Back in Vancouver

The clock radio started singing at quarter after five this morning.

*Snooze*

*Snooze*

"Oh gawd, please just ten more minutes!"

*Snooze*

We finally surrendered to Sun F.M.'s wake up call and pulled ourselves out of bed at 5:40. I don't think 5 hours is nearly enough sleep, but whatever... I'm sure new parents get a lot less. And while our baby may not cry and puke, it still had us rolling out of bed at an ungodly hour, so we could hit the road for Van.

We really should've gone to bed sooner, but it couldn't be helped. Jim n' I had been up to almost 12:30 preparing for our meeting. He wrapped up the rest of his thumbnail storyboards of the Car Crash scene, and then we reviewed some new dialog notes sent to us from our producers, written by She Who Hates Everything.

We were actually both very receptive to these new notes - with the exception of the f-bombs she scattered throughout. (No offense to SWHE, but I think f-bombs are a lazy way to create drama and tension... but whatever, I get her point and appreciate what she's trying to say.) Her notes illustrated how she felt Don could be much harsher without being a hateful character. Think Marty Crane from the TV show, Frasier.  (Just throw in a few f-bombs...) We found her dialog samples somewhat entertaining and are sure that we could make these kinds of tweaks on our own with relative ease.

Anyhow, we freshened up, finished packing, filled up some extra bowls with chows and H2O pour les chats, did a quick tidy (in case, y'know, heaven forbid something should happen to us while we're gone, and our friends n' family enter our apartment to find dishes in the sink or socks on the floor), and within an hour, we were out the door.

Now, while our little car is capable of travelling the sometimes treacherous, always unpredictable winter conditions through the mountains, it certainly is not ideal. It's small. It's light. It wiggles in strong cross winds. It hydroplanes in rain. It has four snow tires, but they'll still sometimes spin... which is always a nice feeling, let me tell you. So, as you can imagine, all things considered, driving the Coq in the wintertime is a real pain in the ass.

Fortunately, our wonderful producers took this into consideration and paid for a rental of a very nice high-falootin' SUV. They figured it was more feasible than flying, because then we wouldn't need cabs once we were in town.

Now, normally I'm not an SUV kinda gal. I think many of them are gas guzzling beasts and totally shitty for the environment (or at least many of them use to be back in my more hardcore Greenpeace activist days - I think I've heard that many have since improved their miles per gallon, along with their image...) Regardless, I will admit that I felt very safe. I'm normally white-knuckled the whole way on that four-hour journey, but today I didn't feel the need to hold my breath or whisper a desperate prayer for our safety even once. It also helped that despite a few thick foggy patches, the roads were totally bare. Hopefully the ride home will be just as good.

We also brought along our GPS, which I bought Jim for his birthday (because I anticipated that we'd be making a lot more of these trips), and it was sooo nice not having to watch for turn offs or street signs. We made it to our producer's office with plenty of time to spare. In fact, after we parked, Jim n' I spent fifteen minutes sitting in the car (not idling of course!), laughing to the comedy channel on Sirius. I have decided that I really love Sirius. Of course, I don't think we drive around often enough to make it worth the investment, but still, it was definitely a cool perk to our road trip.

Now that I've described our drive in excruciating detail, I'll get to the point of this post. Our meeting. In a word - awesome. It started off awesome with TC paying Jim a huge compliment on his storyboards. Not just his ability to draw - but his ability to visualize shot-for-shot of what he wanted to see with such clarity and with such a quick turnaround. Even though TC has seen Jim's storyboard work before, they were designed to meet another director's vision. The fact that Jim already knows our script shot-for-shot in his head, well, TC seemed kinda blown away. He told Jim that this talent will be a huge asset for the production of this film. Which is obviously a very nice compliment.

Next, we got down to bid'ness dissecting the work that still needs to be done. A third producer was also brought in to give his fresh perspective of the story. (Because when you're so intimately intrenched in something, it's hard to see the forest through the trees.) And my goodness, the brainstorming was just a-buzzin'! Every one of us was coming up with cool ideas to better define Lionel's character arc. We were all really in sync. One of us would have an idea on how we could enhance a scene. Then another one of us would think of a way to take their idea to the next level and make it even better. I mean, it was just so friggin', well... awesome!

Everyone walked away from today's meeting totally jazzed. None of us expect the next rewrite to be a total overhaul. Like both pro readers suggested, everything is already on the page -- it's just about tweaking certain elements we already have in our story and just making them a little stronger.

So yes... very, very exciting!

Anyhow, I have so much more to say - especially about all this Olympics nonsense. (After all, how could I yap all about being in Vancouver two days before the Olympics and not make any mention of it?!) But it's 8:30, we just woke up from a much-needed nap, and now we'd kinda like to head out for some much-needed nosh. So, perhaps I'll save that post for another time.