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.