The Aughts (and The Aught-Not- Haves)

Journal Entry:  January 19^th, 2006.  Two weeks after Hostel’s opening weekend.

My house is a mess, kind of like the house in “The Grudge.”

I’m 33 years old and I haven’t written a book or recorded an album, despite the fact I have music playing in my head at all times and talk to myself constantly.

But the good news is I get to do what I love.  I just don’t know what to do now.  What about “Hostel 2?”  Maybe  should just write or produce that one. Fuck, I dunno. How can I make it without my friends who I killed off in the first one?  I guess it’s like going to college, in that you have to make new friends and grow up.

In a strange way I feel paralyzed.  And what am I afraid of?  Failing?  What happened when I shot that new ending?  Some people didn’t like it but most people loved it. And you like it, too.  I was scared of doing it, but I did it, and I had a fun time.  So maybe it’ll be the same way with a sequel.

I can’t get my weight below 178 pounds.  I feel like a whale.

I have no energy.  I’m exhausted.

I can’t get motivated to do anything.  Even returning e-mails is a chore.  People get so angry with me so quickly if I don’t write or call them back right away, yet everyone’s calling me.  I can’t keep up.  People are sending me the nastiest e-mails, like I’ve betrayed them, left them behind.  Not successful people, they’re happy for me, but the ones who haven’t made it yet, it’s like they want to poison my moment.   I feel like I start every e-mail with an apology.  Why? I can’t babysit these people’s feelings anymore.

And I want to get to that place where I’m happy but it’s hard to come back off the high of being number one.  Everything’s a letdown after you’ve been on top.

I feel like I have more of a temper than I care to admit. Maybe a part of me enjoys being difficult, almost as a way of rebelling from having to be polite to everyone all the time.

I need to be more like Robert Rodriguez.  I have to jump right into a sequel and be productive.  I’ll never have a body of work if I sit around talking about making movies.  I need to stop overthinking this.  I need to shut out and focus.  But this is all I do, all the time.  I need to find the balance but I can’t seem to be happy unless I’m all consumed with a film.  This is only going to get worse.

Spring 2006.  I spent most of the time doing press in different countries with “Hostel.”  I went to England, Argentina, Spain, France, Brazil, Mexico, Prague, and finally finished the tour in Germany.

Journal Entry: April 8^th, 2006.  Saturday in Germany.

I never realized what full on first class travel was like until I started touring with “Hostel.”  I had no idea this even existed, but at the airports they have this “V.I.P.” service.  No lines.  At all.  Someone meets you at your car, takes your passport, escorts you past everybody, and takes care of everything for you.  They walk you from the ticket counter through security, to the first class lounge.  But at the airport in Frankfurt they even had something I never knew about that was beyond the First Class lounge.  I had a V.I.P. suite.  A woman met me when I got off my connecting flight, and took me in a Jaguar across the tarmac to some private entrance.  I felt like the president.  She took me into this suite, which was basically a hotel room without a bed.  I had wireless internet, my own food, my own bathroom with a shower.  It was ridiculous.  I actually didn’t want to leave, I wanted to stay there and just keep using stuff.  The woman even went and changed my money for me.  She then took me in the car, and escorted me onto the plane, right to my seat.  It was ridiculous.  The only downside is now I know this exists, and if I ever fly on my own I’d be too cheap to pay for it.  But I’ve just made a lot of money for Sony, so it’s nice when they spend it back on me.

The only thing that fucking sucks about Lufthansa is the food.  They do all this bullshit with putting a rose in your chair and bringing you face towels every fifteen minutes, but then when you order an entrée, they’re out of it.  On the flight over, which is 11 hours, they had some horrible fish, chicken, or some awful pasta as a choice for dinner.  I asked for the chicken.  They were out of it.  I mean, there are probably 12 people in first class.  How the fuck can they be out of chicken?  So I asked for the pasta, and it was disgusting.  And I was fucking hungry the whole flight.  So now on the way back I asked to sit up front so they’d take my dinner order first.  Some lady just came up to me and started giving this song and dance about how they were out of chicken.  Excuse me?  Sony probably paid $5,000 for this seat.  How the fuck can you be out of chicken?  I don’t want to eat some shitty halibut or German catfish or whatever the fuck it is.  And it’s not like I can pass on eating because we still have 9 fucking hours to go on this flight.  They put you in a private car and shuttle you around, which is totally unnecessary, but when it comes to, oh, EATING, they fuck it up. So this woman “from the kitchen” comes up to me and asks me if I could order something else, because she thought they had 4 chickens but they only have 3.  Now of all the people who ordered chicken, why the fuck do you think she asked me?  How does that happen?  Because I’m the only one in first class that doesn’t look like a 52 year old stock broker?  Because I’m the only one in sweatpants and a Nike running shirt?   Because she thinks I’m some kid and not some businessman?  I said “this happened to me on the way over to Germany” and she said “Oh, I’m sorry, I’ll ask someone else.”  Goddman fucking right you will.  Or you’ll get a fucking face full of cat fish.

>>>NEXT: Into The Grind (Click here to print.)

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.