Monday, August 31, 2015

Keith in Hollywood

My first trip to Hollywood in 2006. I thought the people at Warner Bros. would like me
more if I wore my Charlie and the Chocolate Factory shirt.
A spirit of entertainment has been bottled up inside me for as long as I've been alive, so when I visited Hollywood for the first time in 2006, I was in utopia. On a Warner Bros. Studios tour, I saw the alley where Spiderman kissed Mary Jane upside down, a backlot where Eddie Murphy's Norbit (a truly atrocious movie, I've heard) was then being filmed, and the gravel road where the Jurassic Park Jeep was chased by dinosaurs. I asked so many questions our guide couldn't even finish the tour, but I didn't care. I had been bitten by the movie bug, and I knew I would make it back to Hollywood someday.

Now it's 2015, and Hollywood, I'm back baby! And I'm a powerful, suave, cover-of-Variety, electrifyingly exciting *cough* intern *cough*.

In all seriousness, I could not be more excited to be in Los Angeles this semester brushing up against movie magic once again. I am already learning that in the real world, "movie magic" is synonymous with lots of Excel sheets, hair pulling, parking tickets, high blood pressure, and caffeinated beverages. But at least once a day I feel a wave of pure adrenaline pulse through my body and I think, "I'm in Hollywood right now, on track to do what I have always dreamed of doing. Thanks Lord!" The perseverance of those in my field often results in an end product that leaves consumers feeling entertained, inspired, and motivated to live their lives in a better way. This thought makes me delighted to face L.A. traffic in the morning. 

I now have two internships that are helping me move towards my goal of becoming a film producer. For one of my internships, I am an assistant to a film producer who is currently doing what I would love to do in ten years. The second one is a development internship with Andy Fickman's production company, Oops Doughnuts. Andy directed comedies such as The Game PlanPaul Blart: Mall Cop 2, and my personal favorite, Parental Guidance. I won't go into a lot of detail about the internships in order to protect the privacy of the companies, but I look forward to blogging more about where my own LA journey takes me! 

And...cut. Check the gate.