My Life of Leisure

This one's a little painful to read again. Damn, if I actually acted all the times that I swore I was going to get my act in gear and turn my career around... ah, well, I've made a commitment not to edit myself, and I can't turn back now. Monday, April 24, 2006

Okay, I'm back. Sure, I know, most of you didn't know I was gone. Off to sunny Mexico, Ixtapa, the Club Med there. All inclusive, which (if you're one of the poor folk) means that everything was paid for. Booze, food, dancing girls, you name it. And here's what's weird -- I probably came back healthier than when I left. I ate more fish and fruit than I have in years. Got to continue this trend, I feel great.

I figured out that, to live there full time, I'd probably need to make in the ballpark of $10,000 US a week. Which, if my third-grade math skills serve me, means about $500K a year. A cool half-million. Now, that's a lot of money to you and me, but I bet just about anyone reading this knows someone who makes that kind of money. It's not outrageous. Well, it is, but it's not unheard of. Lots of people do that much.

So, why aren't they living at the Club Med in Ixtapa? Not because they love their jobs or don't want to leave their stateside lives behind. It's because you have to work really hard to make that kind of money. Not as hard as you have to work to make $40,000 a year, but hard. You have to go to an office every day. You have to make mortgage payments and car payments, and buy expensive suits to wear in the houses and cars you're paying off. You have to support a family and a few mistresses, and a therapist who'd be earning his or her hourly to tell you to go live at Club Med in Ixtapa.

That's why I'm looking for a job that pays me that kind of jack, but requires little to none of my time. Or, rather, allows me to do what I want to do with that time, and pays me for it.

I'm trained, both by nature and education, to do only two things -- write stories and make movies. Some might call them the same thing, but there's a subtle difference. One involves paper and a beach chair, the other involves going out and working my ass off. Neither pays well, until it suddenly pays very well. Other than that, I could do scut work that would pay me, but I'd never get out from under all I have to do to live that life. And I'd never live at Club Med in Ixtapa.

Here's my plan: I'm going to write books and make movies. And I'm going to make a lot of money at it. Sooner rather than later, I hope.

Been reading Sidney Lumet's "Making Movies." I saw him on Charlie Rose not long ago, pimping his movie with Vin Diesel, and he said that last year was the best in recent memory for movies. So, between those two events, naturally I thought he was an ass. But this book is great. I recommend it to you, if you're even a little bit interested in movies. This is the bookend to Robert Rodriguez's book, tells you how to do it if you have a studio at you disposal. It explains more clearly than anything I've ever read how a movie can stink or be brilliant. It needs to be on every filmmaker's bookshelf