June 4, 2021

Yesterday, after writing how I wanted to be punctual. I was late picking people up to go skating in Venice. Argh. I will keep trying. 

Signed up for a 6-week webinar on writing half hour comedies, put on and taught by Brent Forrester. Will be doing this concurrently with my screenwriting class. Hopefully I will not regret it. I'm pretty far ahead in the screenwriting class, so I think I can handle it. The class might be similar to watching a master class, except that it is synchronous and comes with homework assignments. (That are not graded, I don't think, but maybe other people in the class can read and give feedback.) Forrester talks about breaking into TV being a three- to five-year commitment. As someone in their seventh year of living in LA -- yikes. The information is exciting and interesting though. A lot of it is stuff I've heard before, but it bears repeating. And some stuff will be different, added on. I'm looking for further inspiration, for whatever guidance/mentorship I can find. Trying to get an edge. I don't know, it's fun. 

What else? 

I was looking over my idea file yesterday. It'll be fun to start new projects, maybe picking up old ideas. I feel more confident in starting something that I don't know quite where it's going. Writing so much more consistently over the past few years has boosted my confidence. I feel more assurance that I'll find stuff once I start in on it. It feels like playing in the mud. 

I put some killer ant bait outside yesterday. The ant stream was very close to the apartment door, and a few ants had started making their way inside. I probably shouldn't poison the ants while they're minding their business outside. But I didn't want to deal with the inside situation, which happens almost every year. This was a confession. 

Blog Time! 

**SPOILERS**

Ovitz, Michael – WHO IS MICHAEL OVITZ?

Published: 2018

Read: 06/2021

This is a memoir by the co-founder of CAA. Ovitz talks about starting the agency, convincing architect I.M. Pei to design the building, taking on big clients, helping movies get made, moving on to corporate deals, making lots of enemies, working and failing at Disney, and finally moving up into the Bay Area to join Silicon Valley. Oh yeah, and he says he doesn’t think it’s lying if the person saying the untruth has a reason for saying it. Dubious! 

I liked this book. It’s an interesting picture of mostly-90s Hollywood. Of insecurity, workaholism, ambition, passion, doggedness. I like how Ovitz describes throwing himself into his work. How he lets it consume him. I appreciated his appreciation of art and artists. I don’t think I would want to be him. At one point, after he’s talked over and over about accomplishing the near impossible, he says something along the lines of “there were very few female directors in that day, which is a shame.” Hello? He clearly could have done a lot to have changed that. That was basically his whole job – connecting people who had talent and ambition. There have been plenty of women with talent and ambition for the whole of human history. I think the takeaway lesson from reading this book, for me, is: do the work, come prepared, play to win. It’s energizing. 

Rating: ★★★

June 3, 2021

Anxious times last night! I hate it. It might be time to try meditation (blegh). My mood has been falling off since March. (Not sure why I liked March so much.) I know this because I'm using a mood tracker app. I want to learn about myself, collect data, figure out what makes me happy. I just looked back at my March calendar, and I was in the midst of teaching at Fusion, and I finished Sarah Someone on March 10. Being busy, getting done with a project. Being in rhythm. Maybe it was stuff like that. 

Whew, I am drinking the dregs of this French press. 

I got new wheels for my roller skates for my birthday. They're light up! But they're smaller and the bearings are smoother, and I feel very unsteady on them. I was getting pretty stable on my old wheels. Ah well. I don't think I'm ever going to be one of those twirly roller skating people. It's been very fun to go and do, but I haven't been pushing myself to improve, necessarily. If anything, it's motivating me to treat basketball like skaters treat skating. Try to go a lot; get to know the people who go to a certain gym or certain park. Make it my thing.  

Was thinking this morning about when a friend of mine in Seattle joked about me being chronically late. This was someone who I haven't hung out with much since college. It made me think about how people think about me, especially in the past. Seen by my family as lazy and unhelpful when I was a child. Friends seeing me as scattered and tardy in college. My husband seeing me as moody and unreliable. Now that I worship the holy panda planner I feel like I can change these things. No, what I mean is that those things aren't really native to my personality, I don't think. They're weaknesses or indications of depression or unmet needs. Easily passed off as, oh that's just Amy. 

It's why I can't recommend getting out enough. Entering different contexts with different requirements. Trying to get better. Going to counseling. Sorting shit out. I think in this dawning post-pandemic world, I don't want to be late any more. I want to take better care of structuring my schedule so that I can be on top of everything -- or at least on top of most things. I want to care for my self and pay attention to my needs enough that I keep myself afloat. So that I can be helpful, dependable, proactive. Executive functioning is hard for me, maintaining mental health is hard, but that doesn't mean I can't get better at it. 

Okay, I've been watching Avenue 5 and have to figure out how I'm going to keep a TVlog about it. Here we go! 

TVlog Time! 

**SPOILERS**

AVENUE 5

Season 1, Episode 1 – “I Was Flying”

2020

Written by: Armando Iannucci, Simon Blackwell, and Tony Roche

Directed by: Armando Iannucci

Watched: 3/31/21

Avenue 5 is a luxury cruise ship in space. A sudden change in the onboard gravity causes everybody to fall to one side of the ship. During which time, the main engineer was on a space walk fixing something. He falls towards the ship, impaling himself on a screwdriver. When the gravity rights itself, the ship finds that the sudden shift in weight has knocked them off course. Instead of an eight-week cruise, the ship is on a 3-year cruise. Main characters are Ryan Clark, the captain, who we find out is a British actor faking an American accent. He was hired by the now-dead engineer, who was the real captain. There’s Herman Judd, the billionaire owner of Avenue 5 and enfant terrible. Iris is his ball-busting second in command. Matt Spencer is the oddball head of customer relations and also a nihilist, who tries to make people feel better through his own experimental ideas about psychology. Karen is a passenger who’s definitely a Karen. She has big I-want-to-speak-to-the-manager energy. Definitely a contender to the throne of “actual boss” on the ship. And there’s Billie, the next engineer in charge after the head engineer’s death. 

I really liked this pilot and the series so far. I watched a lot in a row, so I’m going to continue on to the next episode. Crap! I don’t really know how to rate these since I watched so many in a row. Default three stars. 

Rating: ★★★

AVENUE 5

Season 1, Episode 2 – “And Then He’s Gonna Shoot Off” 

Written by: Georgia Pritchett and Will Smith (not that one) 

Directed by: Natalie Bailey

Watched: 3/31/21 

A loosie-goosey engineer has calculated that the ship is only off course by six months rather than three years. Judd gives up his special gold encrusted coffin for the head engineer. After the funeral, the coffin is released into space, but instead of shooting away it’s heavy enough that it’s going to orbit the ship now for the rest of the voyage. Three of the other passengers who died also get funerals, but their bodies reside in light plastic see-through coffins, so they’ll be light enough to actually launch into space. But then there’s another gravity malfunction so those coffins orbit the ship as well. The on-board stand up comedian tries to do his jokes, but the dead bodies pass by the window behind him entirely too frequently. By the end of the episode, we learn that the engineer had undercounted 500 passengers, so the travel time of the voyage is actually 3.5 years. Oh, character-wise, there’s also Rav who’s head of mission control for Avenue 5. She’s on Earth. 

Liked this one too! Pushing ahead. 

Rating: ★★★

AVENUE 5

Season 1, Episode 3 – “I’m a Hand Model” 

Written by: Peter Fellows and Ian Martin

Directed by: Natalie Bailey

Watched: 3/31/21

Wikipedia is telling me this is the episode where the captain finds out his whole crew is a bunch of actors. They’re all cast to look like members of Star Trek, and actually the bridge itself is reminiscent of Star Trek as well. The real crew is much smaller and resides below deck. More stuff happens in this episode though, surely…  

Rating: ★★1/2 

AVENUE 5

Season 1, Episode 4 – “Wait a Minute, Then Who Was That on the Ladder?”

Written by: Peter Fellows and Ian Martin

Directed by: Natalie Bailey

Watched: 3/31/21

Billie sets up a meeting between the captain and the real crew. They drink beers and bond and actually get along very well. The captain thinks it’s important for all the passengers to believe that the fake crew – the bunch of actors – is actually the real crew. Passengers are invited onto the bridge to watch the fake crew at work. Frank, Karen’s husband, is invited to push a button that’s supposed to do something (I don’t remember what). At the moment that he does, a pipe bursts and a bunch of human feces comes out of it. (They have the shit piped around the ship in order to absorb radiation.) Everybody blames Frank, and thinks the captain should be the one to go fix it. The episode ends with him donning a space suit to go on a space walk. 

Another good one! 

Rating: ★★★

AVENUE 5

Season 1, Episode 5 – “He’s Only There to Stop His Skeleton from Falling Over”

Written by: Peter Baynham 

Directed by: Annie Griffin

Watched: 6/2/21

The captain goes outside to fix the shit leak, but he freezes up (even though he just has to shut a valve). Billie joins him outside and the two stop the leak. The captain is hailed as a hero, and Billie would like some of that credit but doesn’t get it. The captain accidentally lets it slip to Karen that he’s an actor. She’s well embroiled by this point. The captains two spouses break up with him! People blame Frank for the button pushing shit leak, and he’s nearly space lynched. Meanwhile, Frank has become convinced that the captain might be sleeping with his wife. 

The joke that is the episode title was really good in this episode. The cast is great, and I like how the story is hinting at what dark things might come. I hope that they go to those dark places, even though it’s a comedy. I feel like that’s what does the sci-fi part of the genre justice. I also wonder if they’ve Houston Houston Do You Read? The sort of ship trajectory question is similar. Or it could of course turn into Lord of the Flies. The writers so far are being coy about their view to human nature. Is it going to turn very bad or is a more positive human spirit going to prevail? Right now we don’t know! Which is interesting. 

Also, it looks like Peter Baynham has been on HLSTP. I’m going to check it out. 

Rating: ★★★

AVENUE 5

Season 1, Episode 6 – “Was It Your Ears?” 

Written by: Jon Brown

Directed by: Peter Fellows 

Watched: 6/2/21

A baby is born on the ship! Also, the ship is making a mysterious beeping sound. Like when our smoke detector is trying to tell us something like we should check the battery. Billie and the captain conclude the beeping must be that the ship is running out of oxygen. Meanwhile, Rav asks the government for funds and The Other President (an AI) recommends that the ship get rid of 500 non-essential personnel. The oxygen leak situation gets out and everyone on board is advised to not shout or talk, not exercise, to breathe as little as possible. The beeping, meanwhile, is keeping people up at all hours. Karen, captain, and Billie are also worried about Judd. He almost got Frank lynched. With the 500 person thing, Karen thinks they should murder Judd, but they all instead agree on just sedating him. (By the end of the episode, they’ve put the sedatives in a drink but we don’t really see where the drink ends up.) It turns out the beep was the ship recalibrating the fact that there’s a new person on board (the baby). They have enough oxygen after all, it turns out. 

I really liked the mysterious beep idea. When our smoke detector beeps it sends my husband right through the roof. The fact that they don’t really check whether it means an oxygen leak, they just assume it must mean that, seems way off. Such an awful fate, you’d think you’d be looking for absolute confirmation before you accepted that as fact. I would have definitely kept watching after this episode, but my husband insisted on going to bed, and I didn’t want to watch without him. wAh. 

Rating: ★★★

June 2, 2021

I missed a day yesterday! I'm reading the book Who Is Michael Ovitz? It's a memoir by one of the guys who started and ran CAA. He keeps talking about not wanting to have to move back to the Valley (where he grew up). Living in the Valley is like this huge mark of failure in his mind. I think if I lived in the Valley right now -- like a lot of my friends do -- I'd feel offended. Plenty of people living/working in LA live in the Valley, and it doesn't seem that different to me. But anyway, I - like Michael Ovitz - have had the privilege to stave off Valley residence. 

Oof, I didn't post yesterday. And now it's nine AM already and I have to start work. I need to wake up earlier. Which is the story of my life. I'm backlogged on Mlog and TVlog. Plus I don't want to work. Story of my life, the sequel. I'll go look at my work email and come back here in a bit.

My body still hurts from when I fell roller skating last week. 

I'm kicking around the idea of making myself a personal webpage to try to capitalize on any Black List score interest. Making a website feels vain and stupid though because I feel like personal websites are important to the website owner but not really seen much by anyone else. And they cost money to host and time to set up. But on the other hand, they're another opportunity to introduce yourself to the world online. To say, oh hi here's who I am. That may be useful. Because people search other people online, and it's a way to have some definite say in what they see. 

Mlog time! 

**SPOILERS**

THE PERSONAL HISTORY OF DAVID COPPERFIELD

2019

Directed by: Armando Iannucci

Written by: Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci

Watched: 5/31/21

Based on the novel by Charles Dickens, The Personal History […] follows the life of David Copperfield, a 19th century Englishman who starts out rich, the only child of a single lady, and then gets sent to work in a factory once his mother marries his sinister stepfather. David goes to live with a large family who is constantly dodging creditors. David’s stepfather informs David that his mother has died and David freaks out, destroying many bottles at the bottle factory. He then goes and lives with his rich eccentric aunt. His aunt pays for his education. His aunt then loses all her money, and David is poor again. David eventually starts to write in earnest (his character is one of Dicken’s most autobiographical) and earns all the money back. 

I like Iannucci’s television more than his movies. I’m not quite sure why. It might be because the television is out-and-out comedy. Tight, smart, funny, absurd. While the movies are comedy/dramas. Slower paced. Understated. Swollen with themes. Lititis. The casting/acting in this movie was excellent. Dev Patel makes a great David Copperfield – spry, youthful, distracted. Even though I knocked it compared to Iannucci’s TV, I still enjoyed this movie the whole way through. It did its job. Its movie job. 

Rating: ★★★