[Roderick Usher]

So we met with XXXXXXXXX last week. Really cool. First off his office is a house. Not his house, mind you, but a small craftsman house in a nice neighborhood in Hollywood that is a dedicated office. Pretty cool.

We enter the living room/lobby and the walls are covered with movie one-sheets from XXXXXX & XXXXXx & XXXXXXXXX there are maquettes and figurines of XXXXXX, XXXXXXX, XXXXXXXXX and a few Chinese take-out boxes with "XXXXXXXXX" printed on them. I'm already getting geeky.

One of the three assistants comes in and offers us something to drink. I take a coffee - those of you interested in doing the Hollywood thing, always take the drink that's offered, seriously - and we wait while a yappy little white dog tugs at my pants lag.

After a minute of two we are escorted into a back bedroom that has been converted into Mr XXXXXXX's office. Bookshelves line the walls. More toys, more movie posters...including Howard Hawkes' The Thing. There's a spread on the table, an actual spread - grapes, brie and crackers, coffee, sugar, cream - and behind the desk is THE MAN.

He smiles we shakes hands. He dives right in, asking us our ages. My partner Jim replies "medium", so John flips him the bird. He does this a lot, three times actually throughout the course of the hour-long meeting. He is awesome. Super cool and not at all pretentious. We talk about the script for twenty minutes in which he tells us that "we did it wrong" that we were imitating. He believes there is something good, maybe even something great here, but we're going to have to dig and work to get it to the right place. He wants us to come back and go over the script page-by-page and work together as long as it takes to turn this into the movie he wants to make. He also tells us he doesn't work in the mornings and he only works here in his office.

I'm in heaven.

Then it gets fun. We start talking about our favorite films. A half hour passes with us discussing the merits and weaknesses of John Ford films. This is Hollywood cool at its best.

We go back to his office again tomorrow for the first full day of work. I can't wait!