I’ve known this guy since I was four years old. Haven’t heard from him in a while, because I have a tendency to lose phone numbers and he never leaves one when he leaves a VM. (No caller-ID.) So it’s been about 8 months since I’ve heard from him. He called last night.
I believe less than half of what he says, and he exaggerates about the rest. Last Winter he told me a cock-and-bull story about having been assaulted and tortured and left for dead in his home. He lived because his GF found him three days later. Turns out it was true. :eek: I found an article online. Yeah, the article used the word ‘torture’. This guy has Big Plans™. He’s going to be a ‘player’ in Hollywood and party all the time and drive fast cars and get laid. Those are his priorities. Too bad he always starts partying the moment he gets a shadow of a break and blows the gig.
So last year he was in the roughest of his many rough patches. He (said he) was pulling himself up, and things were working out. He bought a used computer, and took it to a shop to get upgraded. The tech found inappropriate photos on the drive. Now, I don’t think this guy would download that stuff. Yeah, he’s obsessed with getting laid and I wouldn’t really put it past him to download stuff he shouldn’t. He’s the kind of guy who would find ‘forbidden fruit’ and boast about it because he’s so cool for being able to find it. On the other hand, I think he’s smart enough not to do it. The stuff could have been on the used computer when he bought it. Hey, I disbelieved his torture story and that turned out to be true. But the computer was in his possession, and it had the material on it. Naturally, he was arrested.
My friend said he was friends with the mayor, and asked for a favour. It sounded as if things were going his way… until he started telling the arresting officer what he thought of him. The officer also has friends, and the case continued. But nothing happened. Well, after 13 months it suddenly comes to the surface again.
Not only that, but my friend was trying to buy a house. It was offered to someone else, but he was supposed to be offered a chance to buy it if escrow fell through. In the meantime, there was (he says) an arrangement by which he could live in the house. Escrow didn’t close, and the realtor kicked him out and accused him of squatting. Then the house was sold to someone as he was on the doorstep. He never got the opporunity to try to buy it. I’m not clear what happened next, but somehow he ended up in jail for six weeks.
When he got out, all of his stuff was gone. There were a few shoes, and some clothes, but everything else was ‘stolen’. All of his screenplays, all of his contact information (he says he had letters of support from Microsoft, Ford, yadda, yadda, yadda), his ID and credit cards – everything. He’s estranged from his remaining family, is homeless, and says he has fewer assets than he had in high school. (Of course in high school, he was living at home and didn’t need as much.)
But he wrote another script while he was in stir, and says he’s a ‘friend of a friend’ of a producer who is (or will be) interested.
I wish him well. But it occurs to me that if he had put the same energy into working toward his goal that he puts into finding shortcuts, paying the grasshopper instead of the ant, and schmoozing with people who (probably) see him as a schmoozer, he’d be in a much better position in his life.