Tom Hits The Road

One year ago this week, the invitation in the picture arrived in the mail. It began: "Our dearest and most auspicious friends..." and proceeded to invite the wife and me to join a college friend of mine and his relatively new second wife, along with a party of their "dearest and most auspicious friends", for eight days in India, in celebration of our friend's 50th birthday. At their expense. We knew that our friend's second wife was wealthy. We thought maybe sixty, seventy million dollars. But after we got the invitation we googled her and discovered that no, it isn't sixty or seventy million dollars, it's five billion.

Yes. She has five billion dollars.

And here's the switch. She was raised going to the local public school, her father drove an old sensible Volvo, she got her Phd in history, is a university professor, writes serious scholarly books, donates hundreds of millions of dollars to various environmental and educational charities, and has an irresistable, uninhibited laugh. All of which is to say that, believe it or not, my friend didn't marry her for the money.

And she is taking me and one hundred of her closest friends on a chartered jet from London to Rajasthan for a week. And you, dear readers, are coming along for the ride, because where there are upscale hotels there is internet. I've got my typhoid shots, my malaria pills, my sunscreen and my Lonely Planet guidebook, and I leave Wednesday morning.

More news from London.

P.S. The wife, unfortunately, is on that job in Louisiana, so I'm doing this one alone.

P.P. S. Because I'm using frequent flyer miles to get to London, and staying with a friend there, the whole thing will end up costing me a little bit less than staying home.

P.P.P.S. What did I do to deserve this?

P.P.P.P.S. Or, perhaps more to the point, what's the catch?

Let It Stand

After I got Troll's comment on my last post I re-read the post and just about keeled over from the fumes of high-octane self pity. It's not just that two weeks after finishing a movie that everybody loves is just a leeeeeeeeeetle bit early for all the melodrama about un-ringing phones. It's that self-pity is a waste of time, energy and all of God's other gifts, no matter when. It's that the real problem is all the scared lazy procrastinating I am doing on all the new projects and ideas I should be working on. I almost deleted the post. But then I thought: let it stand as a reminder to myself of where not to go.

Silence

Here's me, walking away from set on a quiet snowy night in Winnipeg, just before Christmas.

It's quiet where I am now, too. In the hotel room where I am writing while my wife is away on her set, here in Louisiana.

Very very very quiet.

I've been told that if I want to parlay my recent movies into work directing episodes--which is where the work is--I need a reel. I spent the morning looking at reels. I looked at reels of directors who've done three Sopranos episodes, a half dozen Six Feet Unders, multiple West Wings. Directors who've directed well known features and also been nominated for Emmy awards for directing half hour comedy. First of all, I am blown away that some of these people would need reels at all. When I had my own show on the air I was hiring directors by the handful and believe me, by me none of these people would have needed a reel--I would have hired them off their resumes. So what's the deal? A changing business. Fewer jobs. More directors. Younger producers.

I don't have Sopranos episodes or 30 Rock or The Practice. I have four pretty good cable movies. And with those movies I'm going to shell out the 5K it's going to cost to get a reel that at the end of the day will be right there in stack with the reels that are bulging with high-end episodic and features and.....

A scary step to be taking.

Scarier, though, not to take it.

And then there's the silence as I sit at my desk and write and the phone is not ringing, the email box is empty and there is just the blinking cursor.

Here's my prayer for today:

God help me see this silence as a gift. A space in which to write the next wonderful thing. Help me see that God. Help me.

After The Ball Is Over

The picture, taken a few years ago on a retreat in central California, is all about serenity.

Which I don't have an ounce of right now.

I put the last touches on the sound mix of my movie a week ago Friday at 11:30 P.M. Tossed and turned all weekend (this music cue should have been louder, that off screen siren should have been quieter, yammer yammer yammer), then declared "the next chapter of my life begins now" and got to work on a new script, had a week of lunches and meetings with my agents and with various friends, producers, executives, and then left for where I am right now, visiting my wife who is working as a makeup artist on a movie in Louisiana. It's a beautiful place and we're having a wonderful romantic time.

But I'm a wreck.

To which you might want to say: oh give me a great big fucking break to go. You just finished directing two cable movies. The first one was a big success, everybody loved it, it got great ratings and it instantly got you a second job. Everybody loves the second one too, it's a big tearjerker just like you wanted it to be, you're having a romantic interlude in a faraway city with your wife, the world is your oyster.

To which I'd say: if the world is my oyster, I seem to have lost the shucking knife, or whatever you call the thing you use to pry the oyster open so you can eat it.

For one thing, the sound mix really isn't great on the movie. I checked out the DVD they gave me and the music sounds muffled. It sounded way better on the mixing stage. Is it just the transfer? Did I make a bad guess as to how it would all sound once it was compressed? Am I just paranoid? Is there anything at all, given that the production is basically now over and shut down, that I can do about it? These are the thoughts that keep a newly unemployed director awake at night, and awake, and awake, and awake. And on Thursday I gave a copy of the movie to my best friend, a brilliant director herself, a deeply warm, supportive and loving person. Who hasn't called or emailed yet. YAMMER YAMMER YAMMER YAMMER YAMMER. She hated it! She doesn't know what to say! Sleep, here in this faraway city at 1:10 A.M. a very very faraway thing.

For another thing, I've just broken through as a working director in long form television. That would be grandissimo if long form television hadn't just gone the way of hoop skirts. Remember when CBS, ABC and NBC all had movies of the week, sometimes two a week, and there were frequent movies on Showtime and USA and FX and Fox? CBS will make maybe three or four in the coming year. Not one of the others makes ONE SINGLE MOVIE anymore. Not one. A&E will make maybe one a year. My most recent employer is just about the only game in town now. I love them and they seem to like me but I just did two movies for them. They don't have in-house directors. They like to use lots of people, as they should.

Okay, so direct features!

Oh yeah Paramount and Warner Bros are LINING UP AROUND THE BLOCK TO HIRE TV MOVIE DIRECTORS TO DIRECT THEIR MOVIES. Next question, please.

Well, episodic! Grey's Anatomy, Brothers and Sisters, One Tree Hill!

Capital idea. Shared by every other underemployed feature and long form director in the state of California. It's a mad rush for those jobs. I'm part of that rush, but--???

And then there's the script I'm writing right now. I optioned a play on my own and I'm doing the adaptation on spec, as we say, that is, instead of being paid to write it I write it first and then try to sell it after. The reason I'm doing it that way is that nobody would buy it up front. It's a period piece, it takes place over a span of 40 years, it's an unconventional love story, it deals with themes of history and destiny, it's... independent. So here I sit in a hotel room in a faraway city working on a movie which at the moment I do not believe that anybody will ever want to buy.

And that, friends, is today's news from Lake Wobegone.