Play Mitzi for me

I don’t know about you, but 2010 has got off to a cracking start. This may be because I am a Pisces and this, allegedly, is going to be our year. http://www.susanmiller.com/forecasts/monthly/pisces_full.php

This is excellent news because, frankly, 2009 sucked. The Making Of Plus One… screening at the Cannes Film Festival and my dad’s 80th birthday party were the highlights of a year drowning in lows.

As one door closed, another was slammed in my face. And then another. Until finally Colin and I had to sub-let our apartment and move in with friends to re-group financially. Despite being a normally robust and positive soul, the year’s rejections and disappointments almost brought me to my knees with stress-related illnesses and chronic insomnia. So much so that I looked like I had been hit by the ugly stick and felt like shit.

My misery was compounded when a friend of the same age suddenly looked 10 years younger than me, thanks to a $10,500 facelift.

Arthur, the acupuncturist and Chinese herbalist, came to my rescue (he’s also my sister Julia’s other half). He brought me back to the land of the living and the remotely attractive.

So, before you submit to the knife, might I suggest you try Arthur’s acupuncture facelift? He can cure other ills at the same time. That’s me above with Colin on New Year’s Eve. Not bad for almost 55, though I say it myself. Thanks to good genes, I only needed eight sessions; most would need 12 at $85 a pop. Arthur’s offices are in Woodland Hills: 818 999 0300 or naturalmeddoc@gmail.com. I am proud to be his poster girl.

Back to 2010. My children were here and it was the best Christmas and New Year ever. In the first week of January, I was offered some research work on a network TV show. My work was so well received that I have been offered a producer job on the show (a one-off) for real money.

Julia and I are going to Palm Springs this weekend for the film festival with two of our bestest friends ever, Lori Leve and Joan Scheibel, where The Making Of Plus One… is being screened. Two extra screenings have been arranged because the one at The Regal on Saturday at 6.30pm is sold out. And there are parties, parties, parties.

A producer has offered $1.5 million partial funding to make the movie Plus One actually based on my book using my script. The fabulous Academy Award nominee Jennifer Tilly has read my script, loves it, and agreed to play the Mitzi character.

Another 11 months like this please, Cosmos.

Cinema Purgatorio

It’s said there’s no such thing as coincidence. I’m not sure what the cosmos is trying to tell me about the Goss brothers, but Julia and I bumped into Luke at the Chateau Marmont last weekend. He was there having meetings with film makers who see him as a hot property after his success in “Hellboy II.” He told us he has five films in the pipeline. And he’s still happily married to singer Shirley Lewis after 22 years. We love stories like that, don’t we, ladies?

In Hollyweird, the more meetings you have, the more successful you are. It felt good to be having a meeting of our own with Mary McGuckian. She told us our movie looked a tad vulnerable last week, because of that pesky global financial crisis. The head of media at her main bank even said that the staff wasn’t able to make international calls for a while. I won’t mention the name of the bank, for fear of causing a run on it and losing our funding.

She said we won’t be getting our plane tickets to France until the week before we fly out, so I should stop worrying that it won’t happen. That’s easy for her to say. In the next breath, she informed me that I’ve been dropped from a scene due to time constraints, so shan’t be needed for the first two days of the shoot after all.

On a positive note, she did say that people who’ve seen the edited footage think it’s terrific and the movie will be a hit (she would say that, wouldn’t she?), and then we can make the movie based on Plus One, then a sequel and call it “Plus Two.” Actually, I said, the sequel’s called “Plus One More.” Or maybe “Claire Fordham and the Goblet of Fire.”

It would be grand if “The Making of Plus One” is a hit, because the option for Plus One has reverted to me. The conflict in “The Making of…” centers on whether it’s going to be a small, independent movie or a big studio picture starring Cate Blanchett and Kate Winslet. How ironic and brilliant it would be (for me and my descendants) if “The Making of…” is a smash and, when the film based on my book is made, that there’s a similar conflict. Kind of art imitating art.

Julia and I had a little disagreement as to which Cate/Kate would play her and me. Mary made a note to use that conflict in this film. I had to concede that Cate Blanchett would have to eat a lot more cake if she wants to play me.

Driving home, I was fantasizing about the film version of my book. Luke Goss could play Julia’s boyfriend. And instead of being a sound engineer (as he is in the book), we’ll make him a drummer in her band, so we can get in some drummer jokes. By the time it gets made, Dakota Fanning and Abigail Breslin will be playing Julia and me with Cate Blanchett as our mother.

Being Somebody

The trouble with having an authentic relationship with your sister is that when you ask her to read your work and say what she really thinks, she will. Julia read my script based on my memoir, Plus One: A Year In The Life Of A Hollywood Nobody, and told me that, while she thinks it’s very funny, it needs a couple more scenes to give it humanity and depth. But it really is very good and I’m almost there but I do need to go back in again because very good isn’t great and it needs to be great, she says.


Which is why I was still under the duvet in the fetal position and sucking my thumb when the picture desk from The Mail On Sunday’s You magazine called from London to set up a photo shoot with the brilliant Mimi Haddon for a picture of me to accompany the article I’ve done for them about the myth of the empty nest.




I’ve also found some dogs and owners for my reality TV show pilot. Even though the producer is too busy to return my emails and phone calls to set up a shoot, I have done what was asked of me.

Mary McG’s producer has emailed confirmation that Julia and I will be needed in the south of bloody France on October 27th where we will be playing ourselves in a proper movie with a proper budget and that our business class tickets will be sorted any day. Julia says she won’t believe it until we’re sitting on the plane.

People of a nervous disposition might also be concerned that director Mary McG could be run over by a bus before the shoot, but I take comfort that because this is a proper movie, the insurers insist that another director be signed up to take over in case of accident or death of Mary McG. In this instance, Jim Sheridan (My Left Foot/In The Name Of The Father/In America) is first reserve.

I’ve been wondering for some time if, because I describe myself as a Hollywood Nobody, it has become a self fulfilling prophecy. To this end, and because this has actually been a very good week for me in Hollywierd: I’m gonna be in a movie film, inspired by my blinkin’ book, and my friend Marilyn asked me if I wanted to go with her to the ER set (my favorite TV show of all time; where I first gazed upon the gorgeousness of George Clooney), I shall henceforth be known as a Hollywood Somebody.

Must dash as I have a script that only needs two more scenes to make it great.

There's no business...

I finally gave up waiting for the TV producer to answer my emails and asked to see him face to face. He told me over lunch that before he talks to his agent in detail about my TV show idea we need to decide what it’s REALLY about. He hadn’t even read my previous emails as he’s been so busy working on another show. Just the six weeks wasted.

So we thrashed out some ideas which he told me to write up and now we need to get something on tape. All I need to do is find four dogs with camera friendly owners who want to be on TV.

I can’t go into detail about the program idea because one of you might steal it. This business we call show is a dog eat dog world and I have been advised to trust no one.

Then Mary McG called to say she’s been ill and needs to put the second round of filming for The Making of Plus One movie back until October 25^th. I resisted the temptation to say “nothing trivial I hope.”

As Julia reminded me, it takes a Herculean effort to make any creative project happen and then survive the process. In the meantime, here’s a brief promo of what’s been shot so far of The Making Of Plus One movie.

FOILED AGAIN!

One of the reasons I moved to Los Angeles from England eight years ago is that I had more of a chance of meeting George Clooney if I lived in the same country as him.

George doesn’t want kids and I don’t (alright, can’t) have any more so, apart from the fact he likes his women half my age and four sizes smaller than me, we are a match made in heaven.

Actually, I have met George albeit briefly and very tenuously. He said, “Hello, Claire.” To me! We were introduced after a screening of one of his movies as he was just getting into his Limo but the chance to sit down and chat with him keeps eluding me.

So I have seen George up close and in the flesh and can confirm that he is beyond handsome and all men should look like him. I’m not completely shallow. He is smart and funny as well.

I almost had dinner with George last year. It wasn’t as cozy and romantic as it sounds. There were at least 500 other people there, but it still counted as having dinner with Gorgeous George.

My chum, Sheran, had invited me to go as her Plus One to a PEN (Poets, Editors and Novelists) event honoring George for his screenwriting skills on Good Night, and Good Luck.

Sheran knows his co-writer, Grant Heslov, and was convinced she could get me introduced to George when she said hello to Grant who, one could assume, would be seated next to the world's sexiest writing partner.

But George was a “no show.” He was too busy saving refugees in Darfur to accept the PEN award in person. It was worse for Grant Heslov as he had to keep apologizing for not being George Clooney.

So you can imagine my frustration that The Golden Globes, organized by the Hollywood Foreign Press, were cancelled because I was going as a friend’s Plus One and George was nominated for Michael Clayton. He was certain to be there at Hollywood’s second most glamorous and prestigious event of the year. I write for the press about Hollywood and I’m foreign so I’m sure I could have found something to talk to him about.

Does anyone know anyone who needs a Plus One for the Academy Awards?