Month: January 2017

Day 16 and I have to go shopping again. My first few shopping trips in this country were unmitigated disasters. The first time was when I walked to Abbot Kinney Boulevard in Venice and ended up in a place called Erehwon. That was my third night here, and I wasn’t to know any better. There was a man in cargo shorts with a waxed beard and a Mohawk talking earnestly about the healing properties of quinoa. I thought at the time that he was an actor stationed there to validate all our prejudices regarding hipsters. And they could have paid him healthily. 8.99 bucks for bread, 14 bucks for a chicken salad in a plastic packet. Robbery. 

The second time was when I went to Whole Foods, but I knew I was going to get skinned going in.

Tonight was closer to my childhood memories. A great big basic supermarket. As a young man I used to come to the states frequently. First of all to Nassau where my dad was working, then later on to Maine where my wonderful ridiculous godfather lived. I remember at the time being captivated by the cereal selection. Over in the UK there’s nothing even close to what they have here. Probably due to food standards. Froot Loops in bright fluorescent colours that rip off the roof of your mouth and inject the sugar directly into your bloodstream. Lucky Charms with marshmallows that squeak as you eat them. Corn Pops that are so big and round you can only get a few on the spoon. Flintstones, captain crunch, cinnamon toast crunch, leprechauns and toucans and bears and rabbits all waving at you from the shelf in gaudy packets. And free stuff! Trolls, Star Wars, cars, animals, a chance to win a console… “mum can we have this? Pleeeeease” Even the steeliest parent would be worn down. I wasn’t allowed fizzy drinks in England. I started every day in America with a sugar rush like you wouldn’t believe, which was then carefully serviced by regular injections of fluorescent drinks with shouty names, and with multicoloured chocolates that had nothing whatsoever to do with milk and everything to do with sugar. No wonder everyone’s so cheerful here. They’re wired. Most of my American childhood memories involve running round in circles. I found a photo of myself aged 14 at my godfather’s place in Maine and I’m properly tubby after only two months. Most likely having guzzled 8 cans of Mountain Dew every day. I loved that stuff. In the UK they have to call it an energy drink because of the sugar content.

I had to parent myself today, and I didn’t do a good job of it, I’ve come home with a six pack of Root Beer, a box of Lucky Charms, and a couple of packets of Reeses Pieces. They were on multibuy! I’m thinking of it as comfort food, as I am deep in work mode now, having to throw out a nicely formatted script to the wolves before tomorrow evening. I’ve never written a script to a deadline before, and despite being very glad to have been thrust into it without time to second guess or overthink, I could use a bit longer. I had to force myself to go to yoga, and writing this is just so I can have a break from writing.

Just getting used to the formatting, the way that shots need to be expressed, the visual nature of it all – it’s a steep learning curve. I spent most of this morning sitting in a garden swearing at my iPad. I can certainly think of worse ways to spend a day though, and everybody in this city is supposed to be carrying around a screenplay. Once I crack it then perhaps I can put the fact that I enjoy making things with words towards the circumstance that I am always sodding broke.

A photo. Damn I never remember to take photos for this. Here’s one I took of an auspicious waxing crescent moon with The Evening Star shining brightly as Venus sits at her peak.

 I took it as I am trying to look for positive signs at the moment, and had just left yoga, where the instructor had been protesting, took her dog into the studio, immediately remarked that there was only one man, and made the class about putting people back together. There’s anger and fear under the surface here, popping out occasionally. It’s a strange time. I think it’s allowable for me to have some root beer. And a lucky bowl of lucky charms.

 Day 15 has been mostly about stories. I woke up in a little Reiki studio in the valley. As usual I went walking almost immediately. Lots of lovely houses and then I hit a cul de sac, where the wind was bringing me the very distinct smell of death from one of the houses. Not wanting to go back past the smell, (I was running all sorts of fantasy scenarios) I climbed a fence and walked down the side of a main road until I got to a shopping mall. The usual smattering of strange food concessions, but I was drawn in by the promise of “Barclays Coffee and Tea.” I needed a coffee and what better place? I wish they’d had branded mugs. They didn’t but the coffee was fine. 

And the shop next door is the 10 dollar bookstore. The best shop I’ve found so far in the states. I love this place. I was in heaven. It’s a huge second hand bookshop with great prices, really nicely organised. It feels like a library where you can buy the books. There were tables for people to sit and read, even. And while I was in there I saw good trade. I decided I could budget ten bucks and buy a load of books that I hadn’t read. I went seeking American classics.

Despite having studied it at school and written essays about it parroting received wisdom, I’ve never read To Kill a Mockingbird. I was mostly distracted bored or angry at school, and my essay technique usually involved attempting to mask a total lack of information with an entertaining prose style. As anyone that reads this every day might have noticed by now. I also picked up this lot:

I’m already halfway through To Kill a Mockingbird. It’s great to put faces to names, like Atticus Finch and that dreadful ’90s pop band “The Boo Radley’s”. I probably would have loved the book at school but I was put off by having to study it. Or maybe I was just pissed off or distracted. But I’m happy with it now. Although after this evening I’m not sure I’ll have time to get through all of them.

This evening I went to Scott’s house, the team leader for this Oscar spoof thing. He lives opposite a dog sanctuary so I arrived to a deeply confusing, varied and wild cacophony of barking and howling. I was upset despite him ensuring me that it’s a pretty good sanctuary. The noise was crazy.

We watched Fences. It’s good, but I instantly feel uncomfortable spoofing it. And it seems that scribing duty has fallen to me. After the screening, (and a little bit before the screening) Scott started churning out gallons and gallons of unpasteurised ideas, which I noticed were just being said and then a new one was being said and no one was recording them. I recognised this instantly. One of my oldest friends and collaborators, Tassos, should be followed by a scribe at all times. I knew that someone had to take the mantle so I grabbed a pen and spent the next forty five minutes saying “wait what? Explain that? And then what?” Someone had to. At the end he said “So great, Al, I take it you’re going to turn that into a script for us?” Fuck.
  

Now it seems I am going to have to turn all of his ideas and the structure we managed to bang out into a tasteful but funny pastiche of a 1912 Pittsburgh tale of self isolation, family ambition and parenthood. Well, It was only a few days ago I wrote on here that I felt I should do more writing while I’m out here. Willing or unwilling, that’s what’s happening… and to a tight deadline. Wish me luck.

Day 14. I’m stubborn. I foolishly consider it to be a positive trait. I wouldn’t still be banging my head against this way of making a living if I wasn’t. But I have to learn that it’s not always the best way.
I had a pedicure. My first ever. Probably my last. It cost me 15 bucks on groupon. It was pleasant, despite the 2 year old running around dressed as a samurai in the salon. But then it all went wrong.

It began when I looked at my phone and said to myself : “39 bucks for an uber pool? Stuff that, there must be a cheaper way.”

Three hours later I have tried and failed to sign up to zipcar twice, been on the phone to their customer services three times. I have been into most of the car rental places in Santa Monica. “Come on, if I had booked yesterday online you’d be able to release a car for 16 bucks. I can pay you 20.” “I’m sorry sir I can only do what the computer says.” I’ve made the lady at Sixt fill in the form to tell me how much I can get the only car left (a corvette) for, and then tried to knock her down to 22 bucks from 220. “You close in ten minutes and you’re not open tomorrow. You might as well just knock a 0 off.” “Even if I could we’d need a 1000 buck deposit, sir.” “Oh, um…” 

All this time I have been obsessively checking and rechecking uber pool, lyft line, uber pool, lyft line. No change. 37 – 42 bucks ballpark. Damn you Santa Monica and all your internet money, racking up the price of transport. Uber certainly prices to the market. LA pool prices go as low as $2.99. You never get less than a fiver in London. But getting a car from Ocean Drive in Santa Monica…? Not smart. It’s one of the places where they take the chihuahua out of the Louis Vuitton and give it 10 buck horchatas.

Eventually I find a lyft for the right price. hallelujah. 10 bucks. IT TAKES ME TO THE WRONG ROAD. There are multiple roads with the same name. Oh god I am so angry by now. All I needed to do was spend 40 bucks for a luxurious one way trip. I could’ve chilled out. Read my book. Now I’ve blown ten bucks to go the wrong fecking way. I sit and chant for five minutes to get my head back, and then find an uber pool, to the right road, for another tenner. 20 bucks. It’s mounting. But then my friend texts to say he’s in a hurry. He’s been waiting with his son in the cafe at Whole Foods. This is a pool, but I’ve noticed my driver has a Russian accent. So when the pool thing beeps, and he’s about to leave the damn interstate to pick someone else up, I instantly offer him five bucks to ditch the guy. I take it out of my wallet and put it in his hand. He does. According to my sister in law that’s how most business is done in Russia. 25 bucks now though. But I get to my friend on time. 2 hours later than planned after about 4 hours of running around in the sun talking about car prices. That’s 4 hours for a saving of 15 bucks. I’m an idiot. This sort of behaviour is the source of most of the arguments I have with friends and loved ones. Because despite all of that, I still have a little grin on my face. “Ha, great. I saved 15 bucks. That’s the pedicure.” SMACK

Where was I going? To an old friend’s house. He’s made a home over here, and built a network around him of good things and good people. The last time I saw him we walked in Richmond Park and he said he was off to LA. I most likely reflexively said “Ahh that place isn’t for me. I’ll never go there. I’m the opposite of LA” Now I’m here, in his house, in a little room that his wife uses to practise Reiki, about to turn in. He’s enjoying his work, he has a lovely family, and he seems calm and solid while I’m running around stressing about the price of a pedicure. It’s past time to employ my epic stubbornness more lucratively than for a 15 buck saving. 20 bucks at least. And a big house in LA, a 22 buck Corvette, and an acting career that pays the bills. Thankyouplease.

I took no photos today. You’ll have to look at my treated feet. If that doesn’t put you off nothing will.

Day 13. My lucky number. My dad always liked to derail superstitions. If I said something was unlucky he would say “Ahh but it’s lucky for Barclays”. He adequately trained me in a wide variety of contrarian ways of thinking which have informed the mess that I am today. But appropriate that the 13th brought me an audition, thus already matching my haul for the last six months in London. And also perhaps appropriate that it showed me some people in this city that I could work with. I went to the theatre.

There are so many places like this in London. It’s a theatre in an abandoned shop front with a load of neon stuck on the outside. There’s art strung to fairy light chains in the yard, and a Mexican street food taco stop just outside the fence doing two great tacos for 5 bucks. Which of course I scarfed down for dinner. Everyone smiles and says yes. The name of the theatre has me worried though. “Son of Semele”… Classics geek break:

Semele was a mortal woman who had lots of sex with Zeus when he was disguised as an eagle. There’s no accounting for taste. She got pregnant. She then messed up by asking to see Zeus as he really is. The force of his divinity incinerated her immediately, but Zeus quickly scooped the unborn baby from the ashes and sewed it into his leg. You would have done the same, right? A bit later he was born out of the leg and became Dionysus the twice born. AKA Bacchus. Half mortal but all God as Zeus is technically one of his mums as well as his dad. He is the God of wine, frenzy, wild careless anarchic parties, and theatre. Bacchus partied lots, rode around on a chariot pulled by leopards, and occasionally tore people limb from limb in vast orgies brimming with priapic fauns, before forgetting all about it the next morning. Standard stuff for a night in Haggerston. When I was at drama school I was called Bacchus. It was a derivation of my surname, Barclay, to Barkers, to Backers. I gave it the last push to Bacchus as at the time I liked the idea of being named for the god of wine and theatre. Now I look back on that boy and think he was a pretentious gobshite. So when I see a theatre named for Dionysus I worry that the play will be a load of academic bloat. Especially as they go one step further to “Son of Semele.”

Thankfully it really isn’t academic. It’s a devised piece in celebration of this city. In terms of my collaborators, it sometimes put me in mind of Fanshen and sometimes of The Factory. It opens with a load of boxes in the space, and actors and audience together fluidly improvising games with the boxes. For the first 15 minutes I was in the space I honestly neither knew nor cared which were the actors and which were the audience, because we were all genuinely playing together. We made forts out of boxes, built towers and kicked them down, created, adapted and abandoned games. I won a dollar blowing down a tower. It was genuinely playful, and allowed them to segue into the story from an effortless playful and fun place.

The show was a mixture of “viewpoints” and set pieces, with occasional frames for the actors to tell truthful things about themselves to the audience. I ended up knowing a lot more about LA. I’m perhaps a little more concerned about earthquakes and jaywalking than I have been up until now. “The big one’s coming.” “That’ll be $175 for the jaywalking ticket sir.” I  also have points of contact for my own sense of alienation in this town, and am much better informed about where to go if I want good meatballs. The actors spoke frankly about their arrival here, and recommended their favourite restaurants. People around me in the house were audibly agreeing with their choices. I went home feeling happy. It was fun open hearted geeky people making something because they wanted to, and making it well. And those are the people I spend my life with in London. Everybody in the auditorium left smiling, and full of yummy tacos. I felt I’d had a lucky Friday the 13th day.

Day 10 and, in a rush to get to yoga I discover that changing your clothes on an empty bus is frowned on. The driver seemed really uncomfortable. He called me to the front before letting any other passengers on. “You took your pants off in the bus, sir. That’s unhygienic.” “I most assuredly did not take my pants off… oh wait … by pants you mean trousers… yes. Yes I took my trousers off. But i didn’t put my bum on the seat…” Thankfully he chooses the path of contemptuously waving me back into the bus after a show of contrition. I get to yoga on time. 

In an attempt to force some form of community onto myself I’ve got involved in a spoof Oscar night. It’s through the huge great big Brits in LA community that I went to breakfast with last week. All I knew is that I had to get to a restaurant called Obica for half seven. What I don’t realise is that it’s a chain. I get two buses into downtown and am deposited in a construction site. I walk through a corridor designed for being murdered. 

Then I creep through the bowels of a deserted car park, up a load of escalators and suddenly I’m in a huge food court. I stumble into Obica half an hour early. Plenty of time to get a coke and chat to the other people involved, I think. But nobody is there. Because it’s the wrong sodding branch. The right branch is only about 45 minutes walk from where I started. I curse like a navvy, curse a little bit more, then curse. Then I get an Uber.

 
They’ve called this thing The Toscars. The selection involves the team leaders playing a game called “Toss your competition off.” Evidently the organisers are playing up to the tits and tea side of British culture. Slightly racy jokes that aren’t really racy, puns about wanking, competition questions about the price of condoms and KY jelly. They’re going all out here. Then the team members are randomly drawn out of a TOMBOLA. You can’t get more British than a tombola.

 
I have ended up in in a group doing a spoof of Fences. We are going to watch it on Sunday. This is the tenth year that this event has taken place. It seems like an extended version of the 48 hour film challenge, where you have a whole three weeks. I have no idea what sort of quality they’ve been in the past, but it seems to be more about the craic. Our team leader Scott had a more or less completely absent team last year, so he appears to be expecting to have to do literally everything himself. It might take some time to persuade him he can rely on me. I’m fond of him immediately, but his energy is super frantic. It might be because he had to get off to work quickly. He works as a female impersonator. I’m not sure where yet but I’d love to go. He spoke sentences rolling one into the next with barely a pause for breath, made sure we had his number, and vanished. He’ll either be lovely or a nightmare. The other guy I met is a young comedian from Texas called Antonio – one of the only black faces there tonight which is a relief considering all the principle roles are black in the movie we’re spoofing. He seems fun and I know I want to see him do comedy. But he had to leave in a hurry as well. So I found myself in a bar on Sunset Boulevard with a load of Brits that I don’t know. Every instinct was screaming at me to hit the bar, down a few beers and bring out crazyfun Al. I’d probably make some friends, of a sort.

 
I quietly left and went home. This not drinking is a good thing but that was a test.

Day 9 and “This place is over!” My friend says. We’re eating steak Benedict. Of course. “All you need to make a film is this!” His phone. “You’re a good writer, write yourself something. Stallone did it.”

Maybe he has a point. But I’ve been lured by a myth. A myth recently enforced and perpetuated globally with Lalaland. But a genuine myth. And like all good myths, we want to believe it. Another friend in this town said “Yeah Emma Stone keeps saying in interviews how she relates to her character’s audition content in the movie. She’s never had to audition in her life. She just … walked into Superbad.” I don’t know the truth of that. Of course there’s buckets of bull in this town though. Anyone that has ever been interviewed in any capacity knows that in the spur of the moment, you feel you have to tell a story. I heard Florence from Florence and the Machine stalwartly resist any attempt to either be mythologised or do it to herself on a radio 4 interview once. Even if I appreciated what she was trying to do, it made for a woefully boring interview. She just seemed to be shutting down the interviewer. And I found myself getting pissed off with her. Wanting her to play along. Because we want that story. Le Carre speaks well in this article about the process by which interviews split us from the truth, to the extent that we might even start believing someone else’s story about us because it’s been published.

And I know I have a story. Of sorts. “Why are you here?” People ask. I give a little potted life history, touching on some of the big negatives, ending with a positive. Because, despite my attitude to it, I’m involving myself in the game just by being here. Maybe I should write my equivalent of Rocky. Everyone in this town has a screenplay they’re trying to sell. Go big or go home, they say, no?

Today I only left the house for yoga and lunch. I applied for a bunch of stuff and sent my bullshit package to a few people. Mostly it was just me and three damaged dogs. One of them is lying at the end of my bed as I sit writing on it. The most damaged one. He and I are firm friends now. He hobbles after me when I walk around the house and sits at the foot of my bed like a loyal retainer. Marley, appropriately enough considering I played Scrooge recently. Here he is:

I’m glad I’m away from my context for a bit. I’m glad I can’t do my usual scrabbling around for money while I wonder if there’s an audition round the corner. I’ll be broke when I get back to the UK. But I like that I’m a blank slate, and that nothing can happen but what I make happen, and that I don’t have the money to buy happenings. Buying happenings is big business here. “Do an improv course!” 500 bucks. “Take a casting workshop.” 200 bucks. If nothing comes of nothing I’ll still have rejigged my bad habits, done loads of yoga, stayed sober and written the equivalent of a novella with my minimum 500 words daily. And if I’m ever interviewed about this time I’ll tell a moving story of how I had to eat dog food in the morning before washing some clothes I found in the gutter and hitchhiking to the studios with a murderer for the meeting that gave me the limited niche recognisability that has caused the interview in the first place.

Day 8. There has been a drought in California for years. It’s hit the international news. The breadbasket of America, where they grow 90% of the world’s almonds. The trees are desiccated, the farmers have been boring thousands of foot down for groundwater. It’s a huge concern as there is produce grown here for use all across America. So all the rain that I’ve been experiencing is surprisingly welcome. But it ain’t raining. It’s pouring. It puts me in mind of the old song:
Got on board a westbound 747

Didn’t think before deciding what to do

Ooh, that talk of opportunities

TV breaks and movies

Rang true

Sure rang true

Seems it never rains in southern California

Seems I’ve often heard that kind of talk before

It never rains in California

But girl don’t they warn ya

It pours, man it pours

I didn’t want to leave the house. I spent the morning finalising all the Vimeo crap and resumé nonsense that I have to put in place in order to have a chance of securing a meeting or two while I’m out here navel gazing. But I have to go out. I couldn’t just sit at home. I know rain, I tell myself. I grew up in The Isle of Man. I go out. How the hell am I drenched in 10 seconds in this part of the world? I walk to Koreatown. They really don’t expect rain over here. Like snow in London. There’s not much infrastructure. My friend across town messaged me saying he had seen loads of cars hydroplaning on the freeway. The drainage isn’t great. I’m in walking boots and the water is too high for them at the sides of the road. People are bailing water out of their houses. I have to detour widely to cross the roads dry. The rain is a thick solid horizontal curtain. Constant. Relentless. An old man with a load of animals is making a great big boat out of gopher wood. I wonder how he managed to get the cows to stand next to the lions like that. This is the second day of constant rain since I have been here, but hopefully it’ll go some way to replenishing the water tables. It’s miserable. And it’s the same tomorrow. By the time I get to Koreatown I am more liquid than solid. It’s windy too, that wind and rain combination that makes umbrellas pointless. I see them abandoned, all too familiar for the streets of London but not what I’d expect in Southern California.

Feeling like I have achieved something I shuffle like the creature from the black lagoon into a supermarket. I buy a frozen pizza. This has been the whole point of this expedition. The rain made me want pizza. The wallet made me walk through the rain to buy it frozen and take it back to digs to cook. Striking back out I think I should probably try and see more of Koreatown. This place appeals to me:

The proprietor speaks no English but I point at what looks like coffee. I get Nescafé. I’m not complaining, it’s warm. I nurse it, balefully watching the sky, trying to will this shit to ease off for 10 minutes so I can get home dry, I contemplate uber. But I’m already soaked. Fuck it. Back into the foulness. And that’s my day. Not quite the Trump March. More rain tomorrow. Oh joy.