A Midwestern Actress Makes Her Move to LA

Hello Love,

Well, first, have a nice set of personal business cards made. Everyone has them. Two nights ago, I met a highly trained screenwriter down at the Venice Grind, and I offered to read scripts for her. I once had read scripts on Thursday nights for the Ann Arbor Playwrights at the Gypsy Cafe in Kerrytown, and I had missed the practice. She had a lovely card, chocolate brown and textured like a linen suit. She managed expectations too. She's completing an application package for a fellowship due May 1, and even to her oldest friends, she was going to be Missing in Action. No problem, I introduced her to the woman's health writer from Chicago, Illinois, recently published in trade hardcover, who was interviewing woman, appointment basis, about body image. Now I've hooked you up a little bit; you know that the Venice Grind is found between the Venice Contemporary Galley and the Cannibal Flower Gallery. It's on Venice Boulevard near the corner of Centinela.

I started my Los Angeles life Saturday, March 17th when I rolled into Pasadena and stopped into a Starbucks to drink two Raspberry Izzies before taking California 134 across LA's back, into the San Fernado Valley. So I haven't lived her a full month quite; I landed a great job at an agricultural exchange in business intelligence. New friends always laugh when I explain I'm not a corporate spy, but I do know how many oranges they ate last month. In the evenings, I'm thrown upon the city, and there's a few sure bets in you want to network with Hollywood insiders. Many of the screenwriters and small time producers are showing up nightly for Quentin Tarentino's grindhouse festival at the grungy but cool New Beverly Cinema on Beverly Boulevard close to the La Brea tarpits. The festival shows all the exploitation and kung fu films in Tarentino's personal collection. It's so absurd what has made it to the silver screen, and I think it gives the screenwriters more freedom when writing a script. Striking up conversations is easy, and it's a real view into what is taking place inside all of those studios in Culver City, Burbank and Hollywood.

Probably the best tip I have for meeting producers, casting agents and A & B list actors is the Museum of Television and Radio at the corner of Santa Monica and Beverly Boulevard (right at the foot of the great Coldwater Canyon Road that passes over the Hollywood Hills to the Valley, where I work). Friday nights at 7:00 PM are best. Last night, the cast and producers of Friday Night Lights held forth in moderated forum on the making of the first season. Each actor described the audition process in detail, and in each case, the ability to improv with the director and producer turned the key. Later, the cast hung out with the audience in the great room, signing autographs, taking personal cards and being just as cool as the InZero community in dear old Detroit, Michigan. You'll get stared at a lot, love.

You are perpetually on a casting call when you go out in Los Angeles. It is impolite to stare, but people will study you. I am sure my Ira Glass lenses serve as enough of a mask that scensters wonder, "for whom does he write". Leagues of writerly types do wear Ira Glass frames in LA, and I've having a fresh pair sent out. These are rather bent by adventures on the road. And because people will not know who you are, many men and woman will add a little zest to even a small daily event, like buying a Vitamin Water at the General Store in Coldwater Canyon. The man reminded me of the zany professor in "Back to the Future".

As a sign of the generosity that flashes out daily in suprising ways, the men in the garage gave me the last available parking space, reserved at all times for a museum executive. I took out my money to pay for the "Friday Night Lights" event, and at the last moment, she refused it, claiming she wanted to close her box. Any one who thinks LA is cold will revise this opinion as soon as one of these random acts of kindness happens.

Be sure to email our Movie Mogul friend. whom C and MM visited during their stay in LA. Jeff works (and works, and works) as an executive at a film distributor (caruanaco@aol.com) in Huntington Beach. He's the first Living for Sundance member to travel out to LA to stake his claim.

Here's my last tip. We're not of the west coast or the east coast. We're of the Third Coast. You are leaving one paradise for another, and the first paradise will always welcome you home, will never be lost.