TWENTYTEN

I'm baaaack....

Okay, lets just do this quickly: it has been almost two and a half months since I last posted on the blog. Very lame. But, I've got some excuses....for starters....I got a little busy directing a Coca-Cola commercial. Finally got around to putting some pics up....







The top pic is of the crew, and without the crew literally nothing would have happened. The best thing about the whole Coke experience is that because its such a cool opportunity you get to meet and work with some of the best people who just bring everything together. Pre-production for the commercial was crazy. We had a very ambitious project and not a lot of time AND I had some already-planned trips to Chicago that made casting and location scouting very tricky.

But the three weeks of hellish pre-pro were followed by three days of heavenly production. Everyone in the cast and crew was spectacular. We had a lot of stuff to pull off and we got everything that we needed everyday, and it looked fantastic.

(BTW: the fella behind the camera in pic #3 is our cinematographer, a USC grad student a few semesters ahead of me who did an amazing job)

Anyway, thats excuse #1. Coke ended in mid-December...why no posts? Well, excuse #2 is that I spent that time in the greatest city in the world.

CHICAGO!!!!!!







So, yeah, between Christmas, New Years, a hunting trip, a Chicago-winter sports tri-fecta, and a (fantastically, amazingly, unbelievable) fun WEDDING...the posts were few and far between. Or, more accurately, totally non-existent.

Now, though, I am back in L.A., finally have my classes figured out, and am ready to take on what I'm betting is gonna be big year: TWENYTEN.

I'm very excited for 2010. I think we can all agree that, for the most part, 2009 was not the "fun" year. It was more like "the year that started out kinda fun but became more and more of an asshole and got really tiresome by the end". Now we got a whole new decade and I've got a good feeling about the lead-off year.

Actually, 2010 may very well be my last year at USC and so I kinda HAVE to make it a big year, lest I falter and end up as the only shelf-restocker at Blockbuster with an M.F.A.

In the spirit of my final year as a film student, me and a bunch of my classmates went on the USC trip to the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Here's a glimpse at what the last 4 days have roughly been:







It was AWESOME. I love a good Irish coffee.

Sundance was just people who make movies and love movies coming together in the cold and snow to watch movies and talk movies and do their damndest to get drunk despite the sneaky 2% alcohol content of some of the beers there.

I had a real blast, but was also really inspired by the spirit of the whole thing. Usually, I'm kinda pro big budget Hollywood and a little wary of things that are "hipster" or "indie" but I drank some of that organic, gluten-free, environmental-friendly Kool-aid and kinda liked it. No: loved it.

Best example is there was this great movie by these brothers who are the super-low budget rock stars of Sundance, who first got in the fest in 2004 with a short film that cost $3.

Their names are Jay and Mark Duplass and they had this film called "Cyrus" that we got into the premiere of(Pic #3). It stars John C. Reilly and Jonah Hill (who, by the way, was on our tiny flight from LAX to Salt Lake City and I sat a row behind...NO BIG DEAL......it really wasnt..i didnt talk to him at all) AND Marisa Tomei, who continues to be so sexy and lovable on screen. Really cool cast.

The thing is: these guys went from a couple of brothers with some ideas and a camera who got into the short competition 6 years ago and now they've got a really funny movie that stays true to their sense of humor that's crammed with good Hollywood actors. If that's not inspiring I don't know what is.

Also, just to sum up the whole "vibe" of the festival, there was this series of shorts that they played before the movies and the one called "Tell Your Own Story" is a must see: http://www.buck.tv/work/sundance/tell-your-own-story.

All in all, a great kick-off to the semester, really got me interested in making movies again...which sounds stupid but film school, with all its "critical studies analysis of films" and "learning the craft of camera movement to tell the story" can kinda distract you from just making a f*ckin movie.

I am pumped, revitalized, re-invigorated, and ready for 2010, and keeping the blog going is gonna be a big part of that. I'm gonna try and play with things a bit more and maybe re-design it a bit...find for ways to get more photos and content and such.

But, as the great Cab Calloway said in The Blues Brothers: "Your lazy butts are in this too". Meaning, I'm going to continue to whine and starve for attention and interaction, like Tiger Woods outside of a Women's Workout World. But, instead of sex all I want is pithy comments every so often to let me know y'all are out there. Texts and FB posts are swell, but keep it on the MGH so everyone can enjoy.

Also, to feed my voracious ego, there's now a "followers" option at the bottom where you can sign up with your google or twitter or whatever and be a part of the world-wide-web party on the blog.

Stay tuned for more posts...this was, by the way, post #99, and I'm going to try and sync up post #100 (woo-hoo!) with the Coke commercial finally getting online, but I've heard that Coke's a little slow at times about keeping to their own deadlines. We'll see...

Great to be back at it....gonna keep these things coming...hopefully they'll get funnier...its has been a while and I'm a little rusty. Whatever, maybe if my comedy writing got really bad and shitty enough I could get a job working for Jay Leno.

I really do hate that man. And Jeff Zucker. Screw the 'Cock.

Its been sad, but the night is always darkest just before the dawn. Only brightness lies ahead. It's gonna be a big year. For me. For CoCo. For EVERYBODY.

T W E N T Y T E N !

The Real Thing

Benn awfully busy lately, but for a very exciting reason.

Last Thursday, my script was selected among 9 others to be finalists in the Coca-Cola Refreshing Filmmakers Award contest.

YES!

But what does that mean, exactly?

Coke has this contest where film students from the top film schools across the nation get a chance to direct their very own Coke commercial. The contest states that the commercial needs to show young people enjoying Coke in a way that also connects the the movie-going experience.

All the 10 finalists get a $7500 grant to shoot the script and make the commercial. Sooooo, that's pretty awesome.

The GRAND PRIZE winner gets $10,000, an award presented to them at ShoWest - a movie theater trade show, and has the potential for their commercial to be shown before features at a major theater chain. Also: pretty awesome.

I'm damn excited, as you could assume, and am also pretty blown away because out of the TEN finalists chosen this year, SEVEN of them are from USC. Fight on.

Now, that's pretty awesome too, except that the deadline for the finished commercial is due Jan 20, 2010 - meaning that it is going to be a big crunch of USC people and resources for the next 3 months. But, its still great to have such a huge presence for this prestigious (and delicious?) award.

Hey, our football team might be slipping (47-20 loss, to the OREGON DUCKS?! we're the godmaned Trojan Army!), but glad to know the film school is still riding high.

Anyway, will do the best to keep posting about how everything goes down, but don't be surprised if you don't see another post until 2010 either. School was already busy enough, and now its just gonna be INSANE.

But I can't wait. Its going to be lots of fun, especially since this commercial is for a product I known, drank, and loved for years that comes from a long line of amazing ads.

Which reminds me, anyone got the number for MEAN JOE GREEN?

Hollyween

Last year, I didn't get to have any fun for Halloween, as I was knee-deep in shooting, but this semester I actually got to have some fun during the week of All Hallow's Eve.

It worked out pretty cool actually, on Halloween Eve, b/c I got to visit the set of "The Ghost Whisperer", which is exec produced by my teacher for my television class.

They shoot on the NBC-Universal lot (even though the show is produced by ABC studios and airs on CBS), and a friend and myself drove on the lot and, after a bit of snooping around, got to the soundstage where they shoot and met some crew members who set us up with a couple of chairs set up by the monitor and headphones to hear the sound feed.

For those who don't know, Jennifer Love Hewitt (known simply as "Love" on set) is the star of the show. She IS the show, as my teacher likes to say. So she was indeed on set on Friday, and man is she gorgeous.

It was great watching her work. TV episodes are shot really quickly (they have to shoot a 42 page script in 5 days, whereas a 120 page movie script can shoot for 30-60 days).

"Love" is an old TV pro, obviously. She would knock out good performances and has hitting home runs by the final takes. Sometimes in the middle of a line just "-I'm sorry, let me try that again ..." without stopping rolling or anything. Watching how fast the crew moved around the set and got ready for different set-ups was great. We hung out from about 12 to 5, when they broke for lunch at 5 we decided to head home (Love was wrapped for the day).

Then a funny thing happened on the way to the parking garage: we got to see part of the taping of that night's Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien.

Conan, in his infinite wisdom, thought that it'd be a great Halloween treat to see the world's largest pumpkin get smashed by the "Grave-Digger" monster truck. And they decided to do this live, during the show, right in front of the garage. So we had some awesome seats to this ridiculous occurrence, and it was AWESOME. Watch for yourself.


It was pretty spectacular live but I think it all translates pretty good on television.

Though I had class all day Saturday at night headed to a bar to see a gang of zombies, aka USC's football team, lay down and die for the Oregon Ducks, and ended up at a really great Halloween party. All in all, a Halloween that, by L.A. standards, was a frighteningly good time.

Plenty of Treats. What's the Trick?

Howdy!

So, I've got a lot of pretty awesome stuff goin' on the next 10-odd days but I'm a little hesitant to spend too much time typety-typing about it.

Blog traffic has been about as busy as Omaha at rush hour and I'll be home in just two weeks, and then home again for Thanksgiving.

Here's a rundown of things that I've done or am doing this week:

David Shore, creater of House coming to class
Visiting the set of "Ghost Whisperer"
Visiting the set of "How I met Your Mother"
I'm submitting to be a director of a Coca Cola commercial
I'm submitting to direct one of next semester's advanced projects
..........and Steven Spielberg is coming to the "Spielberg class" to answer questions from students.

Now, lots going on there, but here's the rub: do I bother filling in all the fun details right here on MGH, or do I just live my life and extrapolate when I get home?

If you're still reading me and want more posts, please do speak up.

Otherwise I can happily fill y'all in later and spend my free time sleeping and such.

The choice is yours.

Trick or treat.

Intern of Steel

Faster than a speeding golf cart, less powerful than a production assistant, and able to pick up tall lattes in a single run.....

Yes, its Mark Kosin: SMALLVILLE intern!

As I've mentioned before this semester has been designated the "Semester of Television", and nothing else I'm doing these few months can compare to the amazing experience I've had so far interning at the CW show Smallville.

Entering its 9th (wow) season, its no secret that this prequel series to the adventures of Superman had its highest popularity when it first started in the early 2000s. I'm not the biggest fan of hour dramas on TV, except when they branch out of the usual "doctor-cop-lawyer" cage, which is just what Smallville does. (Also see: LOST, MADMEN, and GLEE.)

Anyway, its been amazing because I'm working in the writers' office of an hour-long TV show being produced for network television and am getting a first-hand look at how a show really comes together and operates day-to-day.

Now, all the shooting takes place in Vancouver, Canada, so I don't get to go on set or see production at all. I did, however, get included in a bit of behind-the-scenes fun in post-production (which all takes place at Warner Brothers in Burbank).

They needed some extra ADR (audio dialogue recording) for tonight's episode and wrangled me and another intern to record some dialogue. It was really cool to see the facilities and the process (they do everything so QUICKLY). And so, if you listen in on tonight's episode (#4 - Echo, check local listings) you may briefly hear my voice coming in over the airwaves of the CW tonight.

Voice acting is just one of my many talents...the rest are of course linked to the usual office work, but its all good. Tons more little cool things happen everyday, which help keep my buoyant during the almost 2 hours of round trip commuting I do each day to get there. I don't mind it, though: all part of living and working in this damned city. The only way to really avoid it would be to fly, and that would be just...

....super?

Five Ring Circus

So, I waited all weekend for my blood to settle to talk a bit about Chicago losing the bid for the 2016 Olympics.

But, it didn't.

Even thinking about many of the contributing factors that led to Chicago finishing 4th (f***ing FOURTH?!) in the IOC voting just makes my blood boil and my head get so full of angry thoughts that it just isn't worth my personal health to get all riled up about it.

Much like last October, when a similar sense of loss pierced my soul, I am in an unfortunate situation. Though living out here in La-La it is a bit easier to just "move on" with life, as Daley suggested we all do in his postmortem on the bid, what is worse is a hollowness, an emptiness, because nobody out here CARES.

When my team loses its chance for postseason glory for the 10oth year, or my city suffers an astounding defeat in front of the whole world, then DAMNIT, I WANT to be mired in sadness for the next few days, surrounded by omnipresent reminders of the failure. It is through this process that true healing can emerge.

Instead, I'm forced to be in LA, where nobody cares about anything, and listen to idiots blather on about "its great for Rio" or "Let's go Dodgers!". Morons.

Being out here is almost worse, because it makes the pain and frustration seem unjustified, when I know if I was in the CHI there would hundreds of fellow mourners to connect with at local watering holes.

So when looking at the possibility of what could have gone better or who is to blame, instead of wrangling with the different demons of "not enough support locally" or a "failure to navigate international IOC politics" I pretty much just chose to forget the past and move on, not because it is the best thing to do, but because it is the only thing to do.

I made no secret of my passion for this particular endeavor for our fair city, and am still incredibly frustrated with the final results, but there's not a whole lot to be done about it now. Wish I could conjure up some more frothy ranting, built its just not there. Instead, just like after Game 3 last year, its just empty.

Shit.

It is better to give of yourself than to recieve..

...but, if you must receive, I personally prefer deep dish pizza, scotch, cigars, or any object with the word "CHICAGO" emblazoned upon its surface.

But, since this is my birthday, I do have a little gift that anyone out there in cyber-world can easily give me.

Last August I helped out on a public service announcement about breast cancer that some fellow USC students were shooting for a special contest.

Well, the cut is finished and the contest has started.

Go to this link and vote for the video ONE MILLION STRONG

(it's the first video)

http://www.glamour.com/health-fitness/blogs/vitamin-g/2009/09/vote-now-and-help-find-a-cure.html

Then, you know, email this post or the link to a bunch of people and have them vote and see the ads. It's a good cause people!

Take a look at the others (two are NYU students...stupid NYU...the other USC student is actually a good friend and did a great job, but I gotta cheer my team on), cuz its definitely an important cause.

It'd be awesome if One Million Strong won cause I gave a good week to help put this together and work as a 2nd AD on set (I'll do a whole post about that on-set experience sometime soon).

Funnily enough, I'm actually going to be volunteering at church tomorrow, so in case anyone calls or texts or whatever I may not be able to get back to you until later.

Why am I devoting my big day to the Big Guy? Well, its really just a coincidence but i do suppose I've been around for 25 years and owe the Man up top thanks for that.

Or, it could be an ego thing since the church is called "St. Mark's".

Either way, I'm sure any good I do during the day will be undone tomorrow night when I plan to patronize a few local establishments with various peers of mine. Man, so happy to be Catholic....those alcohol-fearers don't know what they're missing.