Back in London with all its regular weather. Kinda nice despite having to take the submarine chill off the office at 5am.

So that’d be the jet lag.

Easing back in slowly today by mostly working on my to-do list for the next three months. The LA trip was fun for a lot of reasons, but the work Ive talked myself into needs to be organised from the get-go.

As usual when I’m away I’ve allowed my email to fall into a kind of disorganised corpse. Autopsy will begin today, but sorry if I didn’t get back to you yet.

Lots of stuff to catch up on here and a few more LA related posts to come. Including the thing I saw that I’m still not allowed to talk about yet.

I now have three hours before I take a vomiting cat to the vet. Time to unpack the remainder of my case and get October under control…

About to start week two of meetings here in LA. It’s been a pretty fun run so far and a nice productive week despite 100+ degree temperatures and my insistence to try and walk between studios. I’ll be taking a nice chunk of homework back with me so it’s always a good sign when you’re looking forward to the plane ride as a chance to get some writing done.

The Donners’ Company meeting I already mentioned was great. And so far everyone allows me a little time to geek out at the stuff that covers the walls or is proudly displayed behind glass. I’ve seen a lot of Oscars this trip, but it’s stuff like Hellboy’s fist and the tiny R2D2 hidden on the deck of the Inferno* from GOONIES that get me really grinning.

A lot of people have been asking me what the meetings are like and how nerve wracking they are. Well the first thing is that they’re all incredibly relaxed. It’s usually lounging around on sofas talking about movies. I’ve waxed lyrical on everything from MOON to John Carpenter’s PRINCE OF DARKNESS, a bunch of westerns and even the Gilmore Girls so far. Some of the people I meet have been following me on Twitter and that certainly helps while others have just read something of mine and are eager to talk about their own upcoming projects to see if anything resonates.

I usually have about four or five outlines spinning around in my head – pitches that my management think are worth some time expanding on and occasionally the conversations allow me to riff off the kind of thing the studios are looking for. Also there are usually a few projects that have been sitting around a while that no one has quite cracked yet and I happily take those back to the hotel to start pulling apart.

I’m also writing each evening so all in all it’s a pretty full day. Buddying up while scribbling and drinking coffee with Amy from Eureka has been a blast.

I was back on the Disney lot this trip, got lost on the Warner Bros. lot, took a huge pile of comics to think about adapting from Dark Horse and ended up giving an iPad demo on the Dreamworks lot to the STAR TREK dudes – handily enough with the destruction of the Kelvin/birth of Kirk already cued up.

This coming week I’m popping over to Jerry Bruckheimer Films, Gale Anne Hurd’s company and revisiting the folks at Sam Raimi and Gore Verbinski’s offices among others so I may not get the chance to blog again before I hit the airport on Friday.

It’s not really appropriate for me to start snapping pics everywhere I go, but the odd thing surfaces on Twitter which as always is the best place to keep track of me. And as ever there’s a bunch of things I’m not going to talk about or even allude to in case they don’t come off, but yeah, it’s been a pretty successful trip so far.

Best get on before the sun climbs even higher…

*For the droid curious:

Landed in LA and after a slightly shell-shocked evening am feeling on an even keel this morning. Up at 6am, but that won’t last.

I was watching LETHAL WEAPON on the plane and although Riggs’ dog gets all the attention I think it’s worth remembering that Murtaugh has a cat.

In a completely unrelated turn of events I have a meeting tomorrow morning over at The Donners’ Company. As in Richard Donner.

THE OMEN, SUPERMAN, LADYHAWKE, THE GOONIES, and LETHAL WEAPON etc…

That’s not forgetting Have Gun Will Travel, The Twilight Zone, The Man from UNCLE and… well just go have a look at IMDB.

This trip is going to be less about containing my inner fanboy and more about having him talk about rabbits while I come up behind and shoot him in the back of the head.

But the trip has already reached new heights as last night I got to work with Eureka‘s Amy Berg at cracking a story open while we caught up and drank too much coffee. She also effortlessly trumped my lousy gift by cutting straight to the chase.

Writers out here don’t pull any punches, man.

Saving The Cat: An infrequently updated screen save of cats I spot in movies. No, I don’t have time for this.

I was in Edinburgh.

Now I’m off to LA.

Promise to blog more from there, take pics and drop the occasional name.

Should be a fun trip. Got on average two meetings a day and a pile of writing each evening.

Back here in a little while…

In this town people who had never had money before were suddenly truly rich, and they didn’t care what they paid for the things they wanted. Rolls-Royce did better here than in India in the days of the Raj. And money was pouring in from all over the world, as old regimes collapsed. In a few years Los Angeles was going to be the most expensive – and corrupt and dangerous – city on the face of the earth.

from Nothing Lasts Forever by Roderick Thorpe 1979

It’s more or less Monday in LA. Interesting weekend and the week is shaping up pretty well. Lots of new people to meet. Slightly rocky start when I got into my hotel room and decided that a new one was in order seeing as I wasn’t here to shoot a porn movie or hang out near the pool. Lovely concierge by the name of Jessica suggested I check out one of the fourth floor suites and passed me a key card. On opening the door I was greeted by a framed photo of the Rat Pack and was happily surprised to find each wall displaying a poster or photograph of Sinatra and co.

Seeing as I’m here because of my own Ocean’s 11-in-space it would have seemed churlish not to take the room.

I’m listening to a lot of John Zorn to dilute the Vegas vibe and the mini bar has remained closed.

Haven’t had a chance to use my camera yet, but when looking on Flickr for photos of the hotel I found the one above taken by someone I know on Twitter. It’s a small world and Hollywood is well trodden.

The quote is taken from the novel that was later adapted into the screenplay for Die Hard. I’ll be swinging by Nakatomi plaza later this week.

Two conversations I’ve had say a lot about the city. The first was with a homeless guy (Dave) who stopped me to talk about music after he clocked my Dead Kennedys shirt – a genuine and warm conversation about the failures of punk rock and why it doesn’t matter. The second was with a music executive (let’s call him Ellis) who gushed about the music station whose logo is on the shirt I wore this evening – I didn’t let on that KAB RADIO 1340 was the station from John Carpenter’s The Fog, but did mention how happy I was that they had bounced back after ‘the incident’ in 1980.

City of angles…

And the terrorists were over-zealous, But it was sweet when they killed Ellis!

from Die Hard by Guyz Nite

Photo credit: from the floor by iced soul (CC license)