Four Years Later

My life is about as different from what it was four years ago as possible.  In August 2010, I was spending my first collegiate summer at my parents' house in rural Norwalk, having recently returned from a wonderful vacation in Los Angeles.  I was closeted, naive, and still in the early stages of my cinematic education.  I had yet to take a screenwriting class, and I lacked any semblance of an actual plan to make my dreams come true.  Instead, I was firmly in the middle of the dreaming phase.  I still had three years of college to figure out what would happen after graduation.

I'm typing this post from beautiful California.  I finally made the move to Los Angeles (North Hollywood, to be precise, but the million neighborhoods around bleed together into one massive, glowing entity, somehow quickly learned but never really known) in May, marking the first step toward achieving my dreams of writing movies, rather than writing about them.  My life has radically changed, in nearly every respect.  I'm learning my way around a massive city/county/planet, trying new foods, venturing to the beach on my days off and into the mountains for work, and occasionally spotting a celebrity during my daily routine.  Through the kindness of a new friend, I managed to find work as a casting PA on a network show, a job that is allowing me to learn new things daily about how the magic of television happens as I take my tentative first steps into an intimidating, impenetrable fortress of an industry.

When I made the move, Such Moving Pictures suffered.  My first weeks here were marred by a mixture of anxiety regarding the search for work and a reluctance to pay for movie tickets when - within a couple weeks - I'd resume working at a movie theater and thus, gain free entry yet again.  So, I missed a couple of the big summer movies (Maleficent and Edge of Tomorrow are the main ones still missing from my list).  My blog posts became infrequent, to put it rather kindly.  I wondered if I might just as well shut down shop, or pass the reins on to someone new.  Maybe writing about the industry in which I wanted to work would end up preventing me from finding work.  What if I had written something nasty about Sony, and then someone at Sony happened to see it, and refused to hire me because of my snark and acid?  I was very silly.  I'm not that important.

But what I'm realizing is, everyone who works on a production is important.  There are no small parts, and all that jazz.  My work is relatively low-stress - the usual on-set mantra of "hurry up and wait" holds true, meaning I only have bursts of hurrying, followed by longer times of mellow reverie.  But I've been confounded, both at my job and during my one day of background acting, to find how many people it takes to make something to watch.  There's so much do-it-yourself stuff out there, overflowing on Youtube and other online platforms, and even in super-small indies, but for something being produced by a major network or studio, there are more people required (or at least used) than I had ever imagined.  Getting a glimpse behind the scenes has only made my awe increase, and adds a little magic to what otherwise might seem mundane.

Many that I've talked to out here who work in the industry are so jaded; a screenwriter I met for coffee a few weeks ago admitted that he never goes to the movies, because he can see where they're going, and he's never interested.  I hope I never get to that point.  I hope I never become one of those critics (or ordinary viewers) who rolls his eyes because a movie isn't surprising, or refuses to surrender to the process of watching a movie.  Even as I see hundreds of movies a year, I still get that thrill when I sit down in my cushy seat (which, out here, can cost upward of $15, easily) and the lights go down.  I was able to leave my theater job behind, so now I pay for all the movies I see in theaters, and I usually end up getting popcorn and Dibs and a Coke.  I've regressed in some way back to being a normal movie-goer, one who pays for the thrill, the escape, the chance to cry, the laughs.  The only difference is, I'm likely to go home and write up a few paragraphs about said film, and debate its merits and flaws with like-minded movie lovers online.  I miss the press screenings I got to attend in Columbus, but somehow, I feel like my movie-watching joy has been rekindled since I moved here.

Part of that joy might come from the sheer berth of my viewing options.  While in Columbus, I often had to wait months for an acclaimed indie or foreign film to finally arrive at the Gateway or Drexel (theaters I dearly miss), but now, I get to see Boyhood and Love is Strange on opening day, and obscure movies that never make it to Ohio are options, too.  I'm like a very hungry person with a very small stomach at a very big buffet.  So I'm a little pickier about what I see, especially considering that I work sixty hours a week.  I figure that, once the show wraps in November, I will play the most massive game of catch-up through the holidays.  Meanwhile, I see what I can, keep up with smaller stuff via screeners, and revel in what trips into fantasy I manage to book.

I feel like this post is the proper place to celebrate milestones of the past year, and there have been a few.  Most notably, I was excited to join the staff of Quorum Columbus in February.  It's a wonderful LGBT magazine based in Columbus, Ohio, and I've had a blast writing about queer film, television, and celebrity culture for the magazine.  Because my topics aren't geographically bound, I'm able to continue to write for them from across country.  I love thinking on and writing about queer culture, recommending hidden gems and celebrating the immense progress LGBT filmmakers and other creative types are making.

My other worth-mentioning milestone is less related to my blog.  I submitted a first-and-a-half draft of my romantic-comedy screenplay, Meet Cute, to a couple contests, and though it failed to progress into the final round of the one that has announced, it finished in the top 15% and received coverage from a reader who deemed it his or her favorite, which was a great honor, indeed.  I await the verdict of the other contest, but the coverage I received, while largely positive, suggests it won't make it to the top.  But I'm learning, and working hard on a second draft while also outlining my next script, and it feels good to bet on myself, regardless of how the cookie crumbles, and to be working toward my goal.  I'm in the right place, and I'm meeting people, and I'm making friends - and connections, and I'm having the time of my life.  And I'm watching movies, and loving them.

That's what hasn't changed.  I sometimes have to pay $4 for a gallon of gas, and there are marijuana dispensaries everywhere, and people talk a lot about highways and hiking and going to Vegas for the weekend.  I haven't seen my parents in months, and won't until Christmas.  Only a handful of people from back home are out here, and I don't really see them.  My life is unrecognizable from the life I was living just four months ago.  But the common thread is my love for film, and not just the objectively good stuff, but for the bad, fun stuff, too.  For the prestige, and the explosions, and the good stories, and the dumb laughs.  Going to a movie theater, even a new one, is like going home, just for a couple hours.  It's a familiar place, somewhere I'm happy, somewhere I belong, somewhere I come back to again and again.

And this blog, though the quality and frequency of the posts varies wildly, has been a constant part of my life, whether it's trying to update multiple times a week or fretting that I haven't updated in weeks.  Even when I'm not here, Such Moving Pictures is on my mind, because movies are on my mind, and I want to share them with you, and with everyone I meet.

Thanks for reading, and happy movie-watching.