It's my birthday

and I'll blog if I want to

steppin up!

What up bizzitches? Iggy rappin at you from the WC holla!

I got another Hollywood job yesterday!

This one might prove a little more helpful than the Dogmatic job. I'm an assistant to a producer who's got several movie projects lined up. Yes, MOVIE projects. Instead of working on commercials I'm headed straight to the big time!

No, it's not paid. And no, I'm not going to do anything other than fetch things, organize files and otherwise be his bitch.

And unfortunately I'm busy most of the week with school, so I can only work Mondays.

But hey it's a step! If I can get in good with this guy, he might help me out with other things! Maybe someday he'll even help me produce a movie of my own!

Funny story: I went up for the interview and got a little bit lost/confused. I thought I was heading for an office, but there were only apartment buildings on the whole block. Turns out the whole production company runs out of a random apartment...

I dig that though. It doesn't have to be a big high-class building, when it's all about making the movies. You gotta start somewhere!

P.S. Here's the last movie he produced: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0419749/

woah

It's September 11th.

The terrible day seems so far behind us, doesn't it?

we still need those extras

There's a seminar at a certain top-flight university this weekend. It's about making a career in entertainment, starting from the bottom as an intern or assistant. I saw the listing on Craigslist the other day... it was in between "Wanna be a HIGH-END HOLLYWOOD HAIR STYLIST?" and "(21+) Extras Needed for Adult Film".

I followed up on the seminar and discovered that it's a one-day event, or to put it another way, eight and a half hours of lectures from the VP of some production company. At the end of the day you get a sheet of paper with phone numbers on it, and a listing of companies with job openings in their bottom rung. The cost? $75.

I guess I shouldn't have been surprised by this. Hollywood has made an empire out of packaging and repackaging the same worthless stuff every year. Ironically the same place I found the seminar listed-- Craigslist-- I can also find job openings galore, as well as the phone numbers and email addresses I need to contact in order to apply.

So why would I pay $75 for the same information? Well... yeah I wouldn't.

I'm just gonna keep waiting for something from Craigslist to pan out.

since there's nothing going on with the quest...

I had a bad dream last night. :(

Actually, most of my dreams tend to be really intense and strongly emotional. Some of the time this happens in a good way-- more often than not, though, it's bad. Bizarre huh? I'm sure part of it is because I'm an intense person. Another part is just the nature of dreams. I think dreams are the place where we sort out the tougher webs of thought that tangle up in our heads.

So tell me what this means:

I'm driving my car up a long flight of stairs. For some reason this was a major road-- there are many cars in front of me and a traffic light sits at the top of the stairs. Flashy neon signs are all around me. The light turns red ahead of me, and the cars in front screech to a halt. I'm forced to stop halfway up the steps.

As I'm sitting there I notice the incline is getting steeper. The steps are becoming taller and taller, by now reaching about a foot in height. The light turns green-- the car in front of me speeds ahead-- but I'm gunning the gas and I can't make it any farther up the stairs. It's still growing steeper. I'm starting to panic as I slide backwards. The slope is nearly vertical by this point.

In the reality of the moment, I truly believe I am going to die.

Then suddenly I'm out of the car, and in a crowded room under one of the neon signs lining the staircase. But there's no time to enjoy my sudden freedom.

A crazed man is brandishing a pencil and stabbing people with it.

Another person hands me a garrotte-- I don't know why this is happening-- and tells me to go strangle the killer. I'm terrified so I head around behind him and pass the garrotte off to another man who's got him in a headlock.

That's when the killer breaks free, stabbing the Good Samaritan in the side of the neck with the pencil. He sees me and sprints straight for me. I can't describe how petrified I felt at this moment-- I'm running in circles around a tiny room as a crazed killer chases me, while a full crowd of people watch impassively.

Warning-- this crazy yarn is about to get graphic.

Somehow a pencil got into my hand, and I decide it's time to "kill or be killed". I turn around and shove the pencil up THROUGH the man's face. The tip stabs through the roof of his mouth and explodes out straight up, right between his eyes.

The crowd bursts into wild applause as the killer seems to lose all aggression and becomes normal. That's right-- he just got a pencil through the face and he's not dead. But now the crisis is averted, as he has become a regular citizen with no malicious intent.

You know how people say they wake up "in a cold sweat"? I've never woken up like that-- but I have woken up in a very, very warm sweat. Yeah, that's how I woke up last night. Right after that little episode.

Again, it's hard to communicate the intense emotions I felt while all the craziness was going on... but trust me, it was very real to me at the moment. And this is actually not an uncommon thing for me. I usually dream like this.

After lying awake for a couple seconds of confusion, my first normal thought was: "WOOOOOOOOOOOW that was intense."

Followed closely by "I wonder if I can put that in a movie?"

you can't fight in here-- this is the war room!

I think I've come up with a new concept for a movie-- one that seems to have a lot more promise than the first screenplay I wrote! Exciting stuff, it is. I'm still not too sure on the details so I won't get into it here. You can kill a story by trying to tell it before it's written.

Let's just say it's a mind-f#!&.

Here's another item of interest for me. I just bought this:

It was the best purchase of my life. I am absolutely in love with these movies, and I'm just in awe of Stanley Kubrick. Within the past year he's grown to become my favorite director.

If you can't see the titles, here's what came with it:
Lolita
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
2001: A Space Odyssey
A Clockwork Orange
Barry Lyndon
The Shining
Full Metal Jacket
Eyes Wide Shut
(plus a documentary about Kubrick's life)

The only ones I haven't watched yet are Lolita and Eyes Wide Shut-- the other six are unqualified masterpieces.

Honestly, if you've never seen a Kubrick film, you really owe it to yourself to watch one. In reality you should probably see all of them. I will let you borrow one or more if you ask nicely-- maybe I'll even watch them with you. :)

Seriously, this guy is unparalleled when it comes to making movies. The sheer craft and technique he used. Not to mention the great stories and characters. Pure genius. (And I don't use that word lightly!)

My favorite film of his is Paths of Glory, which sadly wasn't included in the boxed set, but I went out and bought it anyway. What an incredible film.

I noticed I've thrown around a lot of hyperbole in this entry. Well I don't care. I'm still blown away.

These are the kinds of movies I wish I was good enough to make.

optimism

I just saw the American Jesus
He's huddled up against an old oil drum under the I-10 at Crenshaw
Blowing through a dirty harmonica
and dreaming

more reflection

Writing is like an itch... you have to scratch it.

Writing a blog is like having an itch under a heavy cast-- except the cast doesn't come off after six weeks. It stays on forever. Somehow you have to keep scratching.

So scratch I shall.

Thinking back over my life, I've always wanted to achieve big things. When I was six years old-- a wee Iggy if there ever was one!-- I couldn't think of anything better than being an astronaut. My grandpa was an engineer who worked on space travel equipment, and when he wasn't being a rocket scientist he was a professor. One of his students was a young Neil Armstrong. That is not a lie.

So naturally I wanted to go into "the family business". I bought a bunch of books about the universe, space travel, the moon, the solar system, you name it. Well, actually I didn't buy any of them. My parents did. I was six, remember. But I read every word, pored over every page, stared at all the pictures. For me it was a foregone conclusion: I would go to NASA and train to be an astronaut. I even had my mom sew a complete space-suit costume for Halloween one year. (The costume is still in my closet as we speak.)

I'm not sure when, exactly, but at some point over the next few years, the astronaut dream faded.

At the age of eleven I bought a book about becoming a video game programmer-- and suddenly, that was it. I'd found a new Shangri-La. Gone were my fantasies of exploring the galaxy... now I could sit in front of a computer all day, play games, and get paid tons of money! I immediately set about learning how to program in BASIC, knowing I would eventually work my way up to C++ and Java-- "the big leagues". Someday I would make a brilliant game that would transform the industry. And in the interim, life was certainly looking a whole lot more fun!

Wait a minute. You're telling me it's not that much fun to be a programmer? They have to deal with endless amounts of code, debugging and searching for tiny errors, getting paid in peanuts, and during all of that, they almost never get to play games?

Oh.

Forget it, then.

Looking back, it's interesting that I went straight from programming to the "engineering track". It certainly was never a dream of mine. I didn't lie awake at night fantasizing about AUTOCAD and corporate meetings. I just wanted to make some good money, and it was time I pull my head out of the clouds and aim for something I could realistically do.

So why did I give up on my dreams?

I remember being very disappointed by the reality of programming. As I gradually came to understand what it would really be like to make video games, there was a profound sense of letdown-- it was like finding out there's no Santa Claus.

Maybe that led me to think that I couldn't find a job that was fun, so I might as well go for a job that paid well. I stopped paying attention to my passions and buckled down for a long career in the real world.

Now my priorities are a little different. Passion before cash. Meaningful work before stability. Creativity before conformity.

Dreams before regrets.

If you're wondering why I spend so many posts talking about "the history of Iggy" and my decision to leave engineering, it's probably because I'm still scared to death that I made a terrible mistake. Nine months have gone by since I decided to make movies, and I'm still trying to talk myself into it. Having been on "the track" since I was a little kid, it's hard to step off and find my own way.

But at this point I'm more than ready to jump into the film business. Actually, I can't wait!

There is that little matter of "graduating from college", though. I should probably take care of that first.

After that-- the sky's the limit!