Stuck At Work...Why Not Write

Well, I'm stuck at work. In a cold dry, climate controlled room. It's dark, so I'm hovered over my keyboard sipping on tea and just reading through old mail.

It was a mix up at the airport sending me negative from a film shoot in Virginia. Normally I wouldn't mind, these late nights, but I'm in Hollywood. On my way down, I saw a car flipped completely onto its roof. Traffic is jammed from the Barham exit to God knows here. Luckily I was going southbound, that traffic was north. Poor fucking assholes. A co-worker blurted that when people do stupid things, such as speed, and get into these types of accidents, he wishes them death. Because it's most likely a stupid speed demon thinking they own the road and have zero consideration for the consequences. Fuck their lives, think about the Mom who needs to get home to administer insulin to a child who has diabetes. People just don't think about things like this in this fucking town.

I know someone moving out here soon. In fact, I know two people. One just moved here, the other is making that leap. These two fellas are worldly people. Which is why it's so confusing why this town over any other. Shit, I should be asking myself that. But it's been 15 years for me. I sacrificed a lot already, and just like the availability of certain things. As I mentioned before, if I went to my hometown it would be a little more effort to acquire. Things like doing short films on film.

I have no idea if they have what it takes to succeed here. I heard in a podcast once, the secret of success from the guy who created Five Hour Energy drink (Manoj Bhargava), he's now developing a new system to bring raw energy using the Earth's core...
Anyway to succeed in business you need two things...
...lean in...it's good...
...it doesn't take intelligence...

...in order to succeed, you need two things...
1)  common sense
2) sense of urgency

Say, if we were to put this into the realm of filmmaking...
common sense...well, at face value common sense doesn't exist in Hollywood, what that means is keeping your overhead low. Common sense is to know EXACTLY your path. To hem & haw and drag feet will go for years, if not decades. The common sense understands you maybe need to write in order to direct. Get that screenplay written immediately. In fact, have three going.

The second part is urgency. If you have a product, say a script, there are WAY too many people in Los Angeles who talk about a screenplay but have ZERO urgency to write one. Bits and pieces of an idea don't cut it. William Goldman relates this in his book "Adventures In Screen Trade" they dragged their feet so long on an adaption of "Grand Hotel" Hal Ashby had a similar movie already in the can. Movies don't work on who's best, it's usually who's first. Which comet-hitting-Earth movie did better at the box office "Armageddon" or "Deep Impact"? Which one is better? (trick question, they both sucked).

So there you go. I don't want to waste any more time (or at least try not to).