This sucks.

Not.

This is crazy this is crazy this is crazy

(Isn't that cool? Somebody created it and put on top of our crew lists. Hope it's on the cast and crew thongs, too. I'd give credit where it's due, but I don't know where that is.)

As of this writing, I have white, blue, yellow, pink, green and now goldenrod drafts of AMERICAN SUMMER (not necessarily in that order).

I have crew lists and day out of days and memos and shooting schedules and coolest-of-the-cool so far, a call sheet with my name up in the "Writer" section.

A couple days ago, I got a phone call out of the blue from the incredibly cool and sweet Rosanna Norton, our costume designer. As you can see, she's worked on a couple of films in her amazing career and knows how disconnected from production the writers often feel, so she touched base to say hi and talk about the script. Her call meant a lot to me. She's busy as hell and doesn't know me at all, but she asked about the evolution of the script and entertained my questions about wardrobe (apparently, Matt doesn't really dig Hawaiian shirts, so remember that when you're doing your Christmas shopping). When we hung up, I felt like I'd been hugged.

John Sciarappa, the office PA I mentioned last entry, kicks major ass -- he sent me a picture he took of himself and Efren in the production offices yesterday.

And how's this for crazy? Mr. Fucking Sulu is playing the Maître d' in a couple scenes!

About five years ago, I tagged along with my husband to a conference in New Orleans. He spent his days at the convention center and I hung back in our hotel room, reading introductory books on screenwriting and toying with the raw chunks of story that would become my first screenplay.

Then, yesterday, I called the "Transportation" number on the AMERICAN SUMMER crew list and arranged to be picked-up at the airport by a teamster or somebody... this Tuesday, April 24th... in New Orleans... where I'm going to watch my movie get made.

Is this crazy or what?

P-Push it real good

Lots going on these days!

I finished my rewrite of THE MIDDLE AGES. Got some really constructive notes from my first-round readers, implemented a bunch and sent it to my way-cool manager, who will read it this weekend. Some of my writer-friends think it’s ready to show, so hopefully my manager will agree. I know it’s the best writing I’ve ever done.

Production offices for AMERICAN SUMMER, a/k/a POOL BOY, are established in New Orleans. Warren is already there and the crew list is filling up with a hundred or so people slated to make a movie I wrote.

They’ve pushed principal a week, to April 23rd – just needed a bit more time to get ready. The production coordinator told me this has been a very short prep, so she’s happy to have another week. She seems really cool and sweet and on top of things. I look forward to meeting her. Before she got on the phone, I chatted a while with an office PA, who asked good questions about my original script and bantered with the DP as he walked by and I could feel the camaraderie from here. I felt truly connected to the production for the first time.

‘Course, I’ve been somewhat connected to it, ‘cause I’m now getting emails with stripboards and day out of days – shooting schedule-related things I’ve never seen or heard of before but which excite and fascinate me. A few days ago, an email arrived with “blue” script pages, a “blue” stripboard” and "blue" day out of days. I guess, in order for them to really be blue, you have to print them on blue paper... (It occurs to me, I don't remember anything I once knew about the order of colored script pages. Just that one of them is "Goldenrod." Note to self: learn your colors.)

It’s rather nice to see my name listed as "Writer" on the ever-expanding crew list.

Oh, who am I kidding? It’s fucking awesome.