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15 January 2012
“I think that you have to believe in your destiny; that you will succeed, you will meet a lot of rejection and it is not always a straight path, there will be detours - so enjoy the view.” – Michael York
What: Ben and Harper arrive in Joliet, IL, their destination. Needing some new clothes, they do a bit of shopping. The choice of store and sales clerk (Whitney) is no coincidence.
INT. DRESS FOR LESS - CASHIER – LATER
Whitney ringing them up –
Whitney: Take it you guys don't live around here?
Harper: I live in Chicago. He's from... up there.
Ben: Up north.
Harper: Where it's calm and peaceful and everybody's happy all the time...
Ben: Canada.
Whitney: Never been. Not that I've been anywhere.
Ben: You should go.
Whitney: Don't know anybody in Canada.
Ben: I meant anywhere.
She crinkles her brow, who is this guy? The register coughs –
Whitney: Price check -- be right back...
He watches her go. Harper watches him watching.
Harper: Damn. You want a piece of that?
Ben: Excuse me?
Harper: Can angels even do it?! Isn't that against some major Bible commandment thing?
Ben: I'm not -- and I wouldn't even if I was -- which I'm not –
Harper: If you knocked her up, would the kid be an X-men?
Ben: Inappropriate.
A Continued Conversation with the Writer:
Neely: Let’s to back to the beginning, or rather your beginning. Did you know you always wanted to write?
Brandon: I always knew I wanted to be in this industry.
Neely: Why?
Brandon: Unfortunately, and I say it with a smile, I grew up in the industry outside of the industry. My father, Joe Camp, was a writer, director, producer in Dallas, Texas. He created the character “Benji,” the shaggy dog, if you recall the movie. But he did all of it independently, completely outside of Hollywood. I grew up on sets, so I was cursed from the beginning. Both my parents begged me, begged me to please go be a doctor, a lawyer, a biologist or an anthropologist, go be anything but this.
Oh well, like father, like son, I suppose. I didn’t know any different. I missed the first grade because I was in Greece where my parents were shooting for a year. Then all of a sudden I was dumped back in school wondering “what the hell is this? I don’t understand this environment at all.” I was used to roaming around with extras and eating off catering trucks. It was a very strange thing for me to land back in the “real” world.
I told my parents that, unfortunately, whether they liked it or not, they had cursed me with this industry.
Neely: To discover the romance as a 6-year old is hard to compete with.
Brandon: It truly is.
Neely: What’s your background – college, major, horoscope?
Brandon: I'm a Gemini, I like coconut ice cream.
I went to school at Northwestern in Chicago. I majored in Speech. I did not major in radio/television/film; as a side note, I was not accepted into Northwestern's super duper screenwriting program. I still have the rejection letter. But I did take one radio/television/film class and dropped out after the very first day because it was just entirely too artsy for me. The professor, and I use the term loosely, came out and asked us to introduce ourselves as a camera. As in, what is it that we’re looking at on the wall? Of course everyone in the room is talking about the fact that they’re a 16mm black and white camera and they’re focusing on the thermostat that resembles… You get the picture. I left, never to return.
Neely: How did you get that first entertainment-related job?
Brandon: My brother had worked with Scott Rudin. I interned for Scott one summer during college, then he asked me to come work for him after college and I did.
