The Burbank Diet

Every time you see a 7-11, stop and get a slurpee. (Note: Cherry and Coke are better than any of the new colorful flavors.)

Make your own plans. Don't wait for the phone to ring, ever.

Whenever you are waiting for the phone to ring, go hit tennis balls.

Do not turn on the TV unless you are going to watch a movie. Watch movies only at night.

Write for an hour every day.

Do not check you email every 10 minutes.

Do the dishes, take out the trash, go to the grocery -- at least once a week.

Spend one morning a week faxing resumes.

Spend one afternoon a week making phone calls.

Exercise once a day.

Never leave the TV on all day.

Listen to Audiobooks like "The Art of War" -- and think of yourself as a ninja in training.

Shave every day.

Do not let yourself lie down on your bed in the middle of the day.

Understand that it is time to train like Rocky for a fight which you are destined to lose, against the Apollo Creeds of the world.

Look at yourself and your life honestly, but look forward purposefully.

Do not drink alone or drive after drinking.

Try out those Atkin's beers. Maybe they aren't horrible. Or maybe just drink less real beer.

Make new friends when you can, look around yourself when you go somewhere new, act naturally, and try not to feel awkward or shy. That is bullshit and you know it.

Organize thy life into one hour increments, into files and file folders, into piles and to do lists. And then bother to learn the systems you set up, and try to follow through.

Never flake out on someone. This is what everyone does and it is expected, so if you don't, you will be unexpected.

Write letters. Buy postcards. Make phone calls.

Sit down and write. Sit down and edit.

Drink less coffee. Drink more water.

Look at things from inside yourself, asking questions. And bother to answer them.

Where are you? What are you doing? What do you want to do? What do you want to be?

Drop modesty. Tell people why they should listen to you. (Except don't mention Arnold unless you can tell by the golf shirt, by the watch, by the haircut, that you are speaking to a Republican.)

Do not judge people. Just form strong opinions.

Do not judge your city. It is sunny here. It is a time warp, a black hole. And it is great! Do not resent the happiness people feel out here. Just because they are not in New York does not mean they are worthless human beings. They are, surprisingly, just like you.

Get a dog. Name it after something important to you. Make friends with it.

Don't be pretentious. And don't be unpretentious. Drop the idea of being cooler than you are.

Eat well. Cook.

Wash your car.

Miss your girlfriend.

Look for new things you haven't seen before. Take notes. Never decline an invitation.

Read a very big book. Tolstoy is good. Oprah's book club is reading "Anna Karenina."

Follow your sports teams.

Eat plenty of Mexican food.

Go to movies alone once in awhile.

Listen to good music. Go to shows with friends.

Never forget that you are hungry, that you are after things. This place makes you a very happy failure.

They WON!

Andrew Volpe's band Ludo won the contest and will be
playing live August 2 on fuse TV, and making a $25,000
video made in NYC on August 13th! Thank you for voting!

Travels with Sam

Sam arrived in LA a day or two before I expected him to.

"Hey man, I'm flying into Long Beach tomorrow morning, ok?" He also flew into a different airport than I thought. But when I picked him up I was the one who was late.

Sam Mestman -- the genius behind "Golf on Film," "Project: Redlight," and now "Sell Out," -- like most geniuses, is mostly misunderstood. An extremely creative person, he often makes simple mistakes with the details. For example, two weeks ago he called me and asked me to help him with a project. Here is a re-creation of the exchange:

SAM: I'm coming out to California to do a camp video, at this place between San Francisco and Los Angeles.
JOE: When?
SAM: It's going to be on a weekend.

Sure enough, it is not actually on a weekend but right in the middle of the week. Fast forward two weeks later, picking Sam up at the airport. Having just received the details on our "camp trip" I realize that the camp is actually east of Yosemite -- equidistant but not between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Begins an epic journey into a nostalgic past of camp-going, of bullshiting and pretending to know what we're doing -- of filming ropes coarses, horses and water sports.

Sam and I each day look at each other and laugh. We have to ask: how the hell did we get here, in the Sierra National Forest? People ask us at the camp and it's literally hard not to laugh as Sam answers the inevitable question, "You flew out here from New York for this, really?"

But don't let me say the wrong thing here. Sam is a misunderstood genius, and worth understanding. He is sincere, even if he seems sarcastic. All the time he tells these camp people how he's going to make a sick montage of the watersports, and he means it, he really does. He also, for reasons unknown, decides not to mention when I pick him up at the airport that it is his birthday. When I ask him about it later he says, "I don't even think about it, honestly." Sam is a master of misdirection. He is, often, blatantly subtle.

We drive to Berkeley after completing our three days of camp at the Gold Arrow Camp (GAC). There we meet up with Gabriella, whose parents and house seem somehow lifted from a children's tale or a Roald Dahl book. Sam and I are like drunks waking up to real life. We are unhappily finding that the real world is not like camp, that we have to worry about things like how to pay rent, where to eat, and not where is the good tinder for the campfire? This trip to Gabriella's gives us a chance to hunker down and adjust. Gabriella's dog Charley (recently neutered) runs around with a collar on his head, running into furniture with stunning effect. Gabriella and her mother speak Spanish to each other, entire side-conversations. The coffee is wonderful. I can picture it sitting there.

Later that day Sam, Gabriella and I visit San Francisco. We check out City Lights, the book store the beats built, and buy a book each. We drive around, up and down hills, and Gabriella and I laugh and laugh as Sam reads in the back. "When I get started, I have to finish," Sam says as I exhort him, playing Dad, to look up from his book and out the window at the hills, the trams, the bridges, the cute hippy girls.

That night we have dinner with Lisa, a former roommate of mine. When I lived with Lisa, I had just moved to the city after graduating, going home, finding my girlfriend seeing someone else and spending one of loneliest summers ever getting up in the morning and writing. Lisa was a banker-in-training, coming home and drinking wine, not sure at all that she wanted to be in that world. Lily moved to New York that fall, and we started seeing each other. After we lived together Lisa took her bonus and ran to the West Coast, where she works for the Gap and is dating a guy from St. Louis. Strangely enough, Sam met Lisa when he crashed at my place. The first thing he said to Lisa was "I'm not Joe." They then went to breakfast, a movie, and spent the day wandering around. Sam is full of surprises.

Sam, Lisa, myself and Lisa's friend Caitlin went to Napa Valley the next day and went wine tasting and played bocce ball. The sun was bright.

On the drive back to Los Angeles, and with plenty of amazement at the events of past week, Sam said: "Well, nothing disastrous happened." I like that Sam approaches the things that happen to him like he might a script he is writing -- able to smile at not knowing what comes next.

LUDO's big break

Andrew Volpe and the band LUDO will be on Fuse TV tomorrow, Tuesday, July 13 , competing with two other bands to win a music video contract! The band won a contest to get to New York, where they are being flown and put up for the show. The show, called "Daily Download," airs at 6PM Eastern Time, 5PM Central Time, and 3PM Pacific Time. Fuse TV is channel 132 in New York, channel 139 in St. Louis, and channel 158 in Los Angeles.

The website for the channel -- "MTV without the crappy shows" -- is www.fuse.tv. Voting for the competition starts this Friday (7/16) and continues till next Friday! Make sure to check them out, tell your friends, and vote as much as possible starting this Friday for LUDO! For more info on the band check out their website at www.ludorock.com. This is their big break, and we can all do something to help them out.

"How I Got Lost" & where it left me

Welcome to the new Blatantly Subtle blog! Screw the message board! This blog is for the detailed nuance of life in Los Angeles and New York trying to make movies without losing your mind. It will dwell on personal details, small logistics, attacks, ironic stories that never mention the word "irony," and questions that stick.

I hope it isn't too self-indulgent.

My name is Joe Leonard. I am one of the founders of Blatantly Subtle Productions, a small production company that has produced short films and held screenings in New York over the last two years. I recently moved to Los Angeles, where I am living alone in a house in Burbank, struggling to finish a movie, rewrite a script, look for a job, meet people and make friends, and in general figure out what the hell I am going to do with the next five years of my life.

Right now my goal is to get a dog. But that's far off, honestly.

My last movie, "How I Got Lost," has been used for the web address for this blog. That's because it is as good a haiku as any for the last few years of my life. I am still looking for ways to find things new, and wandering off is one way to do that. That's part of how I ended up in LA.

"How I Got Lost" is my current project, which will be finished this summer and screened in New York this fall -- along with "Sell Out," Sam Mestman's film, "A Love Thing," Bryan Friedman's film, and hopefully even "Homo Erectus Erectus," Gabriella Dentamaro's film. Many of the entries will relate to these projects and this screening, and the progress getting there.

There will also be some stories from LA about looking for work in the film industry, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and other unrelated items.