So the lovely Patrick Lussier and I sputtered down to Santa Monica Town to run our little “Mass Destruction” pitch by Josh McLaughlin. First off, Josh loved the trailer and for good reason. Patrick made an amazing 3 minute montage exactly telling our story. From there we walked out to the garden to tell our story. And as it turns out the biggest twist in the story, the one beat that I thought was utterly brilliant, Josh didn’t like. Two and a half hours later we’d brainstormed a guhzillion other possibilities but in my mind none were as good as what we walked in with. I left the meeting thinking we should take our idea elsewhere. That may sound like it was a bad meeting but on the contrary. Josh would love for us to continue. I just don’t have the interest continuing the development of a story that I don’t think is as good.
I’ve always been a big fan of Josh’s. He’s gone to bat for me on several occasions, it’s just in this one situation I don’t think we see eye to eye. Maybe I’m being pig-headed. It’s possible. Then again, maybe Josh is too close. He’s been dealing with this project for quite some time and has gone through the process of several bad scripts. His head is filled with that History.
Patrick and I discussed the meeting at length on our drive home. I’m willing to make one big change…a change which I really do believe will make the story better. But as for the other suggestions (most of which were elements left over from previous takes), I’m not really interested. This is our story. It’s similar in concept to some of their previous stuff but either we go to Fox with our story or we shake hands and go our separate ways.
At least that’s my feeling. Patrick might be more willing to play ball and I suppose that’s a discussion we need to have soon but I really don’t have the desire to do a bunch of development on a job we have no guarantees of getting.
Since the meeting went so long I dropped Patrick off at the “Cursed” editing room then sped my way to Padre’s to meet Mel and the Loreys for dinner. We saw Ralph Mouth from Happy Days. After an excellent meal and a couple glasses of calm-me-down we thought we’d stop by the Loreys for a nitecap.
As we were heading for the interstate, three people were walking across the road ahead of us. One of them, who I will name Lurch because he was very tall, turned and started walking directly toward the little German car as it sped toward him. I slowed down and gave him the “what’s up, dude” look. He told me to slow down. “Slow down, man.” to be exact.
Wow have I come a long way. A year ago I would have jumped from my German engineered marvel and dropped that smart ass rat bastard like a maggot covered Pop-Tart. But I’ve grow’d. I simply said, “Okay” and drove away.
Then again, maybe it was the “man”. “Slow down, man” has a much nicer ring than “Slow down, dickhead.” The sad truth is that I feel regret. Part of me really wishes he had said, “Slow down, dickhead.” Oh well.
So it was back to the Loreys for a 200 dollar glass of wine and a couple shots of Lemoncello. Cousin Sarah was there baby-sitting and she ended up coming back to our place to watch some late-night “Kill Bill II”. Once Sarah was safely on the road there was still time for some “throw-down” and then I started in on Mel’s computer.
See, Bugsy crashed again. Bought in February, this would be the second crash. First time, Gateway replaced the harddrives, this time it was a different crash. A registry thing. The coincidence is that Mel’s been using a Real Estate site. The problem with Real Estate sites is that they stupidly create their websites so that they will only run properly on Internet Explorer. By the way, that’s the web browser with the most security holes on the market. It’s also the most popular. Well, as it turns out, this particular Real Estate site got a virus last week which crashed dozens of computers in the LA/Ventura County area. Statistically we gotta think we were one of them.
So, I reinstalled the Windows XP and we’ll see how it goes. By the way, if you’re not using Mozilla Firefox as your browser…you are a dummy. Melanie has been properly grounded.
Saturday’s 9-11 struck Thousand Oaks California with a power outage from here to Simi Valley. I never heard what the cause was but I’m thinking more rolling blackout than Ventura County being targeted by assorted terrorist organizations. Thus Mel and I spent the day running procrastinated errands.
The new beta of Firefox is out. Version 0.10 or Version 1 depending on the site. I loaded her up on Smeagol and it seems to run brilliantly. I’ll most likely upgrade the rest of the computers later.
Mel also installed Service Pack 2 on her newly formatted harddrive. So far so good. I’ll give it a week or so and if she doesn’t have any problems I’ll fix Snape, Smeagol, Bilbo, Wendago and Little Princess up with some upgraded loving.
It’s gonna be another busy week. Busy fingers and brain but that counts. I have one meeting at Tiger Hill to discuss another video game but the bulk of this week will be spent rewriting “Last Vamp’s” Night Two. I’ve been walking around enough letting it stew in my head…it’s time to make the majik now. Well, not now, after a good night’s sleep.
Guess I’ll go cuddle up with Sleeping Dummy.
Goodnight, boneheads.
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