Happy Halloween, everybody. I’ve realized these past few years that there seem to be two kinds of people in the world, those who like Halloween and those who hate it or just don’t care. (Maybe that makes three types…) I fall into the former category. For some reason, Halloween always brings up fond memories of childhood. Even when I had a completely terrible costume (there was one year where I wanted to be a “Jawa” from Star Wars and my mom refused to buy the sunglasses that have the red lights to look like eyes and instead pasted glow in the dark circles on my cheeks- no, it didn’t work) but regardless, I loved the basics of the ritual; going door-to-door, being scared at certain houses where the lights were off or the decorations were particularly frightening, feeling the bag or pillowcase as it got heavier and heavier, and returning home to sort out the loot and trade with my brother and sister.

Of course, for some cruel reason there is a universally accepted age limit to trick-or-treating, but the appeal remains. I think the main appeal for me now is not the candy but the creativity – how many holidays force people to actually change the way they look – as well as the break from reality. How much more exciting was grocery shopping today when I saw Frankenstein stacking cans at the market? 

It’s not that Halloween is actually scary anymore (I’ve long maintained that if you really want to scare someone, put on that hockey mask and walk into your office with a bloody axe on March 4^th instead.) but as adults we have to take our fun where we can get it.

In other news: I’ve been looking for a job. Again. The work dried up in August and now I’m tackling the task I should have taken on in August, which logically would be FINDING MORE WORK. Instead, I focused on things I thought were more important, like writing, meeting with various people, re-doing my reel, etc. and now I’m once again in crisis mode.

 A friend of mine who works for a big shot producer at Sony called me two weeks ago. “Listen,” she said. “A job has come up over here. We’ve got this script and we need someone to work on it.” My heart skipped a beat. She had just read some of my screenplays and now she was calling. Could it be that the big producer and the even bigger studio needed me to do an actual rewrite on their script?! “I’m your man,” I said. “What do you need?” “Do you have Final Draft?” she asked. “Of course,” I said, wondering why that mattered. There was a pause. “Well… the script is on paper and we don’t have a soft copy. So we need someone to type it into Final Draft. Could you do that?” My heart was no longer skipping beats. Instead, it was beating very slowly. I looked at the ceiling. I sighed. “Yeah, I can do it,” I said. “But just so you know, I can write these things from scratch too.”

 And the struggle continues…