The Rocker: The backstory rocks

You always hear these stories about these kids who move out to LA to pursue some cockamamie dream of becoming famous screenwriters.

Famous screenwriter! Hahahahahahaa!

Or maybe just working screenwriters.

Screenwriters? Working? Hahahahhaaaa!

They sleep on couches and they eat ramen noodles for dinner and they try to write, and they deal with the fact that no woman in town wants to date them after they let onto the fact that they're sleeping on couches and eating ramen noodles for dinner.

They support themselves working 80-hour weeks answering phones for jerks (see also: Swimming with Sharks), they get coffee and make dry cleaning runs, they get paid to read scripts that they know they could have written better. And they they try to maintain as much non asshole-ness as possible in an industry full of assholes.

The whole time, these kids keep writing. They write some bad scripts. They write some good scripts. They finish one script just as the exact same story is being produced. They finish another script and people they love crap all over it. Jealousy is a beast and in LA, people are even jealous of those who haven't yet succeeded. Just the possibility of success, it seems, is a very threatening thing.

Years later, one of those screenplays hits.

Some call it being in the right place at the right time. Some call it dumb luck. Some of us know that it was ten years of never giving up and always believing in yourself.

That's the story of my cousin. His name is Ryan Jaffe. He got a call one day saying, "Hi, you know that movie you sold us? The Rocker? We start shooting next week in Toronto."

It's out in theaters now.

It's not Rocky, it's not Dr. Zhivago. It's two fun hours at the movies, and hey, Salon liked it and Ebert and Roeper gave it two thumbs up and I'm so very proud of him.

The way I see it, if you can't shamelessly pimp your own family's accomplishments on your blog, then you're no damn good.

Yay Ryan! May this be the first of many.