The cat is out of the bag. Its no secret. I may be the most genius screenwriter in the entire world, but no one really knows that yet. Until they do, I work at Starbucks. Part time. In the mornings. The rest of the day, I write.
I came across this article. Looks like I was about ten years too late, but this is a great story. The very Starbucks that I trained at, and have worked several shifts at WON the California Lottery in 2000. The entire store did a pool, and they together bought the winning ticket. I was talking to some locals, and basically the next day everyone quit and disappeared to chase their dreams. Very cool stuff. Below is the Los Angeles Times article from 2000:
Feeling ‘Like a Million’–or $87 Million
Lottery: Thirteen workers at a Mid-City Starbucks will share a huge SuperLotto Plus jackpot.
October 25, 2000|PATRICK J. McDONNELL and CARLA HALL, TIMES STAFF WRITERS
Their lives are a catalog of workaday hardships: One has a toddler in the hospital. Another lost her job, her husband and her son in a span of a few years. A mother of three told a friend as she left work, “Something’s got to change. I’ve got $1.50 in my pocket.”
She couldn’t have uttered that line more on cue if she were in a made-for-TV movie: Cut to workplace. Employees screaming and laughing and crying. You’ve won the lottery!
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That was the real-life story for 13 employees of a Starbucks coffeehouse at La Brea Avenue and San Vicente Boulevard who will share an $87-million California SuperLotto Plus jackpot, the fourth largest in state history.
“I thought things like this happened to other people, not to me,” said Mary Ann Champaine, the 53-year-old Starbucks manager. She was her usual blur of energy Tuesday, serving coffee drinks, talking about her colleagues and customers as if they were her surrogate family.
These workers, who beat the 41 million-to-1 odds to win, are not college students earning extra money. For the most part, they are trying to support themselves and families on $7.50 to $10 an hour. The winners are a very Los Angeles blend, including blacks, Latinos, a Filipino American, a high school student, one Mexican immigrant and single parents–all stunned to find themselves Lotto winners.
They’re not quite millionaires, however.
Champaine, who bought the tickets, did not mark on the ticket whether she wanted the millions in a lump sum or a 26-year annuity. “I never expected to win,” she said. So the jackpot automatically gets paid out over 26 years.
When the amount is stretched out over 26 years and divided among 13 people, each of the winners will still get $167,307 for the first check. Annual individual payments will increase until each gets a final payment of $341,307 in the 26th year.
Their total take: $6,692,307 each. That’s before federal taxes.
Even before getting their checks–which will arrive in two to six weeks–they have become instant celebrities.
Their Mid-City Starbucks, in which Magic Johnson is an investor, is usually a mix of working-class coffee drinkers. On Tuesday, the cafe was suddenly overrun with TV cameras, Starbucks public relations officials and investment consultants, also hoping for some good luck.
Regular patrons were delighted for their servers. “It just couldn’t happen to better people,” said Craig Quinn, an aspiring screenwriter.
The Starbucks workers are a close-knit group; they seem to enjoy each other and their customers. “This place is like family,” said Quinn, who was working at his laptop on a screenplay about blues legend Robert Johnson. “Once they know you, they actually bring your coffee to your table.”
Champaine, the manager, provides much of the store’s heart and soul. During the bus strike, she picked up stranded employees and ferried them to work. Among her friends who heard the news of her good fortune was Los Angeles Police Department motorcycle Officer Patrick W. Beighley. He marched into the coffee shop early Tuesday and embraced the wiry grandmother. “As far as I’m concerned, she’s the sweetest thing on two feet,” he said.
It was Champaine’s idea to buy lottery tickets when Saturday’s jackpot swelled to $87 million. She’s not a gambler and played only occasionally. But this jackpot was too high to pass up. She organized workers into a pool, with each one contributing a dollar, and dashed to a nearby liquor store to buy 13 tickets.
“Without her, this would not have happened,” said one of the winners, Leah Coley.
Champaine even put in a couple of dollars for employees who weren’t working Saturday. (They have since paid her back, she said.)
Champaine picked the numbers on 11 of the tickets. The two others were Quick Picks, chosen by the lottery computer. It was one of the those Quick Pick tickets that yielded the winning numbers: 2, 14, 15, 36, 45, and a Mega number, 8. She didn’t even check to see if she had won until Monday, when a friend called to say the liquor store near her Starbucks had produced a winner. (L & E Liquor, will be awarded 0.5% of the jackpot, or $435,000.)
“It’s like a miracle,” Champaine said.
At a news conference Tuesday in Van Nuys, the winners were shy while answering questions.
“I feel like a million dollars,” said Rick Camat, 28.
Arely Gaytan, 27, mother of a 6-year old, Vanessa, said: “It’s all for my daughter. It’s all going to be for her and her education.”
The California lottery has been around long enough–about 15 years–for plenty of cautionary tales about lottery winners: Many either squandered their money or ended up as miserable as they were before their windfalls.
“People who expect too much of the experience were disappointed,” said Michael Birnbaum, a Cal State Fullerton professor who received a National Science Foundation grant in 1994 to conduct research on past winners of the lottery’s Big Spin. “People with more realistic expectations were more happy.”
So far, the still-astonished Starbucks winners have the barest of expectations. Those without cars, for example, plan to buy them. All of the workers said they would continue at Starbucks, at least in the short run.
“I’m hoping to start a business,” said Camat. “If I invest the money it might multiply.”
The youngest winner is Keana Essex, 16, a junior at Alexander Hamilton High School, who wants to use her earnings for college. She plans to be a doctor.
Champaine, the eldest of the group, broke down in tears as she talked to waves of reporters in her Starbucks shop. She was in her green apron, recounting how her husband died of cancer last year, how she lost her job when retailer Fedco went under last year and how her son, 24, was shot and killed several years ago.
Starbucks became her home as well as her job. She is something of a mother figure here, offering advice and listening to stories. She is still thinking about what she will do with the money. She may take her 70-year-old mother on a cruise. First, the Indiana native wants to buy a dining room set.
“I’m not going to go out and buy a house or a car,” she said. “My little Corolla takes me back and forth just fine.”
*
Times staff writer David Pierson contributed to this story.
The secret to creativity. There are hundreds, thousands of books written about it. As a writer, or a painter, or a dancer, where do you find your inspiration, or motivation to create? No matter what my accomplishments, or how great of leaps I’ve made in my own art, it always seem that the very next morning doubt has crept in, that I no longer believe or that I no longer want to create.
However, recently I discovered a secret. Music. Or, as I like to call it Muse-ic. I’m not saying that this technique works for everyone, but I have a suspicion that it just might. It doesn’t matter how discouraged I feel, or unmotivated, or even worse, unable to create, I force myself to just put on headphones, and listen to good music.
There is something about it that is like a direct link to inspiration. There are a few different explanations for this that I could shoot a guess at. Perhaps listening to music is a direct connection to all of the artists and art of the past. Maybe it helps me tune into the right rhythm. Maybe its even a connection to a higher power or God.
All I know is that it switches my heart and mind into a different place. Doesn’t matter what I’m thinking, when I put the headphones on, all the sudden I’m not thinking anymore and I’m just feeling. And then there is a flood of inspiration.
Here’s one song that’s been an inspiration to me. I just saw the music video and think that it is kick ass.
Recently I had the privilege of being the director of photography and editor for the echo-luxury event Green Lounge in Los Angeles. It was a cocktail lounge environment that attracted celebrities such as Alicia Silverstone of “Clueless” and Ashley Rickards of “One Tree Hill,” to talk about the environment, wellness, and business.
Below is the promo reel that I just cut – please enjoy, and as always, let me know your thoughts!
This past Friday my friend Megan and I shot an audition video for her. She is auditioning for an entertainment group which will tour aboard a cruise ship.
Most audition tapes are pretty boring – they are usually shot on a tripod, and with the actor or actress in plain clothes reciting their monologue. However, we decided to make our video a bit more dynamic.
First of all, Megan researched her historic role down to the minutia, and found herself the perfect outfit. Part two – instead of shooting in a house or at a studio, we decided to take it a step farther and actually shot aboard the Queen Mary – a cruise ship from the early 1900s that rivaled the Titanic in size and grandeur.
Below is our completed video. Enjoy, and let me know what you think!
We have not me yet, but I look forward to working together soon. Just wanted to start out letting you know that you are one of my heroes, and truly have been an inspiration for the young entertainment professional. I’m frustrated with NBC for you, but at the same time very optimistic for where your career will head.
With that said, you and I both know that you have a few months of free time before you can be on the air again. With this time, I hope that you spend it relaxing, reflecting, and getting to spend some much deserved time with your family. However, once the kids are starting to be a headache, and you are starting to get the performing itch again, I’d love to invite you to join me on the set of my upcoming independent film staring Conan O’Brian. The pay sucks, but I think it will be a good experience.
You’ll play a Boy Scout Leader who is trying to prove to his son that camping is cool in a world of wiis and ipods in my movie “Man Scouts.”
Have your people talk to my people. Or just email me. Either way.
Yep. You guessed it. Just got a new camera. No hidden meaning in this title. Below are a few photos I took this week in Los Angeles of a very strange sight – a rain storm. After a long summer of fire and drought, we’ve spent this entire week in flood. Actually, today we had a few water spouts and tornado touch downs.
The camera is just a little point-and-shoot the size of a credit card, but it shoots at 12 MP, and can even shoot 720p HD video. It is the Canon PowerShot SD780. A very special thanks to the Bottorff family – it was their wedding gift to us.
Without further ado, here is our beautiful city during and right after a storm.
Allow me a bit of room here. These are my ideas, but I do not necessarily approve of them:
A homeless person asks if I have any ’spare change’ and I apologize that all I have is hundred dollar bills.
Another homeless person asks me for money and I tell them “sorry, there is a lot of competition out there – I already gave my change to another homeless guy.”
Best homeless sign I’ve seen to date. Very simple. It just said, “We’re Fucked.”
I was asked for $32 by a crazy person because he told me that his Ass was bleeding. Seriously. Then he wanted to show me.
I had a crazy person try to sell me a “wireless keyboard and wireless mouse.” They both had the wires wrapped around them. Clearly taken from the library next door.
The reason that we don’t have a recycling program in Los Angeles is because we have homeless people to do it for us.
A guy told me that he was starving and could I buy him a bagel. I said sure. Then he asked me to make sure that it was non fat turkey, jalapeño whipped cream, provolone cheese, and lightly toasted. All I was getting was a plain bagel. Something tells me he wasn’t that hungry.
While a homeless man was asking me for money, his cell phone rang.
Thank you all who tuned in on Thursday to watch me in Flashforward. Unfortunately, my face didn’t make it to the final cut of the episode, but there is a close up of the back of my head! I always knew that my hair was one of my most photogenic features. So, if you’d like to see the back of my head, it is on the left side of the frame right at 24:00 minutes into the episode if you are watching it below.
About two months ago I started seeing them outside our apartment. Two stray cats had a litter, and ever since then my heart has been entranced. Two little kittens. They were both so sweet, yet still were very dependent on Mom.
A week after they were born, I stepped outside headed for work, only to see that someone had hit one of the kittens with a car. It was too small, and too good for this world. After that I was determined to protect the other one in any way I could.
Since then, I’ve seen on a daily basis Mom, Dad, and the one kitten. Mom and Dad scurry away when they see me, but kitten usually stays around, very curious. On one particular day, I saw him disappear under our neighbor’s car. I looked under to see him, but no cat was in sight. When the neighbor stepped out, I asked if she wouldn’t mind popping her hood. She did, and right on top of the engine sat a little kitten. We were both glad that we’d checked before she headed out.
About a week ago I noticed that I was seeing kitten by himself more and more. On my steps. Meowing at the door. He’s about twelve weeks now. Finally on his own in kitten years…. So I’ve started feeding him bread. I’ve left bread crumb trails up to my apartment a few times, but without complete luck yet. I want to pet him, but he won’t quite let me, although he is very curious.
I’ve heard him crying outside. Its fall now, and its getting a bit cold.
So, two days ago, I step outside and I see kitten. But he’s not on the ground as usual. My neighbor is holding him! I asked how she did it. She shows me cat food. She tells me that he needs a home, but that she can’t take him. That she doesn’t have room….
So, Mojito is now living with me, and loving it. Unbelievably happy. He’s been looking for it for a while, and finally found a home.
Brace yourself, because I am about to give away the biggest secret of film & motion picture:
Its actually an illusion. The picture isn’t moving at all. You are simply seeing twenty four still photos flashed before your eyes every second. In one minute, you’ve processed fifteen hundred unique stills. They are all perfectly still, but your mind assembles them in a row, leading you to believe that you are actually seeing real life motion, captured on screen.
Visual Storytelling.
I open up most scripts, and I see just two thing: dialogue and description. The dialogue is usually the characters telling an audience exactly what they are experiencing, and the description is usually telling the audience exactly what the character is thinking. Both absolutely useless for a movie.
You see, you can’t shoot on film what a character is thinking, and it will bore an audience to death if an actor is actually telling what he is experiencing or feeling.
Ninety seven spec scripts out of a hundred are written like this. Well, actually, while I’m making up the statistics, it might as well be ninety nine hundred out of a thousand. And it is a huge red flag to me that the writer – although most likely talented – doesn’t have a clue about screenwriting.
All that a screenplay is, is a story told in pictures. In essence, a movie is just a picture book. Since we have a sound track, and since the pictures seem to be moving, most people think that the medium is somehow different, but if you look closely, this understanding of the medium is what makes the difference between the novice writer, and the expert.
The secret to writing a movie: forget that it moves at all. Forget that you are a writer – you are not. You are a photographer. Instead of telling your story with words, think about how you can show it with images. Imagine that you are trying to explain to a deaf person an experience that you had, and all you have are pictures from your Polaroid camera. Show those pictures in such an order as to show them your story. And now, as a screenwriter, know that you can take pictures of absolutely anything you want to get your point across.
When putting your masterpiece together, each sentence of description is one Polaroid photograph. Nothing more, nothing less. Describe that photo with one sentence, in the simplest way possible. Then line up hundreds of these Polaroids in a row, and simply describe each one.
When a reader reads this list of photographs, they won’t realize that they are looking at a series of still pictures. Their mind will blend it together, and create motion between them, creating a fluid story that they can see.
