And Now For Something Completely Different...

So the ball's in Dave's court. I tossed him some pages which, I believe, he really liked. We decided to move one of the bigger sequences to a bit later in the flick (by a scene or two), so he's now due to write the "glue" to bind together the chopped up bits.

That said, I'm still waiting on that. For all the "hurry up, hurry up!" I got out of Dr. Writegood last week, he's certainly taking his sweetass time now. Not that he has much going on in his personal or professional lives. Nosiree...

So, while we wait, I'd like to talk about something different.

Being a bigtime Hollywood screenwriter, I often get invited to industry events. Movie premieres, wrap parties, dinner with the Cruise's (its hard to find a Theta-friendly bottle of Pinot Noir).

Ok. That's a lie. I'm a B-movie writer, living in Atlanta. The last "premiere" I went to was Opening Night of "Eliminator," on Dave's big screen TV back in LA. I've never been to a wrap party. I do have dinner with the Cruise's all the time, though. Little Suri is an angel.

(Joking aside, I've met the guy... remind me to tell you the story sometime)

But this week... all that changes. Friday night I'm on the guest list to see the band BRIL play here in Atlanta, along with People In Planes, and Blue October. Yes, indeed, life is good as a big-time screenwiter with a massively trafficed blog.

Now... I'll be honest... I actually hadn't heard of Bril until a few weeks ago. But when their record label guy hooked me up with the invite, he was also amazingly kind enough to send me their debut CD, Airless Alarm.

And... to be honest again... its damn good. I suppose its never fair to talk about a band by immediately comparing them to someone else, but hey - I'm no music reviewer. In listening to the disk, they evoked sounds not unlike COLDPLAY and/or OASIS on a number of songs, while on some others, coming off a bit more ethereal, like some of the stuff THE DOVES have released. As my tastes go, this is a home-run, since THE DOVES are one of my favorite bands, and Coldplay and OASIS are no slouches, either.

In fact, a rather curious thing is that all the bands I just mentioned are English, yet BRIL hail from California. They're easily the most English sounding Cali band since... um... since... er... well - maybe ever.

It isn't a flawless album... it drags a bit at times... but its certainly quite good, and one of the better debut disks I've heard in quite some time. Its found its way into heavy rotation in both my car and on my iPod, sharing mindspace with the new Stereophonics, Streets, Placebo, and the Dresden Dolls. Read into that playlist what you will.

Assuming SEIGE doesn't suddenly go all George Romero on us and jerk back to life, tearing at the flesh of Producer Dude and demanding "MORE BRAINS!!!!!!!!!," I'll post a review of the concert next week.

Hopefully it'll involve a lot of anecdotes about meeting the band, going backstage, swilling Jack from the bottle, abusing groupies, and partying with Tommy Lee. I'm told that's what most concert experiences are like when you're "on the guest list."

Surely Dave wouldn't lie to me about that, would he?

Charlie

Keywords: b movie, Siege, screenwriting, screenplay, scriptwriter, movies, bril, doves, George Romero, Jack Daniels, Groupie Abuse