Saturday, April 26, 2008

Airplane Bloggin’- End of April Edition

Headed back to LA on a fine Saturday morning, I haven’t really had my fill of New York since returning maybe three weeks ago. Seems like such a short period of time to spend in my New York home before returning to my LA home (aka the “hovel”), where I spent two months after Sundance.

Im headed out for a number of reasons. I have an interview for a production attorney position on a movie, and the producers on this particular movie insisted on a face-to-face meeting. I am not sure why, as its definitely not typical for lawyers to be interviewed in person, and even more so, at the prospective client’s office. But as money has been tight and this job pays decently, its certainly worth the trip. I am told I have the inside track because the line producer recommended me. I hope so.

Scott (The Insurgents) Dacko has been in LA for most of the week, staying in the hovel in my absence. But he’s just rented an apartment a few blocks from my place, and he’ll be vacating my place and taking up his new digs. He’d been spending money on hotels etc with his trips to LA, which were quite frequent, and so for the same economic reasons as me, he’s now a semi-resident of Los Angeles.

The other reason why its good I am making the flight involves Scott. Scott’s new screenplay (newish, I’d read a draft perhaps five months ago when we were in hard prep on Slaughter) has been optioned, with him attached to direct and me attached to produced, by a heavy hitter exec producer. They are putting up some decent money for Scott to do a script polish and for the option itself, and they’ve invited us to lunch to discuss moving forward, I suppose. I might not have been able to have made the trip just for the lunch, but I am glad I’ll happen to be in town for it, and get to meet another big time producer. This guy has had his name of lots of genre hits, and he’s exec producing a Will Smith movie at the moment – no small thing these days.

A funny thing happened on the way to the forum though, Jet Blue, old faithful, changed their website. Not only was it two pains in the neck to book reward travel because the interface to do so was almost hidden, but also, I wasn’t able to choose my seat online. The function wouldn’t work on either of two browsers. So I didn’t have a seat assignment until I checked in this morning at the airport and of course, ninety minutes before flighttime there were only middle seats. I’ve been crunched between two large guys for the past five hours-not so much my idea of fun, and its been tough to sleep, even though I had both Valium and Tylenol PM before I got on the flight. I probably got two to three hours of fitful sleep in, mostly at the beginning of the flight. I didn’t take my normal 6AM flight, as I thought, hey, its Saturday, what’s the hurry, I will take the 9AM instead. In retrospect, however, when taking a flight where you cannot chose the seat, take the flight most likely to be half empty (the 6AM).

Had a great time with my brother Scott and friends (Dave, Mari, Adi, Lali) doing karaoke on Thursday night, which made it even a little more painful leaving New York early. But fun is fun and work is work, so here I am, crunched in coach.

Anyway, we’re beginning descent, so gonna wrap this up. Talk to you from the City of Angels (or, um, Dodgers).

Grumps.

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