What a day. First things first:
I am never fucking another USC girl again. I have hooked up with three since moving to LA, and they are all the same: Entitled, obnoxious, and most unforgivable, WILL NOT SHUT THE FUCK UP AND GO TO SLEEP.
I guess this is because they are all cokeheads. Not just normal cokeheads, this one is a cokehead and CAN'T HANDLE HER LIQUOR. This means that not only will she not go to bed, her constant chatter is slovenly drunk gibberish instead of coherent paranoid jibberish. Super. How about you just set my balls on fire while you're at it? This is the type of shit that makes me want to have a girlfriend.
My dog Murph just looked at her, and then looked at me with a look as if to say, "Daddy, can't you fuck something at least as well behaved as me?" My dog is judging this girl, she's so annoying. Not even kidding. She's finally asleep, so here we go:
The last two days have been stressful as shit. Being an indy producer is like fighting a forest fire--you are always undermanned, out-gunned, and struggling to not only do your job, but to not get killed.
I did not sleep Monday night. My speech at Northeastern was done at 830pm, I signed books etc until like 10pm, drank until 2am, fucked until like 4am, got a 6am flight, SAT NEXT TO A CRYING BABY ON THE FLIGHT AND NEARLY COMMITTED INFANTICIDE, landed in LAX at 11am, went to a casting session at 2pm, then had these issues waiting for me to deal with:
-One investor unhappy with the legalese of the term sheet,
-One investor unhappy with wire transferring money instead of FedExing a check,
-Literally five different, distinct issues with location selection,
-The 1st AD wanting to discuss the director,
-The new lawyer needing all kinds of things,
-The directors deal needs to get done, and
-The casting director's deal is all dicked up and needed to get done yesterday.
This is from just Monday. Oh yeah, did I mention that I tore my ACL? This is becoming a bad Monty Python skit.
None of the individual issues is all that hard (except one, discussed below). It's just a constant barrage of fires that need to be put out, and its not like this is a paint by numbers job. Every issue, every situation is not only different but has to properly fit into the larger scheme that we have devised and has to not conflict with any number of other things.
One of the issues was hard: Negotiating the casting directors deal. Holy shit. Let me tell you about negotiating deals in Hollywood. Its not even describable. I honestly don't know how to make someone understand how fucking insane the negotiation process is in this business. It's nonsensical, it's inhumane, it's counter-productive and it's just flat out mean.
I am not sure how much detail I can put into this, but let me just say this: Negotiating deals in Hollywood is not like negotiating anywhere else. On the casting directors deal alone, there are at least 15 different distinct issues, each of which affects the others, and each of which has it's own issues to be resolved that affect the resolution of the other issues. For instance on a standard casting director deal, you have to negotiate:
-The fee of the casting director
-The fee of the assistants
-The number of assistants
-The rent for usage of his office
-The cost of office supplies used during casting
-Who pays the union fees, and how much (all casting directors are in a union, usually a Teamsters union)
-The credit received
-The placement of the credits
-The flight arrangements (if casting outside of LA--we are)
-The travel arrangements (to and from airport, rental car)
-The hotel arrangements (ibid)
-The per diem (ibid)
-The cost of hiring local casting help (if casting on location for a non-LA shoot--we are)
-Backend participation
I think that covers everything, though I could be wrong. I don't know.
Anyway, after much bullshit and posturing (I don't have the energy to write about dealing with Hollywood agents, but I will at some point), I am pretty sure we have that deal done. The ridiculous part is that our casting director has been awesome and working basically on spec for like three weeks now, but the last mile of the deal got super sticky. Make no mistake about it: There is a reason that artists get screwed so much in Hollywood, It's because the business of Hollywood is so complex, the artists don't want to deal with it (and I very much include a casting director as an artist, it is a hard job), so they leave it to agents and lawyers and other suits who dick them over. But it doesn't have to be this way.
UPDATE: It's 5am. I just kicked the USC girl out of my house because she PISSED MY BED.
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