New Year's Resolution

I was browsing in a little hipster shop the other day, being a fashion wing-girl for a girlfriend. I picked up a pair or those new Grass jeans which I hear the kids are wearing these days. They were surprisingly affordable on sale at $40. Thinking ahead to my ability to buy groceries, I sighed and put them down.

"You're not going to get them?" My friend asked.

"Nah, no money."

A hipster dude across the jean table from me snorted and snatched up a cashmere sweater, "No money?"

I hadn't expected to be explaining my financial situation to a stranger but I snorted back at him and sniped "Nope."

"Put it on your credit card, girl." With that he stalked to the cashier and whipped out his AmEx.

Due to previous financial shenanigans, I don't have a credit card and I don't want one, ever again. As much as I'd like to have chalked it up to the old family rule of "No buying stuff for yourself right before Christmas," it was really that, yes, I am that poor. I seriously would have to weigh gas for the car or these jeans. Last time I checked it wasn't a crime to be poor but it might as well be around Tinseltown.

Criminal nature aside, I'm damn sick of it. Yes, the whole starving artist thing is for a good cause, a film I believe in. But the starving nature of it is getting old. That's why my resolution for 2007 is weatlth. I hereby declare that 2007 is the year I will actually have a serious income. And it will be the first in a long line of serious income years. No more shopping at the 99cents store out of necessity, no more begging off lunches with friends because I can't pay my share, no more putting off the dog's vet visit.

Here's to great wealth in 2007, in whatever form it takes for you.

The Spirit of Giving

As child of divorce and remarriage I was your standard American kid with Issues. Which is to say I was a selfish little brat. It didn’t help that I went to a strict Catholic school; one of those places where cranky teachers seem to glare out from under years of repression. I regularly got in trouble for questioning the nuns during religion class. I may have learned to distrust religion, and to behave myself like a proper lady but one thing I did not learn at that oppressive place was any Christian charity.

In fifth grade, I was transplanted from my idyllic mountain town to uber-hip NorCal suburbia. Having only ever worn an itchy wool school uniform, I’d been an outcast from the moment I arrived. I didn’t understand the mall culture that gripped 80s America. I didn’t own a stitch of Guess or Espirit. In those first few months, I got used to being a bottom feeder and mostly tried to keep my head down and get through till college where I was sure there would be people I could actually relate to.

These suburban pre-teens were vicious kids. I was shocked,...shocked, to hear the kids swear at recess. I snapped my head around looking for the wrath that was sure to reign down in the form of a yard duty but none came. Out here in the NorCal public school system, no one cared if you swore. My parents had always taught me not to be mean to people, don’t stare at handicapped kids and try to help when you can. It seems these Gitano-wearers had missed out on that class.

There was a girl in our class who was badly disfigured and in an electric wheel chair which she steered by nudging a joystick with her largely useless hands. Stacy was pretty tough to look at for someone like me who couldn’t eat meat for a year after being grossed out by ET. But it would have gone against my upbringing to deliberately avoid her. My jaw dropped again when these poor little rich kids would get in her face and ask her what kind of drugs was her mom smoking when she’d been pregnant.

Each Christmas, my new and terrifying school had a tradition known as “Candy-grams” wherein you paid a dollar for a slip of red or green construction paper. You then filled out the To and From lines and whatever cutesy, lovey, ass-kissing message you wanted. The notes were then tied to candy canes and handed out at an assembly during the week before Christmas break. Of course the popular kids always walked away with armloads of candy canes. They’d crow over how many they got, how many people loved them.

Though I never got more than one or two myself from the other loser kids at the bottom of the playground food-chain, I could never bear to see Stacy roll out of the auditorium with a candy-cane-less chair. So each year, I’d collect my allowance and buy her as many as I could. I never had the courage to sign my name though. I at least had a toe-hold of fitting in with the other losers where as she was a total pariah. I just couldn’t risk it.

So I signed them From: Your Secret Admirer. Because I was. To put up with these bull-shit ass-wipe kids like she did. Brave a gauntlet of hatred and fear every day and still find it in herself not to roll out in front of a bus. I don’t know if I could have kept on. I survived by virtue of the fact I kept myself as invisible as possible. She could never have the luxury of invisibility.

Years passed. I made it out alive and away to college. As far away from those kids as I could get. I assumed Stacy had done the same. She was smarter than most of us. She had regularly blown the curve on tests. I didn’t think of her much since I’d been too spineless to really get to know her. She faded into the background of “people who I went to school with.”

Except each Christmas I’d remember her when I saw candy canes and construction paper. I was home for Christmas a few years back and heard from an old friend that Stacy had died. It seems the complications of her condition meant she was not promised a long life expectancy and she’d already beaten the odds. But it still surprised me. She was so tenacious.

I hope she knew that someone really did admire her. I hope she didn’t think that some little bitch was just making fun of her. That’s what I would have thought. But then I'd been busy strategizing and trying to avoid derision whereas she's been just living. And it turns out that’s the point, isn’t it?

Merry Christmas, Stacy. From: Your Outright Admirer.

My Name in the Credits

Despite my best efforts to be a relevant force here in Hollywood I am still relatively anonymous. Not like I thought there would be a film crew awaiting my descent every morning, but still. Alright, I admit, like every other writer, I thought my first script was brilliant and would naturally sell for seven figures. And like every other writer, I came to see that my first script was pretentious crap that I would want my name removed from if it were actually out there.

Like every other writer, I’ve learned it’s a long, slow process to make a name for yourself here. It’s going on four years and there are inroads to be sure. My scripts are improving. My network is growing. My producing project is starting to attract notice. Even famous people know about it and that’s heartening. But it’s not like I’m getting stopped on the street by Brad Pitt screaming: “Heidi, is there a part in it for me?”

“Oh, you wouldn’t want that fame,” says a friend who was married to it. “Your life isn’t your own anymore. And everything is about him and his dream; making that happen for him.”

I assume she means her ex-husband and not Brad Pitt. And, given my brief liason with the Director, I can see how that might be the case. So here I am, still one step away from the big time at every turn.

The thing about Hollywood though is that it is the dream factory after all. My producing partner and I have had an amazing run of good luck lately; cosmic forces coming together for our film, cool people aligning with our plans. The magic 8 ball says: all signs point to yes.

So when I came out of my house yesterday morning to walk Simon Le Dog, it nearly didn’t seem out of the ordinary that there was a film crew waiting there. OK so maybe they weren’t waiting for me per se, but you gotta use what you’re given, right?

As I walked through them, one actor-ey guy commented on my Keane shirt and then segued into a chit chat about my favorite restaurants: “We’re doing a sort of guide to LA food from the streets,” he purred. I gave him some sound bites, plugged a few of my favorite eateries, signed a release form and went on my merry dog walk.

So at last it begins. I’m no longer anonymous in LA. In the ending credits crawl of today’s film I’m Unshowered Dog-Walking Girl In Cheap Sunglasses Who Likes Italian Food. Look for me!