Hollywood Parties and Old Producers

Thursday, all of us from the office went out to lunch with our accountant at a famous Burbank restaurant called the Smokehouse. The food, as always, was excellent. On the way out, we saw Garry Marshall who is an old time TV producer. (he produced Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley,directed the Princess Diaries, the Runaway Bride, Pretty Woman, and has acted in maybe a hundred TV shows and movies) I didn’t recognize him until someone pointed him out.

After work, I was invited by a friend from church to attend his company’s annual open house / Holiday party / RED camera demonstration. It was at Plaster City Digital Post on Sunset right in the heart of Hollywood. I took Craig from work with me because we are currently doing research on the post-production workflow of the amazing new RED digital cinema camera for a project. We saw a great presentation by my friend – a founder of the company – about how his post production facility has developed a workflow for the brand new technology. There were hundreds of people there, red carpets, three bars, hors d’oeuvres all over the place… it was REALLY big and REALLY Hollywood. I got to meet a lot of people and saw quite a few familiar faces from church. I meet people from church all the time that are well-connected in different aspects of the industry, and it was cool to hang out with them in a business-ish environment.

Thanksgiving up North

On Thursday, Greg, Josh, Parker and headed went up to Cambria, CA to meet a group of friends from Greg and my church at a rented-out cottage for Thanksgiving dinner. Then we headed up to Big Sur to camp for Friday and Saturday night. Here are a few (hundred) photos:

My Photos from Thursday:
http://picasaweb.google.com/jake.puffer/ThanksgivingInCambria20071122

My Photos from the Rest of the Weekend:
http://picasaweb.google.com/jake.puffer/BigSurCamping20071123

Parker’s Photos:
http://picasaweb.google.com/jake.puffer/BigSurParkerSPhotos20071123

vegas

view Jer’s photos:
http://picasaweb.google.com/usa4jer/VegasNov2007

view my photos (I only took a few):
http://picasaweb.google.com/jake.puffer/VegasAaronSBirthday20071117

AFM, the NHL, E.LA, the DGA, the WGA, and some more TLAs.

Last Tuesday (the 6th,) I went to a great little theater in Hollywood to see a limited-release film called Wristcutters. The three little screens sat well u under 100 people each (there was one aisle with three seats on either side.) Anyway – cool theater, and Wristcutters is now one of may favorite indie films. (Included in that list is Bella - which is amazing.) If either are playing near you – which they may not be until they get wide release or come out on video – I highly recommend them.

The following morning, I headed to a film trade show down the road from my house at the Loew’s Santa Monica Beach Hotel. It is the partner event to AFI, which is a popular and important film festival in this city. AFM is where filmmakers pitch their ideas, buyers survey what is going on, deals get made and such. I was originally going to go on Tuesday, but I got busy wit a project and went Wednesday morning instead. So I get dressed up ‘business casual’ and go to the hotel in the morning, and find a list of the filmmakers and where they are located, grab the Variety and Hollywood Reporter, get a coffee, and sit on the deck overlooking the ocean. I finish my coffee, read the Variety, make a game plan for the day. I have business cards ready, and am stoked to start talking to some people and hear about some projects. By the time I get to the first filmmaker, I have been at the place for almost two hours. I walk into the film maker’s area and they are tearing down their displays and packing their things. After visiting a few more rooms and floors of the Hotel, I realized that the last day was not for presenting but rather a day for everybody to move out. AFM was over. So, feeling like a total fool, I went home and dressed down and went in to work for the day. There’s always next year.

Oh yeah – I doctored Craig’s badge to save the company $400.

After work that day, I went to Home Group at the Dickerson’s on Sunset and Vine. It was a great time as usual, and after that I went to the DGA for an industry screening of American Gangster. In my opinion, it deserved the hype it was getting as one of the better movies of the year. It was a 2.5 hour movie, but managed to completely hold my interest for the duration. I’m glad I saw it, and it was nice to see it in such an environment (and for free!) Thumbs-up to the Editor’s Guild and the DGA.

Friday, we took an official company trip to the Arclight movie theater to watch No Country for Old Men – a Cohen Brothers film. The Arclight is the nicest movie theater I have ever patronized, and a Hollywood legend. All of the seating is assigned, and they and often have an emcee introduce the film. Gene had seen the film in Cannes and thought it was so good the rest of us ought to see it too. Craig didn’t go because he had a weekend trip planned to some wineries with his fiance. It was good. Weird and gruesome, but good.

Later that evening marked my second visit to the Magic Castle, which you can read about in an earlier post about my first experience there. We met some people there that we had gotten to know on my first visit to the castle and had a great time. I will be visiting that place again no doubt.

Saturday, I didn’t have anything planned so I called Cuauhtzin (a buddy from Webrides) to see what he was up to. He was heading over to a friend’s house in Monterrey Park to kick it with him and some of his friends. It happened that I already knew this guy through Cuautz, so after eating some Chinese with Greg at a restaurant about a block down the road, I decided to roll out there. It turns out Chinese food was a good prelude to the evening, because the party I went to was almost entirely Chinese. There were about 15 Chinese guys and girls, two Mexicans, and one white kid. The white kid was me. When I got there, everyone was around a huge outdoor grill cooking out and having a great time. It ended up being one of the best parties i’ve been to in quite a while.

Sunday, The WGA strike was once again a big topic of conversation at church. It’s amazing how many people are being affected by it even in our small church congregation. Almost everyone I talked with that morning had something new to say about it. After church, I went with Greg to the house of a friend from church who is a writer. He was having a reading of one of his scripts with some actors (also from church) and Greg and I went to observe and (constructively) criticize. It was a good script, and I’m excited for what may come of his writing in the future. After the reading, Connor (my pro-skater friend) swung by and we went to Belvedere skate park in East LA. It was the best free skate park I have ever seen. It was huge and all concrete. I was just out of practice enough to hurt by jaw, scrape my face, bruise both palms, mess up one wrist and the opposite shoulder, and bruise my butt. As expected, Connor was pulling backflips off a 6-foot quarterpipe, and pulling tricks most guys there wouldnt ever dream of doing. But, it was a great time, and i’m stoked to do some more So-Cal inlining before I head home.

The picture is of the secondary collision where my face hit ground after my jaw slammed into the concrete.

This past Tuesday (the 13th,) I left work a little early with Sarkis the Russian Intern to our company-sponsored NHL trip. I guess they just wanted to give us a little high-five by buying us tickets (and really good seats) to the hockey game. It was at the Duck Pond in Anaheim, and we saw the Ducks play the LA Kings. It was a very entertaining game – with plenty of bad calls, fights, and close shots. It ended in an overtime and a shootout, which the Ducks won by a single goal. We were sitting right on top of the zamboni tunnel – which is a great close view of the goal. And the snow-scooper-upper girls came through that way, which was an added bonus. It was one of the few sports we play in America that the Russian actually understood. Hooray for not having to explain everything like when we watch football or baseball or basketball at the office.

Magic Castle

Last Thursday, my boss’s ladyfriend was out of town and he was looking for something to do in her absence. He asked if I wanted to kick it at the Magic Castle. The Magic Castle is a private club for LA-area Magicians in the hills on the north edge of Hollywood. In fact, magicianship is a prerequisite for joining the club. Luckily, my boss is an amateur magician and has gone through the auditions and rites of passage to become a member. Suit and tie are a requirement for members and guests, so I spiffied up, and we headed out to check it out. When we got there, the Castle parking was completely packed, so we had to park up the hill at the Yamashiro Restaurant. Since my boss is a member of the Castle, so when we arrived, we went in via the hidden bookshelf door. Once I guessed the magic words, the bookshelf opened itself up and let us in. The Castle is a four-story ex-mansion housing four full bars, a full-service restaurant, and four or five theaters which hold simultaneous magic shows nightly. It is fully decked out in an ornate, yet creepy facade. There were displays of Houdini artifacts, ashes of former house-owners, and hidden buttons and levers scattered about that performed various scooby doo-ish functions. There is an invisible piano player, Irma, who creepily can play almost any song suggested to her, and will even answer your questions via playing notes on the keyboard. I seriously can not figure out how this piano works, but it is cool. Even creepier than the magic piano and eerie ambiance were the magicians hanging out everywhere in top hats and tails performing magic for each other and just being spooky in general.
We went up and watched a show in one of the theaters, and then grabbed a bite at the bar and walked around and talked to people. We found Whit – a magician, the emcee of the show we saw and personal friend of my boss. We also ran into the owner of the club sitting at one of the bars. After some wandering around, we ventured to one of the lower levels where MySpace (the company) had rented out an area to throw a halloween party for the company and some of their business partners. I think I heard there were 400 people or so at the party. We found out they were the source of the full parking situation. As we were working the room down there, I ran into a girl I know from church who was there with her company – a film advertising group which is apparently linked in some way with MySpace. We met her boss and talked industry for a while. She joined us and hung out for the rest of the evening. While the three of us were hanging out in one of the upper levels, we bumped into a third person we both knew from church – who was at the party with a different agency. It is amazing how often I see people from Ecclesia by chance in a city of about 10 million people.

The Castle was a good time, and I plan on going back next weekend for a business dinner, and as often as I have the chance thereafter.

Last Weekeend, Meeting with Producers, & The New Bus

Last weekend, I hung out with The Condor and acted in the short he was shooting for school. Lindsay, (my boss Gene’s girlfriend) helped out by acting in it also. We shot friday evening and went to OBrien’s restaurant/pub afterwards. I got bangers and mash with a Harp. And it was incredibly good. Saturday, we filmed most of the day and kicked it with the DP in Manhatan Beach that night. We shot on a Panasonic HVX in HD with a 35mm lens adapter system, so the footage is gorgeous with the shallow DoF film look. HERE is what the setup looks like. Sunday, I went in to Max-Q for the afternoon to get some things done before the week hit.

Today, we had a meeting with some producers of a film for which we are cutting a trailer. One of them was this guy, who was once head of Columbia pictures. There was also another producer there from the film, who plays a major acting role in it, but is uncredited. When I met him at the door, it was funny because I thought I knew him, but couldn’t remember from where. Then I realized that I had been cutting a trailer with him in it for the past several days. It’s pretty cool to be working on the project.

I’m starting to get pumped for our Thanksgiving camping trip to Big Sur. I will probably even buy a new bus before then. THIS is the one I am probably going to get. The bus is located about halfway to Big Sur – in Arroyo Grande, so I will get an excuse to drive up the coast twice within a few weeks. Perfect.

Freddy D, the New Feature, and Stuff

A few weeks ago, we got a new feature into the office. Shortly after the film came in, the director came in for a meeting to discuss the trailer and other advertisement for the film. He didn’t quite fit the stereotype for the average Hollywood director though. That’s because it was Fred Durst – the lead singer of the white-trash rock idols Limp Bizkit. I won’t go into detail about it for the sake of professional courtesy – but suffice to say it was cool to work with someone that famous.

Also, we got another feature in last week for which we are cutting the theatrical trailer. It is hilarious, and I am really excited to work on it. It is one of those modern comedies – sort of like Superbad or Wedding Crashers – that genre. I just watched a rough cut, but it has some A-list actors and will be very fun to work on.

Last weekend, I went to the Queen Mary to watch a friend’s band. The Queen Mary is an old cruise ship turned into a Titanic-style hotel, and we had a great time rocking it out. I went with Cuatz from Webrides and some of his buddies. Greg, Josh, Parker, and some of the other dudes went also. I stayed down in Long Beach and went to a KROQ festival at a horse race at OakTree Saturday. It was fun, but my horse : ‘Wanna-Runner’ turned out to be a ‘wanna-be.’ His odds to win were 20:1, so I didn’t expect much, but if he won he would have turned my $10 into $200. He finished third. Stupid horse. We did get to see some entertainment when the gangs started to fight. We saw four major fights- the second of which brought a squad of horse police, and a copter. The other two big fights broke out while the cops were getting everyone out of the infield of the track. We had a whole herd of mounted cops, motorcycle cops, and everything else out on the infield of this horse track rounding up bruised and bloody Mexicans. I saw some of the security guards take some brutal hits.
This weekend, I went to see The Kingdom with Josh and Aaron. It was good. Not quite Oscar good, but very good. Yesterday, I went to a Davy Crockett themed halloweenish party with Greg. It was mostly church-folk there, and I met a lot of new people from the church and had a great time. There was an EXCELLENT indy/rockabilly trio band playing, and I will post their name when I think of it. The lead guy, who happens to be the drummer and one of the lead singers – goes to the church. That band is going places.
This Sunday, we had baptisms and new deacons introduced – and I met one of the celebrities in the congregation, who is also an elder – Tony Hale. He is most famous for his role in Arrested Development (a Fox sitcom that ran from ‘03-’06.)

This and That & The Rain

Last week was a busy one. Early in the week, I was doing final finishing touches on a few movie posters to get them ready for the print house. Doing that, I actually missed a trip to the mixing stage for finishing on a theatrical trailer we were working on, being busy with posters. That was a bummer, because I really wanted to go. The next day, I worked on finishing up a cut of my TV spot for another movie. And then on Wednesday, I got to go the screening/final notes on the film print of the trailer I missed final mixing for on Monday. There were a lot of important people there, including a famous director that I got to meet and talk with for a while. Thursday, I finished V1 of the TV spot I was working on (the default title for a spot that goes to the client for the first review.) The client is a pretty big producer at FOX, so I took all day getting it ready and sent over. Friday morning he called and said he liked it, and would give further comments later. The rest of Friday, I went over the poster comps with the graphic design boss, and spent most of the day executing the changes from the notes I got in that session. We also had a nice lunch for celebration, since we got a lot finished that week. Later in the day, the famous director from the trailer screening stopped in for a visit, and we got more schmooze time with him.

On top of that eventful week, I was making trips to Webrrides each evening to do graphic design work for each of the eight new videos that came out that week from their coverage of the Frankfurt Auto show. I would go straight there from my normal job, and work until midnight or 1, and then head home for some sleep before work. Not gonna lie, that started to get real tiring after a while. It’s funny, because the Famous animators were at that place every evening I was there so late, and usually were still there when I left. And when I used to work there, they were always there when I got there in the morning. Maybe working 24/7 is what it takes to do the kind of stuff they do, which it this: Famous Grop Website. Seeing all of them there working so hard actually kept me from complaining about how I was working so much.
After work Friday, instead of going to Webriides, I went to meet Greg at his work to hang out for the evening in Hollywood, since we were both still up there from work. Unfortunately, Los Angeles got it’s annual rain that evening, and it POURED on me trying to ride my motorcycle and see where I was going in the rain. I actually almost slid the back end out pulling out of the alley from work. Anyway, I met greg and we kicked it in Hollywood.

The end.