In Flight

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I traveled home from Germany today. I woke up at 4:15 am to make a 6:30 flight out of Munich. At the airport security checkpoint, there are posters and videos alerting you to restrictions on liquids, etc. in carry-on baggage. A young couple went through with two overnight bags loaded with cosmetics, scissors, etc and couldn’t understand why security wouldn’t let them through.On the flight from Munich to Dusseldorf,  where I was catching a connecting flight to the U.S., the businessman who was sitting next to me to me grabbed his crotch at take-off and again at landing. I dont know what he was protecting himself from. In Dusseldorf,  the couple in front of me in the security line had bought a ton of drinks and cosmetics at the terminal gift shop. I warned them that they couldn’t bring their purchases on the plane, but they insisted that since it was bought at the airport, it was okay. I showed them the signs, and they still argued with me. So I shut up. They were shocked and infuriated when security made them throw it all out.  I just smiled and went on my way.

On the flight home, I caught up on five episodes of HEROES and the last few BOSTON LEGALS of the season on my iPod. I think that HEROES is getting too twisty for their own good…to the point that it has become ludicrous and maddening…not to mention nearly impossible to follow. I still have two more episodes to watch and I will have seen the whole season. But it seems to me the show started out with a lot of promise and hasn’t delivered on it.

Back in May, BOSTON LEGAL did yet another episodes where the lawyers are held hostage…this time the bad guy was the troubled son of a murder victim wants revenge from Denny Crane (William Shatner) for getting the accused killer acquited forty-some years ago. But what made this tired plot special was that David Kelley cleverly incorporated footage from the original, black-and-white pilot of THE DEFENDERS, which co-starred a very young William Shatner as a lawyer. Kelley used the old footage as flashbacks of a younger Denny Crane defending the killer. I had to admire the episode as a TV geek, a pilot nut, and as someone who has done much the same thing (using reruns of MANNIX as flashbacks for a new Mannix story on DIAGNOSIS MURDER). I’m surprised the episode didn’t get some attention…or did it?

I see that last week TWO AND A HALF MEN was the highest rated show on television. What has happened to America while I was gone!?

I have been up for over 24 hours now…I want to try to stay awake until 8 or 9 pm. So if this post is riddled with typos and incoherent thought, now you know why.

Double the Vanity

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iUniverse and Authorhouse are merging to become one huge vanity press.  In a press release, iUniverse CEO Susan Driscoll says:

Why this move, and why now? Quite simply, the strengths and the capabilities of
AuthorHouse and iUniverse complement one another, and by building on our
individual strengths we can expand the range and enhance the quality of the
services that each company offers.
[…] I’m delighted that my iUniverse colleagues and I will be working with Bryan
Smith and with the entire AuthorHouse team to define a world where publishing is
truly author-centric.

I guess  by "author centric" they mean that they make their money off the desperate, naive authors rather than from selling books to readers. It’s unfortunate that iUniverse, seemingly the most honest of the vanity presses, is teaming up with one of the sleaziest.

Munich

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I am sitting in my hotel room in Munich, getting ready to go out for some network meetings. I won’t bore you with all  the details from my travels, except to say it was great to see the cast of FAST TRACK in Berlin again and that it was hell being in London for a day during the subway strike (though  I managed to run into someone I know amidst the crowd on Oxford Street…what are the odds of that!?).  The weather has been rainy and miserable here and I haven’t managed to conquer my jet-lag. I seem to be tired all the time. I have a 6:45 am flight home tomorrow and am looking to getting some sleep, seeing some sunshine, and making more headway on my MONK novel.

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Singing in the Rain

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Potsdamer_platz_berlin It has been a hectic week  bouncing all over Germany…and my bouncing isn’t over yet. I was in Cologne on Friday for meetings then back to Berlin that same night. On Saturday, I took a long walk around Mitte, worked on my MONK novel for a few hours, had a two-hour nap (which I really, really I needed), then had a wonderful dinner at a riverside restaurant with the FAST TRACK line producer and his lovely girlfriend. Today began with another long walk and after I finish this post, I’m going to work on MONK for the rest of the afternoon, and then I will go to our composer’s studio to listen to the FAST TRACK score. Roomgallery_18 I’ve been staying this trip at the Grand Hyatt Berlin in Potsdamer Platz and it’s a great hotel. The rooms have flat screen TVs that also plug into your MP3 player. The bathrooms are beautiful and also have flat screen TVs. The shower is in a seperate, glass-walled section and is mounted beside the bathtub, which also has it’s own hand-held showerhead.  There’s a mirror in there that doesn’t fog, so you can shave while you’re showering. I love it.  The showerhead is called something like rainstorm or cloudburst…and it just drenches you. I’ve taken two or three scalding showers a day since I’ve been here.. I’m probably the cleanest American in Berlin.  I could spend all day in that shower. If only I had a waterproof laptop

Mr. Jet Set

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I have been on two flights a day each day for the last four days…and it’s getting to me. I flew from Montreal to Prague, then Prague to Berlin, then Berlin to Munich (and back), and Berlin to Cologne (and back). I am SO jet-lagged. I look like the living dead. This weekend, though, I won’t be seeing the inside of a jet…which will be a nice break for me.  On the other hand, I probably won’t be seeing anything outside my Berlin hotel room, since I will have to hole myself up writing to make up for lost time on the latest MONK Novel. Sunday afternoon I am going to the composers studio to hear the score and on Monday I am spending  the day in ADR…followed by dinner with the cast. I’ll be jetting to London on Tuesday morning, then London-t0-Munich that same night, and then Munich-to-Dusseldorf-t0-LA on Friday. All of this travel, for the most part, is for work on the post-production and distribution of FAST TRACK. Speaking of which, I slipped my friend author Paul Levine a DVD of the rough cut and he liked it.

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.