Promoting myself and my projects, I sometimes feel like I'm a vacuum cleaner salesman and I'm also the vacuum. As almost everyone knows, the best way to sell something is to believe in it one hundred percent, and and pretty much be in love with your product. When you are your product, the line between egomania and reality start to blur.
I spent all day Saturday at a convention in Beverly Hills pitching myself and my sitcom "The Hollywood Quad" to prospective agents and managers. Some of them I liked, some of them I wouldn't want to work with. The bottom-line though, was that at the end of the day, I had to detox, to go through decompression and let go of this wonderful product I was selling (me) otherwise there would be no living with me.
Yesterday, I went over to the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences where I am a member and thereby honored to vote in the Emmys. (I will talk more about this at another time). One of the perks of being a member is that I get to see current movies in an awesome, state of the art theater, one of the top four or five movie theaters in the world as far as sound and picture quality. I saw Get Smart! I went in expecting to hate it because I was a huge fan of the TV series. Was I ever wrong!? I loved it! I also loved Wall-e, the movie I saw last weekend, a well told outer space love story.
Today, I am developing a list of the top sitcom executive producers, or showrunners as they are more often referred to as in the industry. People like James Brooks, Larry David, people at the top of their game who might be interested in working with me on "The Hollywood Quad". Making cold phone calls is not my forte, but is a proven process that often works. Wish me luck ...
Oh, yeah, I promised in my last entry that I would talk about flying in a private jet with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Ok, so here's what happened. This was several years back right after I did an episode of Highway to Heaven where I adopted a special needs kid who wanted to be in the Special Olympics. We were going to South Bend, Indiana on a fourteen seat private jet. I took along two friends who helped me get into my seat and put my wheelchair in the back. Moments later who should step on the plane but Arnold Schwarzenegger, Maria Shriver, and Caroline Kennedy. It was a 4 - 5 hour flight.
Maria, who was very nice and much more attractive than she appears on TV, served breakfast to me. It didn't take long for me to relax and see them as real people. I had worked with Michael Landon and lots of other celebrities so I was not so starstruck. One of my favorite memories of that flight was watching Arnold and Maria who were engaged at that time, playing around together. They made out for a while as couples do, then Maria grabbed a bag of peanuts, went to the front of the plane and tossed them halfway across the plane into Arnold's mouth. It was fun to see them as regular people. My main memory of Caroline was that my luggage got separated and went to her room so at a function that night where I was supposed to wear a tuxedo, I had to wear a special Olympics shirt. It was embarrassing but it makes for great story. Thanks for listening ...
That's it for now ...
