Quantum of Solace

After I got off work a few days ago, I drove out to Santa Monica to meet up with Andre and Thomas, a pair of movie producers with whom I’m currently collaborating on several projects. We met at Loews Hotel on Ocean parkway, site of this year’s American Film Market. For those who aren’t familiar, AFM is a global gathering of filmmakers, producers and distributors, a place where many independently made films get picked up by bigger studios to be packaged, marketed and released for a mass audience. For them, it was business as usual; for me, it was a learning experience.

Actually, before I continue, I should reintroduce myself since most of you reading this have no idea what I’ve been up to over the last few years.

Hello, my name is Aaron Ellis, and I’m a screenwriter… Or maybe it would be more appropriate to call myself a struggling, semi-discovered writer.

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Upon graduating from college, I started writing screenplays. After several years of writing for a newspaper, I decided to make screenwriting my career goal. I walked away from journalism and spent the last few years working low-maintenance day jobs so I would have the free time to write as much as possible.

While it would be fun to pretend like I’m living it up as a successful Hollywood scribe, I’ve never been one for putting up a front that I can’t maintain. Truth is I’ve spent six years writing screenplays that few people have read and fewer appreciated, regardless of how good they were. Every time I went forward, I ran into a brick wall. Every time I got high, I got kicked back down to reality.

Roughly a year ago, my buddy Tom introduced me to Andre, a producer he knew from business school. Being the persuasive homey he is, he convinced Andre to read some of my scripts. Dre read them and liked them, which led to a breakthrough opportunity. He asked me if I was interested in taking a writing assignment. The project involved adapting a Japanese short story (which shall remain nameless) into an American film (his production company specializes in adapting East Asian anime, manga, short stories and films for Western audiences). I accepted the assignment before I even read the story. That could have been a major mistake, but after I read it, I knew for sure that I had just gotten in on a good thing.

The last year has consisted of learning the ropes and struggling to stay afloat. I’ve worked on countless loglines, synopses, summaries and treatments of the project so that it will be perfectly presentable and pitchable when it’s time to get funding from studios. And though I’m biased, I gotta say, the movie will be f**king awesome if we get it made.

It’s been an exciting process, but the wheels of the studio system turn slowly, and now that we’re in a down economy in which the film industry, a place of excessive spending, has been hit very hard, the process is taking much longer than it would have four years ago. I wish it were as simple as a countdown to the big payday and career jumpstart, but that’s not the case. Everything is indefinite and far away.

The main reason I’m writing this is to update most of you on my life. I know I seem like the coolest bastard alive (mostly because it’s true), but there’s a lot of hard work and sacrifice that goes on behind the scenes. Also, I’m really sick of fielding bullsh*t questions from stuck-up morons who think I’m a loser because they don’t understand why I walk this path. If I wanted a 9-to-5 and an ordinary life, I would have had it years ago. But I demand something else, something different. You may not understand it, but try to respect it.

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The meeting with Andre and Thomas went well. We had a lunch at Cucina Italiana and developed a strategy for generating studio interest in our project. After discussing the strategy and eating a good meal, I parted ways with them. They had meetings with various producers and distributors. I had time to kill, so I walked along the boardwalk to the Santa Monica Pier, where I indulged in some junk food. I stood at the pier with a cone of frozen yogurt and watched the waves rush to and from the shore. At that moment, I felt pure solace, like everything would be okay.

When it was time to leave, I returned to the streets and walked back to my car. When I got there, I saw a white piece of paper under the windshield wiper. It was a fifty dollar parking ticket, courtesy of the city of Santa Monica.

And once again, I got kicked back down to reality.


Currently In Rotation: Deep House

Blue Six – “Sweeter Love”
From the album Beautiful Tomorrow