A bit of chaos...

Today I got booked for a packing job in Anaheim Hills, starting Tuesday. So I have to fly down day after tomorrow. Talk about scrambling, and I'm not home till Saturday. Fortunately, it's a continuation of a job I've already done, twice before, so I know the layout of the place and will have space enough to work in. And an assistant who can do the lifting and moving parts.

I still managed to get through three more chapters of APoS, to 1970. That leaves 10 chapters to do, and I can this little Macbook with me, to do a lot of this on the plane. So I will focus on the job, tomorrow and Monday, before my flight.

I've also decided to enter The Alice '65 into the Cinematic Book Writing Competition. Not sure what it's really about, but you never know who might read it. I found the Word doc for the updated paperback I did in March 2021, and read through some of it. And I'm fuckin' proud of that book. It flows so smoothly. I like Adam and Casey and the people around them. So I'm formatting it into the required style and sending it in.

They offer feedback, but I don't want any. I don't need it. I did a damn good job with that story and all I want is the promotional aspect of this contest. I'm not having anyone tell me how I should have written it to be funnier or simpler or crazier or anything. I've already been through that and found it's bullshit.

I wrote a screenplay for a former friend, using her idea -- her mother had been in Senior Lady Beauty Pageants and she thought it would be fun to make a comedy out of it. So I worked up a full story, characters, hit all the expected high points...and made it about a mistaken magical charm switching the mind of an older woman who's about to be in one of those pageants with the mind of her cop son-in-law who's trying to catch a criminal. Set it in Las Vegas, and all hell breaks loose.

It would have been hysterical with the right actors. But that's how it is with comedy -- the actors make the piece live. What comments did I get back? "Needs to be funnier." I've got the cop caught in his MIL's body suddenly having to deal with her estranged husband when the man shows up and wants to get back together with her in an intimate way. And the MIL in the cop's body has to save the life of his partner when they're attacked, and not knowing how to fire a gun or use handcuffs.

Not funny enough.

I no longer own that script. It was taken away from me fifteen years ago. Given to someone who knows how to write comedy. And what's happened, since? Nothing.

When William Goldman said that in Hollywood Nobody knows anything, he was right. The problem is, nobody knows that they don't know, and are sure that it doesn't apply to them.