New Year, New Journey

Okay – here’s the deal.  I’ve had a blast the last couple years dragging my happy ass to various different TV and film sets and collecting halfway decent union paychecks for my trouble.  And let’s not forget to mention the FOOD!!!

Me on set - Every. Single. Day. Source: http://gph.is/XJxIL3

But as cool as it was to be Union Core Background on a handful of shows, and get pulled for stand-in work on an increasingly regular basis, the hard truth is that I had long ago already been there, done that and handed the T-shirt down to Goodwill.  Or maybe it’s just in storage somewhere – I forget…

Sure – being SAG/AFTRA put a new shine on an old penny, but it still wasn’t my endgame.  It ISN’T my endgame.

Then again – what is an endgame to someone who fancies herself immortal?  (But that’s another blog for another day!)

Fun Fact: All these men are probably fully "spread" Source: http://gph.is/1Jgw4Ka

 

One evening, not too long ago, after putting in an appearance at an unbelievably awkward birthday party for a friend of a friend, I had a supremely Zen subway ride home.  I was actually little-m meditating on the train.  It was supernaturally quiet and I had a big-E Epiphany!  In spite of all the steps I was taking every day to “follow my dreams,” I was no longer climbing any closer to my goals.  It wasn’t your typical plateau, because I was still an object in motion.  The problem was the stairs I had been climbing to reach that next level had somehow, rather stealthily, turned into a stair-master.  This allowed me to continue to go through the exact same motions day after day without getting any closer to my objective.

Mind = BLOWN!

So what was a consciously awakened girl to do?

Honestly, I wasn’t sure. But I acknowledged verbally and publicly that it was time to shift my paradigm.  I just didn’t have the first clue how to make that happen.  And, behold, the Universe intervened. 

Very suddenly, and seemingly from nowhere, I’ve been offered a new job as a nanny to an adorable three-year old child.  It is a Monday – Thursday 9-5 gig.

Let’s not kid ourselves.  The child is THREE.  I get to essentially play 8-hour one-on-one improv engagements four days a week. 

And then I get to have the rest of my nights and weekends free. Just like that. 

If I want to submit for set work on the weekends, I can. If I want to babysit for another family, I can.  If I want to sit on a subway platform accosting commuters with my ukulele renditions of Sublime songs… Oh YEAH, baby!

FB Live footage of me on Uke circa 2014 Source: http://gph.is/1q6V916

But more importantly, I have time to be creative again!  I have time to write, and sing, and uke, and go to open mics, and YIKES – I suppose I even have time to start, um, dating!!!  

All this, because I’m meeting another one of my basic yearnings – caring for a child.

I never expected to make it this far in my life without – well, expecting and then delivering a child or two of my own.  But my journey has taken some pretty wild turns.  I don’t have regrets.  (They’re pointless when you’re an immortal…) But I do LOVE young people and young minds.  I love watching them work.  I love watching them figure out the world around them.  And I love being a part of their journey.

I’m not sure just how long this engagement is for.  It certainly is a new course heading, but I feel like I’m about to start picking up speed again to my next destination.  You know that feeling – when you’re on the tarmac and the plane engines rev harder and louder and you feel your seat vibrating and you know lift-off is finally eminent?

Back in myyy day, this is how we went to space! Source: http://gph.is/2946efu

It won’t be long now until I’m soaring high above everything else, hurtling faster into the stratosphere where I’ve set my sights for SO. Damn. Long!  So that only leaves one question, dear friends.

In this brand new year of 2017, who is coming with me???

Subway E-dick-ette for Men... (A Lil' Rant)

Men of NYC – your junk is NOT that big! 

I know you think it is.  I know you look down at yourself in the shower every morning and think, “Woah! My anaconda is enormous!  And look at those two boulders it’s hanging between.  Damn!  I better make sure to always make plenty of room for its serpentine majesty.”

So naturally, when you sit down on the subway – or even on a bench in the subway station – you feel justified in spreading your legs as far apart as your groin muscles will allow – just to make sure the massive elephant trunk dangling above your nads has room to swing freely.

Unless you ACTUALLY look like this...

Meanwhile – you’re taking up twice as much room as any given woman on the subway – including the ones who weigh more than you!  I’ve seen very large ladies squeeze their knees together, straighten their posture and somehow slenderize by a couple inches on each side in order to accommodate a fellow passenger who would like a seat. 

But you men and your giant ball-sacks – you don’t even look up from that epic game of Bubble Witch you’re playing on your iPhone that you’re holding down in the cradle of the obtuse angle formed from where your legs meet your scrotum.

Here’s a reality check.  When a well-dressed woman walks on the train, looks around, zeros in on you and murmurs under her breath, “What a huge dick,” she’s not referring reverently to your member.  She’s cursing the fact that she has to stand there with her laptop from the office and try to balance in high heels on a moving train all the way to Jamaica because you’re taking up two full seats, leaving her without a place to sit.

...don't sit like THIS!

If your boy bits really need that much room, you should be standing – because the stability afforded from your tripod gives you distinct advantage…

Thank you for your understanding in this matter! 

Hillary J.

Suspicions Confirmed...

Apparently I’m ‘unbelievably’ hot and pretty much the ‘perfect’ woman for most men…

I don’t know why I do it, but every once in a while, I find myself sticking my toe into the waters of online dating.  It’s a morbid curiosity that most closely resembles the fascination one has with a freshly dead corpse.

This week’s single’s site? LoveArts.com

It’s based out of the UK, which should have deterred me immediately because I’m really only interested in meeting men who live somewhere along the I-4 corridor between Orlando and Daytona Beach.  But I thought, maybe this site that claims to be for “arts lovers” might be the right place for a girl like me.

First of all – not many of the men on the site seem to be involved in the arts.  Big negative.  But apparently that doesn’t deter them from wanting a woman in the arts because I discovered that I’m a 99% match for most of the men who bothered filling out profiles.  Of course, that’s not hard with discriminating criteria such as “From Anywhere in the world,” “Between the ages of 21 and 50,” and “Any star sign.”  Don’t get me wrong.  I didn’t specify a star sign either – primarily due to my penchant to fall helplessly in lust with Capricorn men, who are my astrological opposite…

Sounds about right...

But to see so many men for whom I’m a 99% match simply confirms what I’ve suspected for years – I AM the perfect woman! (Probably mainly because I am a woman and not just another right hand…)

So – I’m filling out my profile and I get to the all important ‘photo upload’ page and I think, Okay, I’m going to put up a few of my recent professional shots.  I mean, I’m supposed to be putting my best face forward – right?  Not so much…

The administrator deleted all my photos – twice.  They sited the reason as: It is a suspected fake photo. Send proof of ID before uploading it again.  

Yep – apparently I’m too hot to be real…

I had to send an email in which I pasted links to my professional web site, my IMDb page and my blog to ‘prove’ this hot piece of a$$ is fully legit.

How many times do I have to tell you I'm PERFECT???

This served as yet another warning sign that there aren’t many ‘artists’ on this page because actors, models, musicians and comics all have professional “glossy studio” photos of themselves as a rule.

So this morning I discovered I had 12 profile views… By one member – a 55-year-old ‘party animal’ in Malaysia…

SoNNY – if you’re reading this, I’m sorry to say – even though I might be the ‘perfect’ woman for you, I just don’t think we’re a match…

Graduation!!!

Over the last two years, I've been on this crazed, hectic journey to keep up with my regular life all while earning a BFA in Creative Writing for Entertainment at Full Sail University.  It's a very new program and one of only three BFA degrees in the country that focuses on writing for entertainment.

Yesterday at 8:30am, I graduated with four classmates who comprise the first ever on-campus section of the class. (Two online classes graduated before us - whatever...)  As the recipient of the Advanced Achiever Award, I was selected to give the graduation speech for my class.

The opening kind of terrified a few of the faculty members - but over all, it went pretty well...

Wow!  I’d like to thank the Academy, my manager and all my home-girls still shaking what their mammas gave them at the Skyway lounge…  Oops!

*Diablo Cody’s Oscar speech from Juno?  What am I doing with that?

 

Oscar on the horizon? You never know! And I've never been above a little 'foreshadowing!'
*Not REALLY the opening to Diablo Cody's Oscar speech!

  

 

…But in case any of you are concerned – don’t worry.  I could never be the ‘next Diablo Cody’ because I could never make a living in adult Entertainment for one very important reason – as my mother, classmates and ALL my teachers can now attest, I have absolutely no idea how to behave like an adult…

Case in point - Right now someone off stage is checking her notes and saying – uh oh… this is NOT the speech Hillary J. Walker submitted Sunday afternoon.

And she is right.

This isn’t the speech.  I wrote a speech - a solid speech. It was kind of cute in the beginning, gave some shout outs to my classmates, and took an inspirational turn into the home stretch where I thanked everyone responsible for my success.  Ta –Da!

But I realized after I turned it in, that I didn’t want to ‘deliver a speech,’ because I’ve spent the last two years of my life at this school learning to be a storyteller.  So the only fair thing for me to do is to tell you a story.

It’s about a deeply flawed protagonist who came here 10 years ago and really really wanted to make movies on the big screen. But after going on the tour, and even reserving a seat in the film production AS program, she just couldn’t figure out how to make it work. And she knew being a set PA wasn’t REALLY her dream.

So she enlisted in the Army National Guard and became a broadcast journalist. Also – not really her dream.

Then one Christmas, just two weeks after her stupid ex-husband drove away in a glistening yellow pick up truck, her ‘not quite dream’ turned into an actual nightmare when she found out she had cancer in her left big toe.

It’s amazing what a big pain in the butt toe-cancer can be.  In fact it almost killed our hero, but she decided she wanted to stick around – not to stick it to her idiot ex (who totally deserved it), or to even find new love and live happily ever after. She fought to live because there were so many stories living inside her head that she still wanted to tell.  There were so many words she’d never write and worlds she’d never create if she just gave up over one freakishly tenacious toe tumor…

In case any of you are wondering, this isn’t some script I’ve been working on for class.  This is my story.

And eventually, as John Cleese so elegantly said in Monty Python’s Holy Grail – "I got bettah…"

But I didn’t know how to get great – Until two years ago when I came back to tour Full Sail with an old friend who was chasing a new dream of her own. And I found out about the shiny new Creative Writing for Entertainment BFA.

That Sunday afternoon, I saw Garry Jones standing right here on this stage daring me to follow my dream – The very dream that kept me alive during the darkest point in my life.

And that moment I knew that someday I wanted to stand on this stage and dare others to follow their dreams too.

I’m not great yet.  But I made it to this stage.  And thanks to family members who’ve shown me more support than I deserve – thanks to teachers who boldly went where no curriculum has ever gone before – thanks to Program Director Noelani Cornell who has discovered that teaching writers entails more ‘cat-herding’ than a Siegfried and Roy show – and of course, thanks to Garry Jones, who dares each one of us to become the stars he believes we all can be – thanks to each of those people – I know how to get ‘great.’

Allison, Brittney, Micah and yes – even especially Garrett, you know how to get there too.  And I promise to help you each remember that, if you promise to remind me from time to time.

Thank you all for being here today to celebrate with me and the rest of Full Sail’s first ever Campus class to graduate from the Creative Writing for Entertainment BFA program.

Congratulations to all my fellow December 2013 grads! Guys - we totally got this!

Film Selection Part II - Cover me!

-->(Photo from Thomas Beatie's book Labor of Love - Unless you've pushed your film out of a vag/man-gina - spare me the metaphor please!)

Just processed another 20+ submissions for the film festival I coordinate.  I even snuck a peak at an animated student film (not my category, but it looked REALLY cute – and it was!)

Alas – in the process of inputting some submissions, I found some more cringe-worthy faux pas(es).  In the interest of saving future submitters the embarrassment and other coordinators the headache – here is my latest gripe.

1) Cover Letter Do’s and DON’T EVERS! 

Some people submit with a cover letter.  Some do not.  I don’t have a preference on the receiving end, but if you send one, I take the time to read it.  A light-hearted handshake is great.  A quick log line or story tease is nice.  And if you are submitting for consideration in a specific category (First-time Filmmaker, Gender/Theme/Genre Category, Locale Specific Production, etc.) it’s helpful to get a quick note to draw that to my attention.  That way, I can make sure it’s properly sorted and assigned to the right judges from the start.  But there is a phrase I see over and over again that absolutely makes me cringe. 

“This project was a labor of love…”  This is pretty much interchangeable with something indicating the work I am about to view is a “passion project.”  Usually following such a smushy-gushy statement is a disclaimer about how ‘sooo many people worked sooo hard,’ and volunteered or “donated countless hours of time and equipment.”  When you write this, you believe this seals your submission as a testament to the wonderfulness of your story, script and vision. 

“Look!” you’re yelling.  “My movie is so amaze-balls that I didn’t have to pay people.  They came to my set in droves begging to be a part of MY no-budget film!” 

But, my dear filmmaker, something gets more hopelessly lost in that translation than a Yeti in the Sahara.  Would you like to know what those words are really saying to the judges?

 

“I’m an amateur.  I couldn’t pull together any funding for my project, because no one with half a functioning brain cell believed in it enough to invest actual money.  It might not look all that great because I couldn’t afford to pay for professional equipment or services.  So go easy on it, because we shot it in my mom’s back yard, ate pizza every day for both catering and crafty, and the only actors and crew I could find were people who I went to high school with who still haven’t left town and gotten real jobs either.” 

Harsh?  You bet.  But only because there is a 92% accuracy rate of that written sentiment matching the physical quality of the work presented. 

Got news for you ‘Spielberg Jr.’ – EVERY film is a labor of love.  Every completed project is the culmination of thousands of hours put in by dozens to hundreds of trained workers busting their collective asses over 12+ hour days.  These people, even when they’re getting paid, are choosing this industry over home-cooked meals, a kid’s little league game, and steady checks with paid vacation time.  I’m glad you love your project.  I want to love it too.  I really do!  But when you send me an excuse in the cover letter, it sends up more red flags than North Korea.  

“But, I hear filmmakers say that on late night talk shows all the time!” you sputter in disbelief. 

Of course you do.  They can say that about a groundbreaking documentary or a gritty indie that ALREADY HAS DISTRIBUTION.  Then it’s called marketing.  That’s the filmmaker (who is already accomplished – hence why he is on Letterman and you are not) explaining why his film is in limited release cinemas instead of every multiplex in ‘Merica.  Those films are usually still made with between 2 and 10 million dollars.  

So what do you put in a cover letter?  Names of recognizable talent and crew are great.  A derivative work is also appropriate (the passionate retelling of Johnny Appleseed in a modern context.)  If the film has won any awards or is an official selection at a high-profile festival, that’s useful too!  If you’re a filmmaker whose work has screened at the festival in the past, that usually puts you on the expedited list, so let us know.  Don’t bother to tell me what other festivals you’ve submitted to, or that you made it to a ‘semi-final’ round before getting rejected – (yep, that was in one of the letters.) 

At the end of the day, a cover letter isn’t all that important for your submission, because what we’re looking for is a great film.  But if you write a poor cover letter, then we’re not expecting the script or finished product to be all that great.  If all else fails, just write, “We are pleased to submit Zombies from Valhalla for consideration in your festival.  We hope you enjoy our film.”  And be done with it!

A Bad Reputation...

It's a gamble.

But then, all forward thinking is.

For my class this month, I committed to posting three YouTube Videos as a character I played in my first feature Film ACTION!!!

The thing is, not only does the character look like me - she has my name!  In the interest of making a three-day mostly improvised shoot as simple as possible, I encouraged all the actors to use their own names, and I led by example.  Please don't be fooled by the girl you see in the monitor.  She bears very little resemblance to 'real life' Hillary J.  Besides - 12-step meetings are for quitters!!!