Hey there guys, John here.
Sorry about the lack of posts on my part (Rodney is doing a good job!), but as most of you know, I’m in Los Angeles at the moment and about to leave to go on my Transformers set visit. Should be fun. I’ll be joined by guys from JoBlo, Latino Review, Chud, AICN, Cooming Soon and a bunch of others. Should be fun.
Ok, so here’s my rundown so far:
Thursday 5:45am – Woke up to get ready to leave for the airport. My shuttle was picking me up at 6:45am. My flight was scheduled for 10am with a connection in Chicago.
Thursday 8am – Arrive at the airport and get through customs and security
Thursday 9am – A nice staff person informed me that an earlier flight to Chicago has room available and that I was free to take it instead of the 10am. I decided to wait in Toronto since my flight was continuing to LA… so it was either sit on my ass in Toronton or sit on my ass in Chicago. I decided to wait.
Thursday 10am – MY FLIGHT GETS CANCELED due to severe thunderstorms in Chicago. So I’m scheduled to take a direct flight to LA at 6pm… 8 hours to wait. I decide to wait at the airport.
Thursday 6pm – My flight leaves for LA
Thursday 8pm (LA time) – I land in LA after a 5 hour flight and a limo is waiting to pick me up and take me to my hotel. The driver is this big young guy who talks to me a bout surfing. Glad to see stereotypes are still alive and well. :)
Thursday 8:45pm – I get to my hotel. The Renaissance Hollywood Hotel right on Hollywood and Highland. Right beside the Kodiak Theater (where they hold the Oscars), the Manns Chinese Theater on right on the Walk of Fame. I can see the Hollywood sign from my room. It’s amazing.
Thrusday 11pm – Sharon Dewit comes over and we chat and go for a bite to eat (she lives down here now)
Friday 9:45am – I grab a cab and head over to Lakeshore Entertainment to meet with Brendan, who is their web marketing guy (I still don’t know his full title there). Brendan is a fantastic guy.
Friday 10am – Brendan takes me in to meet the President of Lakeshore, Gary Lucchesi (He has also produced films like Underworld, Million Dollar Baby, The Mothman Prophecies, Primal Fear, The Gift, and the upcoming films “The Covenant” and Zach Braffs new flick “The Last Kiss”). Gary is a pure joy to talk to. I thought I’d get a quick hand shake and hello. Instead, he had us sit down in his office and we just talked about movies and the movie business for almost 45 minutes. This guy LOVES the movies and everything about them. He ignored phone calls and seemed to actually be interested in my opinions on what was wrong with the movie industry today. He was amazing to yack with. A real first rate guy and I can’t wait to come back to LA to meet with him again.
Friday 10:45am – Brendan then takes me to meet Gary’s right hand guy named Bob (who I’m ashamed to admit I can’t remember his last name). Bob has been in the movie business for decades. We sat in their conference room… and Bob just talked about movies. This guy also LOVES movies. Most of us think of Movie execs as these stuffy guys who could actually care less about film… but not the guys at Lakeshore. It was so refreshing to listen to how passionate these guys are about the movies. They’re still kids, and that was great to see!!!
Friday 11:10am – Brendan takes me into meet Robert Burke, the Vice President of Lakeshore and head of the Marketing Dept. He is another very cool guy. he’s coming up to Toronto for the Film Fest, and we’re going to hook up again up there.
Friday 11:20am – Brendan and I finally have a chance to sit and chat for a few minutes. Brendan is someone who really understands the role the internet has to play in the new age of promoting movies. The other studios need guys like Brendan.
Friday 11:30am – I have them call me a cab since I have to be a Paramount Studios at Noon.
Friday 12pm – I arrive at the MASSIVE Paramount Pictures campus. It’s intimidating. It’s like a little city in the middle of LA.
Friday 12:10pm – I go to the office of Amy Powell, Senior Vice President at Paramount. We chat a little bit about “The Incident”… you know what I’m talking about… and the nature of the internet with regards to the movie biz.
Friday 12:30pm – I go in and meet with Tamar Teifeld of Interactive Promotions & Publicity at Paramount. She’s really wonderful. I’ve been doing most of my correspondence with Paramount through her. We just chatted about stuff for about 30 minutes.
Friday 1:30pm – I get back to my hotel, grab something to eat, shop a little bit and relaxed until Sharon Dewit and her boyfriend Dan came back to pick me up in the evening. We had some drinks and then went out to Santa Monica to see the pier and the beach. We hung out until they dropped me off at 9pm. I wasn’t feeling well, and just stayed in for the rest of the night… because I have a big day today.
Saturday 8am – I wake up and start writing this massive post.
Saturday 10:15am – Tamar from Paramount is going to be picking me up to take me to the Transformers set. We’ll be there for about 4 hours and have a chance to chat with Michael Bay and the cast. That’s nice… I’m really hoping John Knoll will be there (Head VFX Guru of ILM).
I’ll give you guys another report tonight when I get back.
Cheers!
~John
