Thursday, May 12, 2011

One of those days...



I am attempting to get two of the original 1980 Ghostkeeper actors together with me to do commentary on the Ghostkeeper DVD. But the world today isn't as simple as that may sound. Murray Ord, the lead male actor lives in Calgary and we finally found a date in mid-May.

But then he had one of his two daughters who was performing in a concert and Murray had to stay for a few of the shows. So we pushed it ahead to June 3, a Saturday but he called today to say he couldn't arrive until Friday as another daughter was graduating from something.

Back to the flights. I managed to find one, but needed some information from him. However he was driving on the wide open Alberta prairie. But I got him by cell and almost had everything. Now he arrives 2pm Friday (June 3rd), the day before.

Settled. At least for now.

Now Riva, the lead actress in the 1980 film. Riva lives here in Los Angeles so the travel part is much easier... sort of. Riva has a class till 12:30 and since the distrib booked the recording studio from 12pm-2pm, I had to call and change the hours, to 1:30 which meant pushing against another job the studio had later that day.

So, at least Murray and I will be there, Riva will also be there, I hope, but maybe a few minutes late.

I guess you can see by now that I am an on-time kind of person, I am always early for everything and it drives me crazy. I know, my problem.

And I also haven't heard from two producers about financing Ghostkeeper 2, one is still in a jury trial (not his, he's one of the jury) and the other is leaving for Cannes.

Wish I could leave for Cannes.

Wish I had a movie to show there.

Did I mention a company turned down a screenplay yesterday? And they turned it down not from the script, but the "pitch". The pitch in this case was a logline and a short synopsis. They never even asked to read the screenplay.

Now I am one of the worst "pitchers" ever. Because my writing tends to be non-genre, rather than "4 friends get drunk in Las Vegas". I wish I could write or deliver good pitches but I can't.

And one of the things I've learned over 30 years of writing is this;

You can either pitch good or write good, but seldom do both.

I've heard a lot of pitches and much of them were by writers who were never able to deliver the pitch in a screenplay. In fact I took a small poll of writers I know and they almost all agreed their pitches were awful.

Of course, some of them might have lied.

I guess I just hate being judged on the surface, rather than in depth. Kind of like a fashion model.

Hey, how about this; a brainy girl mocks a beautiful girl but wakes up as the beautiful girl and has to go through a day of being regarded as dumb.

Or whatever the politically correct word is.

Let's see, who could we cast...