Are you a Hollywood writer? I'm a Hollywood writer! Hey, I'm also a Hollywood writer!

It seems everyone I've met in the past few weeks has been a writer. I write for a living but my writing is not related to the entertainment industry. I write about plastic surgery so I work on news stories and medical articles with board-certified doctors all over the United States.

I also work with different clients across the country on blogs and social media.

In this town, writers can be found everywhere. They are working on screenplays, network pitches, reboots of their favorite TV shows from the past, grim and gritty/adult versions of childhood favorites and video game scripts. It seems the only writers I don't meet are the ones working on their version of the Great American Novel.

To give you an idea about the amount of people in this town that want to be a writer in the entertainment industry, check out this list of discussions I've had with multiple writers over the course of the past few weeks:

1. "A Hulk reboot that ignores all of the Marvel movies in favor of a Hulk that is gray, lives in Compton and drives a taxi."
2. "A game show where all of the contestants can only answer in 150 characters or less even if the actual answer is more than 150 characters. It's a game show where people that text will rule the game!"
3. "Boy meets girl. Girl meets another boy. First boy meets second boy. It's a love triangle mixed with a touch of The Amazing Race."
4. "What if Luigi tried to buy out Mario's share of the plumbing business? What is Mario's second act? The game is Mario trying new professions. The unofficial name of the game is Mario's Mid-Life Mania"
5. 'What if we did an SNL-type show on the web but it was on 3 nights a week for 5-7 minutes each night? It's SNL without the filler!"
6. "I'm writing a screenplay about a guy that writes scripts that are never produced for a living. That way, if it doesn't sell, I look like a man that really knows his subject."
7. "It's like the Real Housewives franchise except all of the women are mistresses instead of wives."
8.  "It's a show kind of like Dallas but, instead of oil, the family is fighting over 1000 acres of avocado farmland."
9. "I'm rebooting the X-Men franchise. No one asked me to do it but, if I believe enough, I will manifest that job opening through the power of positive thinking."
10. "It's the story of an all girl band if they were actually house painters instead of musicians."

Once again, I write about plastic surgery for a living so I might not be the best judge of those wanting to write screenplays for a living. I will say that all of the above ideas seem like they need a bit of massaging before they are ready to be seen on the big screen, the small screen, an iPhone screen or an Xbox near you.

This actor is studying screenwriting in college.

Things You Learn When You Leave The Bubble

I am writing this update far from Hollywood. It's the holidays so we are visiting family in Arkansas. It's good to be here for a few reasons:

*Visiting family is always a good thing.

and

*Sometimes you have to get out of the bubble of show business to realize that not everyone is constantly thinking about Hollywood.

I've lived in many different cities and almost all of the stores and restaurants shut down on Christmas Eve. I was alone on Christmas Eve (as Dana and Zach had already left town) but I wasn't bored by any stretch of the imagination. A good 70% of the bars and restaurants by my home were open so I had plenty of food options. There were still Christmas Eve services and folks singing Christmas carols but it seemed like any other day in Los Angeles.

As I mentioned in an earlier blog entry (right here), a good portion of the conversations in Los Angeles revolve around show business in some form or fashion. I was at LAX flying out for Christmas vacation and heard conversations about DVR ratings, weekend box office numbers and pilot casting possibilities. About 60% of the passengers on the plane were wearing some sort of "Hollywood gear". I spotted production crew jackets, free t-shirts from movie screenings, baseball caps from TV shows and even a headshot or two being passed around while waiting for our flight.

I flew from Los Angeles to Dallas where I was greeted by Southern accents, SEC and Cowboys jackets and people discussing college bowl games and Jesus. I had a layover that left me enough time for lunch. I was reading the latest copy of "The Hollywood Reporter" when I noticed two people pointing at me. I couldn't hear their entire conversation but I did make out the words "movies" and "producer". 

Once I landed in Memphis, Dana picked me up and we headed to see her parents in Arkansas. It was late in the day and the lack of crops and green fields made the scenery rather bleak on the drive. The bleakness didn't grab my attention as much as the sky above as we drove past the small towns. It's almost impossible to get a good view of the sky in Los Angeles. There's always a hazy layer of smog that blocks the view. You have to get out of the city to really see the stars. We went to Big Bear in August and enjoyed the night sky. After four months of not having a good view at night, I was amazed at how bright the stars seemed and how easy they were to view. It's a fact that escapes your mind when you are used to not seeing the stars clearly on a daily basis.

We arrived to find a sick teen actor on the couch. He must have caught some sort of bug on the airplane because he was throwing up and running a high fever. Remember what I wrote above about Christmas Eve seeming like any other day? This did not hold true in small town Arkansas. It took me 4 or 5 attempts to find a Walgreens that was open on Christmas night. They were only open until 8pm and it was 15 miles away from us. Dana and I jumped into a vehicle and raced to the store to get Zach some medicine. The very nice lady working that night asked what we were looking for in the medicine aisle. We explained that we had just flown in from Los Angeles and that the kid might have caught something on the plane. We didn't mention the Los Angeles thing to brag as much as it was a simple part of the story to explain how he fell ill. I was in another aisle when a fellow customer came up to me and asked if I knew Tom Cruise or Bruce Willis. I told him I hadn't seen the guys for a few weeks but I would catch up with them in 2016. I sometimes forget that people who don't live in Los Angeles think that everyone knows each other (including super famous actors).

The bubble of show business is all around you in Hollywood. It becomes such an everyday part of life that it seems odd to be around people who aren't worried about their next audition or if their lines will be cut out of the final shooting script or how to get a script seen by the right people at a studio. I'm not saying if one viewpoint is more valid than the other one. I do know that it's good to get out of the show business bubble every now and then. It recharges your batteries, puts everything in perspective and helps you focus on what goals you want to achieve when you step back inside the bubble of Hollywood.

This Teen Actor Is Feeling A Little Bit Better Today.