An Explosive Weekend ( and a need for protective eyewear)

It’s not every day that you exit the freeway to see a sign flashing:

CAUTION: GUNFIRE AND EXPLOSIONS…

But this is L.A. and the “gunfire and explosions” on an otherwise benign Saturday could be attributed solely to Hancock, a new feature film helmed by Peter Berg and starring Will Smith and Charlize Theron.

Saturday, I worked downtown on another shoot and afterward came by Hancock’s set to witness the huge street stunt they had planned. Amid the high-rises of downtown, Hancock had taken over several streets—a flutter of activity at nearly 1 a.m.

An amazingly, huge crater “iced” with overturned cars had been created in the middle of the street. A water truck continually passed through wetting down the streets as cast, crew, and “looky-loos” waited on the rooftops of adjoining buildings.

With stunts like this, you really only get one shot—so they rehearsed over and over again until BAM! a huge explosion belched cars up into the air and down again as they slammed into each other and skidded every which way. The ensuing black smoke forced me to look away. (Glad I put those sunglasses on as protective eyewear!) When I looked back, a moment later, the street was a mess of debris and thrashed cars. Even to cast and crew and others alike, it was impressive.

Hancock follows a hard-living superhero (Smith) who, somewhat like Mr. Incredible, has fallen out of favor with the public. He looks to a PR rep, played by Jason Bateman, in hopes of repairing his image, but gets otherwise involved with the PR rep’s wife (Theron).

Director: Peter Berg
Expected Release Date: July 2, 2008 (USA)
Stars: Will Smith, Charlize Theron
Genre: Super Action-Drama
Company: Sony/Columbia Pictures

Scribes: Vincent Ngo, Vince Gilligan and Oscar winner Akiva Goldsman.

*Michael Mann is producing the film via his Forward Pass production shingle along with Smith's Overbrook Entertainment.

For updated info about Hancock, check http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0448157/ or http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/john_hancock/

Cartoon image from The Incredibles

As Many Stars As There Are In Heaven

According to imdb.com, my STARMETER ranking is 225,806 –which might be depressing if A) I actually cared and/or B) I actually knew what this meant.

As it is, all I know is that there are a whole lot of people ahead of me, and even more people behind me. Success means quite a bit of standing in line, which really means that the longer you wait it out, the better your chances are.

That’s why I never pay much attention to the crap-shoot statistics of making it in Hollywood (or the lousy chances of ever getting a movie made.) If I actually allowed myself to believe any of that, I’d lose faith—and faith is what I need most! Lack of faith is what makes dreams wither and die.

The people who publish those dire statistics are the ones who write screenwriting books. Those statistics exist to encourage people to give up or, more importantly, coerce screenwriters into thinking that they need more screenwriting books to put them at the top of the game. You don’t need more books about writing; you need more writing books – as in books with crisp, blank white pages for you to actually write on. And I do mean write, like with a pen—the old-fashioned way.

To put things into perspective: Have you ever been in a huge line at the grocery store and the person in front of you acts all irritated at the clerk. Finally that person just leaves in a huff. You get to move forward. Then, suddenly…right after that person leaves, another checkout lane opens up and the clerk points to you and says, “I can help the next person over here” and that’s YOU! It’s your big break.

Not that it’s that exciting to jump the line at the grocery store, but my point is that you never know when you might get a ‘break.’ That grumpy person ahead of you missed out. It could’ve been him or her. You might get a break here and there, but you’re still going to have to wait until the time is right and you’ll still have to work.

As odd as it might sound, the luckiest people are the ones who had to struggle to get where they are. As much I hate to admit it, they are the ones that had to wait. Not only is success that much sweeter in the end, but the success is given to them when they are truly ready for it. That means that they are ready to handle it.

So, back to my so-called STARMETER--- The good side, 225,806 isn’t bad when I really think about how many people are actually listed on imdb ---which is about 1.6 million. That’s a huge amount of people standing behind me at the grocery store. (We’re all reading US Weekly, by the way…something that none of us would admit, but I’m being realistic.) This also proves just how ridiculous ( and arbitrary) rankings are to begin with.

I forgot to mention that imdb says that my STARMETER is up 143% from last week. Did I do anything differently? NO. Maybe more yoga than usual…maybe more writing… However, as long as there are projects like the feature film pairing hot chicks with freaky little people ( which is an actual project going into development), I know I have a chance.
In the meantime, I keep moving forward…the line is getting shorter, but it’s still long. I wait patiently. I write to pass the time.

*Starfish pencil drawing by: Gloria Hopkins. Available at flickr.com*