Everyone has seen at least one movie that contained a character that made you say; “How did they get my life on screen?”

No you are not alone. Think about this way, with the number of movies out there, sooner or later they get to you and don’t even ask for your permission. I guess you could say what this really shows is that we are not all that dissimilar from each other. Of course it also brings the thought to mind that there is not a single one of us that cannot be stereotyped or type casted. Could it be that life truly is a stage and we are merely players and if so, who’s watching?

Think about those moments in life that have you saying; “That would be great in a movie” or “That was a sitcom moment.”

We hang on to these memories in some form or fashion and never really do anything with them but “remember when…”

Just for shits and giggles (yes, I just said shits and giggles, get over it.), let’s suppose there is an audience that’s watching your life, now how do you behave?

What about your life do you want people to see, what don’t you want them to see?

Are you a protagonist that the audience will care about or maybe you are comic relief?

Are you the antagonist or a henchman of some sort?

The point is this, if you were to make a list of things about you and your life that would be willing to let others see and the things you would never want anyone to see, which list would be longer?

It’s kind of an interesting exercise that can really tell you something about yourself. It may have you reevaluating your life.

As I typed that last part a song came to mind. STORY OF MY LIFE by Social Distortion.

“Life goes by so fast
You only want to do what you think is right”

Saying that you only want to do what you think is right and actually trying to do what you think is right can often lead to conflict, which is the corner stone of a great character. We love the characters that deal with conflict, whether internal or external. I personally find the characters dealing with internal conflict more interesting. We look for growth and development of those characters as the movie goes on, but do we look for that same kind of growth in our own lives?

It is character growth that is one of the hardest things to get from the paper to the big screen. A protagonist will often grow through conflict, while perhaps the antagonist does not see any development the antagonist just is as they are and will progress no further.

Is there a point here?

None I can think of. Just rambling because I can.

Anyway, I am hoping to maybe start writing again on a weekly basis. I may hit the mark, I fail miserably, either way, thanks for dropping by, now go watch a movie.

Life is not a movie. I repeat, life is not a movie.

That was more for my benefit than yours. As The Movie Whore it is quite possible that I have seen so many movies that it has caused brain damage and mental illness. If you have ever read anything on this site, I am sure you will agree with the mental illness part of that. If you have actually met me and hung out, you realize the first part is probably true as well.

Driving a cab 60 hours a week leaves little time for writing until I can save up and get a laptop. My first night off is usually just me, ON Demand, Netflix and my computer. While I am writing this I should actually be reading a script for a TV miniseries a friend of mine wrote based on a real dude.

Back to being a cab driver. It is an interesting life and one well suited for a storyteller. However there are a couple things that are required to this job and be good at it.

1. Get your 215 and smoke up. (For those that can’t read code, get legal and smoke some weed.)
2. Never let anyone see you in a bad mood. (A.K.A. see number 1.)
3. Be a student of human behavior. You have 5 seconds or less to figure out how this ride is going to go. If you can’t read body language, voice tone and facial expressions at night in the dark, it’s going to be a long night.
4. Have a heart. Sometimes a crying drunk girl just needs to get home and you give her that free ride and make sure she gets home safe.
5. This may sound like it conflicts with number one but your ability to remember if you have heard that address before will be your best friend. Connect that address to the name and you may already know whether this is a gravy fare or just another ride in $5 hell.
6. Regardless of who the fare is, treat everyone with decency and respect and be sincere. You never know when that crazy person just happens to be loaded and you just picked up a $175 fare.
7. Have fun. I can’t tell you how many times just listening to the people in my cab had me completely entertained and they threw money at me on top of it.
8. Talk softly but carry a big flashlight. Just in case you have to be ready to crack someone upside the skull. I have not had to do it yet, but you bet your ass I am ready for it.
9. You absolutely have to be able to shake off that bad ride or burn (got to pick someone up and they are not there and you just burned gas and time for nothing.) real fast. (Again see #1.)
10. Be absolutely and completely honest and fair in what you do behind the wheel. You are not just you, you are “You the Cab” driver and you’re a walking, talking, rolling on down the road advertisement for your cab and your cab company.  When you have that dispatch phone, you give away that money call away because you know you’re not the next driver up for a call.
11. You have stop and realize that what you do for a living is a lot like having a gambling addiction with the highs and lows and always betting on that next ride.

If you think you can live up to these things, you might be ready to play the role of, I mean do the job of a cab driver somewhere that is not a major city, but a small ass college town where 75% of your income goes south for the summer. There are some nights that the $20 I bring home after a long 12 hour night shift was a night that every last dollar I made was nothing but pain and misery and there are some nights where I don’t bring home anything. In fact my last shift cost me $10, but it was night that was a lot of fun and well worth every dollar I had to pay for it. That is the life of a cab driver in College Town USA. It is life as a movie every night. Every night another story from the road or the sharing of stories while sitting around the shop waiting for the phone to ring.

You then add in the home life of a driver in his mid 30’s. The sacrifices made to go out and do this job. The guilt that comes with the fun on those nights you don’t bring home any money. The time away from family and missing out on watching your kids grow up. This is a character, I mean a job that is a story all by itself. Life is not a movie. But sometimes when you think of it that way, it makes the rough times a little easier. While I may be crazy, my crazy is what keeps me smiling and laughing every day. As much as I have missed out on with my family, I have also missed out on doing my other work on anything more than when I have the time and I am not exhausted basis. I’m missing out on that dream I have spent the last 3 years chasing after with the excitement of a child. I was doing something I had passion for and now I can barely find time to find that passion and keep it going.

This is why I really appreciate the people that come to this site and keep me going with their kind words. This is why I really appreciate the guest spots some of my friends do throwing a post up here and there. This why I really am missing out on my first on set experience. This is why the love of my life is the love of my life and I owe her big time. This why I owe my kids big time. Someday I will owe some friends big time.

You can see the underlying themes in your life like the subplots of a movie and it somehow makes it you feel alright. You call it crazy, I call it keeping the dream alive.  Part of that dream is taking all these stories and finding a way to get them on a screen, big or small, I don’t care, just get them there. I guarantee you would tune to watch it, because I am living it and it as entertaining as it gets and has something for everyone. I just need someone to listen to me ramble on and for hours at a time and work with me on creating the script for the film or the pilot TV show. I even have the town to shoot it in.

Have you ever watched a paranoid delusion unfold in front of you? I have. I picked this guy up on the 4^Th of July and he was having a bad one. He thought people were out to kill him and yes it was kind of like the movies. We made turns and went to empty parking lots before he asked me to take him to the local P.D. I had picked him up at the hospital where he should have admitted himself.

My life is full of these kinds of stories these days. It is what makes up 60+ hours of my week. So I am sure you can understand why I have not written anything in a while. It’s why I have not been in contact and why I was really happy to finally get my weekly car so now I can work based on my schedule and when the students come back I can make some real money. But there will always be those nights and those rides that I may or may not get paid for, but that I had to take because it was the right thing to do. Sometimes a drunk crying college girl just needs to get home safe and sound no questions asked. Besides I have 3 stepdaughters and one day they may need that ride.

This is just an introduction to what I call The Cinematic Life. Call me a narcissist if you wish but I have led an unusual life that shows no signs of reaching the really real world anytime soon. I have more stories to tell than you have time to listen. I could start throwing a bunch of bullshit smooth talking, waxing poetic, tooting my own motherfucking horn shit, but I figure I like you people and I only lie to the people I really don’t like. That’s if I talk to them at all.

Now don’t take this the wrong way but I don’t think in the last couple years that I’ve not had one single person make a donation using the Paypal link so I’m taking it down.  Oh and Fuck Google or any one that wants to pay me for ad space. If you want to help me pay the bills, help me find the funding for a film called THE SUICIDE FLOWERS. That paycheck won’t make me, but it will clear a lot of things up and get my head comfortably above water for the first time in years.

Then keep helping me find the funding for other filmmakers I know that just need that one break to have a career following their passion, living their dream, and making a living doing it. Whether or not I have a career in film in my future is irrelevant. However for Dom Portalla, Pete Conrad, Marco Alvarez and Kim Johannsen it would be a damn shame should their careers never get the break they each have worked tirelessly for.

Sometimes I think of dreams as wagers and we all have one hell of a gambling addiction. Just a thought.

I know have been rambling on a bit here and I thank you again for indulging me. Though I can’t promise when I should be back behind this keyboard a little more often. I should be around a little more often. At least til school starts then it’s back to the 70 hours weeks but getting paid well for it. Besides The Dude is going to school at his moms because it is the best thing for “him,” I will miss the hell out of him but the schools really are that much better. My job does require me to work weekends so I won’t be seeing much of him this year. Oh well sometimes we just have to do what we have to do. But for the first time in a long time I am walking with pride in my step and doing a job I really do enjoy. So go get drunk and fall into the back of a cab. Be nice to the dude/chick and tip him well. You never who that cab driver may be.

A final thought. I realize I may be coming off as a bit of sandy vag whiny douche bag, (Yeah so I beat you to it, get over it and move on.) however have a firm understanding that I blame no one for where I am at but myself. I know the decisions that led me here and I can’t say I would too much different, maybe a couple small things, but 99% of it I am glad to have had the time to collect the stories. One day you might be glad I did too.

The 1980′s was a decade that established a very clear template for the beast that is the “Movie Bully”. Be it Ace Merrill (“Stand By Me”), Heather Chandler (“Heathers”) or the legendary Biff Tannen (“Back To The Future”), a certain aesthetic had been laid and cemented for future generations of one-line spewing vermin. But some of the most easily overlooked bullies followed up only a decade later.

These are the top ten bullies from the 90′s.

10. Buzz (“Home Alone” – 1990)

Aside from the dude actually owning a tarantula (immediate “bully” red flag) and spouting off unwarranted, callous quips just for the hell of it (“I wouldn’t let you sleep in my room if you were growing on my ass”), Buzz ranks among the top bullies of the 90’s by purposefully eating all of the cheese pizza and therefore setting a series of events in motion that will leave his prepubescent brother terrified and alone, left to fend for himself against burglars who want nothing more than to maim and kill him. Nice going, big bro.

9. Joey Donner (“10 Things I Hate About You” – 1999)

In an effort to try and bang Alex Mack, this guy sets up an elaborate scheme attempting to have Heath Ledger (RIP) date her sister, to whom he is a constant asshole towards (can’t really blame him, Kat herself technically could qualify to be on this list as well). I suppose that’s all well and good, but when you start exuding self-serving, smug arrogance about being an underwear model and sketching dicks on people’s faces, that’s where I draw the line.

8. The O’Doyles (“Billy Madison” – 1995)

There seems to be a family tradition of hazing and harassment embedded deep in the blood stream of the O’Doyles, which these mean-spirited mutants never miss an opportunity to display. If the ginger’s in question had lived to discover the joys of alcohol it may have literally been the apocalypse.  Luckily, Adam Sandler ends up getting the last laugh. O’Doyle Rules!!!

7. Charlie Dillon  (“School Ties” – 1992)

Not only a bully; an Anti-Semite as well. Charlie Dillon makes no bones about the fact that he dislikes that David Green is a Jew.

How can anyone hate THIS guy!?

In fact, right up to the final scene, Charlie is still the same bigot he is at the flick’s start (proving not every bully must learn a life lesson). Enjoy your tour at Harvard, prick.

6. Rex Manning  (“Empire Records” – 1995)

The only bully on this list that’s well beyond his adolescent years, one could argue that Rex Manning is really more of a tool than a bully. However, look no further than the autograph signing sequence in the flick where one fan makes  the mistake of claiming that he was her “favorite singer in highscool”. Behind his smarmy grin and well measured reaction (“who’s your favorite singer now?”) is a stone-cold, bitter a-hole who in all probability spent his youth pushing kids off of swingsets. Plus, the fact that Liv Tyler throws herself at him hoping for love and instead is asked for a BJ (in so many words) is just flat out mean. Say no more.

5. Nancy Downs  (“The Craft” – 1996)

Oh sure, Nancy’s not so bad at first. A poor young girl from a broken home toying with some Wiccan black magic to try and fit in with her own little clique. But once this chick gets drunk on power, she’s off and running; chucking dudes out of windows and slitting her friends wrists just for kicks. And you thought wedgies were bad.

4. Fred O’Bannion / Shannon Hamilton (“Dazed &

Confused” – 1993 / “Mallrats” – 1995)

Though “Dazed & Confused” was made in the 90′s (but set in the 70′s), I still feel O’Bannion still deserves to make the list. If you object (you dick!) then I can just as easily point you in the direction of Affleck’s other “heavy” character, Shannon Hamilton. One is a dope who can’t pass the twelfth grade and likes to kick the shit out of underclassmen, the other a pompous proprietor of the pretentiously named “Fashionable Male” retail store who has a real problem with anyone with no shopping agenda. What do these two characters have in common? A proclivity to abuse a very uncomfortable place (what, like the back of a Volkswagon?). O’Bannion’s weapon of choice is a hand crafted paddle, Hamiltion’s is….well, you know.

3. Rick Sanford (“Angus” – 1995)

Before James Van Der Beek was well known as the WB’s poster boy for angst-ridden emotional teenage train wreckage, he was football star and all around douche, Rick Sanford. Rick was a guy so mean that he’d have kicked Dawson’s sorry ass all over that creek and then made his girlfriend date the fat kid in school, just so he and his jock friends could laugh about it afterwards.

Don't make Dawson sad. You wouldn't like him when he's sad.

Rick’s one sole set-back was unwittingly setting himself up for the biggest laugh in the flick when offering Angus his T-shirt but then slyly adding “it might rip on you”, only to have the Sherminator fire back with “that’s cause it’s cheap, like your mother!” You walked right into that one, Rick.

2. Stifler (“American Pie” – 1999)

Sure, he’s the most liked character in the entire franchise and maybe that scores him some points, but anyone who gives exlax to a kid whose sole hangup is that he’s deathly afraid of shitting in public restrooms undoubtedly qualifies among bully stature. Steven does get his comeuppance, however, when Finch gives his mom a “stiffmeister” of his own. Payback’s a bitch, eh?

1. Mike Dexter (“Can’t Hardly Wait” – 1998)

Mike Dexter is to the 90′s what Johnny Lawrence was to the 80′s – the end-all-be-all biggest dickhead that you absolutely loved to hate. The kind of guy who’d beam you in the eye with a raisin just so you couldn’t see the third dimension at a 3-D film festival. The kind of guy who’d self-assuredly proclaim that he’ll “kick everyone’s ass in this room!”. The kind of guy who’d dump this chick on the day of their graduation.

Would YOU dump me?

Why? Because he CAN. Because he’s Mike-fucking-Dexter. And you know what they say about Mike Dexter, don’t you?

Mike Dexter is a GOD. MIKE DEXTER IS A ROLE MODEL!!!

©DomPortalla 2010

Recently I was asked by Kim OJ what my thoughts are about the future plans for the sequels to AVATAR, the 3D wonder that has become home videos number one seller of all time. First let’s revisit AVATAR. I originally gave this film, a fairly favorable review. Let’s throw that right out the fucking window. Yeah kids, get ready for a rant and a half.

As time has passed and I have thought about this film and have discussed it with others, I find the things I originally tried to look over and dismiss for the sake of being able to enjoy such a visually stunning film, actually bug the ever living shit out of me. Maybe I didn’t want to believe that James Cameron made such a high budget rip off that had not a single original plot point or character. Whatever the case may be its abundantly clear to anyone who actually cares anything for film that AVATAR is a fucking joke and it also shows that most of the free world is populated by fucking idiots. Oh you think I am being a prick?

Think of it this way, go watch FERN GULLY and then tell me what you know think of AVATAR.

Now then for the sequel and Cameron’s plans to take the story under the seas of Pandora. I have one word for you, ABYSS. Cameron has fallen prey to something that a lot of filmmakers succumb to, find a formula and stick with it.  Fuck that noise. This is the same shit that seems to have happened to Ridley Scott with his upcoming ROBIN HOOD film. It is basically Gladiator in the forest, hell he even has Russell Crowe starring in the film. I hate it when once good, maybe even great filmmakers go to shit. It just flat out pisses me the fuck off. (Editor’s note: I am so glad I don’t have a fucking editor.)

I read a lot of scripts from some very talented people and the one thing they seem to have in common, original stories. Yet these talented people can’t seem to find anyone to fund their films. I hear you out there saying “Well then they must not be that good.” If that is you do the world a favor and get your whole head in front of the shotgun fucktard.

The problem is that Hollywood has no interest in putting out anything original, they want to push the next in a chain of formula films that they can market with whoever the young dipshits are that Disney keeps pumping out and don’t get me started on these evil fucks and the way they are already preparing our children with their prepackaged pre-formulated clone babies that they pump through their TV shows and then give them music deals and then put them in films. It is and endless chain of dummying down the masses with mass produced entertainment aimed at the moronic majority.

Let me be clear about something here. THE DARK KNIGHT has been heralded as a masterpiece film and you know what, as good as it is, it is still not an original idea. I love the fucking movie but it is yet another example of the death of original thinking.

I will say this, with the pioneering of the technology used by Cameron and crew, it does open the door to take that technology and marry it to an original story that will blow your fucking doors off.  If you applied that technology to a film I have been a part of since the inception of the idea, damn it would do nothing but enhance an already great story that is original in concept. I know its original because I was talking to the guy who did a lot of the writing and helped him come up with the idea. He is a brother and a fellow filmmaker tired of the endless pile of shit coming from the asshole of this world, Hollywood.

Another friend once told me he gave up on the storytelling and has become focused on the dollars and cents and it’s a fucking crying shame because the guy is a hell of a director. As much as I would love to make some money from my work as a creative consultant and producer, I hope to never lose my passion for telling a good story. I am that guy that everyone knows that has a story for anything. You could literally bring up just about anything I can tell you a story I have either heard or lived that would be similar and every word of it would be true.

What I really need is a writer who will shut up and listen to me talk for a while and start writing shit down and use it for it for a script or a book. I have led a varied existence and have seen so much in my short 35 years that it constantly amazes me the way I am still able to embrace life with the hope of a child.

I still get excited by every new experience and the stories it will provide me. I am a storyteller in a very literal sense. I don’t write my stories and I don’t sing (no singing because you would pay me to stop, I’m tone deaf.) but I do share the tales of my life and the tales of others lives on a daily basis and it is really the core of who I am. I know storytelling because it’s who I am. Not a literary author, not a screen writer, not a lyricist but an old fashioned storyteller. This storyteller fell in love with film over 30 years ago and I have almost reached the point where I have had enough. Reminds of a movie quote, “I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!”

I am truly mad as hell, but what is bigger than my anger is my sorrow and longing for the return of good film. Yeah so I am pissed off and a bit of a whiny bastard when it comes to film, but I have to go to another film and say “Sometimes you just have to say what the fuck?” And then you just throw caution to the wind a go for it. You go for it with every finer of your being and you don’t waste time or energy worrying about the rejection you face, you keep moving forward, you keep trying and quit acting like a whiny little artistic bitch and you get pissed the fuck off and do something about it.

Sometimes you realize the battle you are trying to fight is an exercise in futility and you sell your soul, not your soul, but your passion. You sell it to the highest bidder or anyone that’ll give you a few bucks so you can move on and try to forget what could have been and become part of the machine. Never forget your dreams. Never stop fighting. When they tell you that you’re no good, go talk to someone else. Use the law averages to your advantage. Surround yourself with people that recognize what you’re doing and will support you to the bitter end. By bitter end I mean the day you breathe no more.

I am mentally ill. Right, nothing you didn’t already know. However my obsession with film goes further than I’ve ever really wanted to admit. I tend to see life as a film. I look at what’s going on around me not just as a participant but as an objectionable viewer as well. No, I’m not high, well at least not in a while. Like I said, I’m mentally ill.

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