stress

You know in "Office Space" when Peter tells the two Bob's that he has 8 bosses and when he makes a mistake he has 8 people yelling at him (and if you haven't seen Office Space, you really need to get out more. At least out, you know, to the video store). Well, I have 6 bosses, and when I do anything - good or bad - 2 of them tell me how great a job I did and 4 of them tell me I am a piece of shit. It's fantastic. The head writer came into a room where all of us writers were hanging out and he goes "Hey guys, apparently you're doing a great a job and a terrible job. Keep it up." Uh, thanks?

Remember when I said I was happy about this job because I could just write and didn't have to worry about the production aspects. Wrong. I wrote a "field piece" that everyone seems to like and it was deemed worthy enough to shoot. Yea. But unfortunately for me they don't just take your script and go shoot it. No, no, no. They take your script and call you an asshole for even thinking it is possible to shoot it. Keep in mind that there is an entire production team here who's whole job it is to do this very thing. I mean, the good side of it is that you get to protect your "vision" and they don't just take it and run their own way with it. Which is good, I guess. But this isn't rocket science, people. I don't care that much what you do with it because there aren't too many crazy ways to go. This isn't the Quran. It's a dude asking people questions on the street. And if you do fuck it up, I'll have a chance to edit it the way I want after. But no, that's not the way it goes.

So I had a rough script that people had seen and liked, and was told to write a more detailed script with everything that would happen. First of all, that's a little tough to do when you're dealing with real people and real reactions, how do you write that out? And second of all, I had about 15 minutes to do it before going into a production meeting. Fine. I do it. "Whatever, it's a rough draft" I think. Little did I know that for the next hour and a half, that script would be dissected and ripped to shreds like it was the final say and my computer was broken and unable to make any changes. It's a rough draft! I did it in 15 minutes! I've never been in a meeting like that before, it was pure torture. Here are some of the questions that were posed to me by our expert director, producer, executive producer, the other executive producer, field producer, and others (remember, it's their whole job to take the script and produce it):

-This hot girl you have in here, what color is her hair? Is she a blonde? Is she 30? 35? My response "It doesn't matter." YELLING, YELLING, YELLING. "Okay fine, she's blonde and she's 30"
-The logo you mention, is it the actual logo? My response "Actual logo"
-He's in a car, what car? His car? Our van? My response "Either." MORE YELLING "Okay, Our van"
-You say here the guy talks in ghetto slang, what does that mean? Could you talk how that is, I'd like to hear it. My response "Go rent Airplane, I don't speak jive".


As crazy as that is I actually understand. I just had to produce a thing and I know all of the complications and difficulties that arise. I, however, when producing had the benefit of a super power called common sense. It's just the venom in which these things were yelled at me, like I was trying to shoot Citizen Kane or something. It's the easiest thing in the world to shoot. There's one fricking location. One. The director's estimate on how long it's going to take to shoot: 12 hours.

It's a 3 minute bit.