Good afternoon from Los Angeles my friends.

FILM INDUSTRY SCREENINGS

It’s awards season in Los Angeles which means as a holder of a SAG card I get invited to screenings and Q & A with directors, actors, etc. It’s fantastic and awful all at once.

The awful part is standing in the Sad Actor Bread Line. We have to get there early because screenings are overbooked. Then we wait until the doors open, listening to other actors talk about actory things for a solid 45 minutes or so before we get into the theater and find a seat. After grabbing our free popcorn and soda we sit and listen to actors talking actory things for another 45 minutes before, boom, the glory of it all starts.

I post this stuff sometimes on Instagram and it looks like, ‘oh boy, Tony is living the glamorous life, look at him with Jamie Foxx’ when it’s really:

Tony stood in line for way too long reading Proust, with his earbuds cranking Earth or SUNN 0))) to drown out the fear and desperation of actors looking at actors, hoping to happen upon a writer who will definitely write the screenplay about their idea that they want to act in, because writers are only approached constantly by actors when they find out you’re a screenwriter. When asked what I do by others in these lines of despair I say, I’m a background actor, which is true, but I haven’t been on set since before covid.

Then I post glamorous photos, just like all the other Sad Actors who were in the Bread Line gobbling crumbs of success energy from the likes of Oscar Isaac, Jamie Foxx, and whoever else is doing the rounds to get votes, and we all post on Instagram and life in Los Angeles looks glamorous.

I usually avoid these screenings because I’m easily cranky with the Hollywood part of Los Angeles, but this year I’m trying to just do my time in the Sad Actor Bread Lines and have the experience. One experience was seeing Frankenstein and it was worth it just to hear Guillermo del Toro discuss the film and the relationship with his father and also why he had to film Frankenstein, and the history of that film and book in his life. Worth it.

I walked out inspired forgetting about the Sad Actor Bread Line and bouncing down the street looking for someone to write the film based on my life.

More to come, feel free to follow me in Instagram for the glamorous parts, and know in your heart it’s mostly sad, it’s long lines, its foolish energy, but damn it’s glorious for a second or two.

LIBRARY WRITING WORKSHOP

I did the monthly library workshop this week at the Los Feliz Branch Library in Los Angeles. You can come too, it’s usually the first Wednesday of the month, check the LAPL.org website for the schedule.

We talk writing for an hour then have a 10 minute free writing exercise. I make up this exercise a few minutes before class without too much thought. Thinking? Oh, thinking just gets in the way of so much, I like to teach Unthinking.

Last nights writing prompt: Married couple, give each character a name, the first name you can think of.

The wife has been practicing witchcraft with her witchy friends and she learned how to turn herself and her husband into cats. They’ve been cats for two days. The scene you’re writing is the dialogue they have because the husband wants to turn back into a human and the wife wants to stay a cat. Remember power dynamics and remember to include as much conflict and resolution as possible.

These students get 10 minutes to write the story and it never ceases to amaze me just how fun these stories are. It’s great when they don’t have time to think, they just write. They get out of their own way.

Yes, one student used the word “pussy” and that brought me so much joy. One student had them speaking in French, which of course, cats speak French, who didn’t know that? One student ended his story with the wife turning the husband back to human form and since she wanted to stay a cat he took her to the pound. I asked if he had ever been divorced and he hadn’t.

I started teaching at the library because I found a book that I had paid for because it was lost, but I found it, so I had to sit with the librarian to get my money back, but that wasn’t the important thing, I just wanted to bring the book back and if I didn’t get the refund, that was okay with me. Libraries saved my life.

While sitting there waiting to see how to get the lost book back into the system I asked if there were opportunities to volunteer to teach at the library and he’s like:
‘Well, who the hell do you think you are?’
I mean he said it much nicer, but I know the gist of the question. And I said:
‘I’m a fucking writer.’
I mean I said it nicer, but he knew the gist of the answer. And here we are over seven years later.

HOLIDAYS ARE FOR WRITERS

Growing up without holidays, having to leave every classroom to sit in another sad room alone while the class celebrated birthdays, christmas, or whatever….never being able to engage in tradition with my non-Jehovah’s Witness family, those worldly people who will die at Armageddon, let’s just say it was quite a set up for a life of holiday failure.

I still feel like a failure at holidays, but I also realize that there are other orphans out there searching for others. I’ve been wanting to do this workshop for a while and I’m finally putting it out there. I’d love for you to join.

Instead of being a lonely writer, shit, that’s even without holidays, I’m doing this online intensive Screenplay Holiday Workshop. We’ll commit to working about two hours per day during the holiday break. I’ve taught this similar workshop at UCLA Extension for years and I’d love to bring it to you at about 1/2 price and a quicker pace.

I’m committed to doing this once a year, so join us for year number one.

If you have a loving family, if you were brought up under the traditions of holidays, if you’re cooking and hosting, this class is not for you. We will slightly envy your life then we realize that envy is our problem so we will look up to you and wish you and your family the best. We’d love to show you the work we did at the end of 2025, maybe you’ll even see it on the big screen at some point.

Seriously, writing and teaching saves my life every day. I adore all things storytelling. We are all on our own hero’s journey and the more I learn about the craft of writing, because there’s always more to learn, the even more blessed I feel about being plopped on this spinning planet hurling through space.

Please join me and let’s get work done during the holiday. I’ll be working on my own script at the same time that an agent suggested to me to get done. He’s right, so I will be using the exact same tools I teach and engage with you everyday.

INTERVIEWS WITH FAMOUS WRITERS

Expect to see my interview with Joe McGinniss Jr. transcribed soon. We did a show episode, but the audio wasn’t the greatest, yet the interview was fantastic. I’m on page seven of the transcription of 17 pages, trying to get rid of all the ‘uh’, repeated words ‘coughs’ ‘screams’ ‘sobbing’ parts to just get to the meat of the thing. We had a great discussion about fathers/sons/alcoholism and his memoir about the struggles of not only being the son of a famous author father, but being a father himself. The interview feels really important so it’s still coming. If you’d like to listen to the audio the link is here.

And on this week’s episode of Drinks with Tony is Carol Tyler. Where have I been? I didn’t know who Carol was, but when Fantagraphics got in touch with me to have her on Drinks with Tony I looked her up and said YES immediately. Yes, when. Yes, how. Yes, where.

Tony, who are your inspirations? Well, sometimes they’re given to me on a plate to talk to for a couple of hours on Drinks with Tony, and now Carol is my inspiration.

Again, the interview is so good I’m doing the transcriptions and taking out the ‘uh’ and the ‘weepings’ and the ‘guttural screams’ so it looks pretty for Substack. Until then you can listen to the audio here.

Pity this fool and comment below.

Thank you for reading,

Tony