Let me start by saying I am not new to the city of Los Angeles. I did 2+ years as an undergrad at UCLA (Art History major...yeah, so what?) and 1+ in graduate-level film programs also at UCLA. But that's just the thing: always at UCLA. I've spent the past 5 years living between the Westwood area of L.A. and my native S.F. Bay Area. Westwood is clean and safe but very much entrenched in the UCLA community, and well, it was been-there, done-that for me. I am no longer a college student. I don't work for the university. So why live in Westwood? To be surrounded by drunk undergrads who weren't even fucking zygotes in the 1980s? People who think Transformers is a Michael Bay movie and not a wonderfully dark, Orson Welles-starring 1986 animated film? When my screenwriting program and apartment lease both ended in June of this year, I decided I would re-locate to somewhere new, somewhere more exciting, somewhere that screamed Los Angeles.
So after a summer back home where I constantly debated whether I'd even end up back in L.A., I am finally back. With no job, no school, no internship, no girlfriend...no plan, no structure, no real reason to be here other than the fact that if you want to do film, serious film, in America, you better damn well be in Los Angeles. I live in a guest house behind a woman's home in Hollywood (closer to the West Hollywood side really). It's like living in the fucking hatch from the 2nd season of Lost. I can almost hear the Mama Cass music, I just need my own exercise cycle. Oh, and did I mention I have no car? Fuck! This is Los Angeles of all places, the commuter city. Even the Flintstones had a car. But I finally made it back here, and I have no real direction other than desire to follow this insane industry. I am gambling with my life here, my precious time on this planet. Am I wasting the prime years of my life on an impossible (okay, more like unlikely) dream? But you can't do it unless you actually try.
I'm looking at all these boxes that surround me. Much to be done. Oh shit. What am I doing here?
