Yup, even I'm watching Desperate Housewives this weekend (Sunday at 9, ABC) which honestly isn't usually a part of my DVR's repertoire. More on that in a moment but first please allow me a moment to digress.
I was thinking the other day about how it gets tougher to put yourself out there to meet people as you get older. I was a shiny 25 years old when I moved to Los Angeles and one of the first things I did was get involved in one of the EST offshoots that were raking in the cash at the time in the Hollywood community. I met in that series of seminars a couple of people who would be friends for a period of time, one who took me to a Tufts University alumni event where we met a really tall dance major from the school and his girlfriend at the time who I failed to convince to go to Rage in West Hollywood that night (I had been sans gay men the whole evening and ... well, hormones rage at 25).
That really tall dance major was Jeff Greenstein.
I relate the story for two reasons; a) It's so easy when you're young to go out and meet strangers. Or ... what happened to me? I used to be a social animal, and ... b) To tell someone out there that it's possible to make this happen for yourself. Jeff didn't have a relative in the business, he didn't make a human sacrifice to Satan, he didn't have to service a CAA agent.
He was fortunate to have a writing partner (Jeff Strauss) who worked as hard to make contacts as he did, they were polite and cordial with everyone whether they could help or not and they got very lucky to boot.
It also helped that they were funny. A gig on HBO's Dream On led to a gig at Friends for season one, then a pilot of theirs was picked up by Fox and they were in.
So yeah, if you do everything right and you're nice, good things can happen to you. Hey, that's basically what Conan said when he left NBC, remember?
After the jump, Jeff tells you himself about tonight's episode, which got him his Director's Guild card (yea!) and hopefully is just the first of many assignments.
Before you click, here's a link to the first of two preview clips (LINK). The second is after the jump as well.
Jeff says ...
It's our big Halloween show, which means thrills and chills, plenty of great costumes, and a hundred trick-or-treating extras on the ravishingly decorated Wisteria Lane.
The theme is aggression. Each story builds to an act of aggression at the climax which spins the character's story in a whole new direction.Directing was a huge amount of a work. I prepared like crazy in advance of my episode, watching tons of old Housewives shows, observing other directors, and writing so much in my little notebook that it became a running joke on the set.
Once we got to prepping my episode, I treated every night like it was the night before shooting. I went through every scene, planned the blocking and drew up a shot list. Then I'd spend the next day helping rewrite the script. Then I'd go home and prep the entire show all over again.
I was constantly running from one end of the building (the writers) to the other (production). Thank God it was early in the season -- once we're into the full-on crunch of production, it probably would be impossible.
The first day of shooting was primarily spent trying to mask my inner panic. Fortunately it was a relatively light day and I was shooting scenes with Eva, who helped me a lot, especially in working with the young actresses who play her daughters. Mostly I was trying to remember to say "Action" and "Cut" in the right places, and trying not to giggle every time they held up the slate with my name on it.
By the second day, I was beginning to have fun, and the rest of the shoot was a joyous creative thrill-ride. The crew and the actors were unbelievably kind to me. I hope viewers like the result as much as I do.
And you can see the results tomorrow night at 9 pm on ABC. Here's that second clip (LINK).
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Posted by: Assignments | November 09, 2010 at 08:10 AM