Two years ago comedy filmmaker Willy Laszlo exchanged his everyday production job for a chance to fulfill his dreams. He moved to L.A.
In part one of this cautionary tale, he tells about what he thought was going to be his first directing gig but how it sent him and how didn’t quite turn out as he had hoped.
An actor friend of mine whom I’d helped out when I first lived here got hooked up with a production company that had agreed to shoot his script. They made him a producer and he chose me to direct.
Immediately after I agreed to do the project, I started hearing a lot of “the check is coming in tomorrow.” It took me about a week to lose confidence in the credibility of the project.
I told my friend I didn’t think the movie was going to happen and I needed to get a job. The next night at 11:30 p.m., on the very intersection of where I live, I was handed $500 cash to “not get a job until August first,” the alleged starting date of preproduction. I thought, “Wow, this town is pretty cool, I can’t believe this is how my first feature is going to happen.”
So we forged full steam ahead the next week and cast for Tammy, the white trash girlfriend character in the script with blond hair and a big chest. Then we cast for Consuelo, the exotic girlfriend character with a big chest.
