I went to the post office yesterday to drop off a writing contest entry. But this isn’t a post about the virtue, or lack thereof, of writing contests. The thing that really struck me was noticing how the counter was completely walled-off with bulletproof glass. Each window had an airlock-like structure in which a customer inserts mail, with the postal worker then opening a door on the other side.

Is my neighborhood really that unsafe? I was pretty sure that, living on the west side as I do, I was avoiding much of the crime component of L.A.

Sure, the liquor store near my last place had a big wall of bulletproof glass protecting the attendant. It had a lazy susan of thick acrylic through which people would exchange their candy bars and cash. And when it went up, I couldn’t help thinking maybe my neighborhood wasn’t as safe as I thought. But mostly, I just figured it for overkill, and most of the people who worked there laughed it off, too, happily moving about the store without feeling any need to hide in their industrial plastic sanctuary.

Of course, a liquor store is the kind of place one would expect such precautions. Conceivably, they get robbed more often than other establishments. I can’t assume that a post office is a risky enough place to work to justify the expense of all that armored windowing. Similarly, the drive-through window of the Jack in the Box on the way home from Hollywood the other day featured security on par with a bank.

I gotta figure such investment in “safety” comes primarily from the current, ridiculous culture of fear. I breathe easier knowing there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. In one year, eight months, eighteen days, someone else–ANYONE ELSE–will take office. Maybe then people will stress out less about selling people Jumbo Jacks, or stamps.

There were two main arguments with which I convinced myself that, lack of Douglas fir trees or no, I needed to move to L.A. The first was simply that I couldn’t expect to become a television writer anywhere else. The second, admittedly smaller, was that the number of industry events here had to be at least twenty times what Seattle could offer.

My reality–as I’ve settled into a home I love, found methods to support myself, and learned the patterns of L.A. traffic–is that tutoring is rarely compatible with industry events. Tutoring is fantastic for my writing schedule, allowing me to scrape by with a low-hour, high-wage work week. However, most events are scheduled in the late evening, and it’s rare that I can finish with a day’s students and then get across town in time to catch events.

So I’m all the more excited to discover this workshop being held on a Saturday by the WGA on May 19th, called “Breaking Into the Box: Making Your Start in Television.” They’ve booked several big-name showrunners and built in time to mingle with other attendees. Sweet. Plus, it’s reasonably priced, especially in comparison to most of the steady stream of workshops in town. I just signed up. Anyone else going?

My only problem is that I was hoping to have my 33 1/3 birthday party that day. After all, you only turn 33 1/3 once. (Of course, I’M not really that old. Comedy writers are in their twenties. Like me. One of my students tried to guess my age yesterday, and he stated quite definitively that I must be eligible to audition for American Idol.)

Perhaps the best job description for “producer” I’ve ever heard was exemplified for me in a college improv group. Upon discovering that another group was using our rehearsal space, the director said to his colleague, “You’re the producer. Produce us a room.”

It’s difficult to describe what a producer does, especially since the specific responsibilities can vary so much from project to project. Adding to the complication, some producers are very hands-on in every phase, and some stand back doing almost nothing. Some are so good that they make it look like they’re doing nothing, when actually their work load is monumental. (How to tell the ones who just make it look easy from the ones who do nothing? That’s another matter.) But that “produce us a room” mentality has always informed my thinking on a producer’s role. A producer or a producing team needs to provide anything and everything, from a business or creative or logistics perspective, so that the rest of the people in a creative project might need in order to do their jobs effectively. All while staying on budget, of course.

After meeting with a dozen or so of the different video/filmmakers who have responded to my advertisements, I had a good group of people I wanted to work with. And each of them had people they could bring on board, too. This is L.A. You can’t swing a stick. The only things in short supply are good ideas and people with the initiative to execute them. With great people lined up, I knew that if I was going to move forward with my moviemaking army, I needed to select a project for us to work on, and just do it.

Read the rest of this entry »

I admit that my years in sketch comedy left me a little burnt out. I am not the dynamo I once when it comes to producing, directing, acting, editing, publicizing, sound designing, ticket-taking, and doing whatever else it takes to get my writing made. I had refocused my energy on TV writing, a light having come on for me that this was my ultimate career path. And so, I thought, I’ll just keep writing. Eventually someone ELSE will do the producing.

So far, not so much.

I’ve realized, though, that this is not just some signal from the gods that my writing isn’t good enough to get made. (I hope.) But the fact is that during the time I was focusing on just writing, other people weren’t getting to see that writing. So it’s time to don the producer hat once again and make my work visible

Read the rest of this entry »