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Posts published in “Life of Alex”

10 years since Six Feet Under

Today marks the 10-year anniversary of the series finale of HBO’s groundbreaking Six Feet Under.

Wow.

I remember like it was yesterday, staying up all night in Paris, waiting for the episode to air so I could watch it.
If memory serves me right, I was able to appreciate it around 6AM (Paris time).
I am glad I was able to experience it “live”.
“Everyone’s Waiting” is truly one, if not the greatest series finale of all time.

As I’ve previously mentioned, many manly tears were shed on that day.

If you haven’t read them yet, I dedicated two articles to Screenwriting Lessons from Six Feet Under back in 2011.
The amazing writing of the show, and what can be learned from it, is still relevant today more than ever.
A must read for any screenwriters!

I also recommend reading the The Oral History of Six Feet Under over at Rolling Stone.

And while you do all that, put Sia’s Breathe Me in the background.

Maybe you’ll tear up like me just now.

Everybody’s waiting.

5 years in Hollywood (and the USA)!

5 years in Hollywood (and the USA)!

Today marks my official 5-year anniversary of living in Los Angeles. Hollywood. La la land. The city of broken dreams.

Five years ago (August 6, 2010), I moved out to LA from France not only without a car, but without a driver’s license. Or friends. After all, I’m a foreigner!

The first six months without a car were not great. And not just because “it’s LA” or because I didn’t know anyone.

Like many people, my first apartment–or sublet in this case–was horrid.
It was supposed to be furnished. When I got the place, I finally realized that, yes, there was a bed, a fridge, a stove…but that was it.
No sheets. No pillows. No utensils. No nothing.
Within the first 48 hours, I had to go to Bed, Bath & Beyond to buy a ton of basic stuff I probably didn’t need, and then lugged it all the way back to to my place across town. In a bus. It was ridiculous.

As it turned out, the previous tenant also forgot to mention she had a certain moth infestation going in her closets.
Most of the clothes I had brought with me were destroyed within the first three months. Lovely.

Why am I telling this story now?

Well, for one thing– Holy shit! 2010 was FIVE YEARS AGO!

More importantly, I wrote about it during my very first update on my life in LA. Thinking about it again today made me ponder about how fleeting things are. More specifically, the famous adage that “life is what happens while we’re making other plans.” The good, and certainly the bad.
I didn’t expect the crap that I got. No one was there to drive me around and do my bidding (still no words on that last one). But I survived. I made it through. (Sort of.)

You can make due with what you have right now, but you still need to keep pushing forward.

Five years on, I’m still trudging my way through this town and the beast that is the entertainment industry. Cracking doors, knocking pavements, or something else that sounds like doing work.

Let me ask you something trite: where do you see yourself in five years?
Or how about: Where DID you see yourself in five years?

Nina Bargiel recently wrote a Medium article that caught my attention.
What hit home for me was this little bit:

There is an arbitrary line in the sand that we give ourselves:
By [age] I will have figured out [giant, important thing.
By 26 I will have figured out my career.
By 32 I will have figured out my love life.
By 41 I will have figured out my health.
This is a mathematical equation that is near-impossible to solve. Because all of the big stuff: work, love, health, involves hard work, yes, but it also needs a little bit of luck to make it through.

That impossible mathematical equation on life is something I’m still struggling with.
However many years later, I’m still getting used to the fact that, no, life isn’t a checklist with expiration dates attached to it.

We drive ourselves insane by setting arbitrary goals in the hopes of getting a packaged, predetermined life.
Yes, it’s nice to have aspirations and targets, but part of the journey (at least mine) is realizing not everything can be “controlled”, “scheduled”, “figured out”, or, you guessed it, “planned out”.

Life isn’t a biopic, or an autobiography, or a three-act structure, or a climactic hero’s journey.
As Opus once said: Life is life.

Five years strong. Let’s keep it going.
Here’s the next half-decade, and many more to come!

Seven Years of My Life 101 (or Life of Alex)

Seven Years of My Life 101 (or Life of Alex)

And now for something completely different. Or exactly what this is all about.

We’ve seen the evolution of TV Calling’s content (and form). Today, I’ll be talking about, well, me. Alex. The man behind the machine. Or the keyboard.

This site is named A TV Calling for one simple reason: television is my calling. I created this website to chronicle my own journey into the TV writing business.
I used to talk daily on this site. After all, it used to be a more traditional blog. Fortunately for readers, it evolved into what it is now. (But what is now?)

You can track seven years of my life through this site. I feel old.
When I started A TV Calling in June 2008, I wasn’t even in Los Angeles. Or the US. Or the Americas. I lived in Paris (not the one in Texas).
As I wrote in the very first post of this site:

If all goes to plan in 5-year time I should be in L.A. for good.

700 days later, I had moved from one side of the world to another. I was living in Los Angeles.

For people who are wondering how I got to live and work in the US–I won my green card. In the lottery.
On October 2, 2008, I registered.
On May 28, 2009, I got the white envelope.
On March 13, 2010, I received my Green Card.
Boom.

I explained the entire, lengthy process in “How I got my green card“.
Before I had it, I looked up all my alternative visa options, then listed them in details in two parts: Visa Breakdown (Part One) & Visa Breakdown (Part Two). There’s also the post about the application process for the lottery.

Yes, it was, and still is, fairly off-subject with the whole TV writing business thing. But I’ve had a couple people request direct links to these.
And we’re talking about my life here!

I get to be a little off-topic at times. A lot of the times.

There’s that time I mentioned I had a Furby.
There’s that time I had issues with one of my hard-drives. And that time I had HDD troubles yet again.
There’s that time I posted a photo of Waldo.
There’s that time I posted a photo of my suitcase.

It’s relevant!

Oh, in June 2009, I chronicled my ten days at the Cannes Film Festival, or as I put it: “How I Survived the 62nd Cannes Film Festival”. There was just so much to say (and show), that I did it in three parts:
– Episode I: The Sleep Deprivation Menace (Thursday, May 14 to Sunday, May 17 2009)
– Episode II: Attack of the Celebrities (Monday, May 18 to Wednesday, May 20 2009)
– Episode III: Revenge of the Films (Thursday, May 21 to Sunday, May 24 2009).

On September 2009, after the Fringe bashing I mentioned yesterday, it was officially reveled that I am an asshole.
It’s always a good laugh to read flaming comments, so here it is for the seven year anniversary:

If you honestly think that your stupid post will steer people away from watching Fringe, YOU ARE SADLY MISTAKEN! Grow up, asshole!

Touché?

In August 2010, I moved to Los Angeles (meaning I’ll celebrate my five-year move this year).
Incidentally, it was then that I cut back on the personal meanderings.
Maybe I should get back to that at some point.

Several of the Scribosphere Carnival topics were related to my own processes. One was about my TV writing workflow:

Unlike some writers, I actually prefer to write in the comfort of my own home instead of going out to a coffee shop (and spend $5 on a latte).
With that said, I like to create an appropriate “space” for the magic to happen. Even if my desktop is in the bedroom, I will try to physically separate the “writing workspace” from where I sleep by moving stuff over to the living room.

Another (lengthier) one was about criticism: how to give it, how to take it, how to get it. Did that sound dirty?
And the very first Scribosphere Carnival was a time-capsule from 2013 for the year 2014. I was hoping to nab a writer’s assistant position by then. Things didn’t work in my favor. Alas.

So. Seven years later. Where am I? Who am I? What am I?
Existential questions we won’t get the answer to.
But one thing’s for sure: life is hard. And that’s that.

Looking back at seven years’ worth of personal content makes me almost teary-eyed. Or my allergies are acting up again.
I hope to continue aimlessly writing about my journey on this big ball of dirt hurling through space.

Let’s conclude with one of my favorite quotes, and the one thing summarizing everything we’ve seen up to this point: “Never give up, never surrender.”

By Grabthar’s hammer, what a site!