Posts Tagged ‘Inspiration’

Wrapped up my stay with Stagger Lee in Corona Del Mar tonight and made my way north, back to C-City and the grind. Round two with the meetings starts tomorrow. Currently we have three on the books for this week. I’ll cover them as we go. Going to be speaking with the Feature Agents tomorrow. Hopefully we’ll get the fire going as well, soon.

Sad to say good-bye to Stagger. He’s my dear, dear four-legged pal. Always sleeps right by the door to the room I stay in, so he knows when I go to bed at night. Usually he’s there when I wake up, if I’m late getting going in the morning.

Had a fabulous dinner with Polly, Will, and J.P. before heading back. It was the perfect cap to my stay. We had a grand time at Gulfstream catching up. It’s always so wonderful to see them. Before, J.P. and I had an in-depth conversation about the first grade, how much he likes to not go to school, and how he tries to fool his mother into thinking he’s sick. We covered all the bases. (I refrained from getting into the “Doc” story.) He was not too thrilled with the prospect of homework every night. And at dinner, Will and I talked movies a bit. Mainly Harry Potter, but we also dipped into Toy Story 3 (which he hadn’t seen yet, but I recommended highly) and Despicable Me which got a thumbs down, despite the Henchmen. Will is quite the young man these days, too! The only bummer was that Joe and Matt weren’t back yet. I always love my time with Polly, but when the rest of the clan is added to the mix, it’s a special treat.

After dinner, I made my way up U.S. 1, the PCH, through the coastal towns – all quiet on a Monday night for the most part. The last few shades of dusk heavy in the sky against a thin band of faraway autumnal burnt orange on my left, streaking what was left of the Pacific’s horizon, lingering out past the endless beaches and white-tipped waves rolling over the deep blue. The last few beats of sunset fading in the cool night air. Window down all the way rolling up the coastline, alone with my thoughts, all the way back to L.A.

I guess I didn’t get this entry in today, did I? No small surprise there. May take me a bit longer to “realize” that transition. Onward and upward to the matter at hand: tonight’s entry.

Colin, a loyal reader/brother-in-law to my writing partner Jason/proud father of an adorable brand new baby girl/and all around great guy, asked a question the other day in the comments section that actually echoed a question I had been asked just days earlier at a birthday get-together by a new acquaintance. It’s a question that I’ve noticed is actually coming up intermittently lately to my chagrin and growing curiosity. I had never really thought to much into the matter until recently. Despite the recent thought on the topic, I was caught rather flat-footed in my response; so I thought – let’s give Colin’s question a spin. So here it is:

“My question for you: I know that you have quite the knack for gritty crime writing (which I love. It’s a favorite genre if mine). Assuming you do not currently live a life on the lam, where do you find inspiration for details that make your writing believable, vibrant, and compelling? Personal experience… Nonfiction reading… Research… Documentary… Friends in the business, so to speak… Other films… Vivid imagination?”

Excellent question, Colin. (Thanks!) First and foremost let me provide some context. I was initially a poet. This was in high school, through college, and shortly after college for several years (three or four to be exact.) I wasn’t a mess around, scribble some bad verse in a journal writer, either. I had that phase in junior high – mostly eighth grade. Nope, I was really into William Carlos Williams, Jim Carroll, Allen Ginsberg (huge influence early on,) Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and e.e. Cummings (another really big influence, though unlike Ginsberg I didn’t write in e.e.’s style, I just really connected with his opaqueness and coded emotional specificity) by sophmore year and had adopted an almost daily writing routine.

I always loved movies. Grew up in a family that loved movies. But, I had no concept of screenwriting until my junior year in college. But, in all fairness and to bring it back to the topic at hand, I was always particularly taken with thrillers. It was my predominant genre, with an even deeper love of the heist movie. My mother is a big Alfred Hitchcock fan. An early formative cinematic experience was watching Hitch’s seminal Dial M For Murder in third grade one night with her and being totally mesmerized and freaked out by the suspense all at once.

But how did that all mix together, along with some other elements, into the kind of crime writing I tend to more and more consistently skew towards these days? Part of it probably lies in those formative years when I seemed to watch almost ever conceivable 80′s B Movie thriller (Mean Season, Manhunter, Black Widow, Thief, Tequila Sunrise, No Way Out, To Live And Die In L.A., 52 Pick-Up, and on and on.) Part of it lives with Professor Jim Balestrieri, who first taught me screenwriting as an Undergrad. We bonded over classic Film Noir and I ended up educating myself by watching all those classics (Double Indemnity, The Big Sleep, Ace In The Hole, Sunset Boulevard, The Killing, Asphalt Jungle, and on and on. )

But those are mostly starting points. Initial sparks to where I am now. The main fire that all this is forged in, with out a doubt now that I have some distance from it, was my time bartending in Chicago and my lost years as an alcoholic and drug addict. In those lost years, even back late in College, definitely during my year in San Francisco right after Undergrad, and then about two years into the Chicago tenure, I lived, worked, and socialized in a world of mobsters (Ukrainian, Sicilian, and Polish,) gang bangers, suspected murderers, hustlers, Hells Angeles, “dancers,” thiefs, fallen cops, cowboy narcs, an FBI Agent, ex-cons, soon-to-be-cons, and other fringe opportunists on the make. Even some of my bosses in Chicago were definitely hoodlums of  some kind or employed hoodlums. This I chalk up to the different things I chased through the nights, the company one keeps when chasing those things, the clientele a bartender’s bound to get in a dive bar in a pre-gentrified inner-city neighborhood (which is what I was for most of my bouncer and bartending career in Chicago.)

All that became material. And when I finally wised up and stopped chasing those things, those people still frequented the bars where I worked, especially when I worked at that juncture – which was the off nights like Sunday’s and Mondays, or Saturday open – basically the quieter more Barfly shifts. This is when I would endure or listen (depending on my mood and the drunk on the stool) to countless stories told by these folks for hours on end. Also at this point, when I was clear-headed, I definitely became closer to the Beat Cops and Detectives who would come in on an extremely regular basis, listen to their stories because they always wanted a sympathetic ear and someone to buy ‘em a few beers. One of the last joints I worked in was so slow on the one night – Monday – that I closed that usually it’d be me and this one really nice, veteran Beat Cop who came in without fail after getting off of his shift, before going home to his wife. Sometimes his buddies from the force and join him. This went on for the better part of a year.

(As a side note in Chicago you just can’t live there and not encounter or have to deal with political corruption. I’ve always wondered if Philly is the same way. In Chicago. especially in the restaurant and bar business, it’s a game of graft to keep your business afloat. I’ve witnessed some wild turn of events on the Alderman/Ward level of city politics. Corruption is a way of live there.)

There’s some other factors, too. In Undergrad, I experienced the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer first hand as he was living in our part of Milwaukee, had walked the streets we had walked for several years, lived in an apartment building that students had lived in previously (and I had gone to a party at.) One of my first internships was for the ABC News Affiliate and their morning talk show. After his arrest, he was interviewed via phone by the morning show’s host and I was allowed to write several questions for the interview. In that same internship, I’d be in charge of culling the different story leads for the Saturday ten o’clock newscast and would have to call all the police watch captains to check in, see what was happening – as well as listen to all these scanners.

The one word I come back to in Colin’s question though is compelling. For that the roots run much deeper, or at least the roots of the interest in the actual act. I’ve always been fascinated by the actual psychology behind both the criminal and the lawman, with all its variants. I’ve found that, despite their potentially different external personalities, all cops have a similar baseline in their core mindset that bonds them even if they don’t realize it; whereas criminals seem to have a wildly divergent mindset amongst their own, a total grab bag to why they make the bad or desperate choices they make. I can’t lie, of course, and say that I haven’t committed various criminal acts on the more minor end. My nickname “Doc” comes from an epic act of forgery in High School that went on for some time and involved an actual forgery kit that I cobbled together to achieve my goal – cutting class to hang out with girls. This is just one small example and not an isolated incident.

I guess what I’m trying to say in summation is that beyond the actual events, the stories told over a bar top, the racing through the streets in places that I shouldn’t have been – despite all that raw material and a love for stories (in books, films, on stage, TV, comic books) that deal in that raw material; there’s also a core emotional impulse behind these gritty characters and their stories that I’ve been after for a long, long time in my work. Whether its those carrying the badges or those breaking the law, I’ve seen in real life (as they’ve literally sat side by side at a bar) how they’re two sides of the same coin. I’ve been fascinated with trying to crack emotionally what connects them. I hope that’s been compelling.

Whew!  Thanks for reading. So much still left to say, but I think this captures it enough.

Good Night!

So much to gab about, so little time tonight to gab about it. So, without further ado, let’s hit it:

-I’m hesitant to say anything about the Cardinals at the moment. (Did you see tonight’s box score, Dad? Not bad. Not bad at all.) Let’s just simply say: YAY! And leave it at that.

- Mouth? Still sore. But, starting to settle in. Body? Still discombobulated. Though I think that’s more from the 48 hour write-a-thon I found myself in, before the final 434 on Thursday. BTW, that script is looking quite sharp. It was a rewrite of one of Jason’s – a spare, dark psychological thriller. Near my sweet spot, so to speak. He did a pass, after I wrapped up on Thursday and the script sparkles in my opinion. Truly sparkles. I want to see this movie. See what a director could do with it.

- The delightful Ms. Antone is in town for the weekend from Prescott, AZ. Always a major league treat! We hustled out to see a play at the Pasadena Playhouse. It’s called boom by Furious Theater Company. It was not the best thing we’ve seen. A little annoying. Tough to say if it was the direction, though, or just the play itself. Overall, I’d say the production was quite well done – acting and set design. But the story turned on a rather trivial and tired joke at the end, with far too much wackiness before that to really hinge on something so – plain. One notable to the evening is that this production featured Julia Duffy, mostly known for her work as a series regular on the funny and endearing sitcom, Newhart .

-Tonight, my niece, Ellen, had her high school graduation party. I wish I could’ve been there, or, more importantly, there on Sunday when she graduates. She’ll be off to Saint Mary’s of Notre Dame, in South Bend, next fall. Congrats, Ellen!

- I’m just glad Ellen made it home, safe and sound from her senior trip – a mission trip to Guatemala that some students do as their senior project. All the students do some sort of aid work as their senior project. This particular trip took place this past week. Which meant that they were trapped in Guatemala after the volcanic eruption and then tropical storm. You can read about it here.

-Always makes me a little melancholy when someone I love, who’s heart is still full of wonder and isn’t hardened to the roughness and inexplicably tragic in the world quite only to get a random glimpse of it before they should. I made choices that I’m not so proud of when I was quite young, lead an extremely reckless and self-destructive life when I was in high school, college, and my 20s. This life brought me out into that rough and inexplicably tragic world far sooner than I should’ve been. When I look back on some of those things, string them together in their proper context, and look at them again in clear eyes, I wouldn’t wish that for anyone’s teenage years. Not what I saw. Not what I did. Not what I learned – about myself, about others, and about the world.

-I have three days to rewrite the play. Should actually be a mellow experience. A nice victory lap on my MFA career.

-I’ve made the decision to search for a 2bd/2ba apartment with my buddy Jacob Bursten-Stern, a fine playwright, former HS basketball star, and good guy. I’ve known Jacob for the full three years of school. We both worked together, as well, at the UCLA Film Archive during our first year. We go to lunch every few weeks, talk shop, etc.. He’s also a very good friend of Tiffany’s, a playwrights who plays poker, has good taste in TV shows and – with Tiffany – kept me in it to win it with playwriting this year. We’ve been discussing this, after Tiffany suggested it, for a couple of weeks. Kind of amiably considering it. Bottom line came down for both of us, at different times, this week and the fact of the matter is that we can find a place in Culver City that’s big and will go for $1300 to $1500. Split that in two, plus split the bills and all of a sudden, I cut my monthly by a third, which is nothing to sneeze at. So, for July 1st as the target date. I hate to give up living alone. But, I’ll have plenty of time for that later. Need to stay in the hunt and this will help that – tremendously.

-Been a frustrating week on the business side of things. That’s all I’ll say for now. It is what it is. Suffice to say, this business is not a very above board, say what you mean style of business. Deciphering the different layers of “I said this, but really meant this.” Or, “I agree to this, but what I really wanted was this.” Is a major pain, most all the time. But, it’s also par for the course, unfortunately, and you just have to grin and bear it. Best advice? Keep writing.

- YAY REDBIRDS!

-Coach John Wooden, The Wizard Of Westwood, passed today. He was considered not only one of, if not the, greatest basketball coach/es. More than that, though, he was a teacher, a mentor, a molder of men. As Vin Scully said: “He is a genius in his ability to inspire There are a few giants who walk among us. He was truly one of them.” Coach Wooden’s spirit pervades all of Westwood. Not just in a basketball sense, but in an inspirational success. One of my favorite Wooden quotes:

“Success is never final, failure is never fatal. It’s courage that counts.”

Below is an brief video from UCLA’s tribute page for Coach Wooden. In it he talks further about failure:

“In life there will be peaks and valleys. The strength of a person’s character depends on their ability to accept both success and failure. Gonna have both.”

That is a lesson former Sony Pictures Head and famed Producer, Peter Guber, who will speak at graduation on Friday, taught quite eloquently in his opening lecture for his class ‘Navigating A Narrative World.” I believe he mentioned that he had learned it from Coach Wooden, but I’m not sure. It is, I feel, the core lesson that UCLA teaches and a resounding truth to life that is all too often overlooked. In all things and in all lives there will be peaks and valleys, you must reconcile that in your heart, have faith and learn to grow from both.

At the end of the tribute, Coach Wooden intones a beautiful poem on letting go of the fear of dying.

God Bless and Good Night.

Sorry for the low-posting the past few days. Hopefully, I’ll get back on track tomorrow.

Dave is back home, sadly. We did have a great visit, though. He’s a great dog.

Tomorrow will mark one week left in Grad School. There’s a ton of work to be done in the next seven days. It really won’t let up until a week from tomorrow when my last project, the play, is due. I finished the rough draft. Heard from Hanay, who wrote that he dug the final scenes – it was a good emotional end. But, between now and Tuesday, when it’s due, I have to bring all the parts together and make them sing together. Going back to the post where I discussed the differences between the excavation of playwriting and the construction of screenwriting; I’ve finished the majority of the excavation and now must clean it all up and string the incidents into a polished exhibit (to extend my archaeological metaphor too far.) That’s going to take some work. Mixed in with that is my feature screenplay, due this Thursday at three.

Then graduation and then, hopefully, a career somewhere in their – teaching, writing. Something with health insurance, maybe? I’ll admit it – because it’s good to admit it/get it out of my head – I’m scared. Real scared. Not debilitating scared, due something I’d regret or freeze up scared – more healthy, take a step back and reflect scared.  The past three years have been a dream come true on many levels – some obvious, some not so obvious. One of those not so obvious ones was the real gift of UCLA’s program – three straight years of pure writing time. That’s almost unfathomable to me and I just experienced it. The idea of stepping back from that total immersion to work a job to get by, so I can squirrel away a few hours of writing time every week seems sad and  is not very appealing to me, for clear reasons, I believe. Hopefully, that won’t happen. Or, it won’t happen for too long. Or, I’ll find a better balance (ahem, teaching?) between the two worlds (survival and happiness) than I could’ve in Chicago.

Basically, what I’m getting at, is that I would love to reach the end of the road and reach a conclusion to the striving I’ve done for this dream for the past twenty years. I know the striving part is probably part of my nature and won’t go away totally. Rather, I’m ready to strive for something else. To plot a new course over the next horizon – like build a wonderful, fulfilling career for instance – and settle into this life here in this city I love, doing what I’ve long believed I was put on this earth to do – tell stories, big and small, for the joy of others (and myself, too.)

In the end, all I can reasonably due (which I was reminded of today with some excellent, timely advice) is keep my expectations low (subterranean even) and my hopes high; if for some reason things don’t go the way I had hoped, just make sure to get back up and keep on trying.

So, one of the great television shows ended last Sunday night. Yes, it’s time we tackled the  LOST finale here at Guided By Wire. I do promise this – if you’re not a fan and don’t plan on watching it, that’s fine. I understand. I may think you’re really cheating yourself out of some prime entertainment, but I promise not to make fun of you. Well, not too much at least.

The finale last Sunday was some serious event television. With a recap, two hour special before the two and a half hour final episode, it was an epic evening of television. The likes of which we don’t really see much of anymore. The last time I recall such a big deal being made out of the end of a television show was SEINFELD. I know several iconic shows have ended since then, but they didn’t seem to rise about the usual chatter and galvanize fans and non-fans alike to watch. That’s what makes it an event. For LOST, they were not on their normal night and commanded the whole primetime block for the evening and late night as well (Jimmy Kimmel special after.). That screams event to me.

Why all the hullabaloo? Well, LOST was the last of a dying breed of shows. Sure, it had its hard core fans (LOSTIES) and it had been at for six years, featured a talented cast and had plenty of mystery going on week to week (some would say too much, but I would say to them never!) What’s this business about last of a dying breed? Well, LOST was epic. Unrepentantly epic, actually, with its sprawling cast and story lines, it’s Feature like attention to set design and cinematography, the pathological willingness of the writers to constantly push and play with the world they built from the pilot form, until it didn’t resemble itself (An island that travels through time?!?!) The production shot in Hawaii and didn’t shy away from featuring the undeveloped vistas play a role. Also, the score. The amazing, Feature like score that was crafted for different episodes and for the show as a whole. In fact, you could say when LOST was firing on all cylinders, we were getting a movie a week on Television and it was a gripping movie that get us on the edge of our seat. We probably won’t ever see that type of show – the epic, almost movie-like, sprawling, multi-threaded (different ongoing storylines instead of self-contained) one-hour drama – on television again. A show of that nature is a trying undertaking and in today’s humbled economy, as well as broadcasting’s splintered, specialized market, a show of LOST’S scope and cost doesn’t make much sense. You never know, but I would be surprised.

Many, many different threads were begun by the writers through the six seasons. A lot of the build-up through this season was, of course, all about the “answers.” How many would we get? We couldn’t possibly get them all, could we? What was important? What wasn’t? And on and on. This season, admittedly, buckled under all that build-up. It was unwieldy at first as a whole new thread, important to the Finale (which we didn’t understand at the time), was developed and the answers were given sporadically and not in the most dramatic fashion, more as an afterthought at times. That’s okay. It happens. They had a heck of a job to do, overall, and I think they did the best they could, in the end.  There’s been plenty of debate among LOSTIES and even NON-LOSTIES this week over the Finale, the choices made, the narrative path taken, and all that was left unanswered. Part of the struggle in this debate has stemmed, in my opinion, from making sense of the Finale in the context of all that came before it, essentially fitting it in as the last piece of a puzzle, and making sense of the new world threaded in this season and played out in the Finale. There’s been many theories trying to explain what happened and why. The best, or at least most concise and fun one that I’ve seen so far, is embedded below:

BE FOREWARNED: MAJOR SPOILERS!

Yes, LOST explained with post-it notes in about three minutes. And, he’s right, basically. He nails the core story and lays it out with great clarity. What I love though, is what he says at the very end.

“For me LOST isn’t a show that’s about the story, but a show about how the story is told.”

That is it. Right to the heart of it. With LOST and its Finale, as well as many other shows, what we love is how the story is told; or what we should love and become fans of is how the story is told. If your a LAW & ORDER fan, which ended its run this past week after twenty-one seasons on the air, you know what I mean. That’s another great example. They say in all storytelling there’s only six stories and what captivates us as audiences, what has captivated us from the fire light on the cave wall to the plasma glowing in the dark, is how those six stories are told. The LOST writers made a definite choice in the Finale to focus on how they would tell that last episode’s story, and subsequently through that choice, how they would tell the story of the series. Upon reflection, through this prism, it was a master class on storytelling. The Finale was completely satisfying in an emotional context, which is the choice that the writers made – emotion was the frame chosen to display their work over the past six seasons and it was an excellent choice because it made everything feel complete, it made us feel connected one last time to this strange world and these characters on their mind-bending journey. That’s no small feat – to make us care all the way to the final shots in over a hundred hours of storytelling. And that’s exactly what they did – by focusing on how to tell the story and not worrying about the story so much. Bravo and thank you, to the writers of LOST and this gentleman with his post-its and YouTube video, opening my eyes to the power of this principle.

Kind of a lost day, today, but I mean that in a good way. I told myself I was going to tackle some basic chores around the house – cleaning and laundry chief among them, some grocery shopping would’ve been good. But, I arose a little later than I thought I would and was slow out of the gate, got wrapped up in email correspondence and just, kind of, let the day go. These days happen. Usually after power sessions like the one earlier in the week. So, I’m not too concerned. All right, enough rambling about the non-state of my day, let’s get down to it!

-Went to see a fellow Bruin Scribe’s latest short film tonight – Lily, whom I have lunch or breakfast with every now again, commiserate with and tweet (on twitter for the non-tweeters reading) back and forth with a little. It was screening at The Bridges Theater on campus, along with a directing student’s thesis film, both Produced by Producing student Justin Begnaud, who is producing the serial killer script that Jason and I will draft over the summer. Lily’s film was awesome. I think I mentioned her other short won the audience award at the Milan International Film Festival recently. She’s a hard worker who goes out and makes it happen. She’ll be shooting a feature soon and i can’t wait to see it.

-Alan read the first 35 pages of the script we just handed in and loved them. Really, really loved them. I think he was a little blown away. That always feels good.

-What is up with the Cardinals? They won tonight, but not before starting pitcher, Brad Penny, after hitting a grand slam (yes, that’s right a grand slam) left the game in the fourth with a tweaked back muscle. Which Brad had admitted he tweaked a week ago, while pitching against Cincinnati. The teams been winning sporadically, the situational hitting has been atrocious, the pitching brilliant and the bullpen an adventure. But now, players are hiding injuries! (Mr. Penny was the second pitcher in the course of the past couple of days to go down with a more severe injury b/c he neglected to say anything the first time he was hurt. It boggles the mind! This is a multi-million dollar enterprise. You’d think they’d get a handle on something like this! Quite hiding injuries guys! This has been going on for years. Time to stop. It’s killing the team. Just killing it.

-A 13 year old boy become the youngest person ever to top Mt. Everest. I guess he climbed Kilimanjaro at 10! Man, talk about the best “what did you do last summer” essay when he hits school next fall. Seriously, though, if you can dream it, you can do it.

You. Just. Have. To. Try.

-Has anyone been watching Friday Night Lights, the television show (which is back on NBC now, from DirectTV) ?   It’s on tonight actually and is in its fourth season. If you haven’t been – and I wouldn’t be surprised if  you hadn’t – FNL is one of the most unsung shows in Television history – do yourself a big, big favor, listen to me, and go watch the first season on DVD. You will be hooked. Such a fantastic, heartfelt, stirring show, all about Texas small town High school football and the people of Dillon, Texas. It’s downright criminal that this show wasn’t a huge, smash success. It’s really struggled to find it’s audience, despite being possibly the greatest primetime soap ever. And easily tied for first or just barely a step behind The Wire as greatest television show ever.

-Facebook is about to log its 500 millionth active citizen, worldwide, in the next few weeks. Chew on that number for a minute – 500 millionth! The social media site has only been in existence for six years and was started in a Harvard dorm room (or stolen in one, depending on who you talk to about it.) If it were a country, it would be the world’s third largest – 2/3rd’s bigger than the U.S. That’s a lot of power (personal info on each user) that just a handful of people control. Staggering to think about, isn’t it? With all the privacy debates raging about Facebook, I wonder if they’ve grown too large for the U.S. government to sanctioned or demand changes from. I mean that in more of a philosophical way. Sure, you could pass laws and they’d have to be followed, but is the genie out of the box already?

-Real quick, on Facebook, THE SOCIAL NETWORK, a studio film about the founder of Facebook and the story behind its creation. Well, one of the stories. It’s a major Hollywood production – directed by David Fincher, screenplay by Aaron Sorkin and stars many young, up and coming or just breaking talent. Should be an interesting film. It was very hot screenplay a few months ago. They’ve been shooting some at UCLA.

-LOST ends, of course, this Sunday night with a huge, four hour event. I know of several parties with invitations out that are going on. It’s been awhile since I can recall a show ending that has generated this much attention and outpouring. Sure, this season, compared to last, has been a little off. Maybe it’ll play better, years down the road when all the hubbub and expectations have faded.

With that, I will bid you all, farewell for now.

Welcome to the back half of the week.

A shout out, first of all, to my dear friend Monique, wife of my other dear friend Mike. Both hail back to the Marquette days and are two of my most favorite people on the planet. That have a beautiful family on the east coast. Monique was also in graduate school as well. We were mirrors of each other. That is until monday, when Monique graduated! So congrats, Mo!! And to all the Howley’s! I know we don’t quite celebrate like we used to at the Love Apt’s or Roseneath, but I’m sure you guys acknowledged the momentous occasion in fine style.

I’m do back, pounding away on the script Jason and I are working hard to finish as soon as possible. Initially, I thought I wouldn’t post, but then figured the warm-up would do me well before I dove back in for the final lap of the evening. It’s been a long forty-eight hours, with the brunt of the work coming today. Much as I mentioned last night, I faired the same today – no so hot. It was a game of inches when I was looking for a blow out. What can you do? Keep going, that’s what. It eventually turns around. Late tonight I started to feel it rumbling towards take-off, thus this last lap. Usually if I’m struggling and I put in the hours I did today, I’d drop it for the night, come back in the morning, attack it again. What I feel like the writer is always trying to conjure, induce, cultivate, amplify, stoke, cook, construct is a certain magnetism to the project at hand. A kind of low humming, constant gravitational pull. The bits, voices and scenes are flashing through your head, story knots are being unwound by the diligent, tireless fingers in your subconscious, and your mumbling under your breath – chasing the rhythm and cadence of your characters’ voices, trying them on, tailoring them as you go and then loading them into your hands and your mind’s eye.

That’s why it’s tough – this magnetism – to switch gears quickly from one project to another. That’s what I’ve been feeling a bit lately. Many writers will not switch gears between projects like that. It’s one at a time. Jason and I separately, and now together, have had a habit of juggling many projects at UCLA. But that’s more out of drive, wonder, and need, mostly. In time we became accustomed to it. I don’t know if I, or Jason for that matter, would prefer that the workload ease off a bit or calm down to a one project at a time kind of thing. I don’t think we could go back to that. I once said that without thinking to my Therapist – retiring to Italy and not writing. Her reaction? She laughed out loud. Like surprised laughter she found it so absurd. Not the Italy part. The not writing part.

Well I’ve gone off on a tangent and completely gotten away from my simple post. Oh, well. Suffice to say, the magnetism is hard to get going, but when it does, there’s nothing like it. If it’s not happening, all you can do it keep tending to the just planted crops, waiting for them to shoot up out of the ground. All work will be repaid, eventually!

So, here’s a few simple quotes I found on the internet. They’re for screenwriting, but I think they apply to any craftsman. Hope they’re at least enjoyable to mull over. They’re great reminders for me of some of the fundamentals.

“Writing really is a process of discovery. The biggest enemy is being satisfied. When I think, ‘Oh, this is so great. They can’t change a word. They’ve got to film it exactly like this,’ that’s when I know I’m not pushing hard enough. That’s when you have to be most suspicious.”

-William Broyles, Jr. (Apollo 13, Cast Away, The Polar Express)

“Guilt drives me. I know I have to write every day. During the story period, it’s so much harder, it’s much more fluid… When I start to write, I give myself a goal of five pages a day. I don’t stop until I get that done, whether it’s taken me two hours or twelve. Sometimes if I get rolling I can write more, I can write ten pages… It makes you push. Because otherwise, you’d come to the tough part two pages in and you’d go, I’m gonna give up. You have to push through. Because with every scene you come to, you know that the last scene was easy to write, but this scene is impossible. And you get through that, and you see the next scene, and you say, that last one was easy to write, but this one’s impossible. Every single scene is usually like that. Always, impossible. And then the characters start talking to you.”

Paul Haggis (Crash, Million Dollar Baby)

“One thing that has proven to be true for us [Kurtzman & Orci] over and over again is not to be married to our words, necessarily, but to be married to the spirit of the words. Because there’s a thousand ways you can express an idea.”

– Alex Kurtzman (Mission Impossible 3, Star Trek)

“The writing is the easiest part of it. The trying period is the period of conceptualization, followed by research. This prewriting time can take anywhere from six months to ten years. But once I know everything there is to know about my characters, the actual writing of the script switches to automatic pilot. It makes no difference whether the script is for TV or feature–the writing period is the same: five pages a day, seven days a week. That’s it. Nothing magical. You just sit there and keep typing.”

– Stirling Silliphant (In the Heat of the Night, Charly, The Poseidon Adventure)

“You must write everyday. Free yourself. Free association. An hour alone a day. Blind writing. Write in the dark. Don’t think about what it is you’re writing. Just put a piece of paper in the typewriter, take your clothes off and go! No destination… pay it no attention… it’s pure unconscious exercise. Pages of it. Keep it up until embarrassment disappears. Eliminate resistance. Look at it in the morning. Amazing sometimes. Most of it won’t make any sense. But there’ll always be a small kernel of truth that relates to what you’re working on at the time. You won’t even know you created it. It will appear, and it is yours. Pure gold, a product of that pure part of you that does not know how to resist.”

– Alvin Sargent (Paper Moon, Julia, Ordinary People)

“Forget every rule any screenwriting guru ever taught you. Except one: Never be boring.”

– David Mamet (The Verdict, The Untouchables, Hoffa)

Good Night. Good Day. God Speed. I hope you’re smiling wherever you are. I’ll be at the keyboard.

I’ve actually been working this up for a bit. For some reason, I’ve become a bit persnickety about the photos I sometimes glean off the internet and couldn’t quite come to a resolution on ones I might want to post. But, tonight is a perfect night for it. I’m exhausted. The play is almost wrestled to ground. It’s tennish. I don’t feel like staying up late and I have a ton of work to do tomorrow and thereafter, as always. So, without further ado, a gallery of images that spark moods, characters, stories, or memories inside of me. Hopefully, they may do the same for you. (Helps if you listen to some Miles Davis or Coleman Hawkins while you look at them, just saying.)

These last two are a bit more about me and thus deserve some captions to explain:

Near Positano in Italy. This is where I will retire to write novels for my own amusement. Literally to a balcony just like this. Mark my words.

Where I will be joined by my faithful companion, Fellini, whom I will play fetch with on our long afternoon walks together along the coast and through the hills. He may have a companion, that looks just like him, named Ford. It all depends on the size of the Villa we decide upon.

Ciao!

The waiting is the hardest part.

I hope everyone had a fabulous Mother’s Day. I was going to post some photos, but in my internet vagabonding today, avoiding my play, which I need to wrap up, I came across a post I want to share. It’s a great depiction of the realities of this profession I committed my life to, this vocation which called me to it at an age when I just didn’t know any better (thankfully, or else I wouldn’t have had the fantastic journey I’ve had and met all the wonderful souls that I’ve met, along the way.)

This post is written by Noah Hawley, a novelist/screenwriter/producer who wrote for Bones and created/was showrunner on the short lived cop dramedy The Unusuals, and appears on his blog. He is talking about waiting for the decision on a pilot script he wrote to advance to the shooting stage, which is just one phase of “waiting” that occurs in the television development. This is two phases ahead of where Jason and I are with the recently optioned script.

Welcome to Pilot Season 2010

“This is the waiting. It is not for the weak of heart. It is a full time job, day and night. There is no minute during the waiting where you are not doing the job. There are no bathroom breaks, no time off to exercise or take a shower. It is waiting, much like breathing is breathing. The stakes when you think about them are both high and low. High because there is money at stake, a lot of money. And your career.

This is, after all, what the waiting is for o see if and how your career will advance. This is also why the stakes are low, because what is career, really? It isn’t health or safety. It isn’t family or happiness or love. It is food in your children’s mouth, sure, but food can be put in your children’s mouths any number of ways – though not as much food, and possibly not of the same macro-biotic, all-organic, grass fed, 70% cocoa variety. So the waiting is important and unimportant at the same time.

Which is why you feel so stupid about letting it get to you. For the way it makes you snark at your wife or lose your temper with friends. After all, this waiting time is free time. There is nothing for you to do. The scripts are in, the lobbying complete. You are literally without work. So go play with your kid. Go hiking with your wife. But then you remember, you are not without work. The waiting is the work.

This, you realize, is ultimately about control. Because waiting, by its very nature, is a byproduct of impotence. You are not in charge of this. You are waiting for others to decide your fate. Waiting to be told what the rest of your life looks like. You are waiting for direction, for guidance, for orders. But you are not the “give me the strength or serenity” kind of Which is why the waiting gets to you. But knowing this does not make the waiting easier. It is not a cerebral endeavor. There is no mental off switch, no way to think it away. It is like a river, a surging current that takes you where you do not want to go.

It is safe to say the waiting has you, the way a shark takes you in its teeth and dives for deeper water. And the worst part is – you volunteered for this. It is your reward for all the hard work you’ve done. So enjoy it. Stop fighting and go limp. This is the waiting, after all. It can’t last forever. It will be over soon, one way or another.”

The epic waiting is what baby writers (an industry term for new writers, not mine) may very well talk the most about in all facets of development – both film and television, with their reps, with everything. It is such an all-encompassing, unable to learn until you experience it for real, kind of gnawing perpetual frustration of seeming immobility. I imagine this is what it’s like for, say, cops between training and actual beat. You can’t really simulate the tension of something about to happen, something of consequence…or not (that’s always the kicker, it’s often more about the “about to” rather than the “happen.”) It’s usually next to impossible to express to someone who hasn’t gone through it. Think DMV. A perpetual day at the DMV. One long, cosmic trip to the DMV.

So, when you arrive finally, after dreaming and hoping and working to this point – then you realize it will always be a part of what you do in this business. Sure, if you have unmitigated success, you will not have to wait quite nearly as much. But, that’s in reality fleeting and, honestly, your last name (or mine) is not Spielberg, Cameron, Hanks, Lucas, or Pitt, the only people that occupy this rarefied air. Yes, Tom Cruise no longer does. That’s how rarefied it is. One couch jumping incident and you’re back to waiting, maybe not as much, but you are, end of story.

That is not to say I didn’t laugh reading Hawley’s well written depiction of it. Baby writer’s discuss it, lose the hair and sleep over it, wander around in a daze in the perpetual blanket of it, but eventually, you do accommodate. Eventually, it is what it is and no amount of dwelling will change it. Sure, it still gnaws, but not so thoroughly. I’m not there yet. Not by a long shot. But, I can feel I’m headed in that direction and that’s even a small victory. Means I’m toughening up even more. I’ll gladly take that.

Of course it’s common sense, but repeating it never hurts – Mom, thanks for putting up with me. From those first nine months until now, I’m sure you could’ve never imagined that it would go quite like it has, which has been an adventure to say the least! I wouldn’t be here without you, in so many ways, so thank you for me. I hope you know just how much I love you. I can’t wait to show you L.A. when you come for graduation.

I also think it merits a mention – thank you to my two sisters, Caroline and Claire, who are fantastic moms themselves and probably got more practice than they anticipated when I showed up on April 1oth, 1971. (Yes, I know. It opening day and everyone was headed to Busch Stadium. Until I interrupted it all.)

Then there is Grandma Pedrolie, a.k.a Nanna, who is no longer with us sadly, who was my greatest pen pal ever. Especially in San Francisco, when I was truly on my own for the first time in my life. I still carry those letter with me and can hear her voice every time I read them. I always cherished our correspondence, so very much. And of course, my mother’s mother, Mimi, who also had a profound hand in shaping who I am. Some of the best parts of me come from that woman, who I think is a saint. I wish I could still head to “summer camp” for a couple of weeks, play rummy tile, see a show at the Muny, and go to the swimming hole.

Then lastly to my wonderful Aunt Ginger, who besides being the best Aunt in the world, has also been like my west coast Mom and dear, dear friend, since I’ve been hear in school, going through so many changes and striving to reach such a difficult dream. I’ve been beyond fortunate to be able to escape to Scottsdale so I can spend time recuperating and relaxing with Aunt Ginger and Big Daddy. Of course, I couldn’t close without mentioning my cousins, Aunt Ginger’s daughters, Paige, Polly, and Megan – all married now with their own families, all wonderful Moms as well, who have watched over me in San Francisco and now here in L.A., cheering me on, and making sure, even in Chicago when Polly was there, that I didn’t completely lose my way.

You see, that’s one of the wonderful things about being the youngest. Especially when it’s by so many years. Your whole family watches you grow up. It can be a little overwhelming when your in the thick of it, but when your an adult you finally gain some perspective and you can gaze back over the years and see how they’ve all had a hand in raising you, supporting you, and loving you into who you are today. That’s an incredible gift. Not everyone gets that kind of treatment. It just so happens, in our family, there are a lot more women than men. So, the list is deep for “mothers” that I’d like to say HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY to and let them know I love them for all they’ve given me.

God Bless….