July 28th, 2009
So, my Macbook had been running slow lately, and judging by my calendar, it’d been a year since I wiped and restored. I know, I know… most of you think uh-oh, we’ve got a computer dork here. Actually it’s more that I have Macophile friends who have all told me it’s a good thing to do to keep your computer running well. So on Monday, I decided to do the wipe and restore.
Last year I did it and it was annoying. It happened at work and I didn’t have my back up drive with me, so I had to throw a bunch of stuff on DVDs and slowly feed them in one by one after wiping and re-installing the operating system. Retarded. And I was kinda stuck doing it that way cuz I was hopping a plane that night to San Francisco to lock myself in a room and write for the weekend. So after annoying myself and half the guys in the writers’ room with me, I got it all back up and running. Well, almost… I lost a bunch of music in the process. Mostly bands starting with the letter “S.” I’m still coming across stuff I lost somehow.
So this time I decided to take advantage of Leopard’s Time Machine function. I got myself a nice slim drive, hooked it up and put it to work. It was great, easy and did it all for me once I plugged it in. It even regularly backed up and kept me from having to manually do it once a week. (Yes, I’m a bit obsessive about it after losing my London/Amsterdam photos from 2006) So when it came time to do the wipe and restore, I figured no big deal. And it wasn’t. I wiped the hard drive, re-installed the OS and then restored from Time Machine. The problems came when Time Machine started trying to back up again. Apparently there’s a problem with Time Machine in this situation where it treats your back up drive like it’s starting over instead of continuing from where it left off. Retarded. I mean, having wipe your back up drive and start over again? Again, retarded.
I searched the web, tried some computer geeks’ recommendations and it didn’t work. So, I had to zero out my back up drive. It still didn’t work. Finally after I ejected it, restarted and chose to “change back up” in Time Machine, it finally worked. So now it’s backing things up all over again and hopefully will continue to do it. That is until next years’ wipe and restore. Hopefully Mac will have a fix by then.
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July 24th, 2009
Long story short, I was told about an open writing assignment by my manager some months back. Director (let’s call him T.M.) had aquired the shopping rights to a Korean film called “Ssaum-ui gisul”. I went in with my pitch and he dug it. We went to the Korean production company that owns it and pitched it and they loved it. So some two months later I finished a draft. T.M. loved it. Huzzah! Had a great meeting with him today and he had just a few notes so once it’s polished, we’ll be going back to the parent company for approval. Once that’s done, we’re off to secure talent or hell just take it out to studios. Exciting stuff.
But more to the point of my subject line… This was the first time I was challenged with adapting something. For the most part it’s just like re-writing any other work where the storyline has been established by someone else. All you can really do is ask the producer and director exactly what they’re looking to do with what they have. In this case it was to take a small Asian movie and turn it into a big studio picture, deepen the characters, find more humor and make it palatable for the American audience. So off you go to the original script. Then you read it, you note it, you find what works and doesn’t work with their guidelines. Simple, right? In theory. But it also has to be good. Thankfully I was able to do both. I’ll update you when the next draft is done and it goes back to the parent company. Fingers crossed people!
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July 16th, 2009
At the halfway point, according to Hollywood.com Box Office (formerly Media By Numbers)
YEAR-TO-DATE STATISTICS – WEEK 27
Thursday January 1 2009 through Sunday July 5, 2009
YTD REVENUES 2009: $5.438 BILLION
YTD REVENUES 2008: $4.870 BILLION
REVENUE UP: +11.64%
ATTENDANCE UP: +9.06%
Mo money, less jobs. WTF? Greedy bastards?
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July 16th, 2009
It seems like every day I hear bad news from someone about something. For a place that was supposed to be recession/depression proof, this town sure sucks ass these days. Everyone I know is either unemployed or making a hell of a lot less than they used to. I mean, what the hell’s happening? There’s more channels to choose from than ever. Like a thousand of them. Which of course means there’s more programming than ever. So where the hell are all the jobs? It’s not like all these channels fill their time with re-runs of “Charles In Charge” for pete’s sake. But every day executives and writers and directors and actors and crewpeople find themselves fighting over less less jobs. Anyone wanna take a swing at what the dilly is?
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