Mortonopoulis

Anne Heche, Toni Collette, Judith Godreche, Bill Clinton...

My first movie with glimpses of James Franco and Aaron Paul in their earliest days....

Richard Dreyfuss. Chris Gerolmo. Brian Cox. Bryan Singer.... and nervous breakdowns.

Would I betray others to get ahead? I'm not sure? Would i betray myself, oh, you betcha!

In my relentless pursuit of powerful Hollywood friends, I join a ski trip to Vail... I also kill a deer.

I hire what would become one of my closest friends and rivals.

A love song to the LA dining scene in the 90s and the beauty of Hollywood expense account.

My first Sundance was a revelatoin in so many ways...

It took a minute to get off Mike Medavoy's desk after my promotion, and it only happened after I really started to mess things up and thought instead of getting my own office; I might get fired!

The slow early days of Phoenix looked a little bleak and I thought I might never find that opportunity to get promoted...

hey, now-- after taking a break from writing about Hollywood (and publishing the first 12 episodes as a book), I'm back talking about the transition from William Morris to Phoenix Pictures - an independent film financing studio run by Mike Medavoy. This is kind of a long episode as it delves into what brought me to Hollywood in the first place and the pathology that makes me tick.   It's all kind of boring but this whole thing is an experiment so take it as you will!

This is a story about my daughter's graduation, the insane welter of emotion it caused, and the unlikely way I made it through it.

A life of childhood crime...

I've told this story in various forms over the years - its about the power of grief, and the power of creativity - however misguided or misplaced - to heal.  

It's a story telling experiment.  Here's one from some years back.  This recording is from SitnSpin - a storytelling project in Los Angeles that was a vibrant scene for many years curated by the wildly talented, Maggie Rowe.  This is the story of the time I tried - and succeeded - in creating a viral video.

We finally get to the end of the end as the agents reveal their true vampire nature. Literally.

the second of three parts chronicling the crazy last episode that marked my final days at William Morris...

My time at William Morris comes to an end with an insane crescendo...

A pastiche of some of the characters I came across at WMA...

More tales from my Hollywood early days... In a land full of phonies, my roommate's cat had me pegged as the phoniest...    

How to value a friendship in Hollywood?  Ask Martin Sheen, he probably knows...

Lessons from the Northridge earthquake...

Email was a novel tech in the 90s... and a dangerous one.

That time I house sit my boss's house and tried to navigate his kosher kitchen...

When I started at William Morris, I was the worst asssistant.  I could not even file...

Still not totally sure how I did not get fired that first week at William Morris...

Or how I nearly blew my first big opportunity...