The Birth of Zena

It seems apropos to post about a new life on the New Year.

Click here for a
giraffe birth!

Crossover Cooking

An old friend of mine has written a cookbook and blog called Crossover Cooking. Give it a shot; try a recipe for the New Year!

From the backcover:

Many cuisines come together in one cookbook of sensational yet easy recipes. If you enjoy many different kinds of food, but don't want to have to go to culinary school to learn to make them, this book is for you. Have stir fry on Saturday, macaroni and cheese on Monday, and tostadas on Thursday, all homemade in no time at all.

Dare to hope?

Looks sorta cool. Not crazy about a Silver Surfer with eyes, but it does distinguish him from the T1000.


Come on Marvel, momma needs a new pair of shoes. Let's roll a winner.

Scissorhands

I guess I'm not going to Matthew Bourne's Edward Scissorhands ballet. I have another opportunity to go alone tonight, and here I sit, typing, instead of driving my lazy ass to downtown LA to get a scapled ticket.

Sigh.

The thing is, I already know what my emotional response is going to be, and I don't know if I'm up for it. The movie impinged on me like few others ever have, to the point that I often just had to think of Edward alone in the castle to start crying at auditions. The film is so beautiful and resonant and so about my life mission statement, it's all a little overwhelming. And the ballet...well, the ballet looks like it brilliantly captured the subject matter AND it's ballet.

Going to the ballet often wrecks me, because it is so very beautiful, and I'm so very sad to not be a dancer. I spent years and years of my youth in dance classes, and loved it very much. My mom took me out of ballet in fourth grade when the teachers insisted I had a career and had to go en pointe...they were upset, mom was upset, I was upset. It wasn't great.

I think mom was right in the long run...she'd had a cousin who'd ruined her feet through dance, and realistically though I was the perfect body type and height throughout my teens (naturally aneorixic), my feet have always been in precarious health anyway, and I would probably be somewhat crippled now.

So I ended up in Fosse jazz classes instead, and other weird mixtures of dance. In ninth grade, I was quite disappointed to get on the cheerleading team and discover the other girls were more interested in giving bjs to the football players than in choreagraphing amazing routines. I quit, and went and taught ballet to little girls afterschool.

Not sure why I'm relaying all this to you. It's just, I can already see and hear and feel Edward Scissorhands in my mind. Perhaps it's okay to avoid the emotion of it all.

Wow.

Can't believe no one has commented about the Hero pic, and that that disappoints me. Weird.

Okay, to all you feeling lonely-blue-weird this Christmas, don't forget you have plenty of company over at PostSecret.

Elf Yourself.com

Merry Christmas from Hero.

And I don't want to hear any blackface comments. The Baby Jesus made Hero that way.

If you don't have any animals to humiliate on Elf Yourself, might I suggest this be the perfect therapeutic use for pix of your ex? I might, indeed.

More propaganda

I'm on the computer again with an Oprah repeat about finances on in the background, and they have an expert on saying the usual crap. Then she says the number one frivolous mistake people make is eating out...

I so beg to differ, based on experience this week. I went through a crockpot book and picked out five recipes that looked simple to make and had more than half the ingredients in my cupboard. Wrote out my list, went to the grocery store, and two frustrating hours later I arrived home and unpacked my load...my wallet $150 lighter.

Yesterday, I made my easy crockpot recipe, and it took me half an hour. Half an hour for a cheesy ass WT crockpot recipe.

Today I've eaten that food for the third time, and am more than ready to dump it out. Cost of that recipe? At least $25, and 50 minutes of my time. (50 minutes of my prime time? That's the equivalent of reading a New Yorker magazine and half a Harpers, or 80 pages of a novel, or answering most of my emails on my personal account, or watching half of an Oscar nominated film, or watching an entire Emmy winning episode of TV, or writing my own five screenplay pages).

Now, I could have easily lived for a day and a half on less on $25 from one of my usual takeout restaurant strategies, plus had saved the hourly wage equivalent of the time I wasted shopping/prepping/cooking. Not to mention that when I eat out, I have utensils and plates that go straight into the recycling bin instead of wasting my time doing dishes.

Now I've got four more dishes to make, and no desire to do it. Guess I can comfort myself with the esteem I've built by getting off my lazy ass and cooking for myself. Does that make me a real woman? Doing thankless, repeating chores that waste my time to actually contribute to society?

Next week, I'm going back to my usual time-saving/money-saving lifestyle.

Peaches and cream

Sounds like Diamonds and Pearls.

Carrie, my friend and female fiancee (seriously, guys...someone's gotta pull through or I'm giving into my 3 on the Kinsey scale), and I had the joy of seeing PEACHES live again last week.

Slighltly smaller club, slightly worse acoustics, but one kick-ass female rockstar? Priceless. And a menstruating Mensa drummer's nothing to sneeze at, either.

Carrie remarked that she often gets great creative writing ideas during shows, and I have to admit I do as well. There's something about a fellow artist's live performance that gets me ol' alpha waves flowing. Though that particular night I was pondering Woman Kings in general, and how I don't like them once they come out with their vulnerabilities.

Cher, Roseanne, Courtney Love, Sharon Stone, Geena Davis, Sandra Bernhard, Angelina Jolie, Margaret Cho, Madonna...I don't want to hear about their insecurities about their looks or troubles with men. I want them to just be their warrior selves and lead us through the gates of hell.



Peaches and her mentor/idol Joan Jett are quite similar in that they don't break from that image. Don't think we'll ever see either on People magazine talking about their secret shames or celebrity diseases. Thank goddess. We need some female Mick Jaggers and Steven Tylers storming the pit with irony, intelligence, verve, and organic tampons.





It's funny, what all those celebrities have in common is being bisexual feminists. I wonder if that's what's required to usurp the male gaze. Because what I most admire in them is that when they are confident, they each become the objectifier. Their sexuality becomes the active, dominant force. It's quite striking, especially against the current backdrop of emaciated teen celebrities begging for public attention. A Woman King could care less what you think of her...you're there for her approval.

No, really

Our kitchen sink is broken.

Don't know if this means I have to start using butter as aftershave, but I've turned into Kramer washing dishes with me in the shower...

Is it just me...

Or is life really good?



They were both very kind to me.



If you live in LA, you must go see Carrie Fisher's one woman show, WISHFULL DRINKING, at the Geffen Playhouse. If you live in NYC, I'm sure it's coming there soon. It's as fabulous as her books.

Hours of fun

Don't know how you've been living without it, but here is the Random Book Title Generator, for all you budding writers.

Here are my results:

Green Soul
The Vacant Return
Door of Husband
The Thorn's Waves
The Ships of the Males
Rings in the Soaring

Sound like box office gold to me.

By the by

Was watching LOTR: ROTK tonight thinking how badass it would be to get a tattoo that says "I am no man."

Answer? Pretty badass. Especially if it was on the inside of my wrist, with a Supes shield on the other wrist. A little protection from the eebie-geebies of Hollywood handshakes.

Great

Just watched SOFT FOR DIGGING and I'm totally horrified. I'm supposed to sleep now?

Geez, Edmund Mercer reminded me of Peter Boyle, as if everything about the movie wasn't effective enough.

Eff it. I'm just going to have to put in WAR OF THE SHAOLIN TEMPLE and stay up all night.

Inland Empire

I was here at the AFI screening. Spent ten minutes afterwards just standing next to the man watching him interact with his fans. Almost everything I am artistically is because of David Lynch.

If you get a chance to see his city by city screening, go see him and this crazy ass film. It's a privilege.

Seriously

What the eff is The Lost Room about and why am I supposed to care? Prime object, Legion, urgh. This thin miniseries got funding for six hours on SciFi, but a dense story like Mists of Avalon was shortened on TNT to a Cliff Notes-unworthy four hours. That's sound decision-making.

As my friend Fire says, "Nervous, hungry, nervous, hungry...little bit nervous"

Add bored to the list, and that's what I'm feeling watching Sci Fi channel right now. How did they get these amazing actors to do this nonsensical show?

Enough. Delete. Must go watch The Wedding Wars to see how much of my Divas Inc script I now have to adjust. Sigh.

Oh, and did anyone out there see the Nip/Tuck finale? What the eff? When did this show stop being fun and ballsy? Bring back Peter Dinklage and Kimber's porn career, and fire Sean, already. Sick of his character's plot lines.

How cool is this?

"This is not another teen movie. PISTOLERAS delivers a knockout female empowerment message--its heroines make Charlie's Angels look like the Girl Scouts."
--Erin Torneo, co-author, The Bridal Wave

Rad quote

"She was perfect. I lost the perfect woman. (Beat.) I should have knocked her up when I had the chance."
- Marshall, HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER

Inspirational thought for the day

"An ant on the move does more than a dozing ox." - Mexican Proverb

That would be a great indy film slogan.

Latest Google Search

Man, this is soooo great! Look how someone found my site...

Las Divas de Batman

Bloody Awful

Saw BLOOD DIAMOND tonight with blog pal Meg. It was okay. Poor film wore its earnest heart on its sleeve. I fear they tried so hard to make a middle of the road movie, they'll please no one. I was quite bored with all the machineguns and explosions. It had the same oversensory non-thrills as the last eighteen years of Cubby's Bond films.

The plot points were executed with Swiss watch precision that screamed "Hollywood Epic...Oscar can you hear me?" And I feel for the cause they're trying to make into a blockbuster. But where was the heart behind the paint by numbers? Even the hit rap song over the credits felt like a calculated, group-think decision. I'd really like to see what Mr. Zwick woudl do with a microbudget and no studio goons perched on his shoulders.

Did anyone else notice how fast Oprah jettisoned her campaign for Forrest Whitaker in favor of ratings-friendly Leonardo Dicaprigay? No matter how many times Oprah said Leo's getting the Oscar, all I could think was Did he have the same dialect coach as Kevin Costner? Why hasn't that guy been fired?

And what exactly did Jennifer Connely's character being slutty and not wearing a bra in war-torn Africa have to do with any kind of reality women live in? None of the women I saw the flick with could figure that out. We were laughing DURING the movie.

Just goes to show that the geeky screenwriters who don't know what to do with women in real life don't know what to do with them onscreen either. Shocking. But obviously a good decision to continue hiring 95% male for the films Hollywood's actually hoping to trick 51% of the population into seeing. Morons.

I don't care what great performance is in it, or how worthy the social cause may be. I'm declaring a moratorium on my viewing of African War Films. Enough already. This ban will join my refusal to see Vietnam War Films, World War II Films, Vietnam War Films, Holocaust Films, Pro Pedophile Films, Disease of the Week Films, and anything by Peter Greenaway or anyone involved in creating the abomination of celluloid that was HAPPINESS (though by all means, see that film if you need to learn how to projectile vomit on cue for the rest of your life. Seriously.).

Oh, and films that feature bad spelling, i.e. THE PURSUIT OF THE HAPPYNESS OF WILL SMITH'S CHILDREN ALSO EARNING PAYCHECKS AND OPRAH PRAISE...WITH INNAPROPRIATELY EROTIC MOVIE POSTERS. (I hope all those overpaid marketers get Christmas pink slips for crafting a poster that has four references to pedophilia with an unwitting father and son. Unreal. No, I'm not being too hard on them; having studied and worked in commercial advertising, let me tell you...those aholes know exactly what they're saying. They pretend to be the dumb ones while behind closed doors they laugh at how dumb we are.)

SPOILER (if you're clever, and give an eff): At least BLOOD DIAMOND didn't make the same horrible story mistake THE LAST SAMURAI committed. Which means Ed Zwick is listenting to Laurie Hutzler, mayhap?

Brother Odd

Devoured BROTHER ODD by Dean Koontz in 3.5 hours. Though to be fair, I was speed-reading.

Liked the prose more than the first Odd book, but the story less. So, all in all, gotta go with this book over the other. Because really, when you're reading, it's all about the prose. And as I said earlier this month, the first Odd kept knocking you over the head with its cloying, self-conscious writing. This novel went down smoooooth.

Be interesting to see which one gets made into a movie first, especially since movies are all about the story.

Just found out there was an Odd book inbetween...Koontz did a good job of making it unnecessary to the current plot, as I had no clue I was missing a chapter in the trilogy. All in all, the series is a bit like a Nancy Drew book where you can pick up the adventure as you like. I'd recommend BROTHER ODD.

Sure Shot

If iTunes came in $2-$5 gift certificates, I would have bought a ton of those for the holidays instead of spending the same amount on Christmas cards.

Apple's loss.

I know it well....

Pistoleras, baby!

Guess what's up over at Charles's site? The first public panel of the graphic novel! Whoo-hoo!

Editor's note: Apparently I shouldn't drink and link. Here's the ACTUAL LINK to Charles's website, and not the comic porn above. Which still makes me giggle. He hee Godhead.

Hot diggity dog.

Another Successful Screenplay Reading

Just posted this on the Feedback LA site, but figured you guys need an update, too! - Lis


Another wonderful audience, and tons of fun with our trivia game and themed giveaway. But of course, the night belonged to the vibrant, uber-talented actors of

DIVAS INC. by Elisabeth Fies

In order of appearance:

Heidi Hornbacher NARRATOR, C.JAY

Troy Conrad KENNY

Chauntal Lewis SARAH

Carlos Carrasco MR. MILES, DIRECTOR

Rashaan Harper SARAH’S LITTLEST SISTER, TEEN, EMCEE,
REPORTER, KATE, KNITTING TRANSVESTITE, BOOTH ATTENDENT

Rebecca Michaels MOTHER MILES BISHOP, PROTEST LEADER, NURSE,PRE-OP TRANNIE, FLAMBOYANT PRIEST

Trevor Murphy POPS / DIVA

Joe Peracchio MA / MISS JULIE

Jonah Blechman MANLY KNITTER / YVONNE

Tarek Zohdy JOE, DELIVERYMAN, JESSE PRODUCTION ASSISTANT, FRATBOY

Tara Radcliffe RAQUEL

Annette Reid BARBARA, BARTENDER, TRANSGENDERED CLERK, GLIB HOST, CROSSDRESSER, RADIO ANNOUNCER



As always, the feedback from the audience and cast was incredibly helpful. And the crowd had this to say about the script:

"I loved the script reading! Very witty and cute!"
-Gregg Silver, Broker Associate

"You are truly talented...It's just a matter of time and unfortunately $, but things are going to really start coming together for these projects. I just know it and I'm so excited!"
-Chauntal Lewis, Actor

"Thanks again for the invite. It was fun!
-Cindy Baer, Director-Producer of Purgatory House

"It was a blast and your friends you assembled were all very cool and interesting and contributed with a lot of heart and talent to the reading. Just honored to have been up there with them. and I feel like your script is really funny and touching…and perhaps even more important – I've never seen it before. In other words it's original and exciting."
-Joe Peracchio, Artistic Director of Tricklock Theatre Company

"I have to tell you, I can't stop reading! This is hilarious! I am laughing out loud at starbucks!"
-Tarek Zohdy, Actor

Late Night With Lis

Just watched Jason Segal (How I Met Your Mother) on Conan, and he totally won me over. Charming. Witty. 6'4". Hard to argue with that.

Can't wait for Joan Jett, coming up after the commercial break. Joan Jett features prominantly in PISTOLERAS.

Also can't wait to see this. The music alone makes me weep.

UPDATE: JJ was hot. Eff, man, how old is she? How come I've NEVER looked like that? Bitch.

Now I'm rewatching Heroes. Really like it. But as someone who writes original screenplays, I really had no idea it was so acceptable to crib other people's material. I mean, wow. It's well done, but it should be, the way they're stealing. (speaking of stealing, did you guys watch both Librarian movies? Oofdah!)

So as much as I swear I like Heroes, here are three thoughts that never leave my mind:

Why does every Hero ride the bus?
Can the comic community file a class action lawsuit?
If Tim Sale is doing all the artwork, why does it suck hairy gonads?

At last...

After boring the eff out of me all season, both Battlestar Galactica and Dr. Who FINALLY had the spectacular episodes I expect every week.

Which is slighltly diminished by these snarky, hysterical reviews on Television Without Pity.

Enjoy.

BSG
Dr. Who

And yes, I feel for the incomparable cult favorite Jane Espenson, who is right in her assesment that her episode for BSG is now following the effing Beatles. Man, that's rough. But we still love you, Jane.

And we'll love you even more if your episode rocks out. Because BSG has only had one save-worthy episode this year, IMHO. Even with the creepy Cylon menage a trois.

Sonic Scream

Was just listening to Sam Beam's music, and now I've got snot pouring down my face. Lovely. Nothing like music to remind you of love lost.

It's...I don't know. Things are going great. Everything's falling into place, and I'm clearly on my mission's life path. Hey, I've always been resolved to be the Woman King. It's fine, really. The life of a Jedi Knight for me. Blah-dee-blah blah.

But it's a lie. I'm effing lonely. Just, down to the bones, somebody put a bullet in my gut, miss Him. Not a damn thing to be done about it. I have no idea why I ever had to meet him, or how he could shake me to the core and still love me a little less then he needed to choose me.

Okay.

Breaktime's over.

Back to saving the world.

Get up, Trinity.

How to handle a telemarketer

Worth the click.

Learning More

About me, 'cuz that's what it's all about, right?

Prepping for this screenplay reading this Tuesday night (if you're in LA, come!) What I've realized about my screenwriting process now is that it takes until the fourth draft (theme pass) for people to understand and like my screenplays. Totally valuable info for me. Because that means what I need to do is show drafts two (still crap) throught three (the character pass) to my trusted readers for feedback on confusions, inconsistencies, and what I'm actually saying in the script versus what I want it to say.

Piece of cake. Got my process down.

It takes a lot of the angst out of being misunderstood. I always knew I could write, but I couldn't figure out why my screenplay were clear to me and muddy to everyone else. UCLA was terrible for me because the professors only ever read your barf draft (that would be #1...the one all those publicists like to claim is the one people write in 7 days and then make into a successful film...LIES!). And the professors could never see where I was going. So I got some weird-ass feedback from the grownups. But the other writers had more patience and imagination, and always encouraged me to keep going.

Hey, and now here I am with a film being made, and by February I'll have two more sellable, polished scripts that I'm really proud of. And that's not counting the one I'm only at the midpoint first draft on right now, which is my favorite.

Thank the gods; progress.

Things are really starting to roll on "Pistoleras". We've got an official self-defense organization as our co-producer, our first investor, and next week we'll have a letter of intent to star from a young hot actor with an Emmy.

Rock and roll, bitch.

Just wish Mom was here to see the "Divas Inc." reading. She loved that script. And I really think she would have loved Jonah Blechman, one of my amazing actors reading this Tuesday. He has a very shiny soul, and was absolutely amazing in Another Gay Movie.