Friday, June 20, 2008

I've been CANCELED

The Corporate Powers that Be have shut me down; too risky with info about the movie's content and visuals getting leaked. It was a dramatic scene...the President of 20th Century Fox, Emma Watts, who was the executive on the first movie as well as this one, called repeatedly during a scene that we kept rolling on. I saw her name coming up on Shawn's cell and then checked mine. I had a message; Shawn had to call Emma -- it was urgent. I checked my blackberry; Emma's assistant Nichole wrote: "please have Shawn call Emma ASAP." I was nervous! Was someone hurt? Was it a major budget issue?

Shawn called and hung up with urgency. "Gina, you have to shut the blog down IMMEDIATELY!" I felt like I had been kicked in the stomach. "The Dingo Ate My Baby!" Furthermore, this was NOT the way I envisioned the head of Fox being made aware of my writing (one would hope words like "promising new talent" and "funny" might cross her radar instead of "liability" and "legal headache."

Apparently, Fox has a whole branch of people whose sole job is to scour the internet, looking for everything and anything (chatter, leaks, speculation, gossip) on upcoming films, especially the blockbuster tentpoles. My blog probably surfaced in one of these engine searches and raised concern and alarm. I should have been more discreet and kept it solely about the mise en scene of being a director's assistant on a big movie. Everything is 20/20 in retrospect.

For now, I will continue writing, but in a word document. When I transposed all the entries, I had over 100 pages for 31 days on the movie (starting with DC and the 3 weeks in Vancouver). The question I face: did I like the daily writing, the cathartic process of reviewing and analyzing the day's events? Or was the thrill of knowing there was an audience that included my Mother, My Cousin (a journalist herself), My Sister, My Boyfriend, my Boyfriend's mother, my Aunt, and many friends (most of whom are working women professionals whose opinions I respect -- was this built in audience the spur of my compulsion to write? I suppose I have to believe that if I am diligent, and treat each day as a page that will eventually be read -- the gratification may not be instant, but certainly well worth the wait.