A Photo Essay by Josh Waterman

This man is a well known American screenwriter and director:


His name is Quentin Tarantino. He has directed and written many movies, including this one:


The script for that movie won this:


That is an Academy Award, the most prestigious award in film. That award, however, was shared with the other guy who wrote the script, this guy:


That guy is named Roger Avary.

Today, I drove Roger Avary around and got the chance to talk to him. Very interested in my project (art vs $$ is a conflict that he has seen in every project he's ever worked on), Roger and I talked at length about the filmmaking process. He explained that the quality of your movie rarely affects box office outcome. How much money a movie makes directly correlates with its marketing budget and genre. Sure there are exceptions- a movie that gets universally panned by critics and audiences tends to not make a lot of money, and on the contrary, sometimes there's a gem that brings in big money due to good word of mouth. But for the most part, studios know how much money their movies are going to make. That's why it's not so risky an investment to put $500 million into Spider-Man 3, because you know you'll get it back. If you were to drop even $10 million on a little Noah Baumbach movie that focuses on an intellectual torn-apart family living in New York City that doesn't have a wide appeal, from a financial standpoint, you made a bad decision.

Aside from this general information, Roger was telling me stories that only two people in the world know. One is the great Quentin Tarantino, the other was in my passenger seat.

Very, very cool.

Tomorrow is my last day at Muse. We're all going out to lunch, which will be nice. Muse interns generally work about three months, 2 days a week. I've worked a month and a half, 5 days a week. (Because of this, I feel like I've grown a certain rapport with my Muse co-workers. It's been great to build a rhythm and a daily routine, instead of coming in so infrequently.) I log my hours everyday, and I'm inching towards 200. Over 6 weeks, at an unpaid internship, I think that shows a lot of dedication-- staying late to finish projects (I left the office around 7:30 last night, for example). Anyways. Enough about me.

Actually one more thing-- some of you may have heard, but I got into the film program at Emerson! If I do end up going there, on the first day of film classes, I'll be able to say that I've already worked in Los Angeles for a film production company... I'm definitely in a good place.

And lastly, if I can share some more fun pictures, from this past weekend:

I went on a hike around Griffith Park, where the Hollywood Sign is, and snapped some shots:


Then I visited the Hollywood Bowl, one of the most popular outdoor amphitheaters in the country:


And on Saturday, I scalped some tickets for less than half of face value to the Pac-10 men's championship game. Even though Arizona lost to Washington on a heart-wrenching buzzer beater in overtime, the game was lots of fun:



Unless something terribly exciting happens in the next three days, this is my last blog from LA. After that, I'm back home and will keep the research going.

Also, congratulations to my advisor, Mr. Kittredge on getting married!!!

See everyone soon.