Have Chutzpah. Need VyVanse.

When I sit in a movie theater and I finish a movie that I love, say a Juno, a Rushmore, a Royal Tenenbaums, a Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, I always leave thinking, I want to tell stories like that. Quirky, irreverent, funny. I’ve seen a lot, done a lot. I have some wacky, surreal, incredibly bizarre stories from all my travels. If you sat all my friends down from all parts of my life in one afternoon BBQ, you would be amazed by my circus of a life. You can imagine why that is… not wanting to be bored, thirsting for new experiences, wanting to learn about everything in a Studs Turkel kind of way.

I have a unique point of view and it burns my blood, yearning to tell those stories to the world. It’s all in my head, just waiting to come out and dance around on the stage or on film.

I have grand visions. I am an idea man and many of them are easily worth millions of dollars. I see the big picture of running a fun and cool production company, but every time I get going, I don’t know what it is, but I get derailed and I end up staring at the ceiling.

Problem is, I don’t have the chemical makeup to make those visions into a reality. I’m so disorganized (except when I’m in someone else’s structured world, then I am a field general), I have too many spinning plates around me and I can’t seem to keep them spinning without dropping one, and typically it’s the big Platzgraff plate.

But I know I can do it. I know it’s in me. I’m a hard worker. I’m smart. Here’s an example: When I was in college I spent the entire year blowing off Physics class. I was getting a D- going into finals. Finals was a huge part of the final grades. I put it in eighth gear. I must have done every single homework assignment in two nights to learn an entire year’s worth of physics. I got an A- on the final and ended up with a C in the class. WTF is my problem?

When I’m on the movie set, a lot of producers, department heads, writers, actors, etc, give me the confidence that I can also achieve beyond my level, just by watching some of the things that they do. And so many people with whom I started the business is moving up except for me, becoming producers, directors, writers on big movies and TV shows. Me? I’m trying to figure out how to get out of Target without being so overwhelmed.

I talked to Mel Gibson last night at the Hotel Café. We worked together ten years ago on Payback and he hasn’t forgotten about me because I fully volunteered to be the butt of one of his practical jokes. I wore Lucy Liu’s dominatrix outfit from the movie and he wanted to put it in the Hollywood Reporter. I loved making him laugh.

At the Hotel Cafe, Mel and I chatted about what he was doing and what I was doing. It wasn’t a Hollywood / Entourage / TMZ conversation at all. Just two guys talking about stuff. No mano a mano, or comparing penis size kinds of conversations. We should be working together, damn it!

I went home frustrated, because I’m so accustomed to working with people of his caliber, and I seem to consistently partner up with people who don’t have the chops or who haven’t paid their dues. WTF?

I spent all night filled over the brim with chutzpah. I’m thinking, I’ll send him a postcard and tell him I want to have a meeting with him and talk about directing, or talk about working at Icon, or something…

Then it got overwhelming again. I didn’t want to burn my bridges with him by saying the wrong thing, by trying too hard to impress him or by appearing to be too desperate. Flooded with possibilities, I stand still instead. Running to stand still. These are the moments I wish I had a dad who could help me write a letter.

So it turns out I’m probably not going to write anything. It’s so much easier to just be around the people “trying to make it” than the people who are are already incredibly successful.

I take a VyVanse. It works to keep me focused, but it’s a matter of 1) what shoud I be focused on? and 2) contending with all the scar tissue caused by all my past patterns of self-sabotage. At this moment, I’m inspired to find a coach, which brings up another issue…

Cash flow. And to follow my heart and my dreams of writing and directing I cannot go back to making $12,000 a week and doing what I’m very good at. I just can’t. Like someone told me once, “it’s chump change.”

I’m an ADD Omelet Scrambling to Happen.

What? Who knows. It sounded cool when it arrived in my head, so I just said it. That’s ADD for you. Not thinking before speaking. Working on it!

I have big ideas. With only small powers to execute. I can’t. I have ADD. I recently found out. My feelings are mixed – regret about the past, encouraged about the future, stuck in the moment. I just took my 2nd Adderall pill tonight. But instead of working on my Great American Play, I’m writing this damn blog.

I signed up for an ADD support group. It’s something, right? I have visions of seeing Meatloaf with his big boobs sobbing all over me ala Fight Club. Will it be a circle of people who are incessantly rambling? Will we pay attention to each other’s testimonials from start to finish or will our minds be wandering around the room, floating in helium-state toward space?

I have a deadline for my play on June 2, and here I am dicking around on a blog. A cry for help? Who’s really listening anyway? I write these blogs for posterity, so when I’m found face down, they can read this and make an independent movie out of it.

I’m an Adderall All-Star

I woke up with a bad feeling. A ticking clock over my head. Time is running out, isn’t it? Stuck in a Metairie hotel with a stove and dishes and pans, and I had some kind of epiphany yesterday that I was going to save money by going to the grocery store and cook my own food. But I forgot to buy dishwashing liquid and a sponge. Just don’t feel like going out to the grocery store again today because this ticking clock is forcing me to sit at my laptop to finish the screenplay. So I’ll just nuke a hot dog or eat some granola cereal. And then I’ll take an Adderall. Then I’ll write for hours and hours and hours. Hopefully.

Shut up the Village Idiot, Ranting in the Middle of the Night

This was originally written pre-ADHD diagnosis, in the summer of 2007. 

Looking for to fill my creative well until my cup runneth over. With a smoke and a laugh. Feeling sticky sweat. Looking to bathe in the unbridled energy of people who believe in me. Despite myself.
Looking for a sleep that hasn’t come since I tried checking out hours ago. Eyes closed. Head open for business. Soul a gaping wound. Looking for to fill my God-shaped hole. Wandering. Wondering. Fighting to live the Art of Faith amongst all the dark voices conspiring once again to eclipse the love light.

Three more hours then back to the factory where we make the laughing gas for all the unsuspecting viewers of the Nickel-and-dime-odeon basic cable lot. Three more hours til the Santa Clarita heat that broils the underbelly of my personal hell — being surrounded by the undead, staring down the barrel of love fallen, torn between stopping the nails in the chalkboard of my head with one trigger or making the blind and fantastic leap into the Brave New World of my true passion – directing. 

Praying out loud, to drown out the noise that just won’t stop. Scratching and crawling, at the door, begging – just stop enough to let in Little Joy again. Just for a minute.

All my absurd Spinal Tap life, the broken dial, stuck on eleven, scaring them all away. Fumbling to find zero. Just for a minute?

It’s three o’clock and no one is around. Just a bang and a clatter as an angel hits the ground.

Too late. Time to rise again to make everyone else’s dreams come true. The dead horse needs beating again. Rewind. Repeat. God, make it stop. Just for a minute.

Want to be the song that I hear in my head. Here’s the mash-up currently in circulation:

Where’s the girl with the kaleidoscope eyes? Just can’t get enough of that lovey-dovey stuff. Why she had to go I don’t know, she wouldn’t say. I believe in yesterday. Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see. It’s getting hard to be someone but it all works out. My mind is not for rent. To any God or government. Always hopeful, yet discontent. Know changes aren’t permanent. But change is.

God, make it stop. Are you in the room? Are you in my head?

People don’t say hello often enough…at least that’s what I’m observing. Looking to have you at hello.

The Struggle is the Thing.

A lot of pain out there amongst all of us struggling to live within the surface of things. I feel you. So many artists who want to come out and live their art, but can’t seem to find their love, their space, their village. I hear you. The struggle is the thing. ADD can really suck.

When hope begets vision, it begets love and it begets life…and as I am discovering through a lot of personal bloodletting, it finally begets your reality. All in due time.

Embrace the struggle. Listen…it informs you, it guides you. When you are ready, it will all come into place. This is the art of faith.

Get yourself ready. Fight your good fight and experience your creative renaissance. This is the art of honoring your voice.

Find the other superheroes. Be a band of brothers and sisters. This is the art of creating the Village.

Make your music. Make your art.