When someone you know from film school makes a major Hollywood script sale, all kinds of things run through your mind. The first is, phew, it really can happen. The second is, damn, why didn't it happen to me? The third is that no talent bitch couldn't write her way out of a paper bag! No way was fellatio not involved here, among a treasure trove of sexual hat tricks picked up during a mysterious "summer job" in a Hong Kong whorehouse. Just wait until that particular footnote makes the alumni newsletter.It only gets worse when you made all that up, actually like the writer in question, and freely admit that she's super talented. Maybe not quite as talented as you, but ten years younger and maybe half your body weight soaking wet after a fatty meal. My friend C. sold a sitcom pilot last week in a heated bidding war among all the major networks. Included in the prize package was a job as co-exp on her own show, should it get an order, plus a staff writing position on the season's hottest comedy to tide her over until it does.
While nobody's paid my kind of dues, except maybe people who drive sportscars off cliffs while trying, C. has done her time in the trenches. She had been a playwright before grad school, and her work had been produced and published. She'd had some success as an actress, appearing in a couple of B-list movies before signing up with the inevitable staffing agency for celebrity assistants. She housesat for Don Roos, sat on Matt and Ben's phones, assisted Lisa Kudrow's assistant and fetched coffee for Ben Stiller and the little Marcia Bradyish wife he keeps insisting is funny, goddamnit.
Though C. and I hadn't been BFFs in film school, certainly we were allies. As first years, we were were shunned among the advanced students accepted into the class of a certain famous screenwriter. Each week, we would e-mail each other pissy little missives marked "Delete Immediately After Reading!" detailing the evening's perceived barbs and mean spirited notes from film school power brokers, as if that's not a contradiction in terms. She told me she'd been a geek in high school and felt naturally at home among losers, fat chicks and other outcasts, which I wasn't exactly sure how to take. Still, though nowadays she vaguely resembles Elle Woods, I believed her. For someone with a Dentyne smile sporting a perky, blonde bob, she has one too many angry snake tattoos to have escaped adolescence unscathed. In my charming congratulatory note, I reminded her that I'm still writing a feature for E.N., and was in fact invited to the red carpet East Coast premiere of his new film last week. She replied that she hadn't heard a word of congratulations from Don, Matt, either of the Bens or Marcia, Marcia, Marcia. So instant was her success, so total her newfound power, she didn't even ask me to delete immediately after reading. Man, I love this town. It's not nearly enough to break in. Every now and then, a girl gets to break some balls.
