I've been looking back on my adventure in Hollywood, culling pages from my journal...
It would be over two months and a new year before I made another entry. January 10, 1994.
Mailing out query letters to agents. Starting a new script about a Christmas pageant.
I only mention it in the journal in passing, but I joined a new on-line writer's BBS, PAGE. It was a place created after the WGA West shut down its bulletin board system. I met a young man Aron Abrams. Funny writer. Sharp. We seem to have the same comic sensibilities. Plus, it was writing for the then-current incarnation of National Lampoon; a website. He suggested I submit some material, so I dug some stuff out of the files and submitted. The rest is a wrap of listing of names, old and new, that I had seemed to be touching base with.
Mailing out query letters to agents. Starting a new script about a Christmas pageant.
I only mention it in the journal in passing, but I joined a new on-line writer's BBS, PAGE. It was a place created after the WGA West shut down its bulletin board system. I met a young man Aron Abrams. Funny writer. Sharp. We seem to have the same comic sensibilities. Plus, it was writing for the then-current incarnation of National Lampoon; a website. He suggested I submit some material, so I dug some stuff out of the files and submitted. The rest is a wrap of listing of names, old and new, that I had seemed to be touching base with.
Here was the thing; I think Aron and I had hit it off. We traded scripts. He came to New York once and we met up; saw a matinee of True West and ate. I thought it was the beginning of a friendship but...I lack social skills. I don't know how to work friendship. And I was on the wrong coast. He went on to be successful (even writing on a show called "Grounded for Life" which was set on Staten Island. So I kinda took that as a slap in the face.) Married. Bought a house. Then he died. It was unnerving. This pattern will repeat itself in one form or another for years to come.
Anyway, PAGE was set up with the ability to be an email box, so I finally had an actual email address now: [email protected].
Two weeks later, I'm speaking to Kevin Brown after another earthquake ("Shakened"). He sent out "Kringle" to a couple of producers ("also shakened"). The rest was a laundry list of items:
Anyway, PAGE was set up with the ability to be an email box, so I finally had an actual email address now: [email protected].
Two weeks later, I'm speaking to Kevin Brown after another earthquake ("Shakened"). He sent out "Kringle" to a couple of producers ("also shakened"). The rest was a laundry list of items:
- I submitted to HBO's New Writer program after getting a tip from the PAGE BBS.
- Wrote a children's story that came out well (but I never did anything with).
- Sent Toddman & Simon a TV script.
- Agent Robbins sent back the Seinfeld scripts. They weren't reading them at the moment. Too busy. In retrospect I see Robbins said he'd get the scripts to "Seinfeld," but there was no promise as to what they would do with them once they arrived.
- Meeting playwright Bill about a play of his, he needs the input of a Three Stooges buff.
- We were told the WGAE Activities Committee will not be creating a Writing Sub-committee for the awards dinner that year as Herb Sargent would be doing it all. So that bridge had sailed.
- Resumed work on the book, "The Write Stuff."
A month later, (2/25/94), my laundry list continues;
- An Assistant of Toddman & Simon sends back my TV script, "Yuks." I doubted it was read. I also sensed this was the end of our relationship.
- I did send stuff to National Lampoon but no response.
- At the WGAE, our attempt to run an "Agents' Night" (where writers could interact with agents) was kind of a bust; several agents didn't show, only 1 movie guy and the ones that did show up got inundated by the writers.
- I met a book agent who handled children's books and managed to send off my story, "Jackolli & D.L. Wait for their Mom," to her.
- Met with Bill Squire and read his play "The Three Scrooges" for him. It was fun to participate, but I was never asked to get more involved.
Oh, and here's something I had totally forgotten about: Donna, my actress friend from the group "Style Without Substance," called. She had met this "hot-shot producer type," Shari Upbin who's taken a shine to Donna. She wants to feature Donna in a showcase with another actor she's got. Donna recommended me as a writer. So there's a meeting. Donna's fiance is there. Upbin had some history; producer on "One Mo' Time," worked with Sammy Cahn. She wants to direct. Fiance wants to produce.
I didn't note it at the time, but I remember one thing from this meeting. She points at Donna and the other actor and goes "What am I looking at here? What have these two got? What can they be?" I was looking back and forth and finally said, "What?" "Siblings! They look like brother and sister! That's a relationship that's never been explored in a show!" At that point I knew the gig wasn't going to go.
In the meantime, I was assembling old skits into something called "Cold Drafts." It was going to be a bunch of my show parody sketches lumped together as something...
Just a few days later, February ends and all I can mark down are the rejections that came in, the kid's story at Curtis Brown, and National Lampoon. Bleech.
I didn't note it at the time, but I remember one thing from this meeting. She points at Donna and the other actor and goes "What am I looking at here? What have these two got? What can they be?" I was looking back and forth and finally said, "What?" "Siblings! They look like brother and sister! That's a relationship that's never been explored in a show!" At that point I knew the gig wasn't going to go.
In the meantime, I was assembling old skits into something called "Cold Drafts." It was going to be a bunch of my show parody sketches lumped together as something...
Just a few days later, February ends and all I can mark down are the rejections that came in, the kid's story at Curtis Brown, and National Lampoon. Bleech.
