Bad At Apologies

I'm prepping for tonight's closing-night film Kiss The Bride at the Orpheum. It's the first script to be produced from the Outfest Screenwriting Lab, and I'm looking forward to seeing it; I really like Ty and C. Jay and am hoping they get a great response. There are also festivities, of course, and a last opportunity to see people I've gotten to know and like during these past two weeks. If I sound a little wistful, I am. And terrified, of course, that the momentum I've built will vanish into the ether like so much...vanishing-ether stuff. Like my ability to coin metaphors, apparently.

Last night was Itty Bitty Titty Committee at the Ford Amphitheatre. It was festival awards night, so Bruce Vilanch was onhand with the same high-quality zingers he unleashed in The Star Wars Holiday Special. I don't mean the same type of zingers. I mean the same zingers. Though I think we can all agree a good Cyrus Vance joke never gets old.

I kid. It was fun. And the movie was enjoyable, but I looked horrible in it. satoribee is also in it, and she looked good. Me, not so much. Ah, but vanity is not something your finer actors worry about. I was playing an ugly chick. It's called being true to the character, people! You should try it sometime, Penelope Cruz!

There was a pre-party and a post-party and I went. I said hi to people. I'm still not feeling entirely copacetic, so my schmoozing was limited and I mostly hung out with people I know. Tonight I'll have to step it up a bit. Or I could just relax and trust that it'll all work out.

After tonight...well, the future is always a mystery, innit?

One is inclined to use that played-out metaphor about turning back into a pumpkin, but this morning has not been stellar. Probably the highlight was when my mom invited me to Universal Studios for a day of celebratory theme-park fun, then abruptly revoked the invitation, lectured me to "get a job", got in the pickup and drove away. I'm 5 again! Yay! Fun.

Had a similarly depressing experience a couple of hours later, but we won't be talking about that.

It's "Dreamgirls Singalong" at the festival tonight but I couldn't get a ticket (and, insufficient-gayness alert, I have not yet seen "Dreamgirls" so singing along would be a challenge.) I should keep working on the ticket, go, be seen, yada yada, but no.

They say Rome wasn't bilked in a day, but I feel like I didn't do enough to make things happen, since for all the people I met and all the assembled business cards in my pocket I still have no deal to make the movie, no agent, no writing assignments and just enough money in the bank to get back to Berkeley and buy a gross of those generic frozen burritos from Albertson's. My stupid heart arrhythmia is playing some kind of fucked-up Devo bossa nova. All things being equal, I believe I'm going to have a little lay-down. Wake me when things are better.




PS: I completely adore The Addams Family but I never much cared for The Munsters. What's that about?

I've reached my physical tolerance for exhaustion. Probably not a good sign with another six festival days ahead. I'll admit a wee bit of discouragement has crept into these affairs as well. I try to set a fairly high standard for myself and my work. Maybe it's not realistic. But, as my beloved Kit Kelley so aptly quoted, I don't want realism--I want magic. I spent my whole life putting everybody and everything else first. 38 years of coming last in my own story. I'm not going to do it anymore. I didn't come out here to turn my life story into a maudlin TV movie for Lifetime. Go fuck yourself, Meridith Baxter Birney.

I was pretty sick all day. I did make an important phone call, but I had that heart thing and was pretty wiped out. My friend Jill is in town from Berkeley for the reading and we went to dinner at Real Food Daily, a vegan restaurant in West Hollywood. It was tasty, but naturally I found out midway through the meal it contained buckets full of mushrooms, to which I am highly allergic (as longtime readers scoring at home are no doubt aware.) So that didn't help anything at all. Still, I had a nice time with Jill and her friend, and we talked a lot about my Big Hollywood Experience. And I played and sang some music, which is a rarity. Fucking stage fright. But I'm pretty weary of that whole hiding my light under a bushel thing. I think the bushel's pretty sick of it too. I've been so embarrassed about being transgendered, about even existing, that I didn't want to act anymore or sing publicly anymore because I was afraid of what people would say, or afraid I wasn't good enough. I'm done with that.

I'm exercising my perogative and skipping the HBO panel in the morning on the grounds that I'm deathly ill from the aforementioned mushrooms and the mitral valve crap. Plus, Wednesday being the most important day of my life (until the next one), I need to rest up. My mom and sister will arrive mid-afternoon. I'll be at the DGA around 6 if not earlier, should you care to loiter in my presence. There is parking in the DGA garage for $5. Also, and this is important news if you're coming to the reading: There will be a reception in the lobby afterwards with the writers, cast, directors, and the usual film festival perks. So we will get a chance to mingle. Sadly, unless they are planning a whopping surprise, some of the acclaimed mcbrennan repertory company will not be able to attend, so you won't get to meet the real-life Ricky, for example, or the Principal with the wandering hands, or Jamie Farr or the Reverend Jimmy Swaggart. My apologies. Hopefully my bloated pixie visage will be sufficient.

I'm going to try and sleep. Ugh, what a time for the fucking mushrooms. Hopefully I'll be well enough to attend my own...reading. Yes. See you there!

Please note the extremely filtered nature of this post. If a word of this gets out, it's all memes from here on out. Thx.

Okay, not so much a redaction, just an acknowledgement of the First Rule Of Blogging: Never blog in anger. See, I received my training in the theatre, and am used to working with a tight-knit group of professional actors and reliable friends. These are people who have an interest in what's on the page and who take their jobs seriously. So moving beyond that into the realm of...let's call it "personality" performers...is not a choice I would have made. But you go to staged readings with the cast you have. And three of my four actors range from quite competent to downright outstanding. (And all trained in regional theatre!) And the fourth? um, he means well. I'm assuming.

I suppose the trouble, again, is the schism between film acting and stage acting, and I strongly prefer the latter: you get it at least some semblance of right every time. Man up and get off book. Know your character. The lines are not suggestions. Crap, I'm doing it again, sorry.

I suppose in post, you can assemble ten sloppy takes into one passable one. Sadly there is no post available for the tragic victims of Wednesday's reading. Pray for them and for me, friends.

So it was a rough day like that, but an illuminating one--it reminded me immediately what I'm giving up if I let this script go without iron-clad attaching myself as director. Sobering, yeah. There's a marvelous sequence in Ed Wood where Ed is trying to direct Plan 9 and everything is going wrong. The Baptists who financed the thing are ruining everything, tinkering and futzing and driving Ed bats. When they see Ed in his Angora director-doll outfit they flip out, and Ed runs away to Musso & Frank to drown his sorrows. There, in the corner, is his idol Orson Welles, who in a few well-chosen words convinces Ed to fight for his vision.

Well, friends, life imitates art, because in my own moment of despair tonight I spent a good ten minutes talking--I shit you not, alone, just me--with Steve Buscemi and Kathy Kinney. I went to the gala screening of the late Bill Sherwood's wonderful Parting Glances at the DGA, and through an improbable series of events, accidentally found myself next to the film's stars at the post-show reception. (They were doing what I was doing--hiding from the maddening crowd.) So I nervously introduced myself and we talked about their film, the 80s, my script, and my desire to direct the thing myself. Buscemi had a lot of extremely helpful advice about directing, setting the tone on a set, putting the right people in place and then getting the hell out of their way so they can do their jobs, knowing ultimately you'll have the final say. Kinney and I talked about acting and articulated what I'd been feeling all day--"Casting is everything," she said, "But you're an actor, you get that. You have to cast people you believe in." They were very encouraging, and at no time did they ask security to haul me off, as they probably should have done. It made my night.

In keeping with the whole life-imitating-art thing, I shall now go off and direct the worst movie ever made.

I also snuck into a high-dollar VIP donor party, did my cute pixie thing and got yet another potential producer on the ol' MCB bandwagon. WHO THE HELL AM I? And what have I done with mcbrennan?

Anyway. I need to go to bed. HBO panel breakfast thing at 8:30am. Then I think I'm taking the day off from Outfest to talk to some legal personages and do a lightning-fast polish on that old standby The People's Choice which is also mysteriously in demand. Tune in for more showbiz drama tomorrow, folks.

The Writers Guild Of America would like to remind you to get your tickets now for the upcoming Outfest Screenwriting Lab reading from my script on July 18th at the Directors Guild of America.

Seriously, how did this happen? I'm just a simple, naïve girl from the wrong side of the trailer park, a girl with only a typewriter, a brownie camera and a dream. A dream of entertaining millions. A dream of making America laugh and cry. A dream of tripping over two Oscars, an Emmy, a Tony, an MTV Moonman and a Cable ACE award on the way to my bed full of hundred dollar bills, where a shirtless Johnny Depp will spoon-feed me Ben and Jerry's Strawberry Kiwi sorbet while Jude Law slooowly massages my...

Ahem.

A dream of entertaining America...


We all know the Clampett-colored truth, but if anybody asks, I'm driving a Jag and staying at the Chateau.