Image courtesy of examiner.com

Okay, by “meet” I mean, of course, “sitting in a crowd listening to a speech” and by “maker” I mean “the guy I really really like,” but that’s what it felt like yesterday when I went to see Joss Whedon speak at Sydney’s Opera House.  This is the guy who wrote the show that changed how I viewed and still view television. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was the first show that I watched and then actually retained.  I mean, there were shows that I liked and watched frequently, but it always went in one ear and out the other, but Buffy was different - it’s hard to explain and it’s a story for another day, but all I know is that I’m grateful it happened.

I didn’t know what to expect going into this thing yesterday. I figured he was going to talk about how cool it was to do the stuff he does and then he was going to be grilled embarrassingly by over-zealous zealots he calls “fans.” I have some friends who saw him in Melbourne the night or two before and said that he was charming and intelligent (which was no surprise) but the host they had didn’t facilitate well. Even though I believe we had a different host, I thought the worst that could happen is that we’d have a douche up on stage showing his ass, but  I mean, a bad host is better than no Joss at all.

We were warned right.  Will Anderson, a local comedian, was a crude and disrespectful facilitaor.  Not that I think he meant to be, as I understand it, he is quite the fan, but he wore flip flops and swore a lot.  Sometimes there were awkward pauses in conversation where the audience and Mr. Whedon were like “ehwha?”  Not to mention he would occassionally interrupt the guest of honor to get his own less funny quip in.  That said…

…then there was Joss.

And oh boy, was there Joss.  He came out on stage with a bang.  Smoke and blue light brought a silhouette out into the shape of a man; a hero to so many. Then he started to speak.  The fact that he was just talking several yards away from me made the fangirl in me want to piddle in excitement.  At that point he could do no wrong.  Then, something brilliant happened.  He said that he was going to talk about something different this time around, that he wasn’t going to give the stock standard speech about networks and little trivia about the shows that we could find out anywhere on the internet, he was instead going to talk about himself and what made him tick.

Oh. Em. Gee.

That. Just. Happened.

It was amazing.  He got really intimate.  He spoke about his childhood and his fears growing up and what scared him and what his “dark place” was.  He said before he never knew why he wrote teenaged girls with superpowers.  He always just thought they were cool, but something must have been asked at the Melbourne talk that made him think because he said that the last few days has put some things into place for him.  Yes, he will always write about teenaged girls with superpowers, but more than that, he will always write about hopelessness.  He said that these young girls he wrote were his avatar because he is a small scared man that will always need to be saved. Wowza.

Ah, now, that is interesting.  He said that he was always frightened, helpless, and alone.  He talked about his father and how he was scared of his disapproving scowl ¹ and how if you dropped him three blocks from his house and turned him around twice, he would likely die of exposure.  There was a vulnerability and a truth to what he was saying that I have never heard from him in any interview or DVD extra.  It was amazing.  Amazing is not the best, most articulate way to express that, but it’s all I got. There was something very human but still “Joss is God” like about him as he continued to talk.

When he spoke about himself and his eccentricities it was amazing how much I related to him.  I know that must sound pompous, but I can’t help it. When he spoke about a plain, uneventful, childhood unworthy of a memoir and his social inability to speak to people, especially women, and I was there with him.  When he said that he said he wanted to be everything, to do everything; to paint, to write, to draw, to dance, to play in a band — but then only got good enough to then quit, I wanted to jump out of my seat and shout ‘amen.’ When he said that he was not scared to be alone but often was, I empathized wholeheartedly, thinking about the little study I have made for myself that no one is allowed in. And when he said “I will never be less than a storyteller,”  and spoke with a subtle, non-pretentious passion that oozed from ever pore, I was inspired and filled with hope.  It was so moving that I didn’t want it to end.

But it did.  Will Anderson came back on to try to be funnier than him and the mics were opened up to the audience to ask the equivalent of “what was your favorite childhood toy and why?” ²  I just wanted to scream at them all and get Joss to keep talking about whatever it was he wanted to say – politics, religion, shoe polish, anything – but alas, that would have been really awkward and Joss would have looked at me funny, so I allowed it to continue on course.

I did not expect to be a giant fangirl about this.  I thought it would just be something fun and cool to say, like I mentioned, he was the guy who started it all. Showing up was the only way I could show my gratitude.  I’m now so glad that I went, I got so much more out of it than ever thought possible.

____

Today I had to turn down the opportunity to work on film because they couldn’t pay me up front.  Technically, they planned on paying me, but on a deferred basis, which means I get paid when the film goes into profit.  So it would have been months, maybe a year, before I saw one cent.

It was a pretty tough call for me.  On one hand, I’m in no position in my career to be turning down a credit, especially on a feature film.  I have nothing against the film and I wish it success, but it was a small, fairly new company trying to get a low budget comedy up and running.  The likelihood of it turning much profit was slim.  (Maybe it wasn’t, maybe it will go one to rake in oodles.)  Unfortunately, the other hand is that I need to pay rent now, this month, and I can’t take weeks/months of unpaid time because I have enough trouble paying the bills and my credit card off as it is.

It would have been nice to have a credit on that film.  I have a fairly anemic resume at the moment and another feature film could have helped me a lot in getting my next (paid) gig.

So this is what it means to be an adult then; making decisions based on being able to eat opposed to “pursuing a dream.”

Hopefully, next time this sort of thing comes up I will have the cash saved away that I will be able to take the time off, but unfortunately now, my car insurance needs me.

Three things of note have happened in my life since my last update.  (I assure you there are a lot of things NOT of note that have happened as well)

1. I got a grownup job.

Whoever thought that would happen.  I am now the script assistant for the Australian medical drama entitled All Saints.  It has been an absolute blast.  I am learning so much about the biz and at alarming rates.  It doesn’t hurt that I also love the people I am working with.  Let’s hope it gets picked up for another season so that I can keep this dream job.

2. I have written a TV spec script.

I will be submitting  a 30 Rock spec script as part of my application for the ABC Disney Talent Writer’s Fellowship.  I send it in next week. It is nowhere as good as I would want it to be, but what’s the worst that I can happen?  I already humbled myself by showing it to friends.  EEP, never again.  Reading over it I was embarrassed at the draft I had given them.  However, it did inspire me to rewrite it.

3. I signed up to Twitter.

Yep.  I gave in to peer pressure.  It’s oddly addicting, this Twitter thing.  Who would have thought I cared what people could say in 140 letters or less.  It’s strangely complex and there’s a whole new language one must learn.  But I must keep up with the youths.  You may follow me @carrieisgett. I will eventually link it to my site.

So there, stuff happens.  Isn’t it all grand?

Yesterday, I was lucky enough to be an observer in the All Saints writer’s room.  For those who cannot easily guess what that may entail, let me explain, I observed in the room with all of the writers.  I spent a whole day watching the writers do there job.  Does it sound boring?  Well, it most certainly was not.  In fact, it was pretty much on the awesome side. 

As an American, I am not an expert on Australian television, especially their dramas.  I’m not totally opposed to it,¹ but it would seem that the more actively I pursue my interest in television the less time I have to sit and watch it.   Ain’t life grand?  I have seen only a handful of All Saints episodes, so it can be easily said that I was a bit disoriented at first but I think I caught on fast enough.

Because we ² were plotting out an episode that doesn’t air until next year sometime, I don’t really know what I’m allowed to say about the actual episode in terms of respect for the show and respect for spoiler phobia, so to be safe, I’ll just stick to the “My Day” part of the story.

The day before I was sent a brief rundown of what the episode was that we were going to be looking at. After I got over the “I don’t know which faces to put to these names” portion of my anxiety, things went a bit more smoothly. (Turns out there are a few new characters to appear an that’s why they weren’t able to be found anywhere on the web).  I was also informed that they were starting at 10, so please be there by 9:45.  

If only I had gotten there at 9:45.  Not wanting to be late, I left my house at about 8:45, knowing that though the distance to Channel 7 studios wasn’t far, the traffic in that area could be a real bitch.  Of course, with my luck, there was no traffic.  None.  In fact, from what I could tell, the roads were bored.  I got there at nine. NINE!  Yes, it is good to be on time and even a bit early, but I believe an hour early falls into the category of “Annoying” because your hosts have to discreetly find a place to put you so they can get their actual work done.  So, I went and grabbed a coffee, which took about three seconds, so for the next half hour or so I just drove around the three or four block radius in order to kill some time.  At 9:35, I thought that maybe I had crossed the “Annoyingly Early” threshold into the “Professional” area and headed on into security. 

I, by any means, did notdress up for this, but I did make sure that I looked presentable, which included a pair of boots with a very small kitten heel on them.  I like them and they look nice.  However, I was the only one there who had any form of hard sole on ³ and every time I walked across the hardwood floor it echoed and felt like then entire studio could hear me.  I may be exaggerating here, but not by much.

Annabel Davis, the script department manager, a very nice lady who had been handling me up to this point,  introduced me around to the writer’s department before sitting me on a couch to wait for everything to begin.  As people started to trickle in I got more aquatinted with everyone.  Naturally I gravitated toward the writer’s assistant, Nicky, because I saw her the most as she set up for the day but I also got to speak with one of the show’s medical advisors, Camilla (unfortunately, I never caught her last name).  Finally I met the show’s script producer Louise Crane (an insanely hilarious lady with a great feel for story telling), the script editor Trent (aka Trent 2, for my purposes) and the actual writer for this particular episode Trent Atkinson.  I instantly fell in love with Trent Atkinson a bit, possibly because upon meeting him I just assumed he was twelve and not to mention he was just the most pleasant human being on the planet, which is so taken for granted these days.  Trent and Louise really worked well together, seeming to fuel each other, both in story telling and comedically.  Trent told me which seat was Lou’s and as long as I didn’t sit there, I would probably be fine.

Like I mentioned before, they are in the process of adding new characters, so Lou showed a couple of casting DVD’s of the people they have cast since the last episode Trent wrote.  That was neat, because I was able to familiarize myself with the new faces considering I really only knew “Frank” and “Von” by name/face and recognized the people who turned out to be “Dan” and “Bart” as “All Saints People” before this time. So then the writing process began.  Lou and Trent began to talk through the episode’s story with the occassional input from Camilla and/or Trent 2.  On the other end of the table, Nicky typed everything they decided on — eight hours of essentially typing what everyone said.   This is pretty much how the day went (except Trent 2 made an exit at lunch time).  It was really cool and one of my favorite parts was watching Camilla.  They could give pretty much and time lapse (ie, for surgery or recovery) or visual (ie, coughing up blood) and she could tweak the ailment to have that desired effect.  That was really interesting. 

It was a pretty exhausting day for me, and I wasn’t really doing much.  I did take notes though.  Apparently, observers are allowed to write a submission for the episode plotted in the room and someone will give them feed back on it.  I’m definitely going to do one in the coming weeks.  It’s going to be really hard, especially since I have no idea about any of the medical ailments that were discussed.  Annabel said that Camilla would have a summary for the episode’s medical but it probably wouldn’t be out for another two weeks, so I might have to wait for that so I don’t look too much like a tool.  

Yesterday really confirmed for me that this is what I want to do.  The creative energy was awesome and you could really tell these guys were having a ball doing it, even when they got serious and “down to business.”  And it didn’t really hurt to hear the “insider info” about the actors that you might not hear elsewhere.  They sound like great people to work with though, I’ll say that.  It seems like there is never a dull moment around those parts and I can’t wait to get my foot in the door.  I left my CV with Annabel just in case something ever comes up where they may need someone to do … anything really, I am not too fussed.

On a little side note, Trent is directing a series of short films hoping they will help him get funding for his feature.  I offered my assistance if he need it and hopefully he will take me up on it.  He told me to give him an email and he would let me know some details.  It would be cool to get back on set again, it’s been too long.

So, yep, yesterday was a bit A+ in my book.  Hopefully I didn’t make too bad of an impression (though, would that be better or worse than making no impression at all, and be forgotten instantly?)  I wish that I’ll be able to do something else like that again some time in the future.  Thank you so much Stephen Davis for getting me the connection with his show writer friend Blake Ayshford and All Saints.  It was definitely a great experience.

The episode will probably air in February or March, so it’s a while to wait.  Hopefully though I will be able to post my submission on this website after I submit it, granted I’m allowed to.

In other news, when I did my Wii Fit yesterday it said I lost .5 kg.  Today’s results are as follows:

BMI: 22.79 (from 22.94)

Weight: 61.3 (from 61.7)

So down .4 kg is a good sign I guess, but I’m still far away from my goal and rapidly running out of time. (Not to mention over a week ago I started at 61.4…)