Problems at The Andy Griffith Show!

So I have gotten through two weeks working at The Andy Griffith Show, and so far it still mostly involves filing and copying and collating and highlighting and so forth. I have gotten to go to the set, though, which is really cool and fun. We're actually sharing a building with the detective series Columbo, and I sort of accidentally walked through their set on my way to breakfast last week (the food is still incredible, by the way). No sign of Peter Falk, though.
Anyway, I am increasingly aware of a problem on our show. The accountants (Angela, Kevin, and Oscar) and I are all squirreled away in an office away from all the action. At lunch, we sit together, and the producers sit together, and the writers sit together, and so on. It is clear that there are cliques at The Andy Griffith Show. But here is the other thing: the accountants are not the cool kids. We are like math club, basically. We do a lot of stuff with numbers and seem to be eating all the time.
IT IS TIME FOR THIS TO CHANGE.
I have decided that I need us to be perceived as much cooler, at least so we can get invited to better parties. I have a few plans.
First, we are friends with someone on the lighting staff. This is not perfect, but it is totally a start. He is a real chatty Cathy, so we need him to spread the word about how cool we are to the crew, get them talking us up.
They will of course happen to mention how cool the accountants are while they're around the ACTORS. This part is key. Because everyone loves the actors, after all. The actors will invite us to one of the Actor Parties that probably exist. But here's the kicker: We will not attend.
Everyone at the party will be like "I thought we invited the accountants? How come they're not here? Are they...are they too cool to come to this party?"
Yeah, we totally are. The word will get out, and like two weeks later we'll have a party of our own. And guess who will show up? EVERYONE. Sheldon Leonard, Don Knotts, and Andy Griffith. And by this point everyone wants to chill with us all the time. They're dropping by our office, asking us to come to set all the time, and so forth. This plan will definitely work, you guys. We just have to remember not to get too conceited, because I don't think that will work out either.

Day One @ TAGS

Yesterday was my first day at my internship at The Andy Griffith Show!
Now, I'd heard that you should show up a half hour early for this kind of position, to show them you're serious. As it turned out, I overestimated traffic (I woke up at five a.m.!) and ended up arriving over two hours early. After I circled the block A BUNCH, I ended up in this tiny coffee shop where I watched TV on my phone (I know, right?) and had a cheese danish, my second breakfast of the day. It was finally time to go read in my car, and then park.
Visitor parking (which I think is me) is on the basement level of the parking lot, right next to (this is true) a women's bathroom filled with cleaning supplies and containing a sink brimming with dead cockroaches. I had to wait until I got up to the human level to go to the bathroom (the men's room had a sign saying out of order, by the by).
When I arrived in the office where I'd be working, the doors were locked. In fact, 8:30 is about a half hour earlier than any of the accountants arrive. Luckily, an assistant in another department showed up and took me around a little bit, including to: the breakfast scene.
Apparently The Andy Griffith Show exists in a weird alternate universe of free short order cooks and off-menu requests. My guide walked up to a trailer and asked for them to fry her up some turkey bacon. While they worked on that, she went to the Omelet Guy (YUP) and ordered a custom omelet. I wished I hadn't already eaten breakfast twice as I satisfied myself with a cup of apple juice and a carton of milk.
By this time, the accountants began to show up. I'd be sharing an office with Oscar, Angela, and Kevin, who are all thoroughly pleasant people and listen to mixtapes all day to escape how tedious the job can become. It took us an hour, but we set up a 2002 Dell computer for me with a '98 monitor on my desk! This is, honestly, the first time I have had such an extravagent work area. On day one, I didn't end up having anything to do on this computer, but it was nice to have, anyway.
There is little to say about the work I did today except that I saw so many invoices for so much money over the course of the day I began to grow insensitive to these sums. Much like the policies at the coffee shop where I work full time, where drinks are tossed away with some abandon, enormous quantities of money are spent on what I'd previously thought of as trivial items here at Andy Griffith.
During lunch, however, things got exciting. Once again, there was so much food, and all made to order. I had an all-carbs meal smothered in cheese, because that is how I roll. While we were all eating, my boss (Angela) pointed out Sheldon Leonard, the show's creator, who walked in wearing a pretty impressive coat of many colors. I didn't talk to him yet, but maybe some day.
At the salad buffet, I walked past Don Knotts (THE DON KNOTTS) in a t-shirt, and almost told him how much I enjoy his work, but decided against it. Then, as Oscar and Kevin showed me the sets (not inside the sets, just where the sets are), we walked past Andy Griffith himself, twice, in costume. He looked just like he does on the show.
Yes, I caught a few spoilers for the upcoming season, but in general my job has little to do so far with the ACTION. But I come in on Thursday, and Angela suggested Oscar and Kevin might take me on set then, so we'll see what comes next. I'm so grateful to have this job, sincerely. I think it will be great.

So there's an old joke

This career counselor goes to the circus for fun. On his way out, he sees an older guy cleaning up after the elephants. He goes up to him and says, "A guy like you? Doing work like this? You're very strong for your age. You could be a carpenter or something, make much more than you're making here." The guy scrapes some elephant poop off his shovel and says, "And leave show business?"
Over the course of the last few weeks, I have been in touch with the staff of one of my favorite TV shows ever (for the purposes of this blog I'll refer to it as The Andy Griffith Show). Today I went in to interview with them.
When I got to their offices, an assistant asked me a question. I was very nervous, so I assumed he was asking me "Are you Muffin MacGuffin, here to interview for an internship on this program?" I nodded yes and he led me to a small and cramped room full of people in their fifties. It took me a few moments to realize that I had accidentally landed myself among some auditioning actors, working toward a role I had no chance of getting. I eventually steered myself in the right direction, and after a brief meeting, got a spot interning in the accounting department of what is, as I may have mentioned, one of my favorite TV shows ever.
There's no way to describe how excited I am, mostly because I'm less excited than I am cautiously enthusiastic. I don't begin working until next week, so I definitely am waiting for the other shoe to drop. There is some possibility that this internship could lead to working on this show next year, and it will probably look good on my resume, and I will learn so much about TV production -- my internship will involve some interaction with every different department. But I've only been in L.A. two weeks now -- can it be working out this well?
Incidentally, many of my friends from high school are taking a road trip to Gettysburg tomorrow or so. We'd been talking about doing this since school, and now that we've graduated and they're all in the same place, they're actually doing it. Very Breaking Away, I guess.
This clip made sense to me earlier as to my day, and a little less sense as this evening wore on, but I actually ended up using four programs to put it together, so now you have to suffer through it and appreciate its relevance:

I'm Getting Too Old For This Shit... Is That What I Was Supposed To Say?

I'm twenty-two now, which feels about right. I live in Los Angeles now.

I know I haven't blogged a whole ton lately, and sorry, but I've been in the multi-month process of moving from The Place in Boston to The Hills in Los Angeles. Here are the pertinent details:
I have been here for almost a whole week, and I'm not a famous television writer yet. I have had some very encouraging meetings, though.
On Thursday I had a meeting on a studio lot, which is (as I've mentioned elsewhere) my favorite place to have a meeting. It was fairly productive, and afterwards I saw Christina Hendricks IN PERSON. This marked my first celebrity sighting since moving to The Hills, and also a reminder that I really am not getting out much, seeing as it took me days to see a famous person. The studio was also throwing a big party for the release of a movie, so I grabbed myself a free veggie burger and ice cream sandwich.
This was significant, incidentally, because I have started a process of trying to get more in shape because guess what that is the situation in L.A. I have been eating more healthy and making myself smoothies and also running and stuff and man it is less fun than pizza three meals a day.
Last night I went to a very fun musical written by someone who was described to me as being myself "in five or six years," seeing as he graduated from the same place as I and is on the fast track to writing a sitcom I really enjoy. I introduced myself to the writer, and hope to get some face time with him some time in the next two weeks. I also met an assistant director on the show, and totally talked her ear off about my opinions on different multicamera sitcoms (Chuck Lorre shows tend to make very good use of their space, The New Adventures of Old Christine has a really good set, and NewsRadio did it best). All in all, worth the four hour round trip to the show (there were also free snacks at intermission, and it was a really good musical).
In the meantime, I'm getting used to L.A. except for the way nobody seems to jaywalk, ever. I'm prepared to start this revolution, but I'll need everybody's help.
I also keep plugging away at my scripts. When someone asks if I've written anything, I'll have things to show them, and that's pretty important. If anyone reading this now wants a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, eager-to-learn P.A. for their TV show, you know where to reach me.
Same thing goes for anyone in L.A. who wants to be my friend.

Eight-and-a-half hour shift tomorrow for my birthday. Getting ready. I may turn this into a once-a-week blog, or whatever. We'll see.

More Broad Trip

Today I made a couple of contacts from the road, which was pretty cool. Other than that, it was almost all driving. If you're interested in reading the FULL STORY told by TWO PEOPLE with DIVERGENT VIEWPOINTS, you can go here. Otherwise, I'll write something about Sammy Glick sooner rather than later.

Broad Trip

It's difficult to convey, but pronounce the title of this post "brode trip," as in a road trip with your bros. In this case, my bro is my sister, and we're driving out to Los Angeles. I may be away from this blog for a few days, but if you look to the right of these words you can follow me twittering pretty relentlessly from the road, except when I'm the driving person, in which case, I relent. Ohio tonight.

Story of L.A.: Part Five

The day after the concertplay, I had two meetings. First, with my second cousin's first cousin on the other side, who is an up-and-coming screenwriter. We met in a Starbucks on La Brea, but it turns out that North La Brea and South La Brea take you to different places so I was only fifteen minutes early instead of my usually scheduled hour.

We chatted a little bit, and we definitely seemed to think that the same things are stupid, which was cool. She's got some exciting projects in the works, and she recommended I come out to LA as soon as possible and try to hit the ground running. She also mentioned that at one point she had applied for a writing position on a show executive produced by someone I'd met previously, but did not get the spot. So, that's weird.

Our chat made me a little late for another meeting, this one in Beverly Hills. The man I met with worked in television but had almost no connection to scripted series, but he loved talking about TV history, and so do I, so we actually ended up chatting about Jeff Zucker and Brandon Tartikoff for so long I got a ticket. Forty five dollars to the city of Beverly Hills, where they need it most.

The next night, Natalie took me to the house of a family friend or possibly cousin, who lived in a very swanky house next door to Kevin Spacey. It was apparently a Meal for Young Aspirers, as there were a couple of other twentysomethings there, one actor and one director. I promised to facebook friend them both and then I forgot their names. THIS IS ME YOU GUYS. I'M ON FACEBOOK.

Together, we all watched the Golden Globes, which I think had aired already on the East Coast, so the guy whose house this was kept telling us who won right before it was announced, which made the whole thing a lot more fun, as did Colin Farrell's clearly altered state.

The next day I was on a plane home. I got back to Boston, things got bad, I learned to deal with it, I wrote a couple of scripts, one of which I'm really proud of, I graduated with a Women's Studies major and a Film Studies minor, and by this time next week I'll be living permanently in Los Angeles trying to become a TV writer. I'll keep you better updated this time around.

Story of L.A.: Part Four

Damn, guess who stopped blogging for a couple months. You missed a lot of stuff in my life, yeah, sorry, but what say we try to finish this Story of L.A., huh?
So, where we last left our hero (me) he (I) was about to meet up with a pretty important guy in television. Natalie and I hit the location early to scope it out, and surprise, it was a pretty nice place. I circled the block maybe four times and then got ready to go inside and meet with this guy.
Our meeting was tremendously brief. I had some water, he had probably coffee. I told him my life goals, and he said it didn't seem impossible. Incidentally, a couple of weeks ago, the first new show from his company aired, and I enjoyed it.
The whole thing made me pretty nervous, though, because this experience seemed aggressively positive. How realistic is the idea of me actually finding work in television, you know? No matter what they say.
Following this, Natalie, her mom, her mom's friend, her mom's friend's daughter and I went out to dinner and a show. The dinner was Mexican, and it was good, but the waiter got pissed when I tried to order something and told me he'd bring me something else. Does this happen in LA? Is that an LA Thing?
The show was very weird. It was a one-man show about the life of George Gershwin, written by and starring Hershey Felder, who has done one-man shows about other musicians, and is married to the former prime minister of Canada. FACT. Also, Peter Gallagher was there. Here is a TRUE DIALOGUE that took place between me, him, and Natalie:
NATALIE: (to me) Tell him.
ME: (to Natalie) Nah. I'm too nervous.
NATALIE: (to Peter Gallagher) (pointing at me) Hey, Peter. He went to the same high school and college as you.
PETER: (to me) Oh yeah? Tufts and Byram Hills?
ME: (inside my brain) Fuck. Byram Hills? I thought this dude was White Plains.
ME: (to Peter) Oh, sorry. White Plains.
PETER: (to me) (disappointed) Oh, well, okay.
(He returns to his activities, I return to convincing Natalie's mom's friend's daughter that "frenemy" is a real word. She had never heard of it DESPITE BEING A TEENAGER.)
The show itself was a little long, and included a full performance of Rhapsody in Blue, which was alright, and also included at least three renderings of the verse "Oh I loves you Porgy..." which remains stuck in my head in, I'd say, a positive way.

Rhapsody in Blue
Uploaded by -Chapo-

Anyway, people in the audience feel asleep, which Natalie said was typical for LA theater audiences, which is weird. But at least they didn't sing along like that one dude that time I saw The History Boys. Actually, there was singing along, but Hershey asked for it, and whatever Hershey wants...

This was a lot, and there's still some more to write, but I'm getting back on the horse here, so let's say MORE TO COME IN: STORY OF L.A.: PART FIVE!
Feels good to be back.

My Personal, Intimate Date with Jill Golick

I am interviewed here, if you're interested. The web content thing I refer to is here and here, so far. I am trying to keep myself together, but it is pretty enormous to be interviewed by Jill Golick, you guys.

More of this, PS