a quiet sunday

My brunch meeting on Sunday with the producers went really well. I think. Even though they had a ton of notes and it ran over an hour, they said they really liked what I had turned in. One producer, who I had never met prior, whipped off his sunglasses upon meeting me, peered very closely at my face and said, "Oh, you're so young. I was expecting someone older, more seasoned." He got that from reading my script? Then he looked again, and more closely. "You haven't had any work done," he said accusingly. I didn't know what else to say, so I said, "Stri-Vectin." He nodded knowingly, "Ah, yes." This is the pre-meeting banter? I'm just glad I didn't have to talk sports. The rest of the meeting went as anticipated, no big surprises, no criticism unfounded, all very constructive stuff.

Then the same producer started talking about a project he's producing and said that I was "the perfect person to write the screenplay" and would I be interested? I played it cool. "Absolutely", I said, "but let's concentrate on getting this project made first," indicating the script on the table. We agreed to set up a meeting no more than a week after I turn in the next draft. At the end of the meeting, I held my hand out to that producer and he said, "I'm going to hug you because we're going to be working together on my pet project." After he hugged me, he asked, "Do you like my cologne? It's new."

When I returned downtown, Fiesta Broadway was in full swing. Walking through Broadway on the way back to Jim's pad from the subway stop after that meeting was so surreal. Which one was my reality? Both? How did that happen again?

I don't remember the rest of the day, just that I took another day off from writing. Jim and I went to a benefit concert at Mr. T's bowl, featuring Emm't Swank and The Monolators. Jim's friend Marcus is the drummer for Swank and I was going to finally meet him and his wife, Sylvia. But I'm also friends with Mary, drummer for The Monolators, who I hadn't seen in forever. So we killed a few birds with one stone that night. As if that weren't enough, on our way in to Mr. T's, we ran into my dear friends Reena and Matt, also good friends of The Monolators and Emm't Swank. It was a bit like a reunion of old friends, rather than a meeting of new ones, which was nice. I even ran into an old client, someone who worked at KingWorld when I worked on the Hollywood Squares. Good times.

On days like Sunday, Los Angeles seems like such a small town.