Justice

(Years Three/Four of Robb’s Illustrious Career)

My third/fourth year in the business I worked for this show-runner who was a real piece of work. He was the most hated figure I’ve ever worked for. He made The Weasel look like a normal, well-adjusted human being. From the writers room to the production office to the stage, everybody hated him.

This guy was a harsh dictator. I’ve never seen anybody better at shutting down creativity in a room. Writers pitching jokes or brainstorming ideas would be cut off and dismissed mid-sentence, mid-pitch. Nice. The in-joke in the writers room was that if he was looking for an integer between 2 and 4 and you pitched 3, you would get shot down.

Strangely, this guy was also helpless. He couldn’t do anything by himself. He had no personal assistant, so we were ALL his personal assistant. I was personally called by the guy on a weekend and compelled to help him out with something personal. Let me repeat, I was NOT his personal assistant. My son was an infant at the time, but apparently the guy didn’t think I had anything more important to do on a Sunday morning than get in the car and go help him out. The in-joke in the production office was that you might get a call from the guy in the toilet demanding that you come help him with the paperwork.

One day Mr. Sunday Morning said his computer monitor “flickered.” I was called into his office and yelled at when I could see no flickering. Well, actually, he didn’t yell, he rolled his eyes condescendingly and told me to go find somebody else – anybody else – to come in his office to confirm the flickering. No matter how many assistants and then producers were called in, NO ONE else could see any flickering. The line producer called the computer rental company and had the non-flickering computer and monitor replaced. Twice. Guess what? Mr. Sunday Morning said it still flickered. I will never forget this: I was personally in his office, along with the line producer and all the writers and some of the cast, when Mr. Sunday Morning became enraged and literally shouted to the heavens, “Why does no one else see this flickering?!”. Everybody in the room was acutely aware of the obvious reason. Everybody except him.

He was fired. Well, I got ahead of myself. First the executive producer was told – by everyone – about this guy. Producers were running around in circles wasting time and money on crap for him. The executive producer’s hand-picked writers were not being allowed to write or even contribute, and were threatening to quit. Nobody was happy. A few shows in, production was shut down and Mr. Sunday Morning was given a serious talking-to. After that, he was on his best behavior. At considerable expense, we spent weeks retooling. An additional writer was brought in to clear the air and “reset” the writers room. Writers’ contributions were welcomed and accepted. Everything was back on track, and everyone was happy.

Until we started taping again. With the stress of production, the dictatorial prima donna control freak jerk returned and everything went back to the way it was. A few shows into this second part of the season, the executive producer unexpectedly appeared on the lot, went into Mr. Sunday Morning’s office, and fired him. Security escorted him off the lot.

It was wonderful. It was… justice.

For weeks afterward it was like the laws of gravity did not apply in our little world. As my Uncle Bernard used to say, “When you hit your thumb with a hammer as hard as you can over and over and over… it feels so good when you stop.” The rest of the season was filled with sweetness and light. And with cruel, unrelenting jokes from everyone about the disgraced, fired jerk. The satisfaction was overwhelming. The world is fair after all.

Or is it?

Four years later, I saw Mr. Sunday Morning’s name on a movie poster. And I about lost my lunch. He wrote a movie – a big, successful, $100+ million Hollywood blockbuster. And later that same year, he did it again. He wrote ANOTHER big, successful, $100+ million Hollywood blockbuster. Movies with BIG HUGE stars. And prominent, beloved, cult-following directors. I am not making this up. The guy made it big. Twice in one year. The disgraced jerk hadn’t faded away, he just moved… into movies. And looking at imdb, his plate is still quite full. This guy is a huge success. We got cancelled, but he made it big.

He sure showed us.

In the years since, I have tried to figure out the true meaning of these events. You know, the big, cosmic truth. Was Mr. Sunday Morning really a jerk? Yes. Is he really a successful writer? Yes. Is he successful BECAUSE he is a jerk? Or in spite of this? Or is there any relationship between these whatsoever? For me, this is the question. Young P.A.s and assistants often ponder this issue, because the vast majority of the time in the business the people in charge (like Mr. Sunday Morning and The Weasel) are dictatorial prima donna control freak jerks. So do people become dictatorial prima donna control freak jerks BECAUSE they are successful and are allowed to get away with anything? Or do they become successful BECAUSE they are dictatorial prima donna control freak jerks to begin with? Is one a prerequisite for the other? If so, which one? Can you really be successful if you are NOT a dictatorial prima donna control freak jerk? Or will all normal, nice, well-adjusted writers become dictatorial prima donna control freak jerks once they become successful?

And which one am I?

Movie Poster for Aftershocks

Look what I found! CNN made me the movie poster for Aftershocks! For free!

See? The guy has a dvd drive in his head!

Out to Readers

After an embarrassingly long gestation period, a first draft of Psycho Ex (with a name change) has finally gone out to its first round of readers. I should get feedback Tuesday after the long weekend.

This always feels weird. I am happy and satisfied and exhausted and not convinced it’s really happening – like the first week after college finals.

But there is a whole different additional dynamic at play with this one than usual, because – due somewhat to the original “Challenge” - it is much more an exercise than a passion project. Don’t get me wrong, the story was my idea, and I take its execution very seriously, but now that a draft is complete I feel “outside” the thing more than I ever have.

The thing I love/hate about writing is that when I work on something this big and all-encompassing, I get overwhelmed and lost inside it. I fall in love with it, and I don’t know if this is a blessing or a curse. It’s wonderful because I think/hope it adds heart and soul to the piece, but it’s terrible because I lose all objectivity and get lost. For long periods. With almost every script, I can vividly remember THE EXACT MOMENT when everything shifts and I come up for air, when I get back “on top of it,” when I get back outside and un-consumed by it and I start cutting and shaping and whacking at it with no emotional attachment whatsoever. This is when the work really gets done. But this is also when I feel guilty, like I’ve stopped loving someone simply because it is no longer the pragmatic thing to do.

I don’t think I was ever in love with this one. I spent a lot of time in the depths with it, don’t get me wrong, but it was never a passion project like Aftershocks was or Dead Guy is. I was more objective with this one all along, so there are parts of it (Act Two hopefully, Act Three definitely) that I think are better executed than my usual output. I would say I’m very happy with the execution on those (this Act Three is probably the best I’ve ever written). But it never took on a life of its own really.

Does this mean it will be less “alive” than it should be? Than it could be? Does this mean there won’t be enough “there” for the reader?

Will the reader know that it has less of a “soul” than it could have had? Or will it just be me?

Or have I finally shaken off the indulgent crap of falling in love with your material? Have I finally got on with the real business of writing?

Update: Just got my first feedback (thanks Tammy!). The weekend is off to a good start…

Scene from the Second Honeymoon

Here’s the living room floor on Day 5. It’s not as glamourous at it looks…

Some of the notecards are blank – those scenes have been written, I just haven’t done notecards yet because I’m not there yet. (Somewhere in there are a few script pages from David Lynch’s Lost Highway. Yes, I’m stealing from the best.) The big empty space in the floor is for me.

Total seconds spent playing Wii so far: zero.

Okay, break’s over.

Goodfellas and The Rules

I Tivo’d Goodfellas off Turner Classic Movies a while back and finally had a chance to watch it this week. I hadn’t seen it in at least 10 years and I always thought it was a great movie.

It was even better than I remembered.

Where to begin? I was struck with the moving camera and the exhilaration of forward propulsion. I had remembered this from years ago, but it blew me away all over again. For all the praise and excitement Paul Thomas Anderson gets for this (and rightfully so) for Boogie Nights, etc., Scorsese has always done this. I just had to be reminded. The feeling of hurtling forward through space and story is amazing. Besides camera movement, the use of music and editing to achieve this is phenomenal. The paranoia of the climactic sequence (circling helicopters, etc.) is palpable. Brilliant.

The characters and performances are excellent and feel just as real and authentic as Coppola’s Godfather movies. Scorsese’s mother steals the movie for me every single time (as Joe Pesci’s mother) because my wife has an Italian great-aunt who is exactly that character. Exactly.

I love this movie.

But the more I think about it afterwards, I am struck most by all the rules this movie breaks, especially in the writing. And these aren’t exceptions – the screenplay basically breaks all the major rules of the classical screenwriting paradigm. Think about it:

• Passive protagonist. Don’t get me wrong, Ray Liotta’s character does stuff. But he’s not your classic goal-oriented protagonist. He doesn’t drive the story. Other than survival and greed, he doesn’t want anything. He has no dramatic need. The story is not about that.
• Lack of a clear and specific antagonist. The movie is full of conflict, but there is no ultimate force to be overcome. Different characters serve as antagonists in various scenes, but there is no personified antagonist for the movie as a whole.
• Extensive use of voice-over. You could argue that with a nonclassical protagonist and the lack of a specific antagonist, the force really driving this story is… the voice-over. This is astonishing. Widely regarded as a “cheat,” voice-over – and its relationship to what is onscreen – really propels this story. And the voice-over doesn’t even follow the rules – we get v.o. from different characters in the movie at different times.
• Structure. Classical structure is designed to provide a familiar, intuitive template for the viewer. A context. So at all times we know where the character is now, where he wants to be, and exactly what stands between him and his goal. With classical structure we already know the shape of the story. We know what the character wants and what he has to do to get it, so that when the end finally comes, it feels like “the end” to us, and we know intuitively that the story is over. But Goodfellas doesn’t work that way.

The movie feels to me like a tight straight line of events with a propulsion of their own, like a force of nature. But after marveling at the “exhilarating sense of propulsion” through the movie but then realizing that it has no specific antagonist or classical protagonist, I am left with the question: what drives this story? How does it work?

The classical screenwriting paradigm would say that structure drives the story, but that falls apart here as well. The movie doesn’t have the traditional shape and feel of the three-act structure. I suppose somebody could break the script apart and find Syd Field’s plot points in there and everything, but the story isn’t told with that emphasis. It doesn’t feel that way for me. For me, the entire movie feels like a giant Act One, where we get a sense of the character in his environment and all the essential variables of his story are introduced until events finally come to a head, requiring the character to finally begin to act to control his own destiny. Ray Liotta’s character does a lot of stuff in the movie, but he doesn’t actually do anything to drive the story until after he is arrested. His sole affirmative, active “act” is this: he decides to testify against the mob in return for police protection. Once he does this, the movie is over. And even this single event is treated obliquely – we simply see him and his wife talking to a federal officer, and then he is on the stand ratting out his old pals. The decision to do this – the character’s one active story act – takes place offscreen. Talk about breaking the rules. But the really shocking thing is this: it works. Why? Because the story is not about the goal-oriented protagonist or about a human’s control of his destiny. It is about something else.

But wait! There’s more. Not only does the whole movie feel like a giant Act One to me, it also at the same time feels like a giant Act Two. Like the perfect Act Two, the one that is nothing but a straight, tight line. Where we are being shot forward out of a cannon and one event follows another and we cannot look away. Where we are moving so fast that we can’t imagine where the story is going but we sure know it is going in exactly the right direction. We are on the edge of our seats.

What am I getting at here? That we all want the same thing – to create a well-told story. That is the goal. The traditional rules of classical three-act structure, the active protagonist, a clear and specific antagonist,… these are tools that have been developed to help us reach that goal. But remember this: the rules themselves are not the goal. Following the rules is not the goal. The traditional rules are merely one set of tools, one set among many others. Goodfellas gives us a breathless, exhilarating story experience. How does it do this? It uses tools. Just not the same tools. Not the usual tools.

So remember this: the rules are not the goal. If the rules help, then follow them. If not, make different tools. It can be done.

Great Documentary

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!)

Definition of Insanity

They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result. But they also say “if at first you don’t succeed, try try again.” So what do they know?

Look, you’re not going to get lucky. Nobody does. Whatever it is you’re trying to do, you need two things to succeed: a great idea and the skillful execution of that idea. One without the other isn’t enough. Where do you get these ingredients? The short answer is this: trial and error.

You try and try, over and over, discarding the weak ideas and refining your execution, going through your process. Always hoping for a different result this time.

Sometimes – too many times – you get one without the other. On the one extreme you have the killer idea that goes nowhere. On the other there’s the immaculately-polished turd.

How do you get past these? You work through them, all the way, as deeply and as completely as you can, then throw them away and keep going. Keep driving. Keep moving. Send your stuff out if you’re happy with it, but move on. The clock is ticking and you still need more practice. 

There’s a saying in the writers room: “You’ve got to kill your babies.” Harsh? Definitely. And that’s the point.

You’ve got to be willing to throw away everything, even the ideas you’re most in love with. Especially the ideas you’re most in love with. You’ve got to keep cranking. You’ve got to keep yourself honest. You can’t hang on to anything that can slow you down, that can keep you from moving forward, from driving the process along. Hanging on to one idea is just going to keep you pinned down and preoccupied when the next idea – a better idea – comes along.

When I think about creative people who have been successful, their success has almost always come from a steady progression of projects through which they’ve practiced and improved and reached a critical command of their skills. Then at some point that key idea comes along, and BAM! the idea gets executed with these skills and the rest is history. It is rare to hear of a creative person coming across his killer idea at age 19 or 23 or something and then spending years sheltering and nurturing and protecting that same idea until a miracle happens and the skills of execution arise out of nowhere. 

But you see people – talented people – clinging forever to that one thing. That one pet idea. For years, wasting time. And it breaks your heart. Forget about doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result – these people do NOTHING and expect a perfect result. Now that’s a definition of insanity. 

These skills are learned. You have to earn them, from stretching. From work. Not from babying that same idea you’ve held onto forever. In love with your idea? Terrific. Now go write that idea. Then write another one. Just do it. Kill your babies.

This from the guy who’s been working on Dead Guy and Psycho Ex for about 2 years now.

Jon Stewart, Twitter, and The Weather Channel Just Destroyed My Life

Stay with me here:

Everybody see Jon Stewart take on Jim Cramer last night? Stewart destroyed him. No, wait, that’s too easy – he actually did more than that. Stewart destroyed the financial press in this country. No, he actually did more than that. Stewart destroyed the media. And for someone who has built his entire life on the idea of writing for the media, that is quite a lot for me to say. Stewart destroyed everything. 

How did Stewart do this? By being a grown-up. By actually believing that Cramer and CNBC and the financial press and the entire media is supposed to serve us. To be held accountable to us. He didn’t destroy Cramer so much as dare to live in a different world than Cramer lives in. That world that most of us have somehow found ourselves living in.

Cramer was saying that in the game-show world of the financial press – in the game-show world of the media – people can get caught up in the crazy game and make mistakes. Stewart just looked at him and asked him how he can be so useless and so shallow and so pitiful as to live in a game-show world. This shit is real. This is not a game show. Grow up.

The world financial system is not supposed to be a game show. The financial press and journalism are not supposed to live in a game-show world. Grow up.

My wife and I sat there open-mouthed. We had expected 30 minutes of light-hearted banter. What we got was the truth.

Sometimes you know something. You know it intellectually but you kind of take it for granted and it fades away into the background and then every once in a while – BOOM – it hits you again and it knocks you off your ass and you feel surprised. But more than surprised, you feel embarrassed and even ashamed that you were surprised. Because you already knew it. You were supposed to have already known it so you weren’t supposed to be surprised. That’s what happened last night.

When the show was over, in my knocked-off-my-ass stupor, I flipped to the Weather Channel. You know, to figure out what to wear to work in the morning. This is where my life really started to shatter. Did I get the weather report? No. I got a middle-aged woman standing in front of a weather map of the U.S. talking about twitter. The woman – who was supposed to be telling me about the weather forecast – was telling me that The Weather Channel has some relationship with twitter where people can tweet each other telling each other what the weather is like right now. This is where I lost it.

I don’t want someone – some random person – to tweet what the weather is right now. That is not news or expertise. What I want is a meteorologist, an educated expert – a grown-up – to tell me what the weather will be like tomorrow. Just like what I want from CNBC is a sober-minded, educated and expert financial analyst – a grown-up – to give me financial news. Not a game-show host. Does that make me a grumpy old man? Maybe. What it makes me is a grown-up.

But wait: that’s not really what this post is about. This is what it is about: youth culture is out of control and my life has to change.

Some say that before the mid-1950s, before James Dean, there was no youth culture. Or more accurately, there was no mass-marketed youth culture. There were troubled teens and adolescent ordeals, yes, but there was no mass-marketed idea of “cool.” There were no PG-13 movies, no TV shows, no alternative music. In the movies, people went from being “kids” to “grown-ups,” with nothing in between. Was this reality? No, but it was the media. 

Then along came Elvis, and James Dean, and Bob Dylan, and the 60s, and the counterculture. These images were mass-marketed, and finally kids everywhere knew what they were supposed to do to be “cool.” Suddenly there was a global understanding of “us” vs. “them,” of a “generation gap” which had never been acknowledged before on a global scale. You still had the stodgy old grown-ups who were born before this and didn’t “get it” (like Nixon), but all the “cool kids” could be cynical and cool, sticking it to “the man.” Forever young. It became better to be “cool” than to be “square,” or respectable, or grown up. “I hope I die before I get old,” etc.

And here we are in 2009. Now the “cool kids” are all we have left. Everybody running things today – the government, finance, all our institutions – grew up after the advent of youth culture. They would rather be cool than be grown-ups, no matter how ridiculous or misguided their actions really are. So today weather experts would rather talk about twitter than give weather forecasts. Financial experts would rather live in a fast-paced game-show world than be bothered with the state of the real economy. You have to admit, it is more fun. It is cooler than the weather or finance. And the kids today might actually accept you and not look at you as “square” or “a grown-up.” Anything but that. We all know the “kids’ table” is much cooler than the “grown-up table.”

Watching that weather forecaster blather on about twitter, it dawned upon me that this is all the media is: trying to look cool to today’s youth. The only things they are going to do, the only movies or TV shows they are going to make, are projects that look cool to the youth culture, no matter how ridiculous or misguided they are on their face. This goes for everything – even weather, even finance.

Like I said, sometimes you intellectually know something but it still knocks you off your ass anyway.

I don’t want to be a grown-up either. It’s not as much fun as being a kid or living in a game-show world. But I am a grown-up. Somehow I’ve become one (like Jon Stewart). I don’t care about youth culture or about looking cool or Twittering or living in a game show. The stories I am interested in – and interested in writing – are not about youth culture, they are not for youth culture, they are completely uninterested in youth culture. And yet what I am is a writer. And I have built everything on the idea of writing for the media. 

I have to tell you, I just don’t see it happening. In my 20s, when I had just moved to L.A. and had an agent and was pitching stuff and writing TV samples, sure. My culture was youth culture. That was me, and my Seinfeld sample was damn good. But now? I’m 40 and I just have zero interest in Twitter or American Idol or comic books. So I just don’t see it happening for me. It’s time to move on. Seriously.

Novels maybe?

Does the Twist Ending Have to Come at the End?

If you’re thinking I’ve forgotten about The Challenge, I haven’t. I just continue to struggle with Act Two of Psycho Ex. You know, the easy script. And it’s weird because although Act Two is always the hardest part, the problems I’m having this time are problems I’ve never had before.

Here’s the deal: The script has a twist ending. Or maybe it’s a twist “middle.” I’m not exactly sure. That’s the problem.

I know my story. I know it well. I’m just not so sure about the plot. Big difference. The story is the chronological timeline of events. The story is what happens (In The Sixth Sense, Bruce Willis dies in the first scene and lives the rest of the movie as a ghost). But the plot is the timeline in which information is revealed to the reader/viewer. The plot is how the story is told (Neither we nor Bruce know he is a ghost until the very end). Story vs. plot.

Psycho Ex has a twist. The big problem I am dealing with now is the revealing of this twist and the issue of surprise vs. suspense. Surprise is what happens when the reader/viewer gets information at the same time as the characters, as in The Sixth Sense – we find out that Bruce is a ghost at the same time that Bruce does, and we are  just as surprised as Bruce is. We don’t suspect this is coming, so when it comes we are so surprised we jump out of our seats. Suspense is different. Suspense is what happens when the reader/viewer gets information before the characters do, and then we squirm in our seats or yell at the screen as we wait for the characters to learn the truth the hard way (“Don’t go downstairs! The killer is in the house!”). The only person who knows all the information all of the time is the writer.

Which is me. But halfway through Act Two, I can’t figure out if Psycho Ex is supposed to make you jump out of your seat or make you squirm in it.

When I originally got the idea for the script and started laying it out, I didn’t doubt for a second that it had a surprise twist ending. I had a love triangle – one man and two women, one of them pregnant. After chasing the women, the man finally catches up to them – and then does something that turns the whole movie upside-down. Everyone jumps out of their seats, the climactic twist plays out, and we Fade Out while people are still shocked. 

But then it occurred to me – what if, at the midpoint, I reveal the guy’s plan to the audience, but not to the women? This way I still get the surprise and the movie turning upside-down, just earlier. And I also get much more – the chase will still happen, but it will suddenly be more charged instead of just standard action. You will know the secret but they won’t. Everything the women do would be in preparation for the WRONG climax, so you’ll squirm and yell “Don’t do it! You’re doing the wrong thing!” We get surprise and suspense. I don’t want this to get too Lifetime-y, but suspense with a pregnant woman in danger – man, that’s some powerful territory with a huge built-in squirm factor. That could propel the script into a whole different league. Surprise alone would never get us this – you can milk surprise for half a page, but you can get reams from suspense. Very pleased with myself, I decided I should definitely go with the suspense plan. The twist “middle.”

Unless that doesn’t work. Because usually – always? – it doesn’t work. The twist has to be the climax, it has to be a last-minute surprise. Doesn’t it? I mean, Psycho, No Way Out, every episode of The Twilight Zone… you build to a climax, you reveal a huge twist, these two are actually the same thing, and you Fade Out. Because if a “plot twist” overshadows your climax, you’re in trouble, right? After the twist, you don’t have anywhere else to go. That’s why they call it a “twist ending.” Right? I mean, what if The Sixth Sense had revealed that Bruce was a ghost halfway through the movie? What if The Usual Suspects had revealed the Big Reveal to the audience halfway through?

Then they would have been The Crying Game.

Crap. 

They would have become completely different movies. I’ve got big problems.

I like the suspense option, I instinctively want to go there. I’m just not sure if the climax would still be the climax, or what the new climax would be, or if the story would really work anymore. The idea was engineered and constructed with the twist ending climax. But maybe it doesn’t have a “twist ending,” maybe it actually has a killer “plot twist.” But then… that means the old climax isn’t the climax anymore, just the middle. And if the old climax isn’t the climax anymore, then what is?

Hey – remember before, at the very beginning, when I said “I know my story”?… Turns out I was really lying.

See? Twist ending.

I Hate That Guy!

People – yesterday changed everything and my career will never be the same. I had that meeting with the “small but influential studio” yesterday afternoon about I Hate That Guy!. It has been quite a while since my last round of meetings, but they’re always the same: they read your stuff, they call you, they tell you you’re great, they desperately want to meet with you. You try not to let yourself get excited, but as the day comes closer, you talk yourself into it: They like it, so they must want it. Or maybe they don’t want it, but they have a rewrite or some other assignment and they’re looking for a writer. They must want to offer you something – surely they don’t want to have you over merely so they can have their assistant offer you some Evian and then waste half an hour of their own valuable time for some meaningless chat before asking you “so… what else do you have?”. So you try not to let yourself get excited, but you can’t help it. I mean, they called you. These guys might be different. These guys are smart – after all, they’ve proven it: they like your script! Surely these guys aren’t in it to waste their own time. They’re going to offer you something. And they do: Evian and some meaningless chat before asking “so… what else do you have?”. And you leave utterly demoralized.

The bastards do this to me every damn time.

Yesterday was different. I didn’t let myself get excited. Just another meeting, just another Evian. They weren’t going to do this to me again. If I just don’t get excited, they can’t do it to me. Simple as that.

But then in the morning things started happening. Strange things. I got an email from my contact. Giving me the address, telling me where to park. Again. We had been over this on the phone, but he was… confirming this with me. Me, the writer. They were making extra sure I was coming.

Then I got an email from a guy in the business I met a while back. Great guy, legit guy, very helpful. It was great to hear from him. But the thing is, I haven’t spoken with him in over a year. I didn’t remember the guy when I saw his email or read his name. But here he was, out of the blue, on today of all days, asking me about the script… and whether I had an agent. Or if I needed one. Like, hypothetically, if I needed an agent – like, say, this afternoon – and I didn’t have any leads on one, he could steer me in the right direction.

What? What did this guy know? They were going to offer me something and everybody knew. Everybody but me. While I was successfully keeping myself from getting excited, the whole town was talking, and what they were saying was this: these guys are going to buy Robb’s script.

My head was swimming. I was excited. Very excited.

So I go to the meeting, and instead of being greeted at reception by an assistant, I am greeted by two guys. Okay, I think, one’s the assistant, and one’s the exec. They’ll take me to a conference room and the assistant will leave me with the exec while he fetches our Evians. But this doesn’t happen: we get to the conference room and they both stay. They’re both execs. We have foregone the Evian to get right to this. Whatever is about to happen, it requires two execs. They get right to it – the first one read the script, loved it, and took it to his boss. The boss read it, loved it, and took it to his boss, who is the VP.  The top man. The guy who can make it happen. I am very, very excited.

But the VP just read it, and he hated it. They have to pass.

Time stopped. Do… what? The bastards. They did it to me again.

But man, did they love it. They say I’m a great writer – they’d love to read anything else I have. Anything, finished or not. 3-hole punch or toilet paper. If I wrote it, they’ll read it. They freaking love me. They had to call me in just to tell me how much they love me. That and the fact that they’ll have to pass.

I pitch them Supervillain, but tell them somebody there has already passed. Forget that, they say, they love me – they can bypass the system for me, take Supervillain straight to the VP. Who passed on Supervillain?, they ask me. Jeff Sachs, I tell them. Yeah, they say. He’s the VP. The VP that hated I Hate That Guy. Jeff Sachs. Sorry. So… what else do you have?

The bastards did it to me again.

Screw this, I tell them, standing. Get Jeff Sachs out here, I demand. They are surprised at this. Uh, look, we love you, but we can’t get Jeff out here. Why not?, I ask. There’s two of you: one go get me Jeff, and the other go get me an Evian. You didn’t even offer me a freaking Evian. I am a freaking writer, everybody in town knows you are supposed to offer me a freaking Evian. That’s what you offer writers before you demoralize them. That’s how it is freaking done.

But they don’t move. I realize that no Evian is coming.

I cross to the door. Tell Jeff Sachs I hate him, I say. Tell Jeff Sachs I am going to bring his ass down. Tell Jeff I have a freaking blog, and his name will be all over it tomorrow. What are you, an idiot?, they ask, that would be suicide. No way an out-of-work writer is going to insult a studio VP on the internet, use the guy’s real name. How do you spell “Sachs”?, I ask them. They don’t answer. Okay, I’ll google him, I say, and storm out, victorious. I stride down the hall, feeling great. I will bring this taffy-ass VP to his knees, and if those guys ever see me again, they will be damn sorry.

And they were. (I had to go back into the conference room to ask them to validate my parking, but let me tell you, they were shaking.)

So Jeff Sachs: you bastards do this to me every damn time, and I’m sick of it. So, on behalf of all writers everywhere: suck it, man. Suck it. Suck. It. YOU SUCK.

Jeff Sachs sucks! I hate that guy!

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* “Jeff Sachs” is not the VP’s actual name. Jeff Sachs is a real guy, and I have some issues with him, but he is not the VP at that studio. What am I, an idiot?

** Jeff – how’s it going? Long time, no see. Want to read my script? You can bring the Evian.