A Limey in LA LA Land - One Writers Gurney - Part III

by Michael Donald

(Part III. Missed part II? Check it out!)

The problem with mobile phones, is that as far as I know you cannot have a universal number, after all what would be the point of that when there is a kings ransom to be obtained in roaming charges. As soon as you turn on your phone abroad you can actually feel the money draining from your bank account like sand being sucked between your toes by the riptide on a sunny beach. You are charged for incoming and outgoing calls, data delivery, text, images and email forwarding. If you were stupid enough to watch a HD video download you could blow through hundreds of pounds in no time at all. As a consequence turning on my Blackberry once in the US was something that was to be reserved for emergencies only.

I had charged my Sim up with £18 before I left, and despite this reducing my charges by about 60 percent, I still had to add another £68 onto the Sim for my stay. Before you leave the UK you will also have to change your voicemail to alert people that you are in the US and also set up a voicemail on your new Sim. The first problem I encountered was that I couldn't phone the UK from my mobile number in the States, I never resolved this problem, but it is something I'd research for my next trip. Another thing to beware of is that when you run out of credit on your Sim any incoming calls just get a number unavailable message. This might explain why I missed not only my call from Stephen but also Mr Bruckheimer!

EXT. FREEWAY - TRAVELING - DAY

My journey to Long Beach was uneventful, my Sat Nav had become bored with the whole Village People vibe and had slouched into the lazy left and right approach, so all was well. One thing I did notice was that the instructions for when to leave the freeways and to take turns arrived about a second before the exit ... a situation that caused the truck drivers a great deal of fear as I swerved across in front of them.

As this problem seemed consistent with the incredible speed of my plucky Hyundai I can only presume that Mrs Sat Nav was geared towards the more pedestrian pace of a standard US driver.

EXT. LONG BEACH - VENUE HOTEL - DAY

As I pulled up outside the Hotel, looking across the sparkling blue waters of the river I reflected on why I was here ... and not at the Queen Mary that was moored a few hundred yards away on the waterfront.

FLASHBACK

When I'd received my notification of the screenplay win for Rose's War, the letter had gushed about the delights that awaited me upon my arrival. There was talk of a cash prize, certificate, a festival goody bag filled with products and discount vouchers from their sponsors as well as an all access pass for the festival as well as a meeting to talk about a possible production deal to make my script, all this with films music and art set in the historic ship, The Queen Mary.

Having received all of the literature about the festival on November 21st 2009, along with various requests to fill in questionnaires, send synopsis, bios and photographs, I eagerly awaited news of the festival and my contribution to it. It was a long wait. Originally booked to take place in December the festival had been moved to February due to "Scheduling" and their sponsors' requests. This seemed fairly normal, as it was the first year of the festival. However as the months slid by, and my emails, phone calls and snail mail letters met with a deafening silence, it felt like maybe the Festival was something I'd imagined.

By the 2nd of February I decided to take matters into my own hands and began to track down the other screenplay winners, runner-ups and Honorary mentions in the festival. Using Facebook, Linked In and Twitter I managed to link up all the writers involved and we pooled our information. It seemed that some of the writers had all but given up on the contest as their attempts to contact anyone at the competition had failed. I contacted The Queen Mary reservations department; surely if they had a film festival starting that month they'd have noticed? Well, er no ... all of my enquiries met with a baffled reaction ... was this one of the first recorded occurrences of a ghost festival? I knew that the Queen Mary was supposedly haunted, so maybe it just got eaten.

Then we had a breakthrough, one of the writers Philip Sedgwick made contact by phone and managed to speak to the festival organiser. It appeared that they had had to pull out of the Queen Mary venue due to a problem with their sponsors. The festival was on! We were to meet with a producer to talk about getting our projects made, Clint Eastwood and his wife were going to be there along with the band she repped The Overtones, and more importantly we would have full access to speak to the great man ... boy were we thrilled!

BACK TO PRESENT - EXT. THE MAYA HOTEL

Arriving outside the hotel I saw a man with his wife and daughter arriving in their car and instinctively knew that it was Philip Sedgwick, the only man in our team to have made contact with the elusive Festival organiser Alexa Polar. Philip was what in L.A would be called a portfolio worker, in that he juggled a successful career in Astrology with the dubious art of Screenwriting. We were both in good time for our scheduled meet with the legendary producer Dennis, I say legendary, because that usually applies to someone who vanishes into the mists of time and leaves a lasting impression ... and that was certainly the case. He had no card, no profile and as was soon to be discovered no ETA.

TIME LAPSE SEQUENCE

Having spent most of our pre-flight hours sorting out times for his interviews with us, we were astonished when we a discovered he was stuck in traffic? This was pretty strange, as I'd driven from L.A with minimum problems only an hour before. It was to get even weirder. I met up with the other writers who were as much in the dark as most of the organisers as to the producers whereabouts. We headed to the check in area of the festival. I say registration area, it was a couple of tables with two bemused looking girls standing behind them. Eager to scoop up our goodie bags, festival info and prize money we headed towards it. We stood there grinning hopefully. There was nothing on the table, apart from a few flyers for various film commissions and some actors business cards. I worked up my best Hugh Grant accent and asked if there was any program info for the three days of music, films and award ceremonies. Time literally stopped, she looked at me and was rendered speechless ... I learned afterwards that it was a function of the English accent and only affected a small percent of the population. I tried asking again, hinting about goodie bags, money what was on etc. Eventually she produced a piece of blank paper and asked me to write my name on it. Obviously that was what was holding the process up.

She handed us some small coloured pieces of paper approximately two by three inches in size which had a time, and a list of five or six film titles, with the momentous heading "In no specific order" We were advised that the festival information was on the internet, which could be accessed in the hotel lobby ... it was a little like going to a pop concert and having to speak to the stage technicians to find out what was on. Of course the info on the internet was exactly the same as the little pieces of paper we were clutching.

In the absence of a producer to talk to we headed into the viewing room to check out some short films. As there was no information about the films or directors it was the equivalent of a creative lucky dip, and in some cases we were going to end up with the plastic wedding ring. After three or more not short enough films, we started to became aware of the ferocity of the spiky velour finish on the chair and the continuous crash of the steel handled fire doors that allowed access to the theatre and a blaze of light to disrupt the proceeding. We all agreed it was time to hit the bar. By ten o'clock in the evening we realised that our afternoon appointment to discuss the production of our short films wasn't going to happen!

Updated: 05/20/2010