Oh Mandy....

I wish this was some heartfelt, swooning post about a girl. That would probably mean that there was a girl in my life at this point in time who I was looking to have do more than just read my scripts. Alas, however, the only Mandy right now is Mandy.com, a site that a co-worker of mine directed me to today.

Mandy, or "the mand" as I'm going to call it, is an employment site for people specifically looking into careers in the television industry. Particularly, it helps people who are more interested in the production and technical aspects of it, though it does have postings for writers and office assistants wanted, as well. It's sort of like a glorified Craig's List employment section, as one can search by location and aspect of television entertainment. It's free to create an account and upload a resume, though I actually applied through the site without creating a profile first, which was a nice little time saver.

Many of the positions are for temporary employment. Though I searched for full-paying jobs --if you go to the site, you'll see that you an either search the part-time and low to no pay gigs or the full-salary positions-- most of them were still only for a few months long. Some of the gigs actually only last a day or two (has another opportunity to use "gigs" ever been more appropriate?).

But despite the short term aspect of most of the jobs, the site also offers some of the most interesting opportunities I've seen thus far in my increasingly extensive job search. Why, just a few hours ago, I applied to be an associate producer on a National Geographic special, to be a writer on what I can only imagine is a Middle-Eastern owned network called EbruTV in New Jersey, and an office assistant paying slave wages.

For anyone still looking for a job (and who isn't who is fresh out of college and pursuing a career in entertainment?), Mandy.com might be worth a search. And, by chance, if you know any cute girls between the ages of 18 and 26 named Mandy, be sure to direct them my way.

Edward Albee Article

The New York Times is running an article about Edward Albee that every writer should read. I know he's a playwright and all, but there are some writers that transcend mediums. He's one of them.

One Step Forward...

The New York Times had an awesome article in the Sunday Arts section about the new Broadway production, The Pirate Queen. It dealt with how the producers had to basically revamp the entire show after it got destroyed in a trial run in Chicago before arriving for its opening in New York...only to get...well, killed is too harsh, but perhaps mutilated by the critics works. I mean, let's face it, when words like uninspired and banal are used, in some cases in the same sentence, you may have a problem.

However, I bring all this up because the article focused on the producers and how they coped with having to make drastic changes to the show. Without giving away too much about the screenplay I'm currently working on, it would be fair to say that my premise is almost exactly that, only mine has the added flair that would, you know, make it worth being a movie.

The article was incredibly informative, and as I'm a graduate of the "only do as much research as you need to write a first draft, then do more later if you need to" school, reading it gave me some great things to consider and even a few ideas to immediately address some of my script's issues. Yay!

And yet there's that pesky task, which seems to have dragged out for at least the last month, of finishing my friggin rough draft. I'd been stuck over the weekend, and as most writers know, when you can't move forward, it's because your problem lies behind you. Needless to say, I wrote negative five pages yesterday. At this rate, I should be back to zero by mid-May.

(I'm frustrated. So there.)

Anyway, in tying up a few loose ends, there have been a few Spider-Man 3 reviews popping up here and there, most of them saying the same thing: the plot is stretched incredibly thin, the film seems to drag in places, many of the characters are hardly fleshed out, and yet the action sequences are incredible and at the end, everything is tied up and you feel...satisfied.

Given how ass-tastic X-Men 3 was, I suppose that's better than nothing.

(Of course, rumor has it that Spidey 3 cost almost 300 million dollars! 300 million?? Really? But then again, I saw figures that Sony stockpiled almost $1.6 billion on the first two films, so I guess they can do whatever the hell they want.)

Hopefully we'll have a short comic up by Friday. Expect part 3 of And So It Begins sometime next week.

Happy writing...

Best Scenes From "The Wicker Man"

Because everyone needs to understand that a man in a bear suit punching a woman is never, in any circumstance, anything but downright hilarious.