I met Luke Ryan

Over the weekend I met Hollywood hot shot Luke Ryan. It's okay if you never heard of him. He used to work at some dive bar in Indiana. Now he's the vice-president of MGM. That would be the film company with the roaring lion at the beginning. Luke Ryan used to work at New Line Cinema, Paramount Pictures, and MTV. These types of people never interest me till after they are in front of me and I learn why they are important. For example, you wouldn't care much about Officer Brenner until he was at your carside writing you a ticket, or maybe cuffing your arms behind your back. You wouldn't care much about the North American grizzly bear until you were in a face-off in the forest. I didn't think it was cool to meet Luke Ryan until he was ten feet in front of me and I heard about all the things he did and all the people he knew. Because really, the only people I knew of on the screen writing/production side of film were Steven Spielberg and Diablo Cody since she just won that Oscar. I also met Luke Ryan’s funny sidekick friend, David Neustadter. He’s a creative executive at New Line Cinema, and helped work on one of my favorite movies, Just Friends. He also worked on Wedding Crashers.

So why all these Hollywood guys at a writers’ conference? They gave workshops on screenwriting and also the keynote speech at lunch one day. It was cool because they were just funny guys in jeans and a baseball cap, seemingly normal. I’m not really into screenwriting, but it was still interesting to learn about it. My favorite part was when Luke told about how someone had followed him to his room at the hotel last year and stuffed several scripts under his door. I might have done it.

Over the next few days, I will probably write more about the writers’ conference because a lot of stuff happened and I don’t want to tell you it all at once. I know for sure I will be telling you about the plumpy woman who wore a dusty leather Indiana Jones hat, had frizzy hair, and carried a suspicious wooden box around with her. Later.