Roadblock

A minor film noir effort.  It's basically about a tough-guy insurance investigator who falls for a femme fatale who is bent on finding a rich guy.  By which she means, not him.  But he's desperate to get her, so he cooks up a scheme with a local crook to steal some cash being transferred between banks.  But in the meantime, she's fallen in love with him, and so after the crime is put in place, she ironically doesn't need him to be rich anymore.  At that point, like in many good film noirs, it's too late.

It contains a bit of dialogue I love, early in the movie when she is still in the take-no-prisoners golddigger mode:

Her: I'm tired of being kicked around.  I'm gonna start out with silver fox and go straight to mink.

Him: Then ermine, sable?

Her: Everything.  Know what everything is?

Him: Happiness doesn't count, eh?

Her: Can happiness buy money?

I also love that in the car chase at the end of the movie, his destination to get away is Glendale.

In Search Of...

...the elusive good photo of Elliot.

Louie is naturally photogenic, and because he is white, his nose and eyes stand out.

But Elliot is harder.  Harder to expose correctly, harder to pick out his nose and eyes, and thus his personality.

This image is a start.  Stay tuned.

Editing Previous Posts

I just finished changing one of my previous blog entries.  It mentioned a lunch I had with a well-known animation director, and it used to mention him by name.

But this morning I read an article in the New York Times Magazine about a well-known blogger and her many regrets about very personal information she shared in her blog,  exposed for all to see.  Some very offending and embarrassing personal information, apparently.  She chose, rather than to take the blog entries down, or change them, simply to password-protect them, so only her friends could read them.

I chose to go back into a few of mine and in one case, take out a nasty comment that I now regret, and in this recent case just take out someone's name.  The blog entry is fun and I think mostly positive, but not ALL positive, and this person might be offended.

Is that so wrong?

Yet More Crowded House Shows

I didn't take the picture to the right, but I certainly did attend both Crowded House shows here in LA recently.  (This after attending four last year.)

Friday night, the first of two nights, I just went by myself.  There's only so much CH Ellen can take, after all.  (She likes them but will occasionally comment "all their songs are so sad."  Mentally I reply, "exactly!")  The lovely, somewhat restored Orpheum theater in downtown LA played host to the band, so I dragged myself down there in the Prius, wondering if I should score some crack since I don't get down there very often.  Instead, I had a $9 margarita at the bar next door to the theater, then ordered a bacon cheeseburger at the little greasy spoon window-service establishment adjacent to the parking lot. They have a little tiny linoleum counter bolted to the outside of their closet-sized cooking area, with ugly stools.  I sat there, basically in the parking lot, munching on my burger, watching the BMWs enter, perfectly happy.  But perhaps that's the margarita talking.

Then I went into the show, Row J.  Not too shabby.  It turned out there were two "singles" on either side of me.  One was a 20-something Brit who was in LA on business and took advantage of the coincident CH tour schedule.  I liked him until during the show he several times called somebody on his cel phone, yelled something, then held up the phone so they could hear a distorted, unrecognizable bit of live music.  On the other side of me was a 50-ish woman who came with her sister, but they couldn't get tickets together, so her sister got the second-row seat.  They had taken the subway and misjudged how far away the subway stop was from the theater (about ten blocks), and were a little nervous about the walk back late at night.  I told her I thought she'd be fine as I mentally made a note of her appearance for comparison with crime scene photos in the paper tomorrow.

Then the band came on, which was wonderful of course.  I won't blather on and on about it.  Crowded House shows are always different, they like to mix up the set list, take requests, banter with each other, play old obscure songs, make up songs on the spot.  That, and beautiful ballads like "Fall at Your Feet" and "Don't Dream it's Over."

After the show, the lady next to me tapped my shoulder and said "nice to meet you."  On the spur of the moment, I turned and asked her if she and her sister wanted a ride to the subway stop.  The look on her face said, "I suddenly realize you could be a registered sex offender" and she declined.  Hey I didn't really want to do it anyway!

The next night Ellen and I went to a fun Irish pub (reliving our last year's trip) downtown before the show.  I had "bangers and mash" which is Irish for bland sausage with brown gravy and mashed potatoes.  This being LA, they were garlic mashed potatoes.

The show Saturday night was even better than Friday.  Crowded House -- c'est bon!

Louie Cools Off

It's been hot here.  Up to almost 100 yesterday and today.  So, even though we try to be good citizens and money savers and set the A/C at 78, it comes on fairly often.

And the dogs are not immune to the heat.  So (and this is a relatively new phenomenon) once in a while Louie will plop himself down in front of the heat/cool air vent and let it blow over him.

See above.

It can also be viewed on youtube:

http://www.youtube/watch?v=Zlfh9La1QqM

My Lunch with Fred A. Nonymous

In trying to broaden my search for what to do next,  I have been trying to meet different people, maybe even find someone who might be willing to cook up movies to pitch together.

For instance, a few weeks ago I decided to invite Fred A. Nonymous to lunch.  (I decided to give him a pseudonym, not because this story is so bad, but just to courteous.) The same Fred A. Nonymous who co-directed several famous top-grossing animated movies.  I had made a tentative connection with Fred  through a website called "LinkedIn," a sort of FaceBook for businesspeople, I think, since I have never been to FaceBook.  I'm too old.

Anyway I figured, in a rather mercenary way, that I might be able to convince Mr. Nonymous to work with me to cook up an animated movie idea for me to produce and him to direct.  After all, I'm good at coming up with stories, and he hasn't had a movie made in a while.  Maybe he'd be up for it.  (I already have three animated movie ideas that I am pitching around, but the three of us who cooked them up do not have the name value of Fred N.)

I send an e-mail, and Fred quickly agrees to lunch.  I guess he's in the "hey it couldn't hurt to meet anybody" mode too!  We meet at a groovy forties-style deli in Glendale at noon last Wednesday.  Fred's maybe my age (a little under 50), still got all his hair, or most of it, and has an open, young-looking, generous face.  He smiles when I introduce myself and we get a table.  I order the pastrami.  I forget what he ordered.  But so far so good, lunch couldn't be more pleasant.

I ask him to tell me the story of his last few years (since it's been that long since he's gotten a movie made).  What happened?  Well Fred launches into his narrative of woe.  The stories are very entertaining, full of visits to development hell, development purgatory, and development boredom.  There are good guys and bad guys, and many hurt feelings.  I ask, what happened to Ethelred the Unknown, his partner on all his movies?  Well, he's at (another animation compnay), laboring away, also trying to get a movie to direct.  (But seemingly happy there, to hear Fred tell it.)

What's Fred doing now?  Well trying to get some movies going with various former colleagues.

Just to clear the air, I asked him if he was offended by the idea of sequels to his movies.  No, he answered, I just avoided seeing them or thinking about them.  He had heard a few of them were good, and a few of them were bad, no skin off his nose.

So I launch into my pitch.  I've spent the last 8 years cooking up stories at Disneytoons with some level of success.  I know he doesn't know me from Adam, and I worked on mostly sequels, but maybe we could help each other.  I would do as much of the heavy lifting as he wanted in terms of cooking up a story, and we would together use the leverage of his name to pitch around town, trying to get something set up.  He nodded politely, and I could tell already he was not ready to accept this offer right now. 

So I backed off, saying it's something that maybe could be filed away as a future possibility, that right now it's great to have met and establish a relationship.  Yes, he agreed.  But, I continued, maybe there was a way for him to familiarize himself with my work, since I of course was already familiar with his work.  Although it may sound nutty, the movie I am most proud of from my DisneyToon days was Cinderella 3.  Maybe he'd like a copy to watch?

Well you should have seen the look on his face.  It was as if I had handed him a knife and asked him to go home and stab his mother.  He was trying very hard to be polite, but it was clear that underneath the polite smile was the feeling, "I'd rather drink my own urine than watch Cinderella 3.  Didn't you hear what I said before about the sequels?"

Well there you go.  I accept his reaction.  And I still found him charming and pleasant.  But it was a clear reminder where the direct-to-video sequels stand with some people.

Onward and upward!

Movies, Pitches

Just a short missive today.  Not much news, really.

Another open house today, so we had to get out.  Went to see "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" which we both liked very much.  Sweet and funny.

My long ago aquaintance Alex Schwartz, who now heads up Dreamworks Animation development, is interested in my "Dolphins" pitch and told me she wants to pitch it to Jeffrey Katzenberg.  Lovely!