Hollywood Week Teaser

Today is just a teaser, or perhaps I should call it a PREVIEW, of what I’m going to be doing next week.  For next week will be Hollywood Week here at the League, in honor of my film rights agent, Ian Polonsky, of McIntosh and Otis.  Who has promised me MILLIONS OF DOLLARS, all the GOLD-PLATED CAVIAR I can eat, and a HUMMER LIMO THAT DRIPS EXTRA GASOLINE ONTO THE PAVEMENT, because that’s HOW RICH I will be when Tempest Rising is turned into a mega-blockbuster starring Charlize Theron as Jane (she’ll hunch!) and Tom Cruise as Ryu (we’ll stick him in a pair of stacks!).  Tom Cruise, after all, can play ANY vampire.  It may APPEAR to be inappropriate casting, we may even FEEL it’s inappropriate casting while we watch it, but we are ALL just being glib.  

In honor of Hollywood Week, I’m going to be doing two things.  First I will be telling you about a movie starring Tom Sizemore that was made by a Shreveport native and that was shot entirely in the Shreveport area.  Jeffrey Goodman is one gutsy guy who took a huge risk on something he feels very passionate about.  So I’ll be talking to him about the project, asking him some questions, and generally getting a feeling for just HOW important the writer is, on a project like that.  I imagine they’re VERY IMPORTANT.  Right?

After I sit down with Jeremy, I’m going to be turning my oh-so-fickle attention over to Pruitt Taylor Vince, who you all know.  Believe me.  He’s been in pretty much every movie or TV show ever made.  Seriously.  IMDB him.  He’s.  In.  Everything.  Including a lot of fantasy/sci-fi vehicles, such as Constantine, the Cell, the Highlander series, X-Files, and Quantum Leap. 

 

Pruitt started as LSUS’s Artist in Residence at the same time that I started as an assistant professor.  Imagine my surprise when I sat down at our faculty orientation, the first day, and found myself across from someone I could swear I’d seen drink himself to death at the behest of that hot rockstar married to that even hotter blonde lady-rocker (I’m bad with celebrity).  Anyway, Pruitt was Only Acting, and wasn’t dead, which is really great because, along with Robert Alford and Mary Jarzabek (our other intrepid directors), LSUS’s Black Box Theater is doing some amazing stuff that we’re all very proud of.

So I’ll be sitting down with Pruitt and asking him about what it’s like to act out the shit we UF/F/Sci-Fi nerds dream up.  After all, the great thing about books is your imagination is the limit.  But then movies and TV shows have to trail behind us, figuring out how to make real what we have fantasized.  I’ll also ask him some hard hitting questions about how awesome the writers in Hollywood are, about how much respect and REMUNERATION writers receive, and about the real perks of being in the film industry.  Like the casting couch.  Ian says that I don’t just get my own PLATINUM ENCRUSTED PONTIFICATION ROOM (which will be stocked with at least TEN REFRIGERATORS full of CRISTAL and DIAMOND-FILLED MICROWAVE BURRITOS), a JAGUAR, and a WARDROBE designed exclusively for me by BETSEY JOHNSON and tailored by the nimble fingers of specially trained TALKING RACCOONS (who are covered in BETSEY BLING).  Besides these things, Ian says that I also get to “cast” the male leads.  It’s going to be a long, arduous process, requiring gratuitous amounts of Cool Whip.  But I was never one to shirk my responsibilities.

So that’s what’s coming, next week!  Puns, as always, are entirely intended.