In Catching Up With Team Burn...

Last week, we sat down, me and my guy, my rep, my back. We had spoken a little bit here and there since Kim and Val but at some point I said something like I'm going to go write a book with my boy Durban and he kind of just gave me some space...maybe because we had been though some shit, maybe because he knew it's what I was asking for. Then last week, we spoke and I told him I was almost done and ready to get back into the fight...our fight, the fight of conquering features. Meanwhile, I've been picking others all over town, every day every night every morning. I sent him the opening chapter, Paris, to read before we had dinner and a couple drinks at 3rd Stop last whenever. He read it, or at least enough of it to say something like, look...finish the fucking thing so that we can get back to business...it's good and it flies and I have someone lined up who will take it on...but finish it. I told this to Durban and of course he told me he had plenty of people, plenty of suitors who might take it on but that they would all resent him for being who he was, for all he had. He agreed Team Burn might be a good place to start, at least for the sake of loyalty.

Anyway, we parted after dinner with an agreement to meet sometime after the book was finished, before I started in on my next thing. That was the plan. Now I'm going to tell you why this game is so backbreaking. I'm going to tell you why I've so hardened, why I'm so cynical and fucking tortured. Start with my April 22nd post about the spec episode I wrote for Eastbound and Down. I wrote it in two days, hammered it out and sent it out to friends during the first draft of the book. Everyone loved it because it's near fucking perfect, and everyone gave it to their agents and passed it up and around. I have two cc'd e-mails from TV lit partners at two of the top agencies in town, proof that it was liked enough by successful enough people to put their necks out for me. I haven't heard much because the maddening fucking secret about this town is that no one reads anything, so everything you write just goes out and drifts into abyss - and that's if you're fucking good. Me and Team Burn were on the second beer and I told him I had submitted the Eastbound and Down to Disney and NBC, and told him that I was certain it would at least get me an interview. He glanced over it a little bit and tried to move off the topic and I told him I knew he hadn't read it. He admitted, and apologized, saying that there was nothing he could do with it, nothing he knew to do with it. It was 30 pages long and I told him I thought it was mild bullshit that he hadn't read it, because most importantly...he needed to know my capability of writing something other than drama and love and intensity. He said he would put it on his list and then we moved onto talking about this...

Last night, I was driving around town and something made me want to give him shit. I sent a text while I was waiting for Harry Potter that said something like, Hey Cinderella...how's Kenny Fucking Powers? I got a text back in a couple hours and he told me it was great, then to finish the book so we could get back to work. I laughed, thinking he hadn't read it, again...thinking whatever, forgivable, still my boy. Today, I was finishing a chapter about Rio around 6 when he sent me an e-mail asking about everyone who knew anything about the spec and at which agencies they were located. Then he called soon after and said something like, here I am thinking you're this very serious and love obsessed writer and you drop this on me...comic fucking genius...I printed it out and gave it to everyone I could to read today at the office and it held up...they loved it...they're quoting it...laughing out loud. Then he told me he had been running it around all day and that it was in the very least, going to draw some serious interest for a spec of the same tone, by a writer of my name. I told him I could write the next spec feature in 2 weeks once I had a clear slate, because I like to set myself up for self-destruction. We're meeting on Sunday so I can show him that when I do start this new one, it's going to deliver. I still have a book to finish, and right now that's all that matters...but you gotta respect fire when it gets lit under someone's ass who reads a couple thousand pages a week.

When the click happens, in whatever literary world it happens in, people are going to read about it and say something like, oh the timing. I'll know better. There are no Cinderellas.