Backdoor To Hollywood

Blogging's not just idiots typing in their dirty underwear. It's a Star Making machine, baby. Ana Marie Cox gets a deal to do a supposedly fun, hip, irreverent version of Meet the Press for HBO, which they'll be looking at as a potential pilot.

Wonderful. HBO is really doing some ground-breaking work. Where else can you find a supposedly "funny" interview/panel show on the week's events?

Oh, right -- on HBO. And on Comedy Central. And on Saturday Night Live. And... everywhere else.

Phin sent that to me, depressing me to no end, especially because my one Hollywood connection (no names) had written back to me recently that he "liked" my script, and thought it was "orginal" with "great characters," which, of course, is what you say when you hate something.

The only worse possible review would contain the words "interesting" and "has a lot of potential" and "some parts I liked" and "I appreciated many of your punctuation choices."

But I just got off the phone with him, and he seems to have liked it a bit more than that his email suggested, and will try to get it into the hands of someone who might want to make the movie. (Of course, this contains the implicit message I and my production company would definitely not be among those select few willing to make your movie, but it's something.)

Still, it was very fun to be talking to this guy, and hearing the last names of writers and directors and big-name actors dropped, especially since I liked most of the names being dropped. (Especially when it's just the last name -- makes it sound cooler, and makes you feel like you're in with the guys somehow.)

And hearing that so-and-so, who I think is pretty funny, also reads this stupid blog, is pretty cool.

Incidentally, this guy -- comedy writer/actor/etc. -- really loved the Steven Seagal thread, and was laughing out loud at a lot at the various jokes you morons were telling each other. If you can make a professional comedy guy laugh, you must be pretty funny. So give yourselves a pat on a back, but don't let it go to your heads.

By the way, a couple of his contributions would have been:

Steven Seagal is... Sweating From Exertion

and

Steven Seagal is... Undressing You With His Eyes

...but he doesn't really post here, so they didn't grace the thread. He particularly liked Rosetta's (I think) Steven Seagal in.. The Usual Sous-Chefs, and a couple more. I would have listened more carefully, were I not crushed by the direction of the conversation, "Yeah, the script's okay. You know what was really funny? That thread you had absolutely nothing to do with, that's what."

So, there you go. Not there yet, but this stupid moronblog might actually succeed in its intended mission -- getting me a big fat check overflowing with crazy screenwriting money.

Then again, he thinks you're funny, so, really, he's not exactly a tough sell.

Oh... Since he was generous enough to give me some suggestions on my script -- or "notes," as we people in Tinseltown call them -- I'll offer him a punch-up of one of his Steven Seagal entries.

Steven Seagal is... Sweating From The Thighs

I just think that paints a stronger visual. Plus, I love the word "thighs." It's technically not a dirty word, but it always reads like a dirty word. I like the thematic tension of that.

posted by Ace at 06:06 PM

| Access Comments