New Characters in the TV Show of Life

Hello all, Happy New Year!

This was a busy winter, and I had a lot of fun.  Apologies for not updating the blog.

I'm going to take this opportunity to explain my philosophy on how I look at life.

Life is a TV show.

I got this idea from my friend Steve, who told me in senior year of high school that we were all just characters on a tv show called "The Steve Show."  This perspective was so much fun to me that I ran with it.  I started blocking off sections of our lives as episodes, based on what storylines between characters began or ended.  There was a core group of the main cast that was in every episodes, and then different reoccurring characters or guest stars from time to time.  Our Series finale was when I went away to college...

Steve and I stood on my front porch the night before I left, and very dramatically said that our friendship had changed each others' lives in ways we'd always appreciate.  Then he got in his car, gave a wave, and  drove off as I stood on the edge of a brand new chapter of my life.  Crane up.  Fade out. Credits.

Since this time, it's basically become a religion to our group.  The people that control and steer things in our lives are obviously "The Writers." So if I ever refer to "The Writers" with a capital W, that's what I mean.  They organize a complicated web of drama, desires, through-lines, super objectives, etc. to make the TV show of our lives entertaining.  I'll get into some more detail about how I break up life into episodes later (in case you, too, want to look at your life as a tv show), but for now I bring it up to facilitate current matters.

Now and again, we get new cast members.

Dramatic foreshadowing:


The core group has always stayed the same, with fluctuations in screen time (i.e. interesting things going on in our lives), but you have to keep the show fresh, especially now that it's essentially in it's sixth season.  So, in the season premiere this year (the weekend of Sep 11-13) they introduced a few new characters, and two people obviously slated to be main characters very soon.

Garrett Ligget and Sophie Green.

These are characters that had been brought up in previous seasons, as they are two of Scott's best friends from college that he's been trying to get us to meet for years because they, too, are extremely talented actors.  So, as the Writers prepare the show shift from being northern-california based to southern-california based, they felt this was a good time to bring in these characters and develop them, like having us learn that Garret can sing and play guitar, like we did last trip. While we were waiting for Alex and Sophie to go to the bank, he picked up Ryan's guitar and just started playing and messing around. That's him playing King of Carrot Flowers Pt.1 by Neutral Milk Hotel.

A quick rundown:  Sophie and Garrett both live in LA now, doing the grind trying to get as many acting gigs as possible.  They are both really super cool, super fun, super kind, and just generally super (and also pretty dern good-looking--as most new characters tend to be).  They are also both going to be in my future projects, which I am very excited about.

So, this winter break as Jourdan and Wyatt returned home from Utah, and all of us were in the same place again, we got a visit from Garrett.  And oh what a fun holiday episode it was.  The Writers even had Jourdan organize a ice skating trip, so we could take cast photos like this:

So that is my brief introduction to Garrett and Sophie.  There will be more to come.  Scott is also working on a plan to bring some interesting interviews to the blog, in text and video form, but I'll let him talk about that.

Other quick updates:  I finished the first draft of the script!  And it wasn't super good!  And I freaked out for a couple days!  And then we had a really awesome audition/hangout/rehearsal that I'll talk about later! And then I started rewriting the script!  And it's getting better!

In fact, I should be writing it right now.  It's very different than the first draft; I'll give you an example.  In this script, it begins with "INT. HOUSE - DAY."  You see the difference, right?

And last but not least, I'd like to leave you with a video that I made for our annual Christmas party, that is essentially a year in review put together from all the video that I had of us from this year.  Most of it is comprised of inside jokes, but you may get a kick out of it.



Thanks!  ~Michael