The MME

Ah, the joys of high school mixed with open access to a fantastic VHS video camera. This labor of love was created by Ryan Howe, Aaron Smith, Brendan Hines, and myself.

Nearly 14 years later it's still not really all that funny...well except for the Mentos commercial--that'll always be genius.

Of course there is the amusement of seeing everyone so young. God, I feel old now.




Oh and it's really long too.

Housecleaning

Let's be honest, the old header sucked. I like this new one much better. If only we hadn't moved from the house with that fabulous porch four months ago...

Of course we only moved about 90 feet away, but without that porch it feels like miles.

Also cleaned up a bit of the page formatting so it shouldn't look as sloppy now.

Pix from last wkds pats/chargers game

LA meeting

If people in the city know how to do anything right, it's meetings. It's like an art form here. There's the breakfast meeting, the lunch meeting, the dinner meeting, and the always exciting "drinks." Business doesn't seem to happen in this town unless we're eating or drinking something.

In the time I've lived here, I've had my share of LA meetings, but never to quite the cliche-driving level as last night.

Marc and I met with an actress about one of the lead roles in DJ Girl. Here are the LA meeting cliches we filled...

1. We actually called it "drinks". (although I stuck to redbull after drinking several weeks worth of my share at the pats/chargers game last wkd)
2. We scheduled it at a trendy hotel lounge.
3. We were 2 producers obviously meeting with an actress.
4. She handed us headshots in front of all other patrons.
5. We spoke loudly about things like script and the character so that everyone else could hear.
6. We shook hands at the end.
7. The bartender asked Marc and I if "she got the part"
8. We took five minutes to answer that question for the bartender.

All the silly cliches aside, it was actually a great meeting. We all joked about how "LA" the whole thing was several times in the middle and I have no doubt that as we ramp up, more of the same will be in our future. Truth be told, everyone's so busy here that it's just too damn convenient to not mix business and pleasure.

Oh...and she did get the part. I know she doesn't know this blog exists but on the off chance that her name pops up on a google search, I'll refrain from typing it until we give her the news.

NFL, here I come

At 30 years old, I've never been to an NFL football game (at least as far as I can remember), and Darrin was kind enough to invite Liz and I to come along to see the Patriots playoff against the Chargers in San Diego tomorrow.

We're heading down early Sunday to tailgate with my aunt and uncle who have season tix. Liz claims she's going to drink a lot and yell at the chargers fans. I believe it too.

Thank god, they're playing in a pansy city like San Diego. If it were the Raiders, we'd probably be murdered.

So with all the major sports to be covered after Sunday what's next? With all this Beckham hype, I can see a good chance of attending my first MLS game next fall. As far as NASCAR goes...I'm making a good effort to never experience that one first hand.

DJ Girl

I've been hinting at it a bit here and there but it's time to let the cat out of the bag.

Here's the email I recently sent out to announce the project...

Hello-

I'm writing to you, my loving friends and family, with a request for assistance, an opportunity for involvement, and a potential for investment.

As you know, I graduated from film school at Boston University nearly nine years ago. Shortly thereafter, I crossed the country seeking opportunities in the movie capital of the world--Los Angeles. Well...as luck and fate would have it, I never got that deep of a foothold in the entertainment industry and my path eventually carried me elsewhere. I continued to write but started to feel that maybe it wasn’t meant to be.

Fortunately, it seems my pessimism may have been unjustified.

As many of you know, I wrote a screenplay three years ago called, DJ Girl. It’s a fun, light hearted, romantic comedy that centers on a nightlife princess who becomes enchanted by life behind the turntables. Despite the clublife backdrop, at the core it’s a very commercial, accessible, and funny girl-power “against-the-odds” story.

Aside from some tinkering and tweaking here and there, the script has essentially sat on my shelf for the past couple years because I didn’t have the experience or connections to do anything more with it.

Enter Marc Gottlieb. After reading the script a couple months ago, he expressed interest in trying to help me develop it as an independent feature shot in High Definition. Marc has what I don’t…the experience, know-how, and connections to get the job done. He has previously produced, directed, and co-wrote a feature, and he’s currently a creative executive for Capitol Films ( http://www.capitolfilms.com ). While Marc knows the kinds of people to approach for the $2 Million it will take to shoot DJ Girl, we have a hurdle to cross first, and that’s the reason for this letter.

With the commercial nature of the script, we have little doubt that we’ll find the backing, but no investor wants to drop cash into a project by script alone. Even with a personal pitch, most won’t even bother to read the whole thing. So, we need to shoot a trailer—or promo reel—to screen for investors, present our vision for the project, and convince them to come on board.

Shooting the trailer will cost a tiny fraction of the eventual feature. We’ll be pulling in every favor possible from the actors, cinematographers, editors, and venue owners that we know to minimize expenses. But in order to ensure that it looks, sounds, and feels professional, we’ll need to rent cameras and lights. I wish that Marc or I were independently wealthy and could fully cover these expenses ourselves. Unfortunately that’s not the case, so we need to become indie filmmaker clichés and turn to our loving friends and family to make it happen. You’ve heard the stories about local writer/director making it big. That’s what we’re talking about here.

It’s hard for me to ask for help, but this has been a lifelong dream of mine. And to have an opportunity present itself, I must figure out a way to do it now, because in six months or in a year or much longer the cards may be reshuffled proving it once again impossible. In the nine years since I graduated, this has been the first realistic possibility I’ve seen of a script I wrote being produced, so I must try. I can’t let it pass.

For all those angels who invest at this early stage to get the process started, should the project sell, Marc and I will not take a single penny of profit until you’ve doubled your investment. We’ll also strive to, at minimum, return your investment should the feature receive ample financing.

Please feel no obligation here. I expect nothing from a single person I’m sending this to, but as this is so very important to me, I must at least ask because I know some of you might want to help. No investment is too small, be it $25, $50, $100, $500, or more…every dollar helps.

We’re aiming to shoot the trailer over three weekends in February or March.

If you have any questions about the project, drop me an email or call me @ 310.936.1352. A pdf of the current script is also available if you’d like to see what this is all about.

If you wish to invest (and help make a dream a reality!) there are two options:

Paypal:
contribute AT djgirl DOT net

Mail:
James Beirne
832 15th Place
Hermosa Beach, CA 90254


Thank you!

-James

So that's the crux of it. After we shoot the trailer we'll have a full site up at djgirl.net. Until then, I'll probably blog about the process here. It's all beyond exciting. If you want to be involved, please let me know.

We're back!

All the forwarding should now be complete.

The blog is currently directly hosted at www.liveinhermosa.com, so you may need to update bookmarks and/or feeds. The old site now autoforwards to this one.

The stilesbeirne.com address now forwards directly here as well.

My portfolio site at www.jamesbeirne.com is good to go as well.

The old wedding site will still be live for a bit longer here.

A temp site is up now at djgirl.net. Expect to hear more about that one in the weeks ahead.

We'll be back after these messages

I'm in the process of moving all the sites I own to a new consolidated server with a better company, so there will undoubtedly be some down time over the next few days for the transition.

Look for all the sites to be back *hopefully* after the weekend.

liveinhermosa.com
stilesbeirne.com
jamesbeirne.com


and the driving force for this transition...
djgirl.net (more on that one in the weeks to come)

New Year's Eve

The first NYE that we didn't have any big plans and I end up sick. Go figure. I was looking forward to just hangin' and drinkin' with Liz in low key Scituate. We still hung out, but I was bundled up on a sofa drinking Fresca as Dick Clark was counting too slow to bring in 2007.

Oh well...they can't all be fabulous.