#7 – New Leaf

I’m no longer fat, y’all! I wasn’t really, I found out. I was actually suffering temporarily from a condition known as manorexic/actorexic self-image.

Anyway, I went to the gym today (first time in months), and I’ve dropped twenty pounds since the last time I was there, all from giving up soda, cookies, ice cream and every other thing that gives me pleasure to eat. So now if I work out regularly (big if, given my innate penchant and affinity for a sedentary lifestyle) I might drop the ten I need to get back to my fighting weight. Notwithstanding, I still intend to do nothing as much and as often as possible. That’s “nothing” in a more Buddhist sense of the word.

So, Covenant Coffee raised almost 10K at this point and we need another 25 to finish initial development, including legal fees, an installment to the writers and production costs to shoot the first ten minutes of the pilot. At that point, we’ll legally (and artistically) be able to solicit investments toward our overall budget. This is quite a process!

As the title of the entry might indicate, I’m turning over a new leaf. Last year I got involved in a short film project with the promise of a credited role for a buzzed-about, young director. I showed up on set and waited all night to find out that, no, I was not playing a credited role, but was, in fact, going to be an extra for a split second in the background of a fuzzy night shot. It really pissed me off and made me quite skeptical and cynical moving forward, to the point that I burned bridges with a few legit producers I came in contact with. In short I became an a-hole.

As of yesterday, I’m letting it go and moving forward with the informed naiveté needed to succeed in this business. I’ve gotten a new domain name, www.filmactorjake.com, and am building a site that should be up within a few weeks. Also, I’m putting together both a reel and an actor’s slate.

Other than that, I’m doing pretty well, having recovered fully from the infamous Big-Toe-Escalator Incident of three weeks ago.

Best,
Jake

PS - Peter Biskind is a writer who’s done a couple of books on the movie industry. I just finished Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock’n’Roll Generation Saved Hollywood and am halfway through Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film, and I read more than the titles (which are as long as novellas themselves and almost as ridiculous as some of my titles).

Anyway, first book covers the emergence of the director as auteur (that’s pronounced “oh-tur” – four years of French and I had to look that up) in American cinema which took place in the late sixties. In the wake of the French New Wave, young movie-goers were looking for something more than the tired, formulaic, big-budget spectacles coming out of Hollywood at the time. A couple rogue producers began to take risks, giving young, inexperienced filmmakers money to shoot their, then, unconventional films. What happened next is the birth of the greatest decade in American film to date.

Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson, Dennis Hopper, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Bob Rafelson, Bert Schneider and many more heavy hitters are mentioned here, most of them drug-addled a-holes at that time in the 70s. It gave me hope that even if I continue to be an a-hole, I can make it swimmingly in this business. Of course, I feel better when I’m a good guy. Blah, blah, blah.

Change comes sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly.