Winter Break has just begun! Hooray. I spent the majority of my last week trying to wrap up the obligations I had in Los Angeles before I could head back to Orange County. Let's see, I had three Finals last week: Finance Law, International Trade, and Finance. This week I had a Final movie pitch on Tuesday. I went to Professor Grossbart's office in Beverly Hills and pitched to him in the conference room. It went a lot better than a lot of my previous pitches went. I pitched my 'independent' film idea. The mood was very laid back and casual, we talked about random things for the majority of our meeting and the actual story pitch only lasted roughly 40% of the entire time. All in all it went really well, and I think I left a strong impression on him. Hopefully this will combat the lackluster performance I've had in that class over the year. My test finals, I am less confident in.
After Finals I spent the rest of last week finishing out my days at Warner Independent. It was really great because I had a lot of work piled up from over the last few weeks and with school finally over I could finish everything for the execs and assistants. I had to read like five scripts, watch like 20 comedy reels, and update the acquisitions Sundance database. My last day at WIP was this past Friday and I'm really going to miss everyone at the office, especially all the assistants and execs in development. They've been really patient and helpful with me; letting
me sit in on meetings, read important projects, as well as give my notes and thoughts on them. The last day we had a holiday party at Ribs USA, the food was spectacular and I got a whole bunch of gifts. Patron, $100 to Amoeba, ipod boombox, $25 to best buy. I'll always remember that office, lots of great memories over the past 7 months. Here's one for example:
"The Painted Veil" premiere and after party
The Painted Veil is a WIP film and the vice president's assistant Jacqueline was kind enough to take me to the premiere with her ticket. I probably could have gone to help the marketing department with premiere logistics like what happened with "A Scanner Darkly" but this time I got to go as an actual guest and movie watcher. It was pretty slick. The film was really well put together and I have to give John Curran credit for the performances. My highlight of the night was oggling Penelope Cruz at the after party. I was only a handful of drinks away from being sleazy and hitting on her, boy would that be a story to tell!
If you look closely, you can see me in the background...or not
Since then I've hence returned to Orange County. I'm at my parent's house right now seeing some high school friends and preparing for my first ever trip to Hong Kong. I leave next Tuesday, and I'll be gone for 10 days! That's the entire holiday season in a different country. I won't be with my family for Christmas or New Years... or Hanukkah, Kwanza, and Ramadan? So my parents are appreciating me before I leave. Tonight we had suckling duck for dinner. I'm going to try and give my holiday gifts to my parents asap. I'm thinking bag for mom and vinyl's for the old man. Let me know if anyone has suggestions.
On Friday a friend and I went down to visit our other friend in Riverside to drink and just celebrate our holiday freedom. We ended up at Casino Morongo until 7am! Haha, kind of a bad deal. Today I just schmucked around and slept for an extremely long time. I might go see Apocalypto tonight, I'm a HUGE Mel Gibson fan.
P.S. You readers might have noticed that this is my first entry in like over a year. This is because I am actually taking some free time to write and get my life in order. I'm going to update this regularly, as well as spend as much of next semester getting better at life. Here are my goals: finish my last semester at USC!, stop taking medication (this is more the doctor's decision than mine), get back in shape (track + Lyon Center), and write and work on MY own films (not other people's). Hope everyone in internet land will enjoy my momentous return to the world of the living. I'm excited.
I just watched Cocktail on tv last night. Man I love that movie. It's so good. It's so underated, people (including my brother) think its just some stupid cliched story about a bartender trying to make it. But it's so much more than that, its about ambition, man whoring and womanizing; and money and socio economic junk. Really. Honestly. I loved Elisabeth Shue as the female love interest. Oh wow, I justed imdb'd her and she also played Jennifer in Back to the Future! She's awesome! Anyway, anyone reading this, do yourself a favor and Netflix/rent Cocktail. The Jaimaican soundtrack is bangin' as well.
