tax day for dummies

Oh god. I dread tax day. I’m not one of those tea party losers who resents paying taxes. It’s not the money. It’s the mental block I have for accounting. I have an accountant so I don’t have to do the heavy lifting – but even the signing and mailing part "breaks my head" as the French say. How? How you ask? Simple: I have to deal with 4 tax returns every year. Corporate Federal, Corporate State, Personal Federal and Joint Married State. It’s such a big ball of confusion. So much so that I’m closing my loan-out corporation because I just can’t deal with all the book keeping. Plus it’s not like I make the money I made from ’04 to ’08 anymore.  No, I am delighted to have taxes to pay – I’d pay more if we could have some of that cradle-to-grave, nanny state style governance I came to appreciate in my time in Germany and Canada. Seriously. Free universities, healthcare for all, electricity that stays on in wind and rain, the excitement of knowing a bridge will remain standing as you drive over it. Sign me up for 55% – I’m there.
I met with my writing group last night and ran the new Outlaw In-Law outline by them. Whole new set up wherein Paolo reveals all in the first fifteen pages as he is being bodily dragged off by one of his mother’s henchmen from a rehearsal. No more half step of trying to conceal his mother’s identity. As he is being pulled away he is straightforward, honest and above all, loving. Big doses of Love for the Paolo. I find that script failures most often have to do with a lack of love. 
One of the guys in my writing group just sold a feature this week. He’s so stoked! Everyone is. The headline in Variety read, "Breaking News: Studio Spends Money." See… ’cause the studios officially stopped spending money last year. They aren’t developing anything other than big franchise movies (Transformers and the like). So it’s pretty much impossible right now to get anything off the ground that isn’t one of those and that makes his script sale big news when just a couple of years ago it would have been routine (although good news for him). No word on what sort of pay-cut they’re demanding – but most likely he’s having to take 30 to 40 percent off his usual price.

B, meanwhile is actually working HARD on our horror script and is almost done with a new draft. You could knock me down with a feather. But I guess the looming specter of POVERTY has him willing to sit his ass down in the Aeron and get some pages happening. I dunno – everything sucks right now. A friend of mine wrote this script that has a good idea at the heart of it but was poorly executed. I gave him what one of my colleagues at AFI calls "$5000 worth of notes" on it. Anyhow – he sent me this long email about what he wants to do in the next draft and it was essentially; take everything good out of it, take all the emotion and drama out and replace it with a heavy handed and annoying "spiritual" theme that feels difficult and false. I mean I know something about "loss of faith" stories, fine but what he’s talking about is just ookie. So not a movie anyone wants to see. Lamers. I sent him back an email that said "glad I could help." and now he’s like "uh… was that whole other part of my email to you missing?" Obviously because I didn’t respond… I don’t know how to respond.
Alright. I gotta get my lard piles to the gym.