That’s not my name…

It was my birthday today and I have to say I had a blast.  Coolest birthday present?  Got to meet the beautiful Scarlett Johansson who will be playing Black Widow in the upcoming Iron Man 2 movie.  I also got to walk around the set and saw Robert Downey workin’ his magic before a scene with loads of extras started.  I think my boss might be grooming me to take a job under him when this is all over.  Either that or maybe I’m just really desperate.

Who are you?

1) Humor and Playfulness
2)Social Intelligence
3)Kindness and generosity
4)Leadership
5)Capacity to love and be loved

These are my top 5 strengths.
What do I mean by that?

Dr. Martin Seligman (the father of Positive Psychology) has an online test that measures your top strengths. The test has 240 questions and is very simple.  It takes some time, but its completely worth it.  Once you are finished taking the test, you are told your top five strengths, which are marked as Signature Strengths, and are the things you should pay attention to and find ways to use more often.  Being sure to incorporate your strengths everyday (especially at work) is crucial in living “the good life”

I greatly suggest you take the test when you have some time.  You have to make an account-but it stores your results each time you take the test.
http://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/default.aspx (Go to Questionnaires, then VIA Signature Strengths test).  There are 24 strengths all together, meaning there are endless combinations.  I would love to hear what all of your top 5 are!

Here is a sample of some of my favorites.
Ask yourself how close you relate to these statements (”very like me”, “like me”, “neutral”, “unlike me”, “very unlike me”) and then check out the rest of the test:

-Whenever my friends are in a gloomy mood, I try to tease them out of it.
-I get chills when I hear about acts of great generosity.
-I believe life is more of a playground than a battlefield.
-I love what I do.

Have a good day!

The Whiskey River runs downhill

There have been a few posts mentioning the music that Erik, Jaime, Sam and I have been making and recording.  Well we are happy to say that 3 songs we’ve made are up on Myspace music for everyone’s aural enjoyment and our name is Whiskey River.  They’ve already recieved a few plays but we are always looking for more people to hear our music.  We are planning on having 3 more songs up by tomorrow afternoon.  We should also have a picture up tomorrow.  You should tell all of your friends about us and help our music spread.  Here’s the URL for the Myspace page and thanks so much for reading and listening.  www.myspace.com/whiskeyrivermusic

I’ve been watching too much LOST (poem)

Airplanes scare me
To a tolerable degree

But I have been watching Lost
So I don’t want to fly at any cost

Episode after episode the plane falls from the sky
Without a chance to tell their families good-bye

Some characters did survive the crash
My favorite, Sawyer, also known as white trash

Next would be Jack and Kate
Was it their destiny or fate?

I’m about to start season five
I wonder who is going to stay alive

Tomorrow my flight is at 9 A.M.
And I hope I don’t end up just like them

Lost Homepage

Wildfire

Of course I was super excited when I got off of work today at around 2 pm, because who doesn’t like getting off of work early? But to my surprise (well kind of) there was bumper-to-bumper traffic on the 405 North. As I’m trying to decide to exit and take another route I realize that the hill/mountain (later I found out it was the Sepulveda Pass) in front of me is completely covered in smoke and there were five helicopters flying around dumping, what looks like brown dust onto the flames. I don’t think I have ever seen a true wildfire, but it is a known fact that they are common in California. When I got back to the apartment, about an hour and a half later, I decided to check out what really was going on and found out that The Getty was evacuated along with a college in the area. Thankfully no one was hurt in the fire, but here is the link to the AP article about it. 

Hollywood Hills Aflame

The Hollywood Hills were aflame today. Not from the setting sun, but literally. I looked out the office window early this afternoon towards the Getty Center to find a mushroom cloud rising. Bits of orange tinged the bottom of the smoke cloud as helicopters circled the top. Brush fires really happen in California.

But as I looked at the flames on the mountains I thought about how it absolutely represents how I feel here in Los Angeles. On fire. It’s the feeling I get when climbing a mountain on the fourth of July to watch fireworks. The feeling that races through my body when ”Jamie O’Brien, come on down!” is yelled across the studio of The Price Is Right. The soul I feel when I sing with Whisky River. And as glad as I am that the fire near the Getty Center has stopped… I hope the fire I have in my heart keeps burning for a long time to come.

Star-struck on set.

I have never really been star-struck before, until Thursday that is.  

I woke up at 5:00 a.m. on Thursday morning to prepare for my first professional day on set.  We were shooting a commercial for Chow Mein noodles.  Despite the fact that I had finally drifted into a state of half-sleep just a couple hours prior, I got out of bed with a new kind of energy.  I knew there would be heavy lifting and other “intern duties” in store for me, but I never felt more excited about having the opportunity to move stuff around.  

The call sheet that I received on Wednesday had my name at the very bottom, just under all of the PA’s.  I was listed as “intern,” but I did not present myself as such.  As soon as I met a PA named Johnny, I basically stuck with him and the other PA’s until the end of the 16-hour shift.  I wish I read the entire call sheet before I arrived, because then I would have been prepared to meet James Hong.  

James Hong, for those who don’t know, is an Asian-American character actor who has roles in two of my top five favorite movies of all time, these being Blade Runner and Chinatown.  I couldn’t even bring myself to speak to him, because I couldn’t think of anything else to say besides “OMG YOU’RE JAMES HONG.”  I regret this now, because I wish I had at least shaken his hand at the end of the day.  Alas, he escaped from my sight and I was able to focus on being an intern again.  

Thursday was a great day.  I got to be on set with an obscure idol of mine, I understood the working relationships between different departments, I got my foot in the door, and I came home with a plethora of knowledge.  Also, I slept well that night.

Amit

As some of you have heard, I have been working on my own feature script. I’ve been working on it for nearly 6 months now and its finally complete. At least the first draft is.

It’s called Amit. Amit is a star high school basketball player in rural North Carolina, where basketball is on equal level with religion. He must overcome overwhelming expectations, a town’s unquenching thirst for a championship, and a hot and heavy recruitment between the two local colleges. Is he destined for success or is he only doomed for failure?

Here is a trailer I shot for the short version. It gives you an idea about the script. If anyone would like to read it, shoot me an email and I’ll send you a copy. I’d love some feedback.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSj1WiXClGY

The Commute

Los Angeles, with its nearly 365 days of sunshine and rich culture is just an awesome city and a great place to live and learn. The hardest thing to get used to here and the one thing that might discourage me from starting my life here is the traffic, it sucks. The rush hour here is from 7am until 7pm, Monday through Saturday. Whether your on Melrose, Santa Monica, or the 405 you face the dreadful creeping of cars looking for the slightest buffer area to squeeze ahead or switch lanes.

I for one pride myself on my ability to save time driving through stealthy yet safe and educated decision making on the road. So for the newcomer to LA, a couple tips: 1. Take Fountain whenever possible, avoid the mess that roads like Sunset, Santa Monica, and Hollywood always ensue. 2. Make good use of the far right lane; most roads in the city limits have 3 lanes but people avoid the far right lane alot due to parked cars and turn lanes which force you back in the left lanes. Learn where the right lane ends in certain areas and always be checking your side mirror when driving in this lane so you can time your chances to cut back into the left lanes. When used properly the right lane can shave alot of time off of your commute. 3. Take residential and back roads. Everyone uses the main roads to get through places like the deep city and the valley. The back roads have a lot of stop signs but significantly less traffic. Take advantage…safely. 4. When mapquest predicts a 15 minute trip, leave an hour early. You will get stuck in traffic, and it will always take longer than you think…. always.

5. Find out where you will be working before you decide where to live. For obvious reasons, working really close to home will make life much more pleasant when living here. Finally, always have change. You would think, with the thousands of meters here, parking would be impossible to enforce, until karma gets you with a nice ticket for never putting some quarters in the meter. The parking patrol here shows no mercy.

A Few Pictures

Here are some of my favorite pictures from the past weeks.

Change Project

After finishing our internship me and my apartment mates have taken to brainstorming, writing, recording, photographing, and more. Through in depth conversations we have flushed out several ideas for the next Elon in LA project: Change. The title may be vague, but our ideas have sharpened. My pitch will be a dramatic piece about a pregnant woman who wakes up in the middle of the desert next to her dead lover. She had been dropped off by her murderous and jealous husband, but is saved by a penniless man making his way back from Las Vegas. I personally don’t believe this piece is too morbid, but I believe I can not only film it, but film it quickly. I am organized on who I would ideally want as far as actors go, and now must develop my idea to a fuller extent until the actual pitch comes. then its up to my colleagues as to whether they believe its worth making. Even if its not chosen I am very excited by some of my good friends’ ideas. We have a great amount of ideas in the air and even more talent to reveal in this upcoming project and challenge.

The Ten Contest

In this Highlight webisode you will see behind the scenes footage and interviews from the producers of the four films.  

Please watch all of the films and vote on the poll tab for your favorite. The voting will start on Monday July 5 and run for one week.   

Please leave comments and share the films with your friends and family.  Thanks for supporting Elon in Los Angeles.

This Highlight was produced by Courtney Ramery.

Not for Idle Minds

This film “Not for Idle Minds” was produced by B Copeland as part of the Elon in Los Angeles program 2009.

XChange

This film was produced by Lauren Murphy as part of the Elon in Los Angeles Program 2009.

Human Inclination

This film called Human Inclination was produced by Colin Havey.

Artifacts

This film was produced by Erik Keithley and Sam Gyllenhaal as part of the Elon in Los Angeles Program 2009.

 

An eagle’s eye view

Imagine standing on top of a mountain that has probably only grown a matter of inches in your lifetime. At 1500 feet, above the vast twinkling grid of Los Angeles, it’s easy to feel lost in the grand scheme of things. That is until you realize you aren’t alone, but with a tight knit group of friends, celebrating the opportunity to do such amazing things as staring down at the attainment of American dreams.

At such an angle in the sky, fireworks appear very peculiar. Tiny puffs of vibrant lights dance all over the city in a never-ending waltz.  And you see the fireworks before you hear them. Finales are breathtakingly silent until all is dark, at which point the muffled explosions rip through the canyon like thunder building during a summer storm.

The Hollywood Bowl drew the most attention with their Fogerty and Fireworks display. After John Fogerty, the guitar and lead vocalist of Creedence Clearwater Revival finished his show, the night came alive with the ensuing fireworks spectacular. As the smoke billowed from the bowl, it became a vast reflective screen for the vivid colors the fireworks projected. At this point I felt like I was indeed a “Fortunate Son,” to use Fogerty’s words. 

After the show ended the smoke settled down over the opulent Hollywood Hills, giving them a ghostly sheen somewhat reminiscent of the Sleepy Hollow. This was my cue to begin the trek down, as nothing could top such a show this night. The crowd of 50 or so nearby residents, students, and people from every walk of life, started down the one trail to the bottom, refreshed and ready to continue the pursuit of their American dream.

Robbery

I never thought I would be blogging at 6:24 on a Sunday morning but I have been up for four hours now. Unfortunately this wasn’t four hours of partying or hanging out. I have been up because my apartment was broken into and my car was stolen.

The report

The fourth of July was great. We hung out by the pool, grilled hot dogs and climbed the mountain behind our apartment to watch fireworks. Up until now my fourth of July was a blast but it ended on a sour note. 

Erik came home and found our front door open, which was strange because it closes automatically. He then discovered his wallet and keys were missing, along with Sam’s computer and keys as well as my keys and my car. Some how someone came into our apartment through Sam’s window while Sam and I were sleeping and Chris was watching a movie and robbed us. They literally picked up a computer that was sitting next to me and drove away in my car.

What a night: hot dogs, fireworks and grand theft auto.

Beauty

Ok so today is the fourth of July. It is a day of undoubtable power and liberation for us as a country and so it seems fitting that I am feeling the most indescribable and perfect feeling of rebirth that I have ever felt. Allow me to elaborate…..earlier today Jamie O’brien, myself, Sam Gyllenhaal, matt heath and matt moroughan collaborated to produce/film a session with our latest project Whiskey River. I cannot remember a time I felt more complacent and at peace with my existence than when I was a child climbing trees. We are the sons and daughters of an indie roots revolution and I promise you that you will be hearing more from us. 

Sincerely, Erik and friends

Dreams can save your life. 

www.myspace.com/whiskeyrivermusic

Listen and stay in touch.

The 9 to 5

The 9 to 5 out here is more like 10 to 7 (plus an additional hour on either end for the traffic you travel in and the bane of finding a parking spot). I’m catching a morose glimpse of life post-college and it is a bit oh how shall I describe this…frightening! The only time you have free to get anything done you wanted to is from about 8pm-til midnight, now factor in the errand on the way home that takes longer than expected (1 hr), dinner (30 mins), finding a parking spot (30 mins), the gym (1 hr), and the phone call that took too long (1 hr). Welp, that’s it for the night! Gotta get some rest so I can do it all with a positive outlook again tomorrow! NOT. My first couple weeks in LA I was introduced to this work monotony and felt imprisoned by it. It made me realize 1. how much they’re not kidding with they tell you to DO SOMETHING YOU LOVE so that work is PLAY everyday. and 2. how much I need creativity in my life in order to feel fulfilled from a day at work.

The days we have speakers (usually at least twice a week) I’d get off work at 6 so I could make it to the speaker from 7 to 9:30 at best leaving me enough time to finally eat dinner, and maybe do my laundry or catch up on emails. So I realized you’re faced with a choice: do I go out, have a fun social night, or do I just relax? Before coming out here I would have never even looked at those two as a question. I pictured myself hanging out every night checking out the night life in LA and being a part of the scene whenever possible! My Mom knows how much I all through high school even scoffed at the way Doug would come home from work and relax on the couch with the remote until he went to bed. ?! What kind of a life is that?! I’d tease her?! how boring!

WELL, I’m here to say most nights, all I want to chose to do is RELAX. Although I don’t marry the clicker and glue my butt to the couch every  night I have instead found the sweet freedoms in relaxing in the living room, chatting with the awesome girls in my apt about the day or catching a tv show I’ve never seen (which I  have found not hard to do lol). I like to browse auditions to submit myself to, or watch a movie from my must-see-list with cammomile tea in bed (and kill myself the next day for how late it kept me up). I like to read reviews on plays and dream about what I’d like to direct, or write in my journal,  or pop down to the hot tub to hang with some people before security closes us down, or make that phone call I have been meaning to all day,or soak my feet (tired from the heels) in the bathtub and let my imagination wander with my moleskin close by…

I realized part of “being in LA” is just living here like I would at home just adding the spices of LA to make it sweet. The weekends are loaded with flavor and the weeks…well when I plan to check out the local latin dancing club, a new church, explore around a different area of town, or go out to dinner, each night can be different. I guess it’s more about our assimilation than our differentiation.

Instead of looking at the weekend as a routinely failed jail break, I’ve started to see the weekend as just an extension of the adventure.