Posts Tagged ‘Writing’

Call it the Corona Del Mar effect. I say I’m gonna do something on the blog, but there’s an unplanned  twenty-four hour delay. It’s the relaxing atmosphere Stags and I cultivate when we’re together. That and the sweet ocean breezes. That helps, too.

Here we go. Tomorrow we have our first pitch. Jason and I are a bit jittery – but that’s more over getting in there so we can do what we do and get a feel for the rhythm of the real game. Tomorrow’s is at Warner Bros. Studios with the producer of Grand Torino, among others. The meeting was bumped up to Ten A.M. so that the man with his name on the door could join the pitch. That’s a good thing. Any time the steps between you and the actual decision makers are cut down, so much the better. This would be our agents or manager probably at work. I’m would bet my bottom dollar there’s some kind of connection. I know we share the same law firm, so that’s something. Anyways, instead of pitching to a CE (Creative Exec,) who then in turn pitches your idea to her Boss, who’s either the head of her department or company (in this case its company,) we get to leap frog to him directly now. The reason why this is better is that he might have a discretionary fund for development from the studio as part of his deal to park his company exclusively on their turf and provide for their pipeline. Which means, if he did (it’s not a given, but it’s a possibility), that the head of the company could lock up the idea with a paid option or outright purchase, before taking it to the studio. That sort of thing. Regardless, it’s one piece in the telephone game of pitching, which means less relying on someone else to regurgitate your idea in just the right way. Got it? Good. Here we go:

-THE WIRE, people. Watch it. All of it. Man, I should’ve listened to my brother years ago. THIS. IS. THE. GREATEST. SHOW. EVER! It’s almost too much to handle. Deadwood’s a close second, tied with Six Feet Under. But, NONE, of them touch The Wire. NONE! I’m on season three. It’s blowing my mind how rich, detailed, and authentic this whole story and characters are – not to mention how they slowly and perfectly grow the world of the story from season to season. Of course, when it’s Denis Lehane, Richard Price, and George Pelicanos on your writing staff, you’re doing good as far as crime writing goes.

- My second niece is off to college. Which, honestly, makes me feel kind of old. Sounds like she’s doing quite well from what I can tell on facebook. Her sister is a Junior and their younger sister, my goddaughter, just turned 16. They are all getting too old too fast. It’s not fair.

-We booked another pitch for next week today, which was great. It’s with a non-writing Co-Exec Producer on Breaking Bad. That’s pretty good.

-We’ve got five pitches total right now. Which, I think, is just the first set. Or, I would guess it is. What do we know? We’ve never actually done this before.

-The thing I’ve been dwelling on, savoring even, all day is this: In the past, if I scratched something together, it was usually to get one person possibly interested. One person who, as a long shot, MIGHT be able to make something happen. In other words, the very few times I got into this situation, it was a do or die situation. That one person or nothing. Tomorrow, walking into the first pitch their will be four more right behind it. None of it is do or die in the moment. We will get better as we go through the first run of pitches. We may be great tomorrow, but we’ll then become unbelievable. It’s strange, but this feels, despite all the rest of advancements this summer, and even before, like the biggest career advancement yet. This is exactly what we wanted when we were struggling with the deal that ultimately didn’t go through. This is really all you can ask for as a writer in this town – the chance to take your ideas to the market and  to write. We’re doing that. Pretty cool, isn’t it?

-Ten years ago was the most pivotal time of my life as I struggled through the biggest change in my life ever. A change that is still having an incredibly profound effect on my life every single day. I’m beyond fortunate to be here, in this city, just enjoying the sunshine and my friends, let alone to be in the midst of my greatest dream – living that, too. I don’t quite know what to say actually. There were many nights – long, hard ones – where I thought this was just not a possibility EVER. Not in my life. To be here. Well, I feel like I died and went to heaven. Thanks to all the angels that have carried, and continue to carry me here.

- Cardinals looks like they found their bats. A little help from the SF Giants and we might just climb back into the division race. One way or the other, it’s shaping up to be one helluva stretch run!

Okay. I’m gonna catch another episode of The Wire. Then I gotta catch some zzzzz’s. Big day tomorrow!

I’ll get the Saturday Review and Randoms up tomorrow – a little late this week. I’m done in Corona Del Mar (and none too soon!) with my old pal, Stagger Lee. I just have to say I love that dog more than words can say. He seems to be in fine shape and was quite excited to see me when I arrived. I know I was. Seriously, I hope to have such a steadfast canine companion one day.  I’ve got a special place in my heart for Stags, that’s for sure.

Thought I would interrupt our regularly scheduled program to share a bit of an update. Sure enough, after Jason and I became a bit concerned that we had entered some kind of weird stand still and didn’t know if we had done something or not to get us there; things suddenly perked up on Friday. In fact, they got down right crazy for a bit. Essentially we have four pitch sessions scheduled for next week. One on each day, starting Tuesday and going until Friday. All at wildly divergent times and all over L.A. – The Warners Lot, Beverly Hills, Culver City, and Santa Monica. All with legit television production companies – the company that did The Sopranos and does Curb Your Enthusiasm, for instance.

So this is it – we’re stepping up to the plate and going live. It’s no longer about trying to get into a position to sell something and getting paid to write. We are finally in that position and will head out to see what happens. It’s truly just a first step in what will be a long road, but it’s exciting to think the impetus for the meetings and work has shifted. It’s no longer the audition, now it’s time to put on the show!

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!

I think last night’s brief entry on frustration got away from me! I didn’t mean to imply that I would quit the blog. And I know there are a good many readers out there, checking in week to week. I had hoped to inspire any questions that some may have, that I hadn’t gotten to in my unplanned ramblings, which might give me a track to rumble down for a bit, content-wise.

There is one just asked that’s rather timely (thanks, Colin!) as I was asked the same question at Jacob’s birthday get together in the park this past Sunday and I got caught flat footed by it. Even though it’s something I’ve considered internally in my thoughts. As Sunday demonstrated, though, I’ve never articulated my thoughts regarding it. We’ll delve into more of that tomorrow – as I’m going to try to switch gears a bit to more of a daytime posting ritual as part of my work routine.

Anyone see the Time magazine article on Jonathan Franzen, writer of The Corrections. Grew up in Webster Groves, a suburb of St. Louis. The same suburb where we once lived and I was born. Anyways, in the article there is a brief paragraph on his writing space and equipment, along with a picture. It’s quite fascinating. To sum up: It’s a small, ancient looking industrial office computer cart type desk  with a hard backed chair against a blank white wall. The only thing on the desk is a rather clunky early Dell laptop and THAT’S IT!  Yes, there is no one scrap of paper. Not one picture. Not one knicknack in the whole darn space. Desk, wall, chair, dinosaur computer. I didn’t even see a lamp. Very impressive.

More importantly, and something that I hope to do one day, is remove all ability to access the internet from the machine and remove all time wasting games, etc.. from the software files. Apparently, Franzen customized the machine – going all the way down to the programming language to eradicate games from the hard drive, removing the wireless card physically from the computer, and then taking an ethernet cable – pouring superglue in the ethernet port on the laptop – jamming the cable in and whacking off the permanently attached head from the rest of the cable. Amazing! I love it. I’ve always pined for a computer to work on that’s completely and utterly free of the internet and any other distractions.

Also, as a side note to the writers who are reading this, it took Jonathan Franzen ten years to produce Freedom (at 562 pages.) But, as he talks about it in the article, the first seven or eight produced NOTHING usable. He wrote, but kept throwing stuff away, heading down this blind alley, then that one. Finally, after all this time, he had six pages of a female character. It was the first set of pages he didn’t throw away in almost a decade. From there, he cranked out the first draft in ONE YEAR! Probably rewrote it over the course of another.

Lessons from this:

-Every story told is an excavation.

-Character is the light that cuts best through the dark of uncertainty.

-Plot follows Character, not the other way around.

More tomorrow. I leave you with a few photos (because I haven’t done that in a bit) that I found through Google Reader where I track many different news sources on the net. One folder is dedicated to photoblogs. I love the simplicity of a picture a day. Here are two, of a set, that I find captivating and haunting in the most beautiful way possible. Without further rambling:

Dawn On A City Street In Toronto

A Few Minutes Later

I will say this about the photos: I was drawn to them specifically from the many years I worked until dawn at a Four A.M. bar called Nick’s Beer Garden. I lived several blocks away, basically around the corner. There is something strange, beautiful, and beyond peaceful about a city right as the darkness breaks and morning spills in. All the windows dark and the doors shut on the last moment of stillness. My feet on the sidewalk pavement. The Tribune truck dropping fresh stacks in the boxes on the corner. Everything about to happen, not quite yet, but soon.

Which makes me pretty sad.

Not so much b/c of all the lovely amenities which come with my visits to Corona Del Mar, but more so because I do love Stags so much. We’ve become quite good buddies and I think he knows I’m going. He’ll come and visit me when I’m writing, just to say hello and get some affection and he’s been visiting me more than usual today.

And for the quiet. The lovely, deep and thrilling quiet that exists here. With that comes a such an easier pace to the day which allows me to get more done, be more focused – which can be a struggle at times. I guess maybe that’s it. I’m good, out of necessity, at winning that struggle on a daily basis so I can get my work done. But, it takes a ton of effort in a place like L.A., which leaves me fairly exhausted most days of the week. Here, it seems like the days unfold more the way they should and I’m not doing as much wrestling with myself.

Ah well, work and life, for now, is back in L.A. Someday it might be just outside of L.A. in a place like Corona Del mar. Hopefully! That being said, I am due back. It is time. Work is piling up. Phone calls are happening. People want to talk. Time, essentially, to put the house in order for the next stage. Plus, there’s life stuff to handle as much as I dislike it. There’s a new apartment to find and a job, more than likely, in my near future. Plus, organizing my loans and setting that all in motion.

I will say this. For about the past year now, but in the past four or five months in particular, its been an extremely fruitful period of work. A level I haven’t personally touched quite before. I feel like its been a true maturation as a writer – lots of hard work and sweat put in that’s starting to peek through in the pages and ideas and problem-solving. I always follow how I see things – the pages, the outlines, the drafts, the ideas – and I feel like I’m seeing them very well right now. Getting faster at identifying solutions and building on ideas.

In Major League Baseball, hitters talk about how well they’re “seeing the ball,”  that and their timing. When you’re tasked with hitting a ball that’s the size of an apple thrown at an average of 90 mph from  a distance of sixty feet and change with late movement; you have to be able to time your swing. Which means you have to react to the ball leaving the pitcher’s hand. You’ve got to see it and read it from jump. If you hang back and wait, you’re more than likely toast. The whole interchange happens in seconds, so it’s all about knowing and acting immediately.

Which is kind of, in a long-winded, tangent of a metaphor what I’m talking about during this furtile period. I feel, as Albert Pujols would say: “I’m seeing the ball real well.”

Seriously.

I am amazed that yesterday’s entry was even coherent. I was so exhausted/falling asleep at the keys when I pounded it out last night. You should’ve seen me trying to write it out. Literally to just string those thoughts together. I think I had to take a nap on the couch at one point to rally and edit down the babble I had put down initially.

So, to recap on what I was trying to say and give anyone who’s curious a little insight into the cause of such exhaustion:

-Jacob and I decided not to go with the Culver City place we initially settled on. The one I blogged about earlier in the week. Instead we decided to raise our monthly limit a bit and broaden the area of our search and see what we came up with. That was yesterday. We took a look at several two bedrooms in the $1450 to $1600 a month range. We saw one that might work right down from Boardwalk 11 (Tiff!) Then today we conferred and decided to postpone our move out dates until August 1st, so that we can really look and find the right spot. We both have a bunch of writing type work to do and I need to look for employment of some kind, etc… So, it’s a relief to back off for a few weeks and come at it down the road.

-I was sooooo exhausted b/c I had another crazy, marathon dental appointment. Though this one caught me COMPLETELY by surprise. I was under the impression I was going to get the finishing touches on the work I had done two weeks, or so, ago. Usually that’s a quick one or two hour appointment. Your in, your out. Everything is paid already. It’s not new work –  just swapping the temporary work for the actual veneers or crown (or combination which is what I have this time.) So, I swung in for what I thought was a quick visit and was there for a little over five hours in the chair, straight. I didn’t eat before, which was my mistake. Big mistake. But the whole visit was painful like the last time, which is unusual for me. Something about my front, upper area – super sensitive all around. So there were many shots to numb the area down, through the whole process. I also had a tightly scheduled day – looking at apartments, a notes meeting with my professor, and a writer’s support group meeting that night – boom, boom, boom – all back to back. So, as soon as I realized what was happening at the dentist, I had to start texting to cancel this and move that – very stressful when you’re managing pain and quite hungry!  Then I had to race out of there when I was finally free (in another cruel twist – they took the temporaries out, showed me the permanents weren’t done to their satisfaction – I could put them in, but my Dentist wasn’t completely happy with them, then had to totally redo the temporary!) and get on with what was left of my day. Which meant when I finally got home at 11 p.m. and ate something substantial, I got very sleepy very quickly. BUT, in true doc fashion, refused to admit to myself I should go to bed, because I wanted to watch the season finale of JUSTIFIED and eat this (what turned out be awesome) slice graduation cake JJ had brought for me at the writer’s support group. Thus the world’s shortest blog post last night!

- Saw the wonderful John Sweet for notes – my final UCLA obligation. He loved the script from the quarter. That’s good because we’re using it as a sample!

-Lastly, our former manager-producer officially declared he’s not going to pay us, or rather claims he can’t pay Jason and I the money we are owed on the two pilot scripts we separately wrote for him last winter. We got some money up front, but not the money due upon completion. There’s a signed contract, plenty of emails in our favor – all sorts of stuff. We just need to evaluate what it will take to get our money from him. He lives in $9000 a month condo with his fiance who owns four luxury day spas (invitation only) and guests on the Rachel Ray Show. He’s an actor on All My Children. I think he can afford $8,500 dollars (total amount owed.) We even offered a payment plan. He claims he doesn’t have the money. We’ll see. Sadly, this is a part of the film business and has to be endured. You do your best to avoid these situations or deals that will lead to these situations, but it happens.

More, when I know it!

Yikes. Had a long couple of days and feel pretty wiped out. Can’t believe we’re only halfway through this week.

So, I’m all but there – at the finish line. My play was initially due today; but because I wasn’t getting read, Hanay graciously told me to bring a hard copy by his office tomorrow, late afternoon. So, I will drop that off and have my 434 one on one with John Sweet. At that point, I will be absolutely done.

The extra day came in quite handy. I spent all of day, rewriting the piece. Let me just say, it was a much more tedious rewrite than I initially envisioned. There’s still a bunch of work to be done, but it’s finally in a cohesive place that hangs together well and makes sense. So, onward and upward.

Time now for sleep. More tomorrow.

It SEEEMS to slow down.

The pressure appears to lift.

The too much to do crunch-crunch-crunch of sleeplessness, constant doing, phone vibrating, emails flooding in quiets.

But, you know. You just know that it’s just the eye that we’ve slipped into. A lull, if you will, before the next wave. In the corner with the Cut Man and Trainer, shaking off the last round, getting ready for the bell.

At least that’s how I feel today, which was an unexpected lost day. Sure, I pushed my play around like a young tyke pushes his carrots and peas around his plate, hoping they’ll just eat themselves.

Part of this stemmed from the late news today that I won’t be getting read on Tuesday with the actual MFA Playwrights in the final class. That was the current in the final push – to not be embarrassed in front of the Playwrights and the Theater Faculty as my full-length is read out loud. The stakes would’ve noticeably higher, basically. I’m actually good with not getting read. I feel strong about the play and I know its in an early developmental phase, still incubating essentially, subjecting it to the rigors of a harried workshop read with non-performers reading and no prep. This definitely encourage notes and opinions which most certainly would’ve clouded the forward progress of future rewrites. Instead, I’ll polish for clarity and continuity tomorrow and hand it in on Tuesday, or possibly before. Hanay will be happy with the effort throughout and the quality of the work. I will launch into a true rewrite later in the week.

With SKEET in the bag after Jason’s quick, excellent work with tightening the new version and emphasizing some key emotional turns I only glanced at in my draft, we now are looking at a TV pilot we’ve had to wait on a bit (for me to clear some head space and time) which we can attack and Jason’s take on a script of mine SUNGATE, which I’m really excited about and am trying real hard to remain patient for! From there we have the Serial Killer/Procedural and a rewrite of the CHINATOWN/INDIAN CASINO script and then….whatever we dream up next.

To be certain, we have quite a back catalog of scripts and ideas that need to be addressed, so there’s no real shortage here. I don’t mean to sound arrogant, but we’re both writers who don’t really heal to the idea of writer’s block. We’re sit down, roll up the sleeves, and chisel away until it starts working writers. Which adds to the strength of the partnership. I don’t believe writer’s block exists. I just don’t. You have to give yourself permission to fail (ah, there’s that word again.) You have to encourage yourself to write poorly, as much as you encourage yourself to write well.

And with that, I realize I’m getting off topic. Which means I’ll take this opportunity to reign it in a bit, and get to what I initially wanted to hit upon, which is we are entering a period where we’ll be writing for ourselves You always are to some degree, but the deadlines hovering over from the projects worked on will all be of our own making and policing. It’s a different sort of pressure, for sure. One that I’ve been five years removed from. Should be fun. Might actually get back to a more sane work load of only tackling one or two projects at a time.

Ahhh, who am I kidding?

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.

It’s the last week of the quarter. Well, the last week of the last quarter. So, I’ve been crazy busy, trying to bring the projects home on time. Had an immense weight lifted today. I finished my last 434 script and handed it in to my awesome professor, John Sweet (The Affair of the Necklace.) I haven’t slept much in the past two days, but I got it done and in. So, now all I have left is the rewrite of my play for next Tuesday. Then school will be done.

Regular posting should resume tomorrow. I’m taking a long night on the couch to regroup, before the final push. Plus, Jason and I have a few things we have to get cracking on. On top of all that, I had my dental appointment on Tuesday. What was supposed to be a 3-4 appointment turned into an 8 and 1/2 hour marathon. 8 of those hours were solid work. The 1/2 hour was interspersed throughout the day in ten minute increments for breaks. It was unexpected and wiped me out. I still haven’t completely recouped my forward momentum. I lost an entire day to it. I came home and tried to work and couldn’t. It was a rough one. Roughest I’ve ever had – terrible back pain in the chair in the morning, countless shots throughout the day  to numb the area consistently that they were working on, six teeth in total were addressed, an allergic reaction to the slow-setting material they used for my first round of impressions. It was grueling. I’m thrilled it’s over and I don’t know how else it could’ve been done, but I never want to endure that again.

So tonight, some TV, some pasta, some Ice Cream, and some sleep. Tomorrow’s another day.