Pooling resources... Photograph: Getty Images
Driving along the Pacific, I convinced myself that the guy next to me at the traffic lights was Will Ferrell. Later, I spotted an Olsen twin (the one who looks like a bag lady) on the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica. Someone told me that in LA, if you think you've seen Brad Pitt eating a taco, chances are it is Brad Pitt and the taco is totally real too.
So imagine my excitement when I spotted ex-Blue Peter presenter Tim Vincent, now a reporter for NBC's Access Hollywood, driving an SUV. I almost fainted with joy. Tim Vincent! Top star spot! Then that evening I turned on the telly and saw him doing a live report from Anna Nicole Smith's funeral in the Bahamas. Dammit. It wasn't Tim Vincent. Is nothing in this town real?
Don't answer that - I'm being metaphorical - but I'll tell you what is real: the amount of back-breaking, mind-numbing work you have to put into a film script. They say that babies are miracles. Yeah yeah, we all know about that miracle. The second, more secret, miracle, and the one that is not as likely to emit sweet smiles from old ladies in the supermarket, is giving birth to an entertaining, coherent script.
If I sound grouchy it's because this week I've actually had to do some work. After enrolling at Writers' Boot Camp in Santa Monica, I now find myself on a six-week intensive course that will ensure I have a polished first draft of my latest opus by the end of April.
Writers' Boot Camp boasts some impressive graduates (or alumni, as they like to call them here) including Sex and the City writer/producer Cindy Chupack, Heather Hach who co-wrote Freaky Friday, David Levien who co-wrote Ocean's Thirteen and er, Moon Zappa.
So over bottles of mineral water and the obligatory Starbucks, I got to meet my 12 classmates for the first time. We assembled in a bland room at the Bergamot Centre, a vast place that boasts galleries, post-production and artist studios, just off the ever-rumbling 405 freeway. My fellow boot campees include a chick-lit novelist, some tattooed LA dude from up the coast whose wife is a choreographer, a writer on Everybody Hates Chris, a twitchy guy who launched the Fox news channel and a super scary kid who's just 16 and has more confidence in his left earlobe than everyone else put together. He'll learn.
Jason, our tutor, was full of energy and used the word "pithy" with gay abandon. Over three hours, he took us through some writing basics, asked us our favourite movie (on the spot I said Some Like It Hot) and then gave us enough homework to turn Milhouse from yellow to green. The writer from Everybody Hates Chris nearly wept. The super scary kid looked delighted, and the Fox guy twitched some more and then asked some totally unrelated question about the third act of American Splendor. It was anarchy!
I'm now in the process of wading through my assignments but it has been a great week because I've made shedloads of progress with my story structure and character development. I'm sorry to go all writerly on you, but deal with it. Tim Vincent may have been woefully absent from these shores but his Blue Peter energy abounds; I'm hoping that Boot Camp will be the writing equivalent of sticky backed plastic, an empty washing up bottle and some pipe cleaners. I can't wait to see what I make of it all.
