I've been looking back on my adventure in Hollywood, culling pages from my journal...
So, as it turns out, my big reason for joining the WGA Activities committee, to get a workshop going, was misdirected at best. I was on the wrong committee. Another committee, the Programs committee, would do something like that.
For a while I was part of a group, Pen-to-Stage, which was a workshop where we read scripts and gave feedback, and produced some small stage shows. I met some good people there, got some of my friends involved, and even wound up getting involved with Style Without Substance through a connection made with this group. I so wanted to be involved with something like it again, and I thought the WGA would be the perfect place to host it. Instead I wound up on the committee that planned the awards dinner and a couple of parties. But I decided to hang around.
Here’s a weird thing; I don’t mention it AT ALL in the journal but, when I joined the WGA, they used to have annual New Member parties, inviting all newbies who had joined during the course of the year. Excitedly (and alone) I went. It was at the Algonquian Hotel, a writer’s Mecca because of the famed Algonquian Round Table of the 1930s. Once there, I fell into the clutches of a certain Willie Suggs, a news writer for ABC who just happened to be the chair of the WGAE Activities Committee. She talked me in to joining. And that’s how that went.
Here’s a weird thing; I don’t mention it AT ALL in the journal but, when I joined the WGA, they used to have annual New Member parties, inviting all newbies who had joined during the course of the year. Excitedly (and alone) I went. It was at the Algonquian Hotel, a writer’s Mecca because of the famed Algonquian Round Table of the 1930s. Once there, I fell into the clutches of a certain Willie Suggs, a news writer for ABC who just happened to be the chair of the WGAE Activities Committee. She talked me in to joining. And that’s how that went.
Meanwhile, I resumed work on my novel, since I seemed to have attracted the interest of some literary agent named VanDerBeets. Sometimes I’m amazed at the names I come across here and how I only seem to note them in passing. I had long forgotten about this one.
Mid-July, Kevin came to NYC and we met up for lunch. I took a long lunch from work. I passed along some scripts, we talked comedy theory, and debated “Like Magic.”
Also, I was formulating a new script, using some odd ideas I had picked up over time, a dumped secretary, fired. A Private Eye. A place to park all my Pee-Wee Herman P.I. bits.
Mid-July, Kevin came to NYC and we met up for lunch. I took a long lunch from work. I passed along some scripts, we talked comedy theory, and debated “Like Magic.”
Also, I was formulating a new script, using some odd ideas I had picked up over time, a dumped secretary, fired. A Private Eye. A place to park all my Pee-Wee Herman P.I. bits.
I now recognize the fact that the whole Warner/Paul Ruebens project was dead and simply winding down. Nothing was ever officially stated, there just a lack of new information. I guess I knew it at the time. Kevin mentioned doing TV specs, so I churned out a “Seinfeld” episode. I probably broke every rule writing it, and recycled old scripts of mine to do it. I commenced an “agent quest” sending out cover letters and resumes to agents on the WGA list of signatory agents.
By mid-August I had 3 responses to 22 mailings. One guy actually called, but was disappointed to learn my scripts were all “tainted,” read by a Hollywood producer. I think "Hollywood producer" was a broad definition of Kevin, but the guy had dealt with Warner and Goodman & Simon, so he felt it was a fair point. Which meant I had to write a new script.
I didn’t hear from Kevin again until fall had rolled around. He was fried, had no income, but had a couple of prospects with a thing he wrote, or a producer gig. And I clung to my job because the concept of having no income terrified me. Which is kinda my life motto.
I didn’t hear from Kevin again until fall had rolled around. He was fried, had no income, but had a couple of prospects with a thing he wrote, or a producer gig. And I clung to my job because the concept of having no income terrified me. Which is kinda my life motto.
