(photo by Mark Ackermann)

After I moved to New York and got a job with the ex-Rockette, I had to look for a new job one year later when her business closed. I had no savings and started applying for anything that had 'entry level' in the title. My favorite place to job hunt was a bank of phone booths in back of the Time Life Building on 6th Ave. and every day I'd put on my one suit and matching shoes and hoof it on over. The phones were private yet thick in the hustle and I had enough room to open the New York Times or Village Voice and make notes. I had a dream forming in my head: I wanted to wear high heels and hear them clack clack clack across a marble floor in a skyscraper where I hurried to my windowed office because my job was important yet creative, like maybe a photo editor at Life Magazine. At the time I was taking a lot of photos, but I was overwhelmed with still being new to New York. Less than a year out of art school, when to paint or even what to paint was white noise with no discerning sound.

I interviewed with a headhunter, with a belt maker, with a salesman who sold boxes, then saw something for a 'creative type' at a pre-press house in Hell's Kitchen. I got an interview and met with the secretary, a 30-something curvy blond with soft eyes that held hurt. She told me the company was owned by a Brit named Mike, a genius she whispered, a man transforming the way images were reproduced. Moments later Mike entered, a chipper 50 y.o. who never stopped moving. The way his secretary looked at him told me they were sleeping together. The wedding ring on his finger told me it was an affair.

The company prepared print material for advertisers and books (back then it was mostly still done by hand) and after Mike gave me the tour we walked back to where I entered. Here, an alcove held a very clean table with three computer terminals on it. Mike looked at the terminals lovingly, as if they were his children, then turned and stared at me for a long moment. "Have you ever heard of Scitex?" It sounded like a bra company and no, I hadn't heard of it. "We're -- I'm funded by them. I'm creating imaging software that will revolutionize the way pictures are created and reproduced."

I didn't know much about what he was talking about , but since I needed a job asap I smiled, wide, hoping I didn't look stupid. "I'm looking for a few new employees I can teach the basics to, then you'll find your own level and see where you fit. I don't manage. I want you to manage yourselves." It was a perfect Lord of the Flies opportunity and without asking me a single question he offered me a job. I must have looked surprised. He grinned. "I read people extremely well. You'll fit fine."

Print images are made up of thousands of dots. Depending on size, shape and placement, the dots create the image as well as effect color and tone. Three of us had been hired and within a few weeks we learned all the stations of Mike's cross. That's how we saw it, since not once was he in front of the computers. Instead he was always furrowed with his secretary, her office door closed, though from my seat I could see them gesturing anxiously through a window.

The other hires weren't interested in managing the work flow or dealing with the sales guy so I was organizing and distributing the work and handling the long term projects. The day I started a new Garfield cartoon book came in and I learned how to cut rubylith, work the darkroom, make films for printing, check color and fix color. I worked on watch ads, crappy catalogues, Chanel print ads and learned to dot etch, burn and dodge to soften lines, take elements out of film and put elements back into film. It was a sweet job since I had no boss, lots of freedom, liked my co-workers and loved cutting cartoons. As long as jobs came in and went out on schedule, the sales guy and Mike loved me.

"Think it's shady?" Another new hire was a girl named Martha, a chain-smoking beauty who dressed like a boy who had a boyfriend who dressed like a girl. She was at my desk watching Mike frantically gesture with the secretary who was trying to calm him down. Martha was from a wealthy Main Line family and her father ran a top Fortune 500 company, something almost no-one knew. (I found out when she asked me to finish a project for her. Her father was being honored by a museum, a museum opening a wing with his name on it and she had to leave work for the ceremony.) Martha and I were the same age, both art school grads new to New York, and though she had a boyfriend and best friend neither of us knew many people and spent a lot of time alone. Her best friend Jeff was gay and single and would come and meet us for lunch, and in short time we were all becoming friends.

Jeff was a member of a gay club called The Saint, a giant club in the old Fillmore East. I had never been -- I had barely been anywhere -- and one night he asked us to go dancing with him. Martha and I dressed up in chains and lace, I put on pointy leopard print shoes and ate a quick peanut butter and jelly sandwich, then close to midnight we met Jeff.

We entered the Saint and walked passed what looked like standard ticket windows for a theater or concert hall. We then went through a large set of doors to the dance floor. Disco was pounding, but it wasn't like anything I had heard on the radio. Nor was the dance floor like anything I had ever seen: it was huge, bigger than a skating rink, and it was covered by a massive dome. In the center of the dome was a pole that held a sci-fi looking contraption filled with lights and it slowly moved up and down projecting stars and swirls and blasts of color onto the top of the dome. Hundreds of men, mostly shirtless, many in leather, danced packed in.

We worked our way to the corner of the dance floor and danced for a while, then I left to check the rest of the club out. I had been to a couple of dinky discos outside of New York, but this - this was out there. Off the dance floor it was dark and made my way to the bathroom, figuring I'd freshen up a little. Right when I entered I saw three bear-like men near the sinks, wearing leather vests and chaps. One held a small metal gadget to his nose and was inhaling a popper, one was laughing, and the third was giving a blow job to the guy laughing. I tried to look casual, like I see this on the subway all the time, and nonchalantly walked to the first stall. In it two men were jerking off. Looking unfazed I walked to the next stall. It was filled with cocaine and cocks and for some reason I nodded hello, my face a blend of boredom mixed with did we go to Hebrew school together? I suddenly acted like I forgot something and strolled on out.

I roamed through the club to a metal spiral staircase and climbed up. This floor had an industrial staircase to the side and I climbed that. Up here it was dark, the music was pounding and I stepped onto a landing to adjust my eyes. Around me I could make out chunky benches that in the dark looked like blocks. I suddenly remembered an art history class about ziggurats, which is what they looked like, but carpeted.

The dome on the dance floor opened and light shot up through the club. I glanced around to better see where I was. Everywhere around me men were fucking and sucking and man handling each other with a practical determination of getting down to business. This wasn't romance or urgent release and I didn't even see lust. One guy saw me and smiled, friendly, kind of like 'welcome' then turned back to the four-way he was part of. I stood there looking around awed, my cool gone. I was still frigid then and sex was complicated, but around me it was as uncomplicated as sex could get. No hang ups, no cares, no anything. This was fucking, straight up, as far as I could see.

The dome closed, the lights dimmed and I headed back downstairs. I found Martha and Jeff and we danced till the next morning. I was heavier on my feet, stomping them into the dance floor, being a part of something that was so foreign to me yet felt like home. Some time later I went to work one morning and couldn't get into the office: Mike had driven the business into hell, absconded with the funding and left the country to avoid arrest. The secretary was devastated, positive he was going to leave his wife, desperate since he had been paying for her apartment. Martha and I looked for new jobs and kept going to the Saint. I found another club, Area, and started going there. A lot of artists seemed to be at Area and I got a glimpse of the art world. It gave me the same feeling The Saint did, of being foreign yet so familiar, so right. I lived in a shit hole and was broke, but New York was starting to feel like home.

Or, well, mine. Joe Villari made this video of her which tickles me cockles to no end.

The funny thing about having a puppy is watching her growth spurts. Parts seem to grow versus all over growth and right now she's all head and paws. Given how she's goofy in her body to start, the last few days she's skipped goofier and went straight to goofiest. She careens off furniture, trips over her toes and during walks somehow ends up on her face. When that happens she's as surprised as we are. It's like watching a toddler fall and get up, fall and get up.

I've seen this breed on the street lovingly carrying a plushie everywhere they go and I'm curious to see if she'll do the same when she's a little older.

The bottom photo is from a few days ago. We figured she'd grow to about 40 lbs, but this sudden spurt is making us wonder just how big she'll get.

That nose.

She loves snow as much as she loves heading toward home.

(photo is from Area's photobooth)

I love seeing patterns on the street. Not in the design sense (I do, but that's not what this post is about) but in the people sense.

I've always seen patterns and started noting them a few years ago when the tranny hookers at Christopher Street and Hudson began to look like they had just gotten the baby to sleep and were dashing out to pick up a jug of laundry detergent. They'd be wearing gray collegiate sweatshirts that read Dartmouth or Yale, beat up pale pink sweat pants, and their hair was haphazardly tied up in a scrunchie. The kicker was they wore no make-up. I loved it, found it conceptually fascinating, and then poof! Make-up and size 12 stiletto's were back on the corner.

Then it was blind people. I saw them everywhere, for three days. Then people missing a limb; an arm, one leg, a hand. I'd see them all over town so it wasn't like there was a prosthetic convention going on in the neighborhood.

One of my favorite things to see is a tourist window shopping around the corner on Prince St., say - maybe their bag or coat caught my eye - then six hours later I'll see them in Chelsea. Sticking with tourists, I've had a week where all I saw were tourist couples arguing loudly. No-one swears like the French and I don't need to speak it to know that.

Occasionally the patterns show me things. This summer I was walking through Tribeca late at night and passed a woman outside Nobu wearing a micro mini paired with red-soled 8-inch heels. This isn't unusual to see since it's everywhere, all the time. This night though it hit me that she couldn't run if she had to. 8-inch heels and cobblestone streets don't mix well and if she was chased she'd surely be caught. Maybe New York is getting safer.

The pattern I see now is a broader one, not yet defined. It mostly involves people in their late 20's to mid-30's and it has to do with a desire for an '80's kind of decadence. Desire is the key word, since what really seems to be desired is a simulated decadence, a decadence that's safe and without an edge. Granted, I'm talking about a sliver of this age group: the sliver with money. Interestingly, in the actual 1980's this group made a bundle of money on Wall St. With this new faux '80's sliver, their parents - youth of the '80's? - make the money and support them.

What fascinates me is how accepting and even hopeful this group seems to be about being part of the status quo, the mass appeal. Even the hipsters, moneyed or not, seem eager to define their personalities through fashion that advertises brands from the 1970's, or their clothes co-op an entire ethos and lifestyle of a past generation -- any generation -- except their own. Their clothing choices isn't political: it's as if commercialism and identity have happily merged. The individual is no more.

Over the last five or so years a private club scene has blossomed here. The application process to join paints a picture of exclusivity, one where artists and creative types romp freely, yet this isn't the clientele and members know it. Anyone can join these clubs, something also known by members. The decor is simulated chic, the art offends or excites no-one, and even the personality of the crowd has a consistently homogenized tone. (Soho House is the one private club I've been to that has personality, plus they throw fun parties and from what I hear have a great breakfast scene.) These clubs do reach out to creatives with free memberships, but the comps I know are home watching Netflix or getting ready to take the dog out. (The art world has been turned inside out and culturally neutered, too, but that's a longer discussion.)

In the east village I'm seeing '80's hairstyles and dye jobs; fur is back on the street; drugs are being sold openly; there's a pile of new shows and movies in production that take place in the '80's; and music, even some EDM has hints of a Flock of Seagulls. All this isn't the point I'm writing about. What is, or what congealed all of this and turned an intuitive 'is it the '80's?' cog inside me was a company called Reviv.

A close friend spent the New Year at a fancy hotel in South Beach and one afternoon around the pool he noticed men and a couple of women sporting colored arm bands. Some had more than one arm band on. He asked his date what they were and she told him they had seen 'the doctor.' The doctor?

My friend wanted to better understand what she meant so his date took him upstairs to a lavish suite. Inside it had been turned into a spa, or more appropriately, a med-spa, called Reviv. Every bed and chair had a (mostly male) 30-something hooked up to an IV. Hot nurses tended them while a doctor casually roamed the room. Each client was receiving a personally tailored infusion, a doctor-concocted blend of saline and multivitamins and medications - some were getting oxygen - for whatever ailed them. All ailments were gotten by partying too hard.

Run by an ex ER doctor who threw around terms like 'Hydrating therapy' and 'MegaBoost' and 'UltraVive,' this was the womb you went to if you drank too much or snorted too much cocaine or needed to sober up so you could start drinking again. This struck me as real decadence, nothing simulated about it.

My friend isn't much of a partier and back down at the pool his date called over some of the armband wearers. This crew -- all trust funders -- ignored my friend and spoke to his date of how they wanted to start their own Reviv and make it global. My friend listened quietly, since he recently helped build a global brand which he sold for a huge chunk (and now heads another global brand). It was like this crew was playing at business, acting out what they'd do knowing full on they never would. And it wasn't because they didn't have to; talking about it was satisfying enough. Fantasy success has a built in safety net -- you never have to lose or fight for something. What struck my friend was that this crew showed no desire to go for the real thing. Simulation is sufficient.

I find it all disturbing. I know that change, ultimately, is good and I love when I see signs that we're moving into the future. Right now I can't understand or find purpose in how this sliver moves our evolution forward. Sometimes we gotta go back to move forward, so I'm hoping this sliver is the equivalent of an algae bloom, one that will eventually block its own sunlight and cut itself off at the legs.

Our friends Larry and Shyamala call them 'pit fits.' They have a full grown pit bull that could be Opal's twin brother and I was telling them that every once in a while Opal gets these crazy bursts where she hops like a bunny then tears around the house - sometimes running in circles - with a look on her face that just has to get it out. Then she plops down and goes back to being a lap dog.

Their dog does the same thing and he's not a puppy. Maybe it's the breed. Maybe it's New York. Maybe they're flouridating the water, Mandrake.

Mrs. Tischbaum does not like the cold. She doesn't like the rain. She's as lazy as can be in the morning and despite having to pee she plays dead dog weight when it's time to put her coat on.

We carry her down the stairs to go out since she's too small to manage them, but she climbs up them at her own slow, mostly distracted pace. What's that smell who's that barking that's a cat I smell chicken - this is after a walk spent mostly wrestling leaves and rocks and gum and dirt out of her mouth.

If we're lucky we'll run into a neighbor's dog and get an early romp in. It's 6:30 a.m. when all this goes down and everyone just wants to get out and in, but when Opal is in Mrs. Tischbaum mode she can pretty much get away with anything.

We were thinking about getting a dog. Probably an older one. A female. Most likely a pit bull, since there were so many in NYC's shelter system.

The pit bulls we knew were 50 pound lap dogs, all cuddly, sweet and smart. There were also a little shy and I loved how they'd sit against my legs and tap me lightly with their heads, as if to let me know they wanted a pat but didn't want to ask.

We went to an adoption event, but there were no older dogs. We tried to meet a few dogs from petfinders without much luck. We went to another adoption event at a Petco uptown and halfway through it walked to the bird section of the store to take a breather. Kids, shelter puppies, a cat - it was bouncing.

At the quiet end of the store a line of pet owners were getting prescriptions and waiting for grooming. We were pondering our next move when a beautiful grown pit bull came over for a pat. Her owner came with her, cradling a tiny puppy. We started talking about pit bulls and she mentioned she was a pit bull foster mom for the ASPCA. The puppy was a foster, not hers. He was a boy, seven weeks old.

We hadn't really talked about puppies and we found ourselves asking Does he have a sister? He did and if we wanted we could come back the next day and meet her. Still not sure we wanted a puppy we went back uptown the following day. The foster mom opened a heated carrier and took out a shaky, spotted little pooch. The mom handed her to Joe and the puppy looked up at him then fell asleep in his arms. We knew that was it. (That's the photo above.)

Pre-rescue she had a rough start and needed to gain weight then get spayed. It took a month and last week we finally got her from the ASPCA. I'm looking at her now and don't know how we ever lived without her.

(photo by Christopher Payne)

When the prod. co. with the first look with Sony showed interest (please see post behind this one, 'Starting Out') I thought Yay! I've made it! They introduced me to five agents and I picked one. I started looking at houses to buy. Four months in the prod. co. disbanded and I got the script back. I stopped looking at houses.

My agent sent the script around and suddenly it was hot. Aents at William Morris and CAA called - I went back to the real estate listings. My home would have at least three bedrooms.

Then just like that my script got cold.

I had been writing a new script, JOYVILLE, a dark comedy about competition. I gave it to my agent and she took it out. A V.P. at a dream production company loved it. He nurtured the project through the gears of his co. and at the top it came down to my script and an action pic. Action won. The V.P. called my agent and said,"I'm going to fuck my boss for not making this. I'm giving it to the competition." He gave it to a producer at Brillstein Gray. She read it and loved it. I was back to four bedrooms.

Two weeks later she left on maternity leave.

A manager liked my first script and wanted to rep me. "What can you bring to the table?" I asked. He brought me an Oscar winner. The Oscar winner's current movie opened and bombed. She got into bed and wouldn't get out. The manager vanished. My script , again, was cold.

My agent sent JOYVILLE to Howard Stern's production co. His head of development loved it, but not for Howard Stern. I told him I had another script and pitched the project the Sony group liked. There was a great part for Howard Stern in it, too. The HoD read it, thought the part was too small for Howard Stern, but was I interested in TV? I was very interested in TV. The HoD gave me a headline he saw on CNN that he thought was interesting. Could I do anything with it? I took the headline, blew it up into a show and when I finished we were happy with it. Finally, I had something moving in the pipe.

I saw a contest in The New Yorker in collaboration with HBO: write an episode idea for THE SOPRANOS. There would be five winners and I ended up being one of them. I turned the idea into a spec script and my agent gave it to a TV agent at her agency. Suddenly I had meetings with Dick Wolf's guy (LAW AND ORDER) for a new show they just shot a pilot for. The meeting went well, the show was something I could definitely write for, when would I move to LA? NBC dropped the pilot. The show was now dead. I met Sydney Lumet's showrunner/TV guy. We clicked, it was great, then his show didn't get picked up. Goddamn.

My TV agent came to New York, we had a strategy meeting, then he vanished. Literally. Rumor had it he had two wives and one of them found out about it. He was in Spain, Portugal, maybe South America. I was on Shit Street heading toward Fuck-You-ville.

I wrote a horror movie. Even for me it was a little too far out.

Painting and drawing had been going well and I got into a big show. This would be the one that would catapult me into the world. The show opened, my phone started ringing, I got reviewed well, it even sold okay. When the show came down and it got quiet again. Very quiet.

I had a studio visit with a major museum here. It was the worst studio visit I ever had. (Two months later the curator came back and bought a painting, for herself, not the museum. I still didn't get in the show.)

Part of my agreement with Howard Stern's production company was I would get the TV series back, sole owner, if it didn't go into production in three years. I got it back. Because I was focusing almost exclusively on TV, my relationship with my film agent ended.

I was brought in to adapt an Elmore Leonard short story for a TV director. A month later the financing fell out.

I could go on. There's a lot I'm forgetting, blips I'm leaving out, grants I was short-listed on, etc. Every time I got something I was sure it would rocket me into stratosphere, it would be the one. Instead it was just a baby step. I kept telling myself no matter what, keep going. So that's what I did.

Then then three years ago I didn't want to anymore. I'm hardy, a New Englander by birth annealed by New York City. I've been mugged at knifepoint by a tranny (she was better dressed than me); chased by a machete-wielding crackhead; was wrong time/wrong place for a suicide (he jumped in front of a subway); and had a neighbor hang himself from a landing above my door. I've seen things I wished I never saw and have done things I wished I never did. I've had as much inside chaos as outside, then seven years ago I punctured an artery cutting a bagel. Sitting in the trauma unit at St. Vincents pushed me to a bottom, which slowed me down enough to peer inside. I started sorting through the past and present and two years later my mother was diagnosed with lung, brain and bone cancer.

Two years into her illness was three years ago. If you've ever been close to someone with an illness like this there's a moment that gets crossed when you know they're going to die, for real, no matter what. Not next week, not next month, but this year will most likely be your last together. When I saw that point I was traveling nonstop to be with her, my career was stalled, I was stalled. One day I came back from visiting her and sat down in the middle of the path. That's how I pictured it, my life as a pine needle path through trees. I sat down and didn't want to get up. Wasn't going to get up. I felt done, with what I didn't know. Whatever it was, I was quitting.

I had never, ever done that. To sit down meant I was a failure, a loser, someone who had lost the fight. I sat there not caring. It was like I emptied out: worry, concern, care, angst, passion, fear and joy - it all became inert. I sat there feeling nothing.

Two days later Diane called. "What are you going to do about it?" she said, tough friend she is, then added "Get up and get going." I put my feet under me and stood up. I wasn't relieved or happy or sad or optimistic. There was no cheerleader saying This is good! You're back on your feet! I was still empty, simply up.

I roamed aimlessly around my house and the next day I roamed in a muttering, puttering and scratching kind of way. Which meant there was life brewing. I cooked dinner, put one foot in front of the other, watched traffic. I got an idea for a new project, a one-hour pilot about a group of teens that would be fiction, but personal. Very personal. Personal would be new for me. What was strange was how calm I felt even though I had just done the worst thing I could ever do, give up. The calm gave me a moment of objectively and I asked myself why it was the worst thing, why quitting scared the shit out of me. And it hit me that the calm I was feeling was lack of fear. I had given up, done the one thing I swore I'd never do, and now I was on the other side of it.

I wrote the pilot and a new world opened, personally and professionally. A head fuck got replaced with faith. I didn't see it coming. It so wasn't how I thought things went.

In the summer of 1997 I was getting ready for my first solo show and a heat wave hit. I had been in group shows and two person shows, but this was the first time I'd take over a whole gallery. The show was set for October and though I had finished the paintings I still needed to varnish them. The humidity was making things too sticky, so I couldn't work until the heat wave passed.

I paced around for two days, agitated, and then from nowhere - to this day I don't know why or what came over me - I decided to write a screenplay.

Though I had watched a lot of movies I had never seen a screenplay nor had ever tried to write anything. Two uncles were writers, one crazier than the other, and after seeing what writing did to them I wanted to flunk English and go straight to art. Writing wasn't just something I hadn't done; it was something I didn't want to ever do. But there I was, sitting at the kitchen table, opening a notebook. What would I write about? An image came to mind of the Paula Cooper gallery on Wooster Street. I wasn't interested in writing about her gallery or people I knew, but I saw I did want to write about a world I knew. That was enough. I started writing.

It was like I was possessed. Eight days later, barely eating or sleeping, I had a finished draft. It was a love story about failure, set in the art world, a blend of comedy and drama. Half way through it a title came to me, BIG WORLD. Painting had always gripped me, but the specificity of words was a whole new thing. Writing was as satisfying as painting.

I had guessed at screenplay format so I ran to B. Dalton Books. There was a book of screenplays by William Goldman that seemed good and since I had never seen a screenplay I didn't know that he was the only screenwriter ever to use his own format. When I got home I dragged out an old IBM Selectric and over the next two days transposed my notebooks to typed pages. I didn't know how to type and went through two boxes of correction ribbon, and when I was done stared pleased as pink at the first draft of my 185 page screenplay.

By this time the heat wave had lifted so I went back into the studio and finished the paintings. I also signed up for a class, Directing the Actor, since I was going to make the script myself. The 6-week class started in August and during the first half of the class I rewrote BIG WORLD. I also burned out the Selectric and bought a ProWriter, a typewriter that could remember about 40 words and had built in correction tape. Goodbye correction ribbon.

The new draft had a gaping hole I didn't know how to fill, so I put the script down since I had an idea for another. This new screenplay would be set in the mall I worked at in high school and would be a story where the bad guy gets away with it and the bad guy's a girl.

When my show opened a classmate of mine from the acting class came to the opening. He was producing an indie he co-wrote and I told him my new idea. Right then he optioned it. It meant I'd get paid to write it. While he went into production on the indie I wrote a draft and while he was in post production I showed him the finish. He loved it, I was happy with it, nothing could happen with it until the indie finished completely, so I went back into BIG WORLD.

Synchronicity is a wild thing. Right then I got called for jury duty and brought a copy of it with me since there'd be a lot of idle time. I read it while sitting in the jury pool area and noticed the guy next to me kept glancing at the script. We started talking, his name was Jim Denault, he was a D.P. (Director of Photography) and I told him I wanted to direct the screenplay. He suggested I crew to learn how a film set worked and gave me the name of a producer crewing up. I called her, she had nothing available, I asked her if she could suggest anyone else I might call and she gave me the name of a production designer, Sharon Lomofsky. I called a few times and found out Sharon was crewing up for a movie called BAD MANNERS. "I'm an artist and I can make anything out of string and duct tape," I begged and she brought me in as an intern, an on set prop assistant, unpaid.

Shortly after that film wrapped the indie producer's film hit the festival circuit and started winning audience awards. He got a big agent, moved to LA, and was going to remake the indie into a big budget movie. When the option on my script came up he didn't renew it and I started throwing it over the fences of production companies. I had no idea what I was doing, but I was doing it.

On the set of BAD MANNERS I noticed this girl, Jessica Lichtner, was always huddled close with the director and producers, was front row for watching the cast in action, took notes on every shot, remained on set when the set was cleared, etc. Her title was script supervisor and I started talking to her during meals, asking her about her job. This girl knew her shit and let me tail her one day so I could watch what she was doing. When filming ended she took me on a two day gig she was doing pro bono for an MFA student at Columbia University and after the first day she turned it over to me. That job led to other student films, then back to low budget features. Here and there I'd day play as a grip, a production manager, a location scout, set dresser, etc. but mostly script supervisor.

For three years I crewed and the most important thing I learned was someone had to have a clear vision for the project. If a director or producer didn't, the project always bombed. (The indie producer's big budget remake never happened, despite his having a very clear vision. I was also starting to learn all the ways a project can derail.)

Eight months after the option expired on my script I contacted a production co. with a first look deal at Sony. They agreed to read it, they liked it and I started rolling my rock of Sisyphus forward.