A Star is on the Rise

So the other night was pretty damn magical.


I'll explain.  Every Wednesday night is We Make Movies night, here in LA.  I've probably mentioned them before, but here's a quick recap for all of you too lazy to look through my previous posts.


We Make Movies is a film collective based in LA, whose mission statement is "Making the film industry not suck.  One film at a time."  Basically, they hold free writer's workshops and improv nights and they have a podcast called How We Make Movies where they interview directors and producers and whatnot about how they get their independent films made.

Anyway, I go there every Wednesday night, and last night was no different.  With one exception.  The first three episodes of my girlfriend's webseries, The Girl On The Couch, was getting read. Now, LJ had already shown me the scripts to get my feedback on them, so I already knew they were brilliant, but I was super excited to see everyone else's reaction.  Bottom line: it was good.  Like, really good.  Like, people started laughing at the first line, and didn't stop until we were finished reading it. 

I have never seen a piece be so universally loved by an audience, anywhere. Normally, after a piece is read, there's about 10 minutes of feedback where people say "I liked this, but you should think about changing this" or "This didn't really work for me" or "This part was a bit confusing, you might want to make that clearer..." None of that.  I think 4 or 5 people raised their hands and said "Why isn't this getting shot already?"  

Now the big news for the night was the special guest who was in attendance.  I'm not sure how much I should give away, mostly because I haven't told LJ I'm writing this, and I don't want to steal her thunder, but suffice to say, this gentleman has some pretty bomb-ass connections and is interested in getting LJ a meeting to pitch her webseries to some people who would actually have the means to greenlight it with a proper budget and everything.  So that's exciting.  More info to come when we know more.  Mwahahaha.

But the really incredible part was how LJ's script acted as a catalyst for everyone else.  I've been going to WMM for almost a year now, and I've seen a lot of scripts get read.  I've seen stuff that made people laugh their asses off, and I've seen stuff that people said should get made immediately, but I've never seen not only everyone say that a script needs to get made yesterday, but to see each and every person practically beg the writer to either let them produce or direct or write them into the project.

And not only did people immediately see LJ's brilliance and try to hitch their wagons to her star, but the incredible energy that came off her reading infected everyone and served as a catalyst for everyone to go "Let's go make some MOTHER-EFFIN' MOVIES!" It seemed like after it was over, everyone just had about a million new ideas bouncing around inside their heads, because creativity is freaking contagious.

So I think what I'm saying is that after all of this, I am perfectly comfortable being LJ's Judd Apatow's wife.  Because she is an actor in her own right, and she's been in a bunch of movies, but no one knows who she is except in relation to Judd.  Even sitting here, currently using the interwebs, I can't bring myself to find out what her name is.  She's just Judd Apatow's wife.  And I will be L.J. Johnson's boyfriend.  And I'm okay with that. It'll give me more time to work on my watches.