, but I changed schools a few times. Different states. It’s rough when you’re a kid, but one huge thing I learned was how to come into a new situation and figure it out immediately. Intuitively. The politics, the dynamics of the relationships, all that. Every time we moved my parents told me not to be sad about the friends I left behind, but instead to just go to school and make new ones. I got practice at this – I got good at it. Figuring out who to be friends with and who not to. But there was one thing I never learned.

When my dad would come home from work and tell us we were moving again, we would be devastated. We would cry, we’ll never see our friends again, all that. But you learn to put that aside because it hurts too much. You learn to figure out the place you’re moving to, not to dwell on the one you just left. You learn to forget your old friends. But I never learned how to say goodbye – it hurt too much. Terrified of never being found again. So I never have.

So I never did.

Are you still alive? I saw you. Are you a ghost? I see ghosts. Different states. I see dead people. I saw you. Sometimes it feels like I can’t see alive people anymore.

(Year Four of Robb’s Illustrious Career)

Winter 2001/2002: I was working on Weakest Link and we had a Star Trek theme show. All 12 contestants (or 8 or 10 or whatever it was) were Star Trek cast members from the various shows – there was Shatner, the chick who played Tasha Yar, George Takei I believe, LeVar Burton, the hologram doctor from Voyager, that Neelix dude from Voyager, etc. Nobody else memorable. The tapings took 2-3 hours and I was psyched to meet Shatner – I was busy with my job duties before and during the show (my job was in the control booth, not on the stage), but my plan was definitely to somehow meet the guy after the taping.

So we go to the booth to start the taping and the assistant director comes in from the stage. She says dang the rumors are true – all those people HATE Shatner. All of them. She said the bad blood on the stage was palpable. I don’t know if anybody ever watched the show but the way it worked is everyone would have to work together to accumulate the most money, then at the end of each round one player is voted off by the other players until finally there are only two left and they have a head-to-head round to determine the winner who takes the entire pot. The host (Anne Robinson) tries to crank up the interpersonal conflict, but if people are smart then they will ignore politics and vote off only the weaker players to maximize the money for themselves. The conflict of the game is just that: will people turn against each other in a political smackdown? Or will they play pragmatic and smart to get more money?

So they play the first round of the game and Shatner does pretty well. FAR from the weakest player. But of course he is voted off by all the other players. Unanimously. Man they hate that guy. I am crushed. While I am still captive in the booth doing my job, Shatner does his post-show backstage interview and walks off the set. He walks. 20 minutes into the 2-3 hour taping he drives of the studio lot. So I never met the guy.

A couple of weeks later we had a different theme show. Coolio won the game… or maybe Ben Stein won it… Anyway, thinking I was somebody important, Coolio marched right up to me after the show and shook my hand and thanked me profusely. It didn’t help. All I can say is Coolio is definitely no William Shatner.