doodledee

Hell yes that's Hollywood golden boy Rob Perez sitting in a Linden Hills clothing boutique having a beer and breaking down his long journey from assistant yogurt fetcher to Hollywood golden boy. At least I think he's a Hollywood golden boy. He rolls with Josh Hartnett and RT Rybak, right? He wrote that "40 Days 40 Nights" movie, right? Is that maybe only a silver boy? No disrespect. I don't make the rules. Seems like it should be golden boy. Let's go with golden. I'll deal with the heat if I'm wrong.

He was there to give a talk to the local neighborhood "let's get published" club. It's a neat vibe. Lots of appetizers and wine and amazing hair and teeth and Volvos and yoga and so on and so forth. Some dudes were even wearing blazers. Basically what you'd expect. [FD: I was rocking flannel lined pants (dirty), a long sleeve tshirt (clean) and a stocking cap with ear flaps (awesome).]

Night started with mingling. I cornered neighborhood Strib columnist Kim Ode for like a 15-minuteu chat-up. That was fun. Seriously. Later I went to check on my nemesis Phil (dave+1) and he's talking with these two cool looking guys so I wander over and start going off about how cool everyone looks and how fast I can run and how I got new running shoes and at one point I think I challenged the taller dude to a footrace or something. That's when the shorter dude introduces himself as [that] Rob and it turns out the taller dude is some Rob.producer.buddy or something. And here's me, thinking they were just neighborhood guys I'd never met before. I knew they looked too cool for Morningside. (No offense Morningside! None taken!)

Perez sat and talked for like an hour. He winged it. It went well. Lots of interactive Q&A and stuff. A little derailed at times, but whatever, that kept it amusing. The best parts were the part where he tiptoed into his philosophy of what it means to be a 'writer' and the part where he said that 95% of people have nothing to say. He didn't add "that's why they post pictures of their cats on their blogs". I think maybe he wanted to? Either way, he had me 95%. I would have hugged him, but I was too busy downing another brownie.

Turns out he lives here now. He's making what I think is a coming-of-age film. Set here. That'll be fun. It's 'independent'. I raised my hand and asked what that meant to him. I expected an answer like "you know, polo shirts and Velvet Underground on the soundtrack", but he said it was about total creative control. That was a neat answer, but I'm thinking most of the film-going public just sees it as a genre now (c) 'alternative' music. I wonder if that's maybe hard for independent filmakers to come to terms with? Should we apologize or anything?

I also asked if it was worth it to struggle as a production assistant in Hollywood when you can just make a REAL movie RIGHT NOW and post it on youtube and get noticed that way instead. His answer again was great. It included something like "we're just going to end up with 10 million mediocre movies on the internet". Seriously, can somebody put this guy in a bottle?! Loving it!

The evening wrapped with more mingling. And me eating like 19 shamrock cookies. I had no pitch. No treatment. I shopped nothing. I felt like I should have been more prepared. Like with a business card or something. I'm not exactly sure why, though. It wasn't my intention. Like who needs to get published? And hang out with golden boy screenwriters? Who should totally call me to funny-up their next screenplay? Pass the chicken skewers? Yes please.

Fun times.