Peace and tranquility reigns

The "business" is such a rollercoaster, I try to keep my personal life as low key as possible.

Peace, joy, comfort, ease, effortless fun, nature, pets and appreciating things as simple as my wee tripical fish swimming in the aquarium mean a lot to me.

Writing is exciting to me; directing and producing gets my heart beating; and coaching is most enjoyable to me most of the time (when people are committed and come prepared!).

It's all the other stuff - deal making, counting on people to say what they'll do and do what they say and keeping projects on track that can be the crazy-maker unless one's personal life is on a pretty even keel.

Even then it's hard not to "lose it" once in a while.

But I try to maintain good work habits through it all. From what I've seen, personal qualities of being positive, constructive, communicative, consistent and reliable create success habits, no matter what your profession.

One party in Hollywood I went to for promising screenwriters awhile back was attended by several "stars," industry pro's, many folks new to the biz and lots of "wannabe's."

The wannabe's sucked down the booze, talked (slurred more like) about all the great projects they had going and stayed late; the successful actors and writers left early. They had to get up early to go to work!

One very well-known actor held an untouched drink (I don't know if it actually contained alcohol, come to think of it) the entire hour he was there. He simply set it down as he left.

Yes, I took an important lesson from that evening:

boring as they are, those parties serve *great* food!

;-)
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Meanwhile, talk about the real deal - HUGE congratulations to my bud Bill Marsilii for penning the new Denzel Washington hit, Deja Vu!

Bill's not only a marvelous writer for several media (TV, stage, film, print), he's a remarkable, insightful, kind and principled man. YOU ROCK, BILL! So does "your" movie!