progress!

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. This is your captain, Air Marshal Iggy speaking. We've got some light-patterned clouds coming up on our right, and if you look down through those clouds you'll see the Grand Canyon. It's a breathtaking sight this time of day, right near sunset. Truly a rewarding experience for everyone who has chosen to fly with us today.

However, I do have some bad news-- our flight from Chicago to Miami may be getting in a little later than scheduled.

(This cold open brought to you by an old Calvin and Hobbes comic.)

So finally I have something new to report in my quest. I wrote a second draft of my short-film script. It's much improved over the old one, and I'm a lot more excited to put it to action. I also think I've gotten two of the parts locked down: my "main character" and the sarcastic clerk. Only part I still need to cast is the female clerk.

Seriously, if acting in a short sounds interesting to you, let me know! The casting call is completely open at this point.

Now the next steps: getting a 24p camera locked down (for relatively cheap, hopefully one-day use), talking to a couple places for permission to film, and since the script calls for rain, I also need to have God set up a rainy day for us. Or I'll have to rig up some kind of rain machine.

Too bad I don't live in friggin Berkeley, where it rains 93% of the year.

But for today, progress has been achieved.

Which is the opposite of congress. And Congress has certainly NOT been achieved.

Well, technically the Congress always exists, and it's not really something to be "achieved". It's more like an institution. A system of government that is constantly in place. Really, without Congress we'd be nowhere. Our country would be a totalitarian wasteland, with a so-called "president" selecting a few corrupt judges to protect his tyranny.

Where was I going with this?

one week and one day?

Yesterday was the one-week anniversary of this blog. Before I break out the champagne, I'd like to present all of you, my faithful readers, with a special treat. I like to sustain the idea that I'm just a character, a man (or woman) named Iggy, writing from an unspecified and constantly-changing location. But today, I'm going to reveal my identity for the first time.

I'm going to post a picture of myself.

But be warned-- I'm not planning on doing this very often, so enjoy it while it lasts.

Linky

You know what, I have to apologize for that picture. I was not having my best hair day, and it turns out my favorite flower-patterned tie is barely in the frame! What a gyp.

On the "quest" front, not much to report. I spent most of today sitting on a Greyhound bus, traveling across state lines.

When we went out to our lunch break, the guy sitting in front of me didn't make it back in time. The bus driver was very adamant-- he'd said 2:30, damn it, and we weren't about to wait until 2:32 for the man to show up.

We pulled back onto the road at 2:31 exactly, sans guy-in-front-of-me. As we turned onto the freeway, I looked back and saw him standing on the sidewalk, sadly watching the ass-end of the bus as it disappeared into the golden horizon.

Let this story be a warning: Greyhound takes absolutely no shit. Not from anybody.

But now I'm back in my main haunt, so pretty soon it will be time to start on this short-film project. One last tidbit-- I can't think of a name for it yet, but the main plotline revolves around... shoes.

Yep. Shoes. (...betch.)

Don't worry, though. I think you'll like it.

setbacks

Today is all about failure.

Google defines "miserable failure" as "President George W. Bush".

Or at least it used to. They fixed that a while back, to the collective disappointment of nerds like me.

But here's a fun thing I found on Google today: try googling "Elgoog". Mind-bending stuff. Or you can try googling "french military victories", if you weren't around about six years ago when that joke was still fresh.

But today we aren't talking about weird Google results-- we're talking about failure.

(I think that's what I was talking about, right?)

For me, failure has taken a lot of different forms. I failed to get into the film school I wanted to get into. I failed at being an engineer. And this summer I applied to about twenty different jobs as a production assistant, and I failed to get a single one.

A production assistant is a person that works on a film set, who basically does all of the shit that nobody else wants to do. It's a position that's just above "being a prop" on a set. A typical PA task involves guarding the set from passersby for five hours straight, or wading into a muddy stream to carefully keep a small fleet of toy boats from floating off-camera. If you're lucky, you get to drive places and pick things up-- or pick people up-- because union scale for gas reimbursement is amazing.

But yeah, I couldn't even get a single one of those jobs for this summer.

I almost got work on a reality show that was going to be filmed in either Newport Beach (which I could do) or Santa Barbara (which I couldn't)-- but as Orange County is a ridiculously expensive place to film, they said nyet to Newport. That makes sense to me, though. I mean, they didn't even tape The O.C. in Orange County, which says a lot about how much it must cost.

I mean, the show is called "The O.C." for God's sake. If they named a show "Temecula" I would think they would go ahead and film it in Temecula. If it was called "West New Mexico", go film in friggin' Albuquerque. "Chico", "Downtown Riverside", "Agoura Hills"-- you get the point. Hollywood is weird sometimes.

Oh well.

Luckily, craigslist keeps posting a pretty constant stream of these types of openings. So I'm gonna keep trying to break in. If I get anything, you guys will be the first to know.

Some people have told me I shouldn't have to be a PA at all, if I want to be a writer/director. Honestly though, I just want the experience on set. I don't really mind doing crappy work, if I'm going to be working in such an interesting place.

But so far... the word of the day is "failure".

googlebomb

In an effort to get my readership up, I'm now going to Googlebomb this website-- and write down some key search terms that might attract people to Iggy's Quest:

Britney Spears swallowing a sword. Howard Stern's penis. Iguanas. Muscle Milk. The Monopoly guy taking a crap. iPod Touch. Six sick sheep sleep soundly. Miley Cyrus doing a handstand. Ninja Warrior. Alicia Silverstone's balls. Viva la Vida = the best album of 2008. (That last part is actually true.) Justin Timberlake playing Stratego with John Mayer. Chocolate chip cookies. Talladega Nights. And of course... 2 Girls 1 Cup.

There! Hope that helped.

Welcome to all my new (and slightly weird) readers! Scroll down to the bottom post to get caught up on what's going on here. My name is Iggy, and I'm a young, lithe flight attendant from Dallas who also wants to be a writer/director someday.

Actually I don't have too much to say today. I've pretty much gotten you caught up on my quest. But I will tell you a little bit about my new project for this summer.

To be a director, you basically just have to start getting experience making movies. Short films are a perfect way to get that experience. You don't need a huge budget-- if you have the right camera, you can make a movie on $100 or less. Quentin Tarantino once said that trying to make a movie with a shoestring budget is the best film school anyone can have. And y'all know how much I love QT.

So I'm gonna be making a short film, and then I'm probably going to just upload it to Youtube and see how many views I can get. I've heard that people have actually been hired to make movies or music videos, based solely on Youtube videos they directed.

Pretty intense, huh?

The casting call is open for three characters. A downcast but nice guy, maybe HS or college-age. A highly sarcastic store clerk. And last, but certainly not least, a quirky, attractive female clerk, in her late teens.

Now please be sure to keep your tray tables in their upright and locked position, and fasten your seatbelts, cuz this plane is taking off-- straight to the top of the Google hit list!

(Please?)

writing

Howdy, sports fans. Iggy here. I don't have much time-- I've been waiting tables at this Chicken & Waffles house in Birmingham, Georgia for six hours, then I ducked into this supply closet to update you guys on my quest. But I think my boss is on the warpath.

This job sucks.

But you know what? I would rather work at this podunk chicken & waffles restaurant, serving griddles to fat Southern women, than spend another second as an engineering major.

(Whew! I managed to tie that intro into my overall blog concept. High five to myself!)

So this entry is about me writing stuff. It's not really that long of a story, actually. (Thus my clever "I don't have much time" intro, which really means I don't feel like writing a lot today. Yes. It all ties together.)

When I was but a wee Iggy of ten years, I met a man at my church who wrote Christian fiction for young adults. We struck up a kind of friendship, the special kind that grown men and ten-year-old boys can only have...

...purely writing-related. Duh.

Anyway, my author friend decided to write a book with me and a friend as the main characters. It was kind of a horror series-- we fought a gigantic sea monster-- but with the power of the Bible behind it all. I actually got to write a little segment of the book! As a ten-year-old, I was already kind of a published author. And my writing interest wasn't done yet.

In seventh grade I wrote eighty pages of a novel. It was called Code Red, and I wish I had an excerpt to post, because it was totally the best thing ever written. It was about this secret agent team, led by Gray Bradford the super-spy, against an evil terrorist group called Stingray. By the way, when I said "the best thing ever written" I actually meant "the lamest thing ever invented by humanity". (Sorry for any confusion.)

But I would move on to high school and write more random stuff, and then my first year of college, I wrote a story called Six-Six-Seven which turned into a full-fledged book, almost 140 pages long.

Then this spring, after I decided to switch into film, I wrote my first-ever screenplay.

It's called Jack is Dead, and if you ask nicely enough, I might even post some snippets of it.

So what's the next step for me? I'm going to work on Jack until it's actually good enough to send out, and then I'll canvas the city of Hollywood with the script and try to find an agent. Then my next project will be to transform Six-Six-Seven into a screenplay (since I always pictured it as a movie, anyway).

I can't tell you how amazing it feels to have a full script written and locked away. This is how I know I'm a writer. It feels like the greatest thing I've ever done as a human-- even more than getting into the college I'm at.

Sure, it kinda sucks as a script.

But at least it's finished? (Question mark?)

Uh oh. I think my boss knows where I am. (See, I'm using the chicken and waffles conceit as a bailout because I'm tired of writing this post. In case you needed me to decode it for you.) I'd better get going. Last time she made me mop the kitchen using only my own saliva. I tell you, that floor tasted disgusting. Let's just say it's a good thing I like maple syrup so much.

Peace.

too bad i didn't know my credit was wack

I'm thinking of a number. Do you know what it is?

It's thirty-seven.

That's the approximate number of times I've actually wished that the "thinking of a number" guy would make a comeback, and replace the ungodly, annoying singing-pirate band that does the new Free Credit Report commercials. Seriously, if I hear "They say a man should always dress for the job he wants" one more time, I'm putting an ax through my own television.

I feel very strongly about this.

Well, guess I'd better awkwardly segue into the topic of today's post.

Iggy here, blogging at you from a couch in downtown Phoenix, Arizona. The weather's nice, if you have a large hump on your back to carry water, or if you normally reside on the planet Mercury. That's why I'm on the couch. Inside. Watching commercials for Dockers jeans ("Like a sound you hear that lingers in your ear...") and the Honda Element ("Oooooh barracuda!").

Yes, it's a blindingly exciting life I lead as a budding movie-maker.

But every so often a commercial for Activia yogurt comes on, with Jamie Lee Curtis, and I have to stop and take note. You've probably seen the one.



This commercial is always really interesting to me because I was an intern at the production company that made this ad.

Dogmatic Creative Production, Inc. was the name of the place. A little boutique business in a little hole in the wall in Venice Beach. It's across the street from the world-famous original Gold's Gym. A lot of hippies live in Venice Beach... I would walk the two blocks from the bus stop every Tuesday and Thursday, and every morning I could catch the distinct aroma of pot in the air, hovering around one of the splashy art-deco houses that lined the street.

I never stopped to ask for a toke. That's part of the lifestyle of Venice Beach that I didn't ever partake in, fortunately or unfortunately. Maybe if I had, the art-deco scenery wouldn't have looked so much like piles of kitschy vomit.

The job itself was very easy. I sat around watching my boss David make edits on his incredible Apple G5 setup, using Final Cut Pro, and every now and then I would get a chance to jump on there and mess around with some editing. Throughout the day, people would ask me to make runs for them. Pick up lunch, pick up tapes, return tapes, pick up groceries. Sometimes I would go into the machine room and make dubs-- basically, copies of tapes that would come in from on-location shoots.

We worked on a bunch of different projects. Real cutting-edge stuff. The Jamie Lee Curtis commercial was one of those... and you should have seen some of the stuff that didn't make it into the final cut. (She's kind of a diva, especially considering it was a friggin' yogurt commercial.)

Another one was a Carl's Jr. shoot. Dogmatic didn't handle the ad itself, just some B-roll footage. But don't let that fool you: we were involved in some real top-of-the-line stuff.

Ellen DeGeneres did a plug for some dog food-- and we were there.

Heidi Montag started her own crappy clothes line-- and we were there.

Miranda Kerr launched a new perfume-- and we were there.

(By the way, Miranda Kerr is stunningly hot. That was one of the better projects we got to work on. :)

Through it all I managed to get some experience with Final Cut, along with meeting some fun famous people and learning a whole lot about how the entertainment business works. Plus, I now have a couple of references that might-- MIGHT-- be able to help me get my next job. That's always fun.

Oh God. I have to go... I just heard the sound of Hell's gates opening up and a thousand damned souls screaming for release.

"Well I was shoppin' for a new car, which one's me? A cool convertible or an SUV?"

How about an ambulance?

boxing day epiphanies

Hey kids. Iggy here, blogging at you from a ice fishing tanker in the Bering Strait.

I just got finished hauling in a big load of king crab-- very common this time of year in the Arctic Circle-- and I thought, after soaking in a hot tub for about seventeen hours (cuz it's effing cold up here, okay?) I would shoot you off a daily update on my quest to become a gigantic, world-famous filmmaker.

My fingers are still a little frostbitten, so try to be understanding when I try to type the word "filmmaker" a hundred times because it keeps coming out as "ftikkmsakjer45". (Seriously. That last paragraph took almost two hours to write.) But I'll try and keep it in check.

Today I'm going to take you back, back, back in time... about six months, to December 26th, 2007. The day after Christmas. The day I woke up as an engineering student, and went to sleep a wannabe Scorsese.

I really can't tell you what snapped in my head, but it had certainly been building for a while. I was coming out of a horrendous fall quarter, in which I took four insane classes-- physics, chemistry lab, linear algebra, and C++ programming-- and in doing so, hopelessly burned myself out on ever accomplishing any school-related thing ever again. I came away with less than a 2.0 for the quarter. Considering the load, I'm surprised I didn't get all F's.

The truth is, I could have tried harder than I did. But I didn't-- because I just didn't care. I hated the idea of being an engineer. Sitting in a cubicle, filing reports, designing widgets for flanges and feeling the more creative side of my soul die, day after day after day.

So the morning after Christmas, I woke up and suddenly had a stunning realization: I didn't have to be an engineer. I could do whatever the hell I wanted. I could go work on an ice fishing tanker in the Bering Strait for all the live-long day, and as long as it made me happy, why not just do it?

Within seconds I was out of bed. I opened up my laptop, and sitting there in my comfy plaid boxers and wild bed hair, I canceled all my engineering classes for the next quarter. I was free-- and I had never felt so powerful, so liberated. It was an incredible moment. One that changed my life.

(I never remember to dress up for these kind of things.)

The following quarter I applied to my school's film department. Suffice it to say, it's one of the best film programs in the country, and the selectivity is unbelievable. I ended up being rejected based on the fact that I was under the minimum GPA required to transfer.

But back on that chilly December day, I had made up my mind: damn the odds, I was going to make movies.

Why movies? Oh, I'm SO glad you asked!

I remember watching Pulp Fiction for the first time at the tender age of fifteen, and being completely blown away by the things that Tarantino did-- not only with the camera, but with the script. These people were talking like real people! Their conversations were interesting, funny, and extremely real. The story was structured perfectly. To this day, Pulp Fiction remains my favorite screenplay of all time... to say nothing of the brilliant camera angles, sequences, music choices, and performances QT managed to pull together for the film. It all came together into a powerfully new experience, a completely different approach to making a movie than I'd ever seen before in my young life.

Over the next few years I hungrily devoured any kind of cinematic experience that could give me that same rush, the exhilaration of watching something fresh, different, and NEW. Films like Memento, Eternal Sunshine, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Mulholland Drive, Fargo, A Clockwork Orange, and Man On Fire. They were my bread and butter. I became fascinated by the processes that went into creating these movies-- I watched all the DVD special features, listened to the director commentaries, even looked up behind-the-scenes footage on Youtube. I began to idolize directors like Tarantino, Kubrick, Scorsese, the Coens... and with each passing moment I studied these films, I began to recognize techniques and file them away into my memory banks. I started to think of ways to improve sequences, and I picked apart the reasons why these films were so effective.

Somewhere along that path, I think I became a filmmaker.

Maybe not a good one-- who knows, I've never made a film!-- but that's what I am.

And to this day, I consider December 26, 2007 to be the beginning of my crazy movie-making quest. (Although I think the transformation began a little while before that.)

Okay, I think that's good enough for one freezing Arctic night. Tomorrow I'll fill you in a little bit on the few small steps I've taken since that day in December, including my exciting and fulfilling internship at a creative production company (read: coffee-fetcher and ass-kisser). But until then, I'm gonna go chip chunks of ice off my own face.

Then I'm pretty sure it's back into the hot tub for me.

square one

The first blog post is always the hardest.

I've been sitting here staring at a blank text screen, watching the little cursor blink on and off, smiling to myself every time Google autosaves the draft-- as if the empty whiteness was somehow full of brilliant material, needing to be preserved just in case my computer crashes and I lose all of this nothingness.

Well actually, now I've got two little paragraphs done. Progress!

My name is Iggy. Or at least, that's what I'm calling myself. Truth be told, my real name isn't that important. If you know me, you know my name. If you don't, tough cookies. As far as you know, I'm a 75-year-old geriatric Miss America (or former Miss America), tapping away at the keys in between rounds of Mahjong at a retirement home in Scottsdale, AZ.

(All joking aside, though, Mahjong is the shit. Outside of Freecell there's no better time-waster.)

But there's one thing you do need to know about me here: I'm an aspiring writer and filmmaker.

Having struggled through a couple years at a very respected university, and having achieved decidedly mediocre results, I'm more convinced than ever that I'm not really the academic type. The truth is, I don't know how much I really have to offer the world, from an "importance" standpoint. But I think I have a shot at doing something creative, something that will let me leave my mark, something that might give me a small piece of a "legacy" someday. And at the end of the day, I just fucking love a really good movie-- and I want to make one someday. Who knows? Maybe I'm really good at it. I've never tried it before.

And so we finally come to the reason behind this blog. I'm going to chronicle my steps toward realizing that dream... through all the setbacks and triumphs, the long hours, the awful jobs, through EVERYTHING that it takes to break into the film business. If you're looking for a guide, you won't find one here. I have no idea what the fuck I'm doing. But I hope you'll still stick around for the ride.

So there we go. My first blog post is finito, and it's about frigging time, because there's a shuffleboard tournament at six that's calling my name, and I haven't taken my meds yet.

I'm Iggy, and this is my quest.