Tuesday, February 13, 2018

New Book Excerpt: KILLING HIS ALTER-EGO

Published by Desert Breeze Publishing:


Honestly, I'm wondering what I'm doing here. Sunday we were supposed to spend the whole day reading through the script and just figuring out the subnotes or whatever Mike the director calls them, you know, what the characters are thinking underneath the lines. I learned not to volunteer what I was thinking when I wrote the lines. Turns out, writers are the lowest of the low in Hollywood. The guys at craft services get more respect than writers. They feed us, in case you were wondering. Weird how I'm picking up the lingo so fast. I certainly don't want to pick up much else of anything around here. Anyway, it turns out that even though I'm the writer and I created half the characters, I don't know what anybody is thinking when they say the lines that I wrote. Conrad Emerson, the guy who plays Captain Simmonds, and Kyle Hawkes are about the only actors who didn't sneer at me when I explained why lines had to be said a certain way, so lines later on in the script would make sense. I think they didn't sneer at me because I met both of them before filming, and they both know I'm the writer. Everybody else is all, "You're just a stupid kid, what do you know?" The second time someone snarled at me, Mike snarled back at them that I was the writer, so yeah, I did know something, since I knew what was going to happen later in the script, and it just showed that none of them had read the script yet or they'd know what I was saying made sense. Didn't stop them making faces and muttering at each other, but at least they didn't do it out loud where he could hear it.

What a bunch of jerks. Actors are all jerks.

Yeah, that includes Kyle Hawkes.


Now that you've picked yourself up off the ground, here's the scoop. Even though he was so nice to me in April, the guy is a bozo. He's an overgrown adolescent. Just as bad as the jerkfaces in our class. Getting back to what I was starting to say before, about Sunday, we were supposed to spend the whole day going through the script. We didn't because Kyle and some of the stunt crew guys and most of the lighting crew guys were out drinking and goofing around Saturday night, until Sunday morning. So they were all sleeping late and hung over. None of them -- except Kyle -- had to show up for the meeting, so what did they care? So when Penny came by the trailer Sunday morning and said I'd be free until after lunch -- and added, "Like usual," so that means those bozos have done this before -- she offered to have someone drive me into town if I wanted.

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