The Unfathomable Liking of My Job

Amongst the hundreds of frustrations with my production company job in Chicago was that there was no room for advancement despite there being 5 positions that didn't exist there that are actually necessary to run a successful production company. No matter how much Charley and I tried to create a position the company needed, we could not eliminate the lack of such a position. It was about the most frustrated you can get, aside from the ultimate frustration of finding a way to not distribute a civil rights period piece starring an Oscar Winner and an Oscar Nominee. I mean guess it couldn't sell the way Humongous 2 or Pumkin Karver or anything I saw for sale at the AFM.

And that as much as anything else drove me to L.A. The people who ran that company were so proud that they didn't have to be in L.A. to achieve all their success. But perhaps you do to a degree.

I subscribe to the theory of the "inverse paranoid," being convinced beyond even doubt's shadow that strange forces are conspiring to make everything turn out perfect. Most would get upset at the three years there, but, if things had gone great at Strata, would I have moved here and had all this fun already?

I don't ask for much in life. I didn't move here to run Paramount by Thursday, I didn't move here because I heard if you moved here you got famous right away. I moved here because I simply love sitting in traffic. Wait, no, I moved here to work with professionals in a professional environment where you can wears jeans and not shave.

Last night, me and all the other Loggers were asked by the Story Department to come in for a meeting where we all discussed the story of the show and how they felt it was shaping up. There are some sharp and obvious plot points, love triangles, developing relationships, and backstabbing. The story editors had taken all these plot points and ordered them to form the eight episodes, many events happened before events they were now placed after, and other events are grouped with events that had nothing to do with them, thus the genius of the Story Department on a show with no script. Now if we could just get the WGA to recognize them.

I feel the Loggers can take credit for a few of the plots. They really were going to can Greta's character altogether until the Loggers protested that she was the only sympathetic character. She turned out to be the perfect storm of sympathy because for some reason everybody hated her, and she's super-likable. Imagine watching a reality show with Kate James and every Paris Hilton in the show calls her a bitch. Plus the lead they were putting a lot of chips on, turned out to be kind of "...eh." Which is fine because she turns out to be a passive eye to watch this crazy world unfold.

We've had several of these meetings and each time there's a series of "soft" plots which the Story Department tries to lock down with our help. We point their attention to moments they didn't know about that connect other points they did know about and we all find out together what we might be able to make stick. Then we go away and log another twenty minute shot of Molly and her disgusting lipgloss gingerly working its way around a straw while the Story Editors do their thing giving us new progress in a couple days.

This is what's so exciting about reality tv. You work in groups a lot in written television, but this is a particularly unique groupwork that can only be compared to improvisation. My co-workers tell me this is a unique amount of interaction for a reality show, considering most reality shows are American Chopper, Ghost Hunt Mystery House, Building Houses For The Attractive Pooror Strange Factual Occurences X-treme, I don't find it hard to believe that this is different. We are trying to string together a plot after all.

But, to bring this whole post back around, I don't ask for much. All I ever wanted those three years in Chicago was to be asked my opinion. I guess it takes the little guy like E! in Los Angeles to extend that hand.