Part VI: Never giving up when you seem to be drowning in B.S.

We all have our doubts. Sometimes this is called: intuition. Some of us wait out our intuition, to fact-check it against reality. And--if you are like me--when reality comes along and confirms it, you get mad. I had stated in an earlier email that this whole process of submitting a script is like learning a super-secret code in a dozen different languages. Whenever I have to move this script via a cold call or a personal interaction, I prime myself for activating this part of my awareness. Anyone who has been exposed to Western popular culture in the past twenty years knows the basic guidelines to life which were supplied by Douglas Adams in THE HITCH-HIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY. So: I have a Hollywood Babblefish. In the email I sent round before I left for Austin, I wondered if my Hollywood Babblefish had gotten crossed in the lab with Marvin the Paranoid Android. What I wrote to a good friend before I left for home was: "Marvin's RIGHT." Rationally, anyone can flake at any time. I was just hoping it wasn't going to happen. And it did. And it was a waste of my time and money. It was also offensive at a certain point, so I'm still seething. The woman who was supposed to be helping with my Impossible Task magically arrived in Texas. She'd been invited by friends who were paying her way, and they were all touring around in the friend's limo. They wanted to do a day of schmoozing at the Festival, and then they didn't. "Read me the names of who is there, who is presenting.", she instructed me. So I got out the festival guide and did so. "Hmmph.", she says. "I can do better than that for you in California." Meaning: she supposedly knows more influential and powerful people than this motley bunch. (Marvin: "Actually, Hilary, she probably doesn't know ANYone at the Festival and if she shows up, you'll see it and then the game will be over.") Their plans change, and it's the friends limo, she can't very well ask them to pick me up now, will I drive to meet her instead? It's a two-hour drive to this other city. I'm due to hang out with her for at least two or three days, so she can get to know me. Originally we were to go mansion-shopping with her friends, so they can ALL get to know me. I don't really understand this fully, but I expect it has something to do with; if people are going to spend millions of dollars of their own money on producing your movie, they want to see if they are going to like you. Fair enough. It's an investment. If this were a "real" business, all this chatting would be happening on the golf course and then over dinner at the country club. We will be staying with another friend of hers, as Limo People are driving on. Except she doesn't remember the friend's address. And has forgotten her address book. BUT: her friend runs an art gallery, and it's right downtown. And there's a cell phone in the limo in case I get lost.

To meet her arrival time, I drive and drive without food. There is no art gallery. The neighborhood is not right downtown. This is a neighborhood that wouldn't have an art gallery anyway! Over the cell, she tells me they are running really late, and gives me the visual of the intersection where her friend's gallery is, just go hang out and wait. There is a big run-down house. It is not an art gallery. I ring the bell anyway, ready with a smile and my story. No response. I have to eat. I'm getting light-headed and really mad. I drive downtown, the parking is atrocious, all the restaurants are closed...so I beg a valet; I don't know this city, can I please leave my car with his hotel, eat in their restaurant and wait for these people? But their restaurant is closed. He recommends another, and lets me park in his hotel's lot anyway, for free! Bless him. I leave a very terse message on the cell: it is now 3 hours past our meeting time, I am at this hotel because there is no art gallery and no friend answering the door of a big run-down house instead, I am going to sit here where they can find me and perhaps then I'll follow them back. By this point I'm pretty much beyond caring. So far, this lady has been able to do just one thing for me about the script: she got a phone call returned. So what? I'VE gotten phone calls returned. I'm beginning to think "the limo" is a euphemism for "roly-poly floating marshmallowy old Cadillac". For some reason, one of my mottos in life is: be professional. And when people aren't, I doubt their credibility. (Marvin: "Actually, Hilary, there's a better phrase for this and it is: 'I do not suffer fools gladly.'") So, I don't care if this lady and her friends get unhinged and go ballistic because I dared to take a tone of annoyance with them. If this is all about getting to know Hilary, then they likewise get to know that I get this way. And rightfully so. I was actually hoping to drive back to Austin and write the whole thing off. But instead, they arrived--at the friend's run-down art gallery of a house, they gave me the directions again to the same place, and I told myself the only way I'd be happy with the situation was when I saw the limo with my own eyes. Yes, it was a real limo. Her friends are filthy rich all the way from the gold nugget rings, to the painted claws of the little dog, to the Assassin Undertaker version of a chauffeur. I felt a little better. But not for long. Next up: how clowning around gets to be termed as "Industry Meetings". cheers--Hilary