Me Me Me

Oh Canada

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Greetings from Montreal. My flight was fine…but it took us 90 minutes to get through customs, and that was before I ever got to the luggage carousel. Other than that, the trip went smoothly. We got to our hotel, the St. Sulpice in Old Town, at about 5:30 and after stowing our luggage in our rooms, we went out for a walk. My associate, the international sales guy for Action Concept,  wanted to visit Notre Dame…but it was closed. There was another Church he wanted to visit, but that was closed, too. I guess God keeps bankers hours in Canada. The weather was fantastic and it was nice to get some exercise.

We had dinner with Andrew Walker, one of the stars of FAST TRACK, and his girlfriend Cassandra, and then took another walk through Old Town. When I got back to the hotel, the episodic budgets and shooting schedule for FAST TRACK were waiting for me from Germany. I spent a few hours reading through them, making changes, and preparing for the next day’s meetings. By the time I was  done, it was 1:30 a.m. and I was practically asleep in my chair.

The next morning, Andrew picked us up in a restored 1973 Chevy Caprice convertible and took us on a tour around town. It was fun, and the way people stared at us, you would have thought we were in a Ferrari. We had lunch with him at Schwartz’s smoked meats. The place was packed, so we  where we shared a table with three guy who turned out to be the producers/stars of an Outdoor Network show who’d just come in from a week spent hunting caribou. After lunch, our tour continued…and then Andrew dropped us off for our meetings a distributor/broadcaster for FAST TRACK.  The meetings went very well, and I learned a lot about how the distribution and financing business works up here.

We went back to the hotel to make some calls to Germany, change our clothes, and then we went out for dinner with Andrew and the distribution folks who, as it turned out, have done several movies together. We had a great night, I learned even more about how the financing annd distribution side of the international TV business works, and I didn’t end up getting back to the hotel until well after midnight.

Now I’ve just packed up and am heading to a recording studio to do Andrew’s ADR for FAST TRACK and to have lunch with him and his parents. Then it’s off to Prague, where I will get a connecting flight to Berlin…and arrive tonight.

The only downside to this trip is I haven’t had a chance to write and it’s making me anxious. I will have to make up for it big time this weekend…wherever I am.

Another Rave for HOLLYWOOD & CRIME

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51umlwe7gul__ss500__2Booklist has praised HOLLYWOOD AND CRIME, a new anthology coming out next month that includes my short story "Jack Webb’s Star":

As veteran crime writer Randisi notes in his introduction, when some people think of Hollywood, they think fame, glamour, and Disneyland. Others think of the Black Dahlia, O. J., and Fatty Arbuckle–the dark side of the Tinseltown dream. Among the authors represented in this collection of original short stories with a Hollywood theme are marquee names Michael Connelly, Max Allan Collins, Bill Pronzini, and Stuart Kaminsky. Among the best of the 14 selections are Collins’ "Murderlized," featuring Moe Howard of Three Stooges fame investigating the death of his mentor, and Connelly’s "Suicide Run," in which Harry Bosch extracts justice for a series of murdered starlets. Veteran television screenwriter Lee Goldberg has some fun with a small screen legend in "Jack Webb’s Star," and Dick Lochte brings back private investigator Leo Bloodworth–still listening to Dinah Shore but on an MP3 player–in a mystery that ends with a devilish poke at the quality of modern screenwriting. This consistently high-quality collection offers readers a nice mix of big names and lesser-knowns who deserve larger audiences.

This follows a rave review from Publisher’s Weekly, published a few months back before the book’s release date was changed:

The 14 stories in this entertaining anthology from Shamus Award–founder Randisi span Tinsel Town history from the 1930s to the present and intersect, literally, at Hollywood and Vine. Top billing should go to Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch story, "Suicide Run," and to Lee Goldberg’s "Jack Webb’s Star"—the former for the detection and the latter for biggest laughs. Other highlights include Max Allan Collins and Matthew V. Clemens’s reinvention of one of the Three Stooges, Moe Howard, as a detective in their clever "Murderlized," about the 1937 death of the Stooges’ mentor, vaudevillian Ted Healy. Robert S. Levinson delivers a wicked portrait of gossip columnist Hedda Hopper in "And the Winner Is…," which turns on her lackey’s efforts to stop a Nazi sharpshooter at the 1960 Academy Awards. From Harry Bosch’s visit to a photographer at Hollywood & Vine Studios to Moe’s meeting at a coffee shop at that intersection, all the tales pay homage to the storied Hollywood street corner.

Traveling Man

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I am off to Montreal tomorrow to meet with Canadian broadcasters and to record the ADR for one of our FAST TRACK stars…and then I’m going to Berlin, Munich and Cologne for more post-production on FAST TRACK and some important meetings on other projects. I won’t be back until Sept 8…but I will try to post here from the road.

Chiseling

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Ah1l14poin I spent the day writing yesterday…but I am being generous. I only got a few pages done and it was like chiseling at stone. Today I looked at the crap I wrote yesterday and was convinced that I’ve lost whatever minimal talent I had. My days as a writer are over. Then I read an excerpt of Walter Mosley’s book THIS YEAR YOU WRITE YOUR NOVEL in Oprah magazine…and felt much better.

If you skip a day or more between your writing sessions, your mind will drift […] You will find that you’ll have to slog back to a place that would have been easily attained if only you wrote every day.

He’s right, and of course I already knew this, but I’m a writer, so I am naturally insecure. The fact is, I didn’t write for two days because I was bogged down with catching up on my life (after four months away from home) and with FAST TRACK stuff. So when I finally sat down with the book again, I was starting from a dead stop. It should go a bit better today…then even better tomorrow.

Back in the USA

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I got back to the U.S. late Sunday after nearly four months in Europe and it feels good, though I was wide-awake at 4 a.m. this morning.

I’ve already starting wading through the unbelievable mountain of mail I’ve accumulated while I was away…it’s like the back room of the post office. It’s also like Christmas…the boxes I’ve opened so far include maybe 100 Emmy screeners, some copies of the Polish editions of my MONK books, and stuff I forgot that I ordered on Amazon, DeepDiscount DVD, and eBay.

But I am not stowing my suitcases just yet.  I’ll be returning to Germany in about four weeks to finish post-production on FAST TRACK and to be a keynote speaker at the Cologne Conference 2007, along with guys like Steve Bochco and Paul Haggis. And I may be hitting the road with Action Concept’s international sales team to help secure worldwide presales for FAST TRACK in advance of the broadcast of the pilot in Germany (which will happen some time before the end of the year). 

Dom-inating

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I am back in Cologne, Germany, and enjoying the view of the Dom cathedral out of my hotel window. 

We had a wonderful little European roadtrip through Belgium and Holland. The highlights for me were Brugge, Belgium and Ultrecht, Holland, two incredibly beautiful cities with lots of canals, bridges, wonderful architecture, and colorful gardens. I have to visit both places again some day.

I wasn’t wild about Brussels — the streets made me nd my GPS go nuts.  The Brussels city planners must have been drunk when they devised their traffic flow scheme. Antwerp left me cold, too.

Amsterdam was interesting. I might have liked it more if I hadn’t seen Brugge first. It was also way too chaotic for me…crossing the street meant dodging trams, buses, bikes, motorcycles, cars and crowds of people. I felt like I was in a meteor shower. We also inadvertently strayed into the red-light district…where my 12-year-old daughter saw lots of, um, interesting things.  It wasn’t the prostitutes sitting in the windows that was unsettling for her, it was the window displays in the sex shops (then again, there was nothing there she didn’t see later in the front window of the sex shop right next door the Intercontinental Hotel here in Cologne).  It wasn’t easy explaining to her why a woman would wear a giant, rubber penis strapped to her waist. My wife told her it was to keep her hands free while she made scrambled eggs, but my daughter didn’t buy it and demanded that I tell her "exactly" what it was for. So I told her the truth. I said it was a clothes hanger.

My family returns to L.A. tomorrow but I have to stick around for a few more days to do some post-production work on FAST TRACK before finally returning home. This is the longest I have ever been away from the U.S. and I am beginning to feel home sick, even with my family here with me. It will be nice to sleep in my own bed again and stop living out of a suitcase for a little while.

More later…

Going Dutch

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Greetings from Haarlem,  Holland.

The screening of my FAST TRACK cut for the network execs last week at the Action Concept studios in Cologne went very well. They loved it…much to my relief. I’ve made their suggested changes to the cut and now I’m waiting to attend the "big" screening of the pilot at the network headquarters in Munich on August 8th. In the mean time, I am continuing with post-production…which includes working with the composer, the fx team, and supervising the "clean" cut for U.S. broadcast TV. France_lohr_brugge_342

But  I’ve snuck away for fives days with my family for a little European road-trip before they head back to L.A. on the 3rd (I’m still working though…I have a MONK book to write). We visited Brugge, Belgium, which is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. I must have taken 500 photos of the place.  I’ve posted a couple of them here.  Today we visited Antwerp and tomorrow it’s off to Amsterdam for a day or two…then back to Cologne.

Hello Again

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Sorry I have been scarce around here lately — I’ve just been too busy to post.

I’m back in Cologne after five days in the tiny village of Lohr, where I taught my fourth "Writers Room" seminar in Germany and researched my next MONK novel. I think it went well — I certainly had a good time.

While I was in Lohr, I screened the rough cut of FAST TRACK for the students (all writer/producers in Germany) and got some valuable feedback. I stayed in touch with the post-production department and, thanks to the wonders of high-speed internet, was able to fine-tune a "teaser trailer" for our international sales department, watch a few fx shots, and review the "audition scenes" submitted by four different composers who would like to do our score. On Sunday night, I found three hours for a walking tour of Lohr with a very knowledgeable woman from the historical society.

As if all that wasn’t enough to deprive me of sleep, the galleys for MR. MONK IN OUTER SPACE arrived while I was there and I have begun proofing the manuscript, which has to be back in NY at the end of the week in order to make the Oct. 30 pub date.

Early tomorrow morning, I’m making a few last minute tweaks to the FAST TRACK cut before the network execs arrive from Munich to see it. I’m crossing my fingers that they will like it!

Okay, time to go back to the galleys. I’ll report back soon.

(Why is it that Internet access is free in cheap hotels and costs a fortune in expensive hotels? And did you know that the McDonalds in Germany serve Grilled Shrimp Sandwiches and profiterolles?)

Paris and stuff

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I’ve driven in a lot of U.S. cities, and quite a few European ones, but I think if you can drive in Paris, you can probably drive  anywhere on earth. It’s dog-eat-dog on the roads there, no rules seem to apply. It’s infuriating,  exciting, and exhausting.

Since I was last here five years ago, it seems as though the population has quadrupled and most of them are on motorcycles. There’s less dog shit on the streets though, perhaps because it has never  stopped raining. It doesn’t feel like summer here at all.

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But Paris is still, well, Paris…a beautiful city and I had a wonderful dinner last night at  Lasserre with my wife, actress Alexia Barlier, our international  sales exec, and an exec from the French network M6, which will be airing FAST TRACK. I’ve  never been to a restaurant quite like it. Very elegant, with five waiters doing what’s ordinarily done by one. They do everything for you but pre-chew your food. In middle of the meal, the ceiling opened up…less like a skylight than SPECTRE’s hidden base in a dormant volcano. It was pretty cool.

My vacation will be ending soon… our director Axel Sand delivers his cut of FAST TRACK on Friday and on Saturday I head Action Concept studios in Cologne to do my cut. I’ve got about five days to work in the editing room…and then it’s off to Lohr to teach the principles of American TV writing & producing with writer/producer Jack Bernstein.  Jack and I worked together on DEADLY GAMES, but we’ve also both worked separately on SHE SPIES and MONK. He’s a great writer and a very funny guy, so it should be a lot of fun.

In the mean time, I have been re-reading a book that I’ve optioned, going through it with a highlighter and getting a feel for what the "screen" story will be…I hope to be able to get to work on that script (along with MONK #6: MR. MONK GOES  TO GERMANY) while I am awaiting word on whether  FAST TRACK will be picked up or not.

bois-le-roi

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Greetings from the tiny village of bois-le-roi france, where i am visiting my mother in law. She has no internet acess or even a computer, so I am attempting this post with my blackberry (thank god there is cellular coverage here or I’d be cut off from the outside world). FAST TRACK wrapped on Sunday (the day was spent  on second unit and insert work). The wrap party went into the wee hours of Monday morning and then I hit the road to France with my family. We stopped in Heidelburg, Nuremburg, and Strasbourg among other places along the way. It was nice, but I was exhausted. I have been sleeping a lot the last few days (about 10 hours a night!) and going on long walks, thinking about the next monk book. I am trying to relax a bit but it is taking some effort. I am eager to get in the editing room..but I have to wait for the director’s cut first. I haven’t read a book in ages, so once the monk outline is done, that’s next on my to-do list.