Writing at Roscoe’s Chicken ‘n Waffles

Last night I found myself chowing down at a Los Angeles institution: Roscoe's Chicken & Waffles. Roscoe's is renowned for its, you guessed it, chicken and waffles. The dinner item to get consists of a plate of fried chicken doused in brown gravy and onions which is served with a plate of two waffles that are smothered in butter and syrup. The real pros slice off some chicken, dip it into Rooster's Louissiana Hot Sauce and then stab a bite of waffle onto the same fork with the chicken. While this sounds like a potentially disastrous gastronomic adventure, I assure you that the end result is delicious and almost worth the heart-attack it will induce 20 years from now.

I ended up in Roscoe's because I was meeting with my college-buddy Gavin. Last Friday, we agreed to write a screenplay together. The deal was closed with a handshake outside of an art gallery closing. Neither of us was particularly inebriated at the time, so it was the sort declaration that might actually turn into a finished piece as opposed to the "Let's go sky-diving off Mt. Rushmore!" "Yeah TOTALLY!" interaction one often sees at parties.

It was a productive meeting, and we were able to discuss story ideas, aesthetic, and soundtrack in between bites of gravy-covered waffle. At the end of the meeting, we had beginnings of at least five stories. We've tasked each other with writing a treatment a piece before our next meeting.

It seems that there is no one way to make it as an actor down here. Some are extremely talented, others extremely pretty, others extremely well-connected, and still others are extremely lucky. Since I don't rank in the extreme in any of these categories, I am in the position of needing to make my own luck. The hope is that I can write a good screenplay that I can sell with me attached to the project. Of course, I might just be trading impossibilities, but it's worth a shot.