I just read an article written by a guy in Austin, Texas, about how you don't need to live in Los Angeles to make it as a screenwriter in Hollywood. He was lecturing his readers about how to do it, and about how he had done it...and he's 26 years old. And his proof of "making it" was that one of his scripts got optioned.
Well that just happens to be where our story left off. I was around that age, and one of my scripts got optioned. And thank God I didn't write any articles about it, because I probably would have sounded as dumb and naive as that guy.
Getting your script optioned ain't making it, as I soon learned. It was nice to get paid, even a tiny amount, for something I wrote. But in the grand scheme of things, it didn't mean shit for me or my career.
I didn't have an agent. And there was little to no chance that the script would actually get turned into something. But I didn't know that at the time. I was all, "it's happening!" But it wasn't.
As mentioned previously, after being so close to the brass ring of a sitcom job, I was unceremoniously dumped on the street without work or any prospects. Luckily, through a friend I landed at E! on a show called "Celebrities Uncensored", which really was the forerunner to TMZ.
If I had been really smart, I would've parlayed that into TMZ and become a millionaire. But alas, Harvey Levin beat me to it.
"Celebrities Uncensored" was a show featuring paparazzi footage narrated by an omnipresent, wacky Voice Over Guy. I don't like to brag about this, but we really are the reason Paris Hilton, Nicole Richie, and various others got famous. Because we would sit and look at this footage and there was absolutely nothing good in it, but Paris and Nicole were in all of it. So we had to put them on because we had nothing else. Unfortunately for the world, that lead us to where we are today.
The craziest part is that I loved my job. I loved it. I think it was the first job where I had some creative control, and where I was actually good at what I was doing - I was one of the worst assistants of all time. I don't know how to make coffee, probably because I've never had a sip of it in my life. And that douche was right not to hire me, because there's no way I could've fixed his fax machine. But as odd as it may seem, I don't think I've enjoyed working as much as I did at that God awful TV show.
I would write the shit out of that wacky voice over. And other people on the show would have me punch up their scripts, or just write for them entirely. I was a machine. But it is troubling to find out that what you excel at in life is being able to recognize Rod Stewart's daughter and make jokes about her. But at least I had something. I had found my niche, and it was low paying.
Strangely enough, the ratings for "Celebrities Uncensored" were huge. But E! hated the show. It was ruining their relationships with celebrities. People were starting to refuse to do interviews with E! news. Rene Zellweger claimed she needed 5 bodyguards because of the show. I have no idea why, except for maybe she's out of her God Damn mind.
I made a lot of great friends working there. One of them was a nice young lady whose father happened to be a big shot at Lionsgate. He was on the non-creative side things there, but was starting to venture into actually producing features for them. His first foray was Tyler Perry's first movie, which made way too much money.
And he had his second lined up, but the screenplay was in horrible shape (apparently a horrible script didn't stop them from making the Tyler Perry movie, but that's another story).
The movie was going to star DMX and was called "Dying for Dolly".
"Dying for Dolly"Here's what happened:
LOGLINE:
An Italian mob boss's daughter falls in love with her bodyguard, a black dude.
The smart people at Lionsgate did a study and found that if you had DMX on the cover of your movie at Blockbuster, it was guaranteed to make a certain amount of money. So as long as you produced it for less than $5 million dollars, you had yourself a tidy profit.
I know what you're thinking, that sounds like an awesome way to make award winning films! But hey, it is a business.
I know what you're also thinking, DMX? What the hell? Keep in mind this was 2003 and DMX wasn't a full on crackhead yet. He just did that Jet Li movie and was something of a name, I guess. I don't approve of any of this, I'm just telling you the facts.
I know what you're also thinking, what's Blockbuster? Again, this was 2003, Netflix wasn't around yet.
So Lionsgate went to DMX and said, we want to make a movie with you. DMX said, "X gonna give it to you!!!" No, he said, great, and I have the perfect script!
It turns out, some friend of DMX had written a piece of garbage script and DMX gave it to Lionsgate and said, we have a deal as long as I get to make this movie. And Lionsgate said yes.
So they had their DMX vehicle, but they felt like it was too embarrassing to make with that script. They needed a rewrite, a complete and total rewrite.
And that's when "Celebrity's Uncensored" finest star stepped in...
In the next chapter, I rewrite the thing, everyone loves it, and then DMX carjacks someone at the Newark airport and gets thrown in jail...
(The next chapter will be sometime this week)
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