The Vault Manager

Dave works as a supervisor to the vault. He is close to 50 years old. A young-ish spirit with a disc jockey voice. He is a movie fiend. But we hardly agree on any movie. Which is why we like rapping with each other. He's smart, seems determined to be a screenwriter. And has that patter in his voice that he's an expert at everything. I'm sure I share that tone.

Every once in a while he'll tell me about a script he is writing. I told him I'd be happy to read it. As he knows I make movies. He has paid people to do coverage on this script. Which means they break it down beat by beat. He's workshopped it with friends and actors. He's done everything you possibly can to beat the script into submission. And finally...after all that he was excited to tell me I could finally read it. I stopped by the vault recently and asked him about it. To which he put it this time that he had another friend read it and he skewered it. This back and forth between he and I have been going on for at least a year.

Do I believe he has a script? Yes. Do I believe it's good. No. Is Dave serious about being a storyteller? No. Not even remotely close.

I say this for a few reasons. He tells me he has this script. Yep. One script he's hanging his hat on. Based on the synopsis he gave me, it's God-awful. Possibly a bad pitch, but it instantly rankles your idea bank. It's bad. I ask him plot lines to defend his position on story. It gets worse. He just has no clue.

Not that I do or anyone else does. But willful ignorance is epidemic here. He is content to be a vault manager and he is great at it. But, in terms of trying to crack the business...you need 10 bad scripts instead of whipping a disaster one to even consider being a writer. He is very literate, incredibly willful.

Which brings me to my second thing, which I find myself doing a lot, and met with eyerolls. Your past accomplishments mean nothing. They mean something to strangers but does not to industry people. Trust me, you are here today gone (use to be tomorrow) at noon. Whenever I expound on my career dive, people may not want to hear the fall. Mostly because no one is seeking the recipe for failure (I think you learn more from them). Whenever a washed up industry person speaks, most people tune out. Because, if we're superstitious lot, we don't want failure to jump from their mouths to ojr souls. So we build a phony image of ourselves. Dave has told so many tall tales to people who have no clue how it works, when someone challenges it, it's worse than a sleepwalker being woken. It's terrible. So I never shake his position loose. Because I can see how much rougher the road will be for him in the coming years.

I can do no more but to listen.

This is something we all will face. When we're bookended by irrelevancy. It happens to everyone.