The TV Spec Script: 1

When you arrive in LA, the general assumption is that - if you're a writer - you are interested in only two things.

Movies - and - Television.

Of course, I'm interested in more - like theatre and advertising (am I schitzo or what?) - but, I still get the look from anyone and everyone who is just meeting me, or considering me for a job. It's a look that says, I know why you're really here - you want to be a famous well-paid writer of good movies and interesting tv shows.

The silent conversation between the eyeballs continues:

My eyes say: Um, well, yes, of course, who wouldn't?
Their eyes say: Yeah, yeah, you think you're a hot shot, don't you?
My eyes say: Not exactly, I'm just you know trying to learn.
Their eyes say: You're just like a million other people. And chances are you'll disappear just like them.
And my eyes say: You know, I'm just trying here. I'm really not copping an attitude. I just...

And so on.

Eventually actual words are spoken and those words are: Do you have a spec script?

My answer is: I have three movie scripts and no TV scripts.

There are several very logical reasons for this lopsideness.

The first is, I LOVE MOVIES. I mean, really, there is just nothing better than making a date of disappearing into a chair in the darkness with a few hundred other souls and giving it up for sound and light arranged to passionately tell a story.

The second is, when you write a spec movie script you might have to follow some formulas and formats but the characters and story are all yours: You're not beholden to anything before you in that way.

Not so for TV. Here the spec needs to demonstrate an understanding and mastery of the rules, a knowledge of all that's gone before, plus your own flair for writing.

The third is, I have never watched much TV.

Simply put, I've been a very active boy and really never made time for it. Why should I have? Frankly speaking, the television shows of my generation (DALLAS, MAGNUM PI, CHARLIES ANGELS, LOVE BOAT, CANNON, COLUMBO), well, they were never truthful about anything. Just contrived and fake, fake, fake all the way through. Consequently, they sucked. There were exceptions - I liked Star Trek for it's wooden directness, for instance. And the Roseanne Show. But I simply don't get the love people carry like a credential for most of the television programming of the 70s and 80s. Even the sitcoms I hated for their over-written-ness and their slavish schtickyness. Every once in a while Newhart had something - but it was in the pause, not the words. And then, the laugh tracks. Don't get me started...

It was not until the 90s that televsion began to look like anything interesting to me. I still recall seeing Law & Order for the first time and being fascinated with riding a story through the justice system's digestive track. I couldn't get enough.

My attraction to TV got another bump with The Sopranos, Deadwood and 6 Feet Under - and finally The Shield, The Wire and now Rome and Friday Night Lights (the best and most truthful drama on a network).

And so, being tired of saying that I don't have a TV spec - and knowing that TV by far employs more writers than movies do - I have decided to throw my hat into the ring.

To that end I have done two things. The first started when I got here: Regular visits to the WGA to read TV scripts.

And I have to say, I've been greatly relieved to find I LIKE READING THESE STUPID THINGS.

In fact, I only wish I'd started earlier. You see, a good TV script flies by like a good pulp novel. It's direct and informal at once. Always economical and has a tremendous sense of pacing.

My particular favorites have been episodes of HOUSE and MEDIUM. Both have very simple A/B story structures and crystal clear lead characters.

HOUSE is great and I've got a lot respect for its writers. I believe you actually have to know medicine to write it. To me, anyway, no episode has ever read as if the technical crap was just dressing. To the contrary, knowledge of it drives the action as much or more than the soap opera relationships happening around events.

MEDIUM, however, is a show I prefer because it is actually a show about the social change that has occured in the two income household throughout America. Allison Dubois has all the responsibilities usually associated with the male's role in the house. She has the star job. She protects her family. She provides leadership.

While her husband, a rocket scientist, is almost always a step behind. If not more.

Yet no one is dumb. And more to the point, despite the absurdity of the hook, the show balances the right amount of skepticism and evidence to be something you can swallow. (Most of the time.)

So which one am I going to try my hand at first?

MEDIUM, of course.

Plus Arquette looks eerie.

And eerie is always good.










NEXT: I take a UCLA extension course for Dramatic Writing and start an outline. OOOF.

In case you didn't know

You can't make a living as a playwright. You can barely scrape by.
- Sam Shepard

Me-me 5 times

You know the meme. 5 things no-one knows about you.

(Thanks to Laura for the tag.)
___________________
1. I was born in a pink hospital on the island Oahu.

2. I once woke up in a garbage dump at the end of an airport runway with no idea where on the planet I was. It took over half a day to to discover that I was in the Canary Islands.

3. I seriously considered a career as a compititive horse show jumper until I discovered writing at the age of 17.

4. David Mamet has my copy of Homage to Catalonia in his library and he doesn't know it (probably).

5. I helped apprehend a knife wielding man in broad daylight on Michigan Avenue in Chicago.
__________________

I tag Fred - when he gets back from surgery - 2 times. (That's 10 things we don't know, Fred.) I tag Dave once.



This is NOT a picture of me. (And I have no idea who it is.)

Breathe. Sleep. Write.

Hemingway wrote 'til his pencils weren't sharp.

Collette picked fleas from her cat.

Kerouac and Bacon started on their knees.

Whatever it is, most writers have something. And I'm no different.

And getting back to it is one of the big upsides to having a permanent address and a sense of home.


My routine is pretty simple:

Get up around 7.
Make coffee.
Start writing.
Stop around 10 or 11.

I write long hand when I'm stuck or starting something new. When things are really fucked up, I "clean" the house and get a fresh sheet of paper.

I use Maria Irene Fornes sense memory exercises to get the world out of my head if it's in there.

I've found that turning on the TV, listening to music, checking email or reading the blog world generally destroys everything. So I try to avoid all that crap.

I'm generally no good for anything but talking in the afternoon, so unless I have business, I stay away from the phone.

There are a few other routines that are important - Tennis with H at mid-day, every other day. Plus, three AA meetings a week - a meeting to share at on Mondays, a crazy cross talk men's meeting (populated by rock'n roll and correctional facility refugees) on Tuesdays and a step study meeting on Friday.

I do book study on Wednesdays in Santa Monica with my sponsor.

There's meditation and prayer too, but I'm not worth shit when it comes to either one.

Here's an article on the importance of routine to a few young writers.

Please take out a pencil and a sheet of paper.

You got a routine? Let's hear about it.

Shakespeare's Sonnett 116: Bill H

It's an imperfect project, but Bill was very interesting.

He also cans peaches from the tree in his backyard and brings 'em over.

Ain't the world grand?

Get me an axe, I see a door

Somebody told me recently that Johnny Cash used to cut doors in the walls of the hotels he stayed at when on tour. He used a fire axe to do it.

According to this perhaps apocryphal story, Cash'd stare at a wall and think, "There's a fucking door on this wall, I know it."

When he got tired of reaching for the knob that wasn't there, he'd just go out to the hallway, get the damn axe out of the glass case next to the elevator and go to work.

Eventually, everyone could see the damn door he was talking about.

And that he was crazy.

So often, however, we're all standing in front of a wall and think, "Hey, there's a fucking door here."

Once we're done with the play or poem or whatever it is, we step back and say to anyone nearby, "See. There's the door. I told you."

Depending on how good you are with an axe, they see it.

And maybe that you're crazy. Which you are.

A little while ago, Isaac Butler asked me to show him a door that I'd made with an axe in the wall of the little hotel room up behind my forehead.

He wanted to see: Dressing the Girl.

The play's been workshopped at the 78th Street Theatre Lab and the Soho Think Tank with Matthew Arbour, and worked on with Michael Kenyon when he was still at the Public. It's also had some readings at places like the Magic in SF. (Please take note, anti-development people.)

It's not an easy play - particularly as a read since the second act is quite visual.

I got an email from Isaac about the play after he read it. He liked it. But he also cited it in an interesting and worthwhile conversation with George Hunka about the kind of theatre that's being made today. He used it as an example of the kind of play that George might like to see more of (or a play anyway that might be worth watching eventhough it was written by someone with an MFA in playwriting - apparently a dirty credit for half the blogosphere - though George hasn't read the play so who knows what he'd think, MFA or no).

For me, it's nice to know when someone not only sees the door you made, but goes through it to the room you have beyond.

And that you're not crazy.

Except that I am.

Check it out at: Parabasis

Here's a brief synopsis of the play. If you're interested in reading it, just shoot me an email. I'll pdf a doorknob to you.

DRESSING THE GIRL

Anne and Ian, once romantically involved, still emotionally and intellectually entangled, try to pick up where they left off. Unfortunately, Anne hates sex and Ian’s recent decision to quit drinking has left him thirsty for just about any diversion he can find. Searching for a way into Anne, he starts buying her the same dress over and over again even though it doesn’t fit. His relentless pursuit eventually pushes him into the arms of a dress shop girl who shows him just how dangerous a dress can be.

1 male, 2 female

In the meantime, I'll be in the next room making a lot of noise.

Sweet dreams.

The accountant's truth vs. Optimism - round 2

Money, get away.
Get a good job with good pay and you're okay.
Money, it's a gas.
Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash.

The purpose of this blog is to follow the story of what it takes to be a writer - in particular an unknown writer - in America, today.

As in, NOW.

The move to Los Angeles from New York is a sort of spine to wrap the story around, but it's more than merely an excuse for narrative. I really do believe that if you look at the sources of cultural influence in America since WWI, you see a real shift from East to West. A shift, that is obviously more pronounced in the television age, and more accelerated in the cable age.

Of course, that's just my opinion, but it's been a long time since I've heard people talk about truly good books without the help of Oprah or a movie adaptation to guide them.

All of which is to say that there's been a money shift in the arts from language based forms of entertainment (theatre, books) to visually based forms of entertainment (movies, TV, graphic novels).

Not exactly news, I know, but what this has meant for Heather and I is a move to the capital of all that - LA - and THAT move has cost us something very dear in the American way of thinking: Money.

It's one of the critical aspects of the story I'm trying to be honest about.

And I'm not going to shy away from it. Especially since I've already talked about what it cost us to move. (The Bill From Caesar.)

So, what will it cost us to stay?

(If ever there were an arguement for going into law or medicine, here it comes.)

************************
First off, we're both products of bigtime arts institutions (which neither of us regrets, by the way) and our total bill for servicing our debt from Columbia and NYU is: approx. $1400.00/mo

Our health insurance: about $1800/year

Our cable/utilites/phone/internet: about $100/mo

Our car payment: about $200/mo

Our cel phones: about $120/mo

Our server space (where my website is stored plus my .mac site): about $300/year

Our groceries: about $250/mo

Our rent is $1400/mo

Other insurances: $1500/year

We were both working this year and we were able to save quite a bit of $$$. So, while we're generally good, we also are about half way through what we've saved.

That means we have about 4-6 more months of funds until we have to hit a retirement plan - which is something we are deeply loathe to do.

You can do the math. But it should be obvious even without a calculator that a life in the arts is a risky proposition.

And for Heather and I the stakes are high. And getting higher. (More about this later.)

However, we have some good things going for us, too. Those educations were good for us, and, they've helped us get in doors that were closed before. Plus, I had a pretty good career in advertising before coming out here. And I still like advertising quite a bit. It is how I expect to pay for all that stuff up there.

And then we have one more secret weapon: we both thrive on adversity. Not misery. Adversity. In fact, I don't think either one of us has had it easy in our respective industries but we've each done well. Heather was once told she was uncastable and yet she's worked at the Guthris, OSF, The Public, Arena and many other great places. I was told you could never do good work at most of the ad agencies I've put time into and while I haven't gotten in the One Show or CA, I have work in MOMA archives and swept the NY Addy's last year over Ogilvy and powehouse BBDO.

In other words, we have assets that don't show up on a ledger, but are there.

It should be a pretty interesting year.

(See what I meant about medicine and law?)

SEE ALSO:
Optimism vs. Real World - outcome to be determined
The $77,000 movie
Love opens with a closing.
1 Day. 2 Miracles. Maybe even 3.

So you wanna write TV?

An excellent little post from Emmy-winning writer Ken Levine about the cycle that is TV.

The Stare

Top 10 List of Self-Absorption: Goodbye 2006, Hello 2007

I'm glad to see 2006 end.

Honestly, it's been quite long and exhausting and, well, nothing like what I thought it would be 365 days ago.

Back then, I was hoping a raise at the ad agency I was working at would give me financial incentive to stay in NY. More foolishly, I was still thinking that Nokia would do something more intelligent with its marketing dollars than do what it did. (The brand has all but disappeared in North America despite producing a campaign with a theme that could've taken them 20 years into the future. They have serious Motorola envy... but that's a whole different soapbox.)

In theatre, I was hoping it would be the year of DRESSING THE GIRL. Alas, despite a draft that was a finalist for New Work NOW! - and an interesting site-specific reading - the producers of the world saw fit to lose money with other plays.

But there were highlights.

AND, rather than do a top 10 list of things that I had nothing to do with (Top Movie; Top Book; Top Play; Top Stupid Celebrity Thingee; etc.) - and I might add, a list that would look like everyone else's - I'm doing a top 10 list of good things for my year.

A list of self-absorption? Sure.

Something you should do for yourself? Absolutely. Because why should the culture brokers at People Magazine, US Weekly, The New York Times and elsewhere have all the power?

Anyway, here it is:

***************************************
1. I'm still sober.
Yep. This is a good thing for me. And an especially good thing for you.

2. Still in love.
Could it be clearer from my blog that this is true? If not, please email me and I will carve it into a blunt instrument, come over to your house and use it on your head.

3. Still solvent.
I freak out about money. A lot. I wish I didn't. But I do. And yet, I am still so so lucky. (Check-in 6 months from now though and see how I'm doing. Then you'll.... Shit, I doing it again.)

5. Still writing.
I'm sure my Clubbed Thumb Boot Camp chronicle bored most of you after the second entry (assuming you got that far), but it was a great experience. (And I don't give a damn what the blogosphere's consensus says about New Play Development - YOU'RE ALL WRONG! WRONG!!!!!! YOU HEAR ME?!!!!! WRONG!!!!)

6. Still not in New York.
Sorry, New Yorkers, but the city I loved living in when I was 19 (that was in 1983) isn't the city for me now. Nonetheless, it's nice to go back and visit. And I still love so many people there.

7. Still not completely employed.
I've flipped the negative here because it also means that I've got tons of time to write and even more time to spend with my wife. Since employment kept us separated, I feel this is only fair.

8. Still not at Grey.
I hear it's gone down hill since I left. While I could take the George Bush the first approach (Before me, wall; After me, no wall), I won't. It's just good to get out of a place that does not truly appreciate its own people.

9. Still have friends.
If I've alienated you, please don't tell me. I'd like to keep the delusion going.

10. Still new in LA.
I rue the day the wonderful novelty of daily sunlight wears off.
***************************************

Have a great New Year.

I know I will.

I was it. Now you're it.

I have been tagged with a ridiculous task - with continuing a kind of chain letter for the blog age.

It's Fred Wickham's fault over at The Bullseye Rooster blog.

Basically, the deal is I'm to:

Find the nearest book
Name the title and author
Turn to p. 123
Post sentences 6-8
Tag 3 more people

Normally, I'd ignore it, but Fred is not only a good friend, but he once did a performance art "chain letter" for me and not only was it hysterical, but bad luck did indeed follow me after I refused to perform it for anyone else.

I had to lay two people off at the office the next week - I kid you not.

I have to assume something worse will befall me if I don't do this. So here goes nothing.

The book nearest to me (at the top of the first book box I opened - we're still unpacking dammit!) happens to be Hemingway's A FAREWELL TO ARMS.

Here's sentences 6, 7 and 8 from page 123.

"You'd be a general, " said Simmons.
"No, I wouldn't know enough to be a general. A general's got to know a hell of a lot."

Lieutenant Henry has more to say, but it's beyond the quota.... so the end quote is mine.

I'm tagging someone I know well, someone I know only a little, and someone I know not at all.

Adam Szymokowicz
Isaac Butler
Jaime

Feel free to do what you like, kids. But if you play, thank you for playing.

And Fred: I'll never do anything like this again.

But hopefully I've avoided the fate of one man who broke the chain. Arnold Brady, 42, Susanville, CA, ignored these instructions and within a week was struck dead by lightening in broad day light while heading toward the Bi-Mart to purchase a Samsung Slimfit TV for his wife.

His wife was killed a week later in an unrelated threshing machine accident.

Move. Done.

Before.














In mid-August of 2006, I started this blog with an entry about the life Heather and I were putting behind the door of a storage facility outside an airport in Medford, Oregon.

Then I went down to Los Angeles, found a temporary place to live and began to look for work.

Since then, I've gone back up to Ashland to visit Heather several times, been to New York twice to develop some theatre work, met a lot of people in LA and had a lot of up and downs emotionally about it all.

One of the things I've chronicled quite closely has been our struggle to find a place to live. And if you've been reading, you know that in late November we signed a lease for a place at the corner of Sunset and Crescent Heights in West Hollywood.

Last week - on Wednesday the 20th, to be exact - after three days of driving, we pulled a rented truck up to the curb and began to unload our stuff into our new apartment.

After.














This is the main reason I haven't written much on the blog lately. For the past 7 days Heather and I have been unpacking boxes like crazy and trying to set up our house.

In addition, we hosted a small Christmas dinner for my cousins Phil and Caryn and my mom-in-law, Eleanor.

I don't know if we bit off more than we could chew, but we sure did bite off a lot.

Still, it's been good.

Even better, the unpacking process has reminded us of how fortunate we have been with friends and family - how generous all have been to us over the past year and a half - since much of what we own came to us as wedding gifts that we've never really been able to use until now.

Thanks every one - again.

This is also why I've posted the wedding video here. Though many have seen it (I have it on my phone) - the plates, the vases, the kitchenware, the quilts, the everything - have reminded us of that first day we had together as a married couple.

And of the good fortune all who were there wished on us for our future.

And now we're here. In LA. Together. A new city. A new life. Just need to find a job. (Oh, yes.)

Ah, the writer's life....

Have a happy New Year!

How They Get There

So I haven't posted much this week. (Okay, at all.)

There are many reasons - namely, we finally got everything out of the storage unit in Oregon (see The Door Of My Next Life) and into our LA apartment (see: 1 Day. 2 Miracles. Maybe even 3.).

I will post more about the move (how we got there, or, well, here) and all that later (over the holidays) but until then, well, here's a wonderful little movie from Spike Jonze.

It was made a little while ago, but it answers an eternal question.

Enjoy.

ps. Family - if you click on the video on the blog, it'll play right in the window for you.

A far far better thing

Two professors step onstage and lean over music stands at us. They're a little overblown, goofily in love with the insults that can be found in Shakespeare texts. Serious to the point of absudity, they assure us that they are scholars and this is an intellectual pursuit.

But within a few moments their dispassionate aura dissolves and the insults they are exploring as an exercise become arrows and spear they can throw at each other.

And the audience they are standing in front of is eating it up. Small - maybe 20 or so people - their laughter is compulsive and involuntary. And after "puke stocking" it's explosive.

i am witnessing one of the final evening shows by Heather and her partner Bill Langan as part of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's school tour. Schools as far away as Alaska and Kansas have paricipated at one time or another in the program which sends teams of actors out into the world after each OSF season ends to teach classes to introduce the Bard to kids. As part of that the actors also do school and public performances.

The tour, which lasts about 8 weeks, is grueling. Constantly on the road, work usually starts early and, as you'd expect, there are some schools and groups of kids that are more welcoming than others.

Heather and Bill have been assigned to towns along the Oregon and California coasts. Many of them have fallen on hard times. The lumber and fishing industries are both in the doldrums and sometimes, over the phone, I can hear the hardness Heather has experienced in the sons and daughters of that diminishment in her voice.

Interestingly enough Heather has also told me that many of the theatres in these schools are quite big and beautiful. Tonight's show is taking place in one of those auditoriums. I know it's used for many things besides the school theatre department - rallies, school conferences, ceremonies - but I also can't help thinking that it's a lot nicer than most of the theatres I've done work in in New York City.

The other thing I think about as I watch them is how selfless an act it is that they - Heather and BIll - are engaged in. Sure, there is a financial stipend, but it will never make them rich, much less even barely middle class (if they had to live on it year round).

Or maybe just saying it a little differently, I can see they're in love with theater and that they're there to pass that on.

It really humbles me.

On the plane back, I went back

Coming back from New York, I caught the tail end of one of my favorite rock doc's.

They bleeped most of the offensive language as if that by itself made it less dangerous somehow.

Time has done that to punk pretty well.

I confess, however, I still felt the old sense of "fuck'em" run through the soul as I watched four drunks put it back in the face of the machine with their completely unmanageable "not gonna take this shit anymore" truthfulness.

There are days when I'd like to feel this after a night of theatre.

Occasionally, of course, it still happens. Usually during a Martin Crimp or Sam Shepard or Martin McDonagh or Caryl Churchill show, believe it or not.

Still.

But without further bullshit, here's the trailer for "The Filth and the Fury." It's got some kind of Eastern European subtitles which seems appropriate.

Have a great weekend.

Clubbed Thumb Boot Camp: 4 – Final thoughts on car crashes and play notes and, yes, oh, yes, the development thing

A lot of times, my writing process is driven by fear.

Fear of failure. Fear of not getting it right. Fear of embarrassing myself.

That, and coffee, of course.

My writing process is more comfortable when it’s not driven by that very primitive emotion, but the little adrenaline rush that it brings has something to it and there’s no doubt that a lot of my best work has been done with a pearl handled revolver pointed at my head.

The trouble is that right after you spend a week locked away in a room rewriting - fueled by little else - well, when you finally do cross the finish line, you really can’t be sure what you’ve got is any good.

Or isn’t bad, as the case may be.

Getting notes right after a reading of the thing you’ve been bashing your head against doesn’t necessarily make things any clearer either.

In fact, I don’t think it’s outrageous to say that the feeling of disorientation I have after a reading of my work is akin to pulling myself out of an overturned car with a perfect memory of the accident but still asking: What the fuck just happened?

Okay, maybe it's not really as traumatic as all that, but then maybe it is.

After the BEYOND THE OWING reading I had several immediate responses in addition to that. The first was relief: I got it done. This was followed closely by the need to profusely express my gratitude to those who’d come by to see and hear the piece.

I went a little overboard. I always do. But this “thanking response” is deeply connected to the fear that propelled me through the process in the first place: the fear of failure.

Somehow I hope that thanking people for being there will get them to overlook the problems of the work.

However, we all know that it doesn’t.

Generally this is why I try to remain impassive when I get notes directly after a reading (unless I’m doing a talk back, which is often less a discussion and more of a performance half the time).

See, despite my best intentions, I really have no perspective on what I just heard, let alone what I just worked on. And if I let myself go beyond thanking, I might start explaining myself.

Or worse, defend myself.

These are not good positions to be coming from when getting notes. For me, when I’m defending and explaining, I’m usually re-acting to the most literal surface meaning of the note. And if there’s any interpretation going on for me beyond that, it’s that I’m interpreting every note as another way of saying, “You suck.”

And, let’s face it, notes – especially when given by people you trust – are signs of respect as much as anything else. More importantly, sometimes a note isn’t even a suggestion for change but rather nothing more than an observation.

But listening to people tell you how they experienced the car accident you just had can be pretty instructional. Especially if you don’t dilute it with your version of events.

The best note I got was that I hadn’t gone far enough with the lie of omission created when one partner in a relationship hides something important from the other.

There were other notes, too, (one character appears only one once in the play, etc) but this particular note was especially resonant for me because I understood it as an opportunity to really harpoon my theme in much more muscular way.

Of course, it’s only been a week since the final presentation, so who really knows. I’m still a little fuzzy.

But I don't regret for a second getting in that vehicle and taking the curves at 120 mph. I might've slid off the road, but I'd do it again in a heartbeat. It's kinda exhilarating to watch the world come loose and turn upside down just before the airbag explodes and breaks your nose.

QUICK NOTE: I've gotten some feedback that some people think I didn't feel my play went over very well in the final presentation - please know that I felt quite to the contrary. It was simply a lot of work. And I tend to bring an intense amount of pressure on myself whatever the task. There was a lot of growth - and, as is often the case with quick growth - there were some aches and pains. But I'd do it all over again in a second.

**********************
Interestingly enough these last few entries have described my part in one theatre companies development process – a company devoted to developing and producing work by living American playwrights - just as the discussion over development heats up again on some of the blogs you'll find in the right sidebar.

While the debate about development’s value and place in American theatre will go on in the blogosphere and elsewhere for, well, probably ever, I hope my recounting of my experiences shows that development does not have to be some evil crime against a writer.

Jason Grote makes more sense of it than almost anyone else I've read so far.

If plays are to be about opening up difficult questions, well, nobody should expect the process of addressing those questions to be easy - and even less so because you're squeezing those questions into "art".

What's required for any of that be successful - if it's ever to be successfull - is some smart people, well placed trust, a willingness to run blind and a high tolerance for failure.

A high tolerance for failure.

Put more directly about what I'm reading elsewhere: Any general conclusion anyone draws up about how the development process is ruining everything - or really great for everything - is pure bullshit. They're only telling you how crappy or great their own experience has been working on plays with other people. They also are often revealing just how big their own egos are (writers who don't take notes; dramaturgs who believe their conclusions are always golden nuggets of wisdom; intellectuals and critics who'd rather be shaping culture than commenting on it from the sidelines.)

That's all I've actually done here, as well.

Nothing more may ever happen with my play.

But already a lot of shit happened with it that I never thought would.

Clubbed Thumb Boot Camp: 3

A girl praying doesn't seem like it should be a break-thru in writing a play, but when the scene came to me late on Friday it proved to be a gateway for the rest of the piece.

Within 12 hours of writing this simple one page scene, I had redrawn the breaking point in the play, lopping off a third of the first act and completely re-organizing the emotional world of the second.

Well, actually, let me correct that: I'd completely rewritten the first and last scenes of the second half of the play and decided to scrap all the scenes in between.

Obviously, there were a few things in the play that I lost that I loved. One of them was the plum tree speech which is below. In the original draft it had been the turning moment in the play. It was the moment that Sutton, the groom, realized that his future mother-in-law was not going to help the financially beleaguered couple out. The idea was to have her say no without actaully saying it - a matter of point of view created by the tone the actor takes to the content...

Watery light comes on Sutton from the window. Light falls on Ruth from a different angle. Everything about Ruth’s speech says, NO.

RUTH
We planted trees along the side there. Plum trees. I said I didn’t think they’d take. Didn’t think it was the right environment for it, but no-one listened and the builder just did what he wanted. These are my hands, he said, I’ll do what I want with them. And he made holes in the ground and put them in. They were hardly sticks to start with, never really had a chance. And one by one they died. The soil here, like I said. I think one or two I actually mowed down when doing the lawn. Accidents you could call it – if you are one of those who believe that a word such as accident can exist in a universe such as this. Still, one lived. One made it past a point where the mower couldn’t run it over and the blades couldn’t cut it. It was a scarred thing, but it lived. Grew big too. And after all that, I was glad. It bore fruit in the summers. Big, juicy plums, liquid sugar that quenched the thirst you get for everything sometimes when you look up at the sky. Occasionally, I’d grill a couple on the barbecue. And more than once I’d catch a black bear out here at midnight stretching up to a branch to find a good one. Eventually, though, well, it got so big that its branch spread out over the roof. And when the leaves fell off it, the gutters got clogged. And nothing drained right. A few seasons, I had a man out here to clean the gutters, make it right, but one day, he came out and said he was tired of the work involved and wondered if I was tired of it too. He pulled a chain saw out of the back of his pick-up. It smelled like oil and diesel. If you look out the window, you can still see the hump. Never had any trouble with the gutters again.

Sutton, during the speech, has turned to her.

SUTTON
You’re not going to help us, are you? Never even considered going to the bank with us, did you?

She slowly looks at him.

RUTH
How do I know you’re gonna be around after all’s said ‘n done?

She stares down at her plate. LIghts shift....

I was very much attached to this speech, but it also turned out to be an example of one of my writing problems with this play. It was oblique to say the least. And rather than say what a character wanted from another, it simply explained the inertia that a character had - an inertia that was not the result of active fear.

So it was cut. Ironically, Cecil MacKinnon who played Ruth told me later that she'd just figured out how to deliver the speech to make clear what I was trying to do, but she also said it in a way that let me know the cut was the correct action. As noted in the previous post Clubbed Thumb Boot Camp: 2, in its place came a public revelation between lovers about what one owed to the US government for getting an education in the arts.

This simple change meant the play was about three people working out their mutual obligations rather than a play about what one guy was gonna do about a debt.

Ultimately, by Monday, I had crafted a final scene for the play that was also different from where I had been at the beginning of the process. Originally, my two main characters had reconciled, agreeing that their love for each other was more powerful than their fear of never getting out from under their debt.

In the new version, my bride, Liz, after watching her fiance Sutton fail at his attempt to fix a leaky roof, realizes he is attached to things rather than ideas and tells him - almost defiantly - what she is (an actor) and lays out what she owes monthly before leaving.

Her man, Sutton, for his part remains attached to things and so stays in the home where he clings to the hope that she'll come back after he's gotten his mother-in-law to re-mortgage the house to cover their financial problems.

I had not figured it all out, but the direction was more active. Still, with so many holes still to write through, I wasn't sure how the cast would take it.

The rehearsal on Monday loomed and in I came with the new first act and two scenes from the second act and a one page prayer.

They all looked hopeful as we started. About an hour later we all looked up from the new work. There were continuity problems all over the place. There were things that didn't work. But for the most part my cast, my producers and my director all had big smiles on their faces.

The emotional map that the new work laid out definitely pointed in direction that all felt would work.

Maria, tongue-in-cheek, put it out there for everyone: "Now all you have to do is fill in the connector scenes and you've got a play. You can do that before Wednesday, can't you?"

We all laughed.

And I relaxed. The play could be read as it was in front of people, holes and all, and it would be fine. It would show people what the play could be and how it could work. More importantly, it was clear that the spirit of the Clubbed Thumb boot camp had been embraced whole-heartedly.

Best of all, by Wednesday, I had filled in a lot of that connector material.

Certainly, there were still issues.

In fact, we made our audience sit in the hallway for 15 minutes longer than they should have as I tried to fix what I could. To make sure every one knew just how unfinished the play was, we also had the actors sit behind a table crowded with coffee cups stuffed with pens and pencils. During the reading, I felt it was almost possible for me to jump up and change something right in front of everyone - that's just how raw it was.

But it was clear, I believe, that there was a play here on our marked up pages.

It was good.
















This play will be produced July 13 -26,
at the Red Eye Theater in Minneapolis,
directed by Genevieve Bennett.

Check it out.... right here.

Clubbed Thumb Boot Camp: 2

Friday afternoon. I’m sitting in the north rehearsal room on the 5th floor of Playwrights Horizons trying to hear a young woman explain why she hasn’t told her lover about how big her debt from school is.

She starts in a low mumbly voice and doesn’t get much louder. It’s a lot of “I, I, I…” and “But…” and that’s about it. She knows it was a mistake. She didn’t mean to not tell him. But the size of the debt was so big and the whole affair was so quick that before she got the nerve to say what was what, she was wearing a ring.

I know this. She knows this.

But for some reason she seems unable to figure out how to say it to the person she’s hidden it from - the person she was obligated to tell.

I look away from the pages where she’s struggling to say this very simple thing. The west side of Manhattan glitters at me like big stupid Christmas ornament.

What am I going to do? The play’s a complete mess and I’m having trouble connecting to the voices of these characters the way I had once.

Part of the problem is that I haven’t truly jettisoned the old play. The play I came in with. The play that I’m carrying in my head. Every page, no matter how blank to start with, slowly fills with it. Every moment I visualize on stage, the characters start in a new direction but almost always find their way into the comfortable rut of behavior that I carved for them long ago.

It’s some kind of monster I’ve let rule the closet too long and now I can’t get rid of.

Maybe I should start by listening to him – her lover. He’s the wronged party. He’s gotta be pretty pissed. I would be. But it turns out he’s too stunned to say much. Too angry to do more than be an ogre.

This is not going to work. Maybe it’s time to do something radical.

I get up, get in the elevator. Ten minutes later I’m watching the new James Bond chasing bad guys across the globe and thinking the unthinkable: This new Bond just might be better than Connery. I’m impressed.

I go back to Playwrights. I get out the spiral notebook. It’s time for some old-fashioned writing, writing that moves slower than hands type. Writing that gives time for characters to respond.

I close my eyes. It’s night. I see a girl next to a kiddie pool brimming with water at the center of a living room.

She looks up at a hole in the ceiling where water drips down.

She kneels.

She opens her mouth.

Clubbed Thumb Boot Camp: 1

As someone who’s been paid on a regular basis to come up with ads over the years, I have gone into many offices with an armful of scripts and ideas that I was sure were going to change everything. Including what I might be paid every two weeks.

99 times out of a 100, I’ve left those same offices – sometimes within minutes – bleeding from the nose and feeling lucky that I got paid at all, let alone every two weeks.

Though getting your ass handed to you is never pleasant, I was usually relieved to discover that I was not alone - a quick poll of my fellow writers and art directors in the hallway often revealed they’d suffered similar fates.

For some reason though, there is no relief for me when it comes to plays. I just simply never want to miss. I never want to leave anyone unengaged. I never want to feel that someone reading, watching or hearing my play could walk away feeling like they wasted their time.

Sometimes I wonder if this is because failure in theatre is almost always a social occasion.

Or maybe it’s just that I care too much.

Or perhaps it’s just that I have too damn big an ego.

I don’t know.

But, for the record, I hate failing and my fear of it was unusually high this past week as I went into the Clubbed Thumb workshop.

Maria Striar, the producer working with me on my play, assured me – repeatedly - that the point of the workshop was to try new things, fail and try some more.

The word fail is in there, so I wasn't so sure. But she assured me that if I didn’t like any of the material created during the workshop, I could return to the original script for the final presentation.

“The play I chose,” she said, “is production ready. You don’t have to do anything to it if you don’t want. But this next week is about seeing what else you might do.”

I suppose the idea that you’ve got 7 days to play around with an option to return to the script that you started with would’ve made most writers happy, but me, well, it was something else.

Why? Because after the first read through on Wednesday the 29th, the one thing I was certain of was that the original script was not production ready. In fact, it was no good. At all. Sure, it had a good idea in it. And it had some great characters. But somehow, in that room over 42nd Street, I heard something in it that I hadn’t heard at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in March or at NJ Rep in September – a creeping flatness that kept the characters from truly engaging with each other and the problem that was keeping them at odds with themselves.

Matthew, my director, heard it. And my cast did, too. We all talked about it in different ways at the table after. It felt like an ocean of notes that I might drown in.

Having taken a red-eye in from Portland, I hoped it was just fatigue. I hit the hay and decided to worry about it later.

Matthew and I jawed about it all the next day. I hoped I could reroute the train; Matthew suggested track needed to be ripped up and re-laid. I discussed it carefully with my other collaborator, Heather, over the phone and then pulled out an old draft.

On Friday morning, I brought this older, but now more polished draft in for the cast.

We read. We looked at each other. Maria and I separated from the group to discuss.

She noted the play was different from the other plays I’d sent her. Those plays had been spare linguistically but visually interesting and laced with mysterious tension. This play had long monologs and action that happened offstage. The characters had interesting things to say but weren’t trying to change what other characters were doing.

Perhaps most notably, the play – about how a young couple is dealing with educational debt - was naturalistic when most of my other plays were decidedly not.

Maria made one concrete suggestion: Have the size of the bride’s debt revealed to the groom during the course of the play – don’t make it something he already knows at the start of the play.

This meant widening the focus of the play’s central problem from how a young couple deals with a financial problem caused by chasing dreams (school) to include the effect that hiding such a sizeable fact means in a relationship.

I went home and opened up a blank page on the computer screen. I couldn't go back to what I had. It was time to see what would happen next.

I just tried to forget that I only had 5 days to see it.

Spike Jonze

Who needs writers?

New ink

A whole new second act.

Revised soup to nuts in less than 4 days.







5 great actors.
2 fantastic producers.
1 terrific director.
An audience of 30 or so.

All huddled together in a room above 42nd street engaged in the act of theatre.

I have more work to do - but for now I'm pleased.

Don't forget, readings from Ethan Lipton on Friday at 8.30 and Ann Marie Healy on Saturday at 3.

(More later on the entire process as well as the what New York was like this time.)

The reading. (After the rewriting.)

I've been missing in action. Why?

I've been rewriting.

Is it any good?

Please come and find out.


************************************************
CLUBBED THUMB reading of BEYOND THE OWING

WHEN: Wednesday (tomorrow) at 8.30 pm

WHERE: Playwrights Horizons (on 42nd Street, just west of 9th) on the 5th floor. North Rehearsal Room.

I gotta say, Maria Striar, Michael Levinton, Matthew Arbour, Cecil MacKinnon, Mary Bacon, Jeff Beihl, Jeff Stietzer and Meg McQuillan are all warm, kind, smart, patient and incredibly talented.

I'm very, very fortunate.

IN OTHER NEWS: The job in LA - there's a second interview. Originally they wanted to do it over the phone. Now they want to do it in person. Looking forward to meeting them. So far they've been great.

Cross your fingers. For everything.

*Morgan Freeman will NOT be there. However, his wax figure may appear.

New York. Again.

Arrived in New York this morning - after a long redeye on JetBlue - for the week long Clubbed Thumb development of Beyond the Owing.

The plane was full of babies and tall girls with paint splats on their shoes and Bob Rauschenberg bios in their hands.

They scared me, those girls. And I was uncomfortable. Plus, somehow the Big Apple, despite some temperate numbers on the thermometer, felt intimidating as soon as I got out of the gate.

Could be I'm just worried about whether or not I can whip this play into shape in a week. Could be I'm just tired. Either way, here goes nothing.

I've got a terrific cast - Cecil MacKinnon, Mary Bacon, Jeff Biehl, Meg McQillan and Jeff Steitzer - as well as a wonderdful director - Matthew Arbour - and a great producer in Maria Striar and Clubbed Thumb - so it's definitely up to me.

I'll try to post as I can - but depending on how much needs to be done on the play, that may be very little.

We'll see...

What's a Clubbed Thumb?

Some answers. Here.

And here.

And here.

And, not least of all, here.

The reading of BEYOND THE OWING that you can come to will be Dec 6 at 8.30 pm. Playwrights Horizons in NYC.

Hope to see you then.

You are rejected

Somewhere in the midst of my 1 day. 2 miracles. Maybe even 3. post I mentioned how I've been rejected.

It's occured to me that this is a worthwhile subject just by itself.

After all, there's a lot of it in my life. A lot.

And I don't think I'm any different from most other writers out there.

Though I suppose one reason I am a writer is because early on - ridiculously early on - I was not rejected. In fact, teachers, perhaps surprised that any male student might be attracted to anything besides how the Chicago Bears were doing, encouraged me over and over to continue writing short stories. And then, the first time I ever sought approval outside the classroom, I won a prize - the Senior Scholastic Short Story Competition - for a rite of passage story about a kid on foal watch at a yearling farm.

It was all downhill from there.

************************************************************
I sometimes dream that I'll frame all my rejection letters and hang them in the lobby of the theatre I hope to own some day. Until then they're all in a plastic portfolio envelope like this.



************************************************************

There are two kinds of rejection. Personal and not-so-personal.

By and large, most rejections are of the not-so-personal variety - form letters, with my name filled in at the top. They usually start by thanking me for my submission, occasionally naming the play, and then have a paragraph about how many plays they get and how few production slots the theatre actually has. "Regretfully we do not feel that your play is appropriate for our theatre at this time."

The "this time" thing always gets me because I'm pretty sure what is really meant is, "any time."

It's not uncommon to get a follow-up paragraph to this that is probably the single most disengenous thing you can get in a form letter. It usually goes something like this: This is not a reflection on the quality of your play or your writing.

Let's face it, while this may be true - a nod to the subjectivity of their judgement - if they thought your play had quality or merit for them, they'd make it.

Lately, some theatres and theatre groups have taken to email rejection. This, for some reason, strikes me as less personal though, generally speaking, it's nothing less than an electronic form letter. Still, it feels cruelly impersonal since, outside of reading the play, it cost the theatre nothing to send. I can be removed from their world of possibilities and considerations with a finger on a send button.

The more personal letters of rejection are, of course, the other kind and sometimes they are really just form letters with a personal addendum. Once, for instance, I recieved a letter from the Nicholls Fellowship saying one of my screenplays didn't make it. But I had two entries that year and in handwriting the words "Better news to follow" was scribbled in the margin.

Most personal rejections don't have that kind of message of hope, but they are almost all a sign that you got someone's attention. Ie, somebody in the organizaiton had some heart for your script. This can be exhilarating. But it can also be devastating, because you're still rejected.

My own personal reaction to these letters is proportional to the message itself and the organization that it's from - squared to the power of the amount of hope I have for the play. In fact, the more I love the play or believe in it, the harder these personalized rejections are.

Put another way: when a piece gets bounced with a letter that lets me know that the play "has great characters and dialog" or "is compelling and fascinating" and that I'm "clearly talented", I feel like the guy who manically scratched at the cliff edge before falling to his death. In mid-air, knowing the end is coming, I'm thinking, "Shit, maybe I shoulda stapled $5 to that one."

That's not to say that I feel completely bad about this kind of rejection. After all, I'm decidedly not dead at the bottom of a ravine. I will get up. I will write again. I will have my revenge.

And, since I think everything is about relationship, a rejection that goes, "I like you but I don't want to sleep with you" is always followed by a "Yet" in my mind. I'm a sick bastard this way. The turn down is essentially an invitation to send something else.

Oddly, acceptance, the few times I've gotten it, has always been less interesting. It's come in an email or a phone call. "We're interested in doing this" or "Congratulations, your peice was chosen from thousands" etc. Then I've usually found myself off in the details of what's next without much reflection on how truly astounding it may be that I'm a winner.

Obviously, I'll take this kind of deflation any day.

Fortunately, I've been accepted to a few things often enough to also get some perspective on why I've been rejected elsewhere. By seeing what's been chosen, I can see that quality really is not always a way to determine what's to be produced and what's not. Especially in short play competitions. Certain themes and ideas emerge that show you're not crazy.

There's actually a pattern of craziness.

Currently, I'm waiting for quite a few letters of rejection in the mail. My philosophy is to truly try not to think about a submission after I've dumped it in the mail. If I don't hear from someone, I don't hear from them.

As far as I'm concerned, I'm still being considered.

Klosterman still rules.

Yes, please.

More, please.

Thank you.

And have a Happy Thanksgiving.

A rather dry introduction to the best pop essayist alive.

My first LA party

This weekend I went to my first LA "thing". It was a wrap party for WEDNESDAY AGAIN, an independent movie starring Richmond Arquette (yes, of the endless and endlessly talented Arquette family) and was written and directed by John Lavachielli. It was at Arquette's house.

A laid back affair, everyone was incredibly nice. And, again, smart. I was a guest of one of the movie's actors and while I was quite shy, my "date" was very good about introducing me to everyone. And I found both Arquette and the Lavachielli to be warm, interested and entirely ego-less. Weirdly, Shirley Jones was also there (her husband is in the movie) and I got to shake her hand. (Yeah, me and Mrs. Partridge.)

Honestly, I never thought I'd be in any Arquette backyard - but there I was. And it was nice. Like a neighborhood BBQ should be.

I'm in Ashland for Turkey Day and then, next week, in NY for the Clubbed Thumb workshop of Beyond The Owing. I'll post from the Big Apple if not before then.

1 day. 2 miracles. Maybe even 3.

"In dreams begin responsibilities."
- Delmore Schwartz

Okay. I admit it. I've been a little glum lately.

In fact, some of my recent posts could send the most ardent "Don't Worry Be Happy" believer to consider a jump from the Golden Gate Bridge as an upwardly mobile thing to do.

But on Wednesday this started to change.

*********
Miracle 1:

Over the weekend, Heather was in LA and we looked at apartments together. The first one we saw we loved. But it was also the first one. The woman who showed it to us (her name will be Susan) was lovely and clearly liked us, but like I said, it was the first one. The first. We took applications and then we looked at some more apartments. Saturday we called and said we'd take the apartment and come in with the paperwork on Sunday.

But Sunday, just before we went over, Susan called and said she'd rented it to someone else.

I couldn't blame her. Heather and I are a tough sell economically. She's an actor. I'm a writer. Neither of us have jobs. Just savings. And while there are plenty of reasons in our backgrounds to believe we'll make it, those things can't be expressed by numbers on a ledger sheet.

It was hard news. Heather cried. Though I kept our applications hoping something else might open up with Susan, I went into a deep funk. Deep.

How were we going to rent? Work wasn't/isn't coming effortlessly. We have debts. Our only assets: Optimism and a Mini-Cooper.

Things only got worse after Heather went back up to Oregon to finish school tour work and I applied for another apartment that was nice, but not as nice as the one we didn't get.

The landlord read me the financial riot act. It got me down even more because I understood how rational he was.

I'd faced this before once, in New York, but I'd overcome it there. Somehow, on the West Coast, I just felt more exposed. More vulnerable. Perhaps I want it more out here. I dunno. I certainly couldn't ignore what had happened.

I snapped at Heather over the phone. She reminded me that we had money. That she was still working. That we both had talent and that if we just kept putting it out there, something would happen for us. But I was wallowing. Work. Work. Work. Where is it, I groused, not counting the blessing of being married to Heather.

I went to AA meetings. I talked with my sponsor. I applied for more jobs online. I decided to continue working on my spec TV script and keep putting the ad portfolio fearlessly out there.

Still.

And then, Wednesday night, while I was hunkered down at the WGA, Susan calls.

"Have you and Heather found a place you like yet?" Susan asked.
"No," I said, "I'm afraid we haven't."
"Tell me a little more about your finances."

Twenty minutes later Susan said the other people had backed out and she was still interested in us if we were interested in her.

I signed the lease this morning.

************
Miracle 2:

You write a play. You send it out. 9 times out of 10, you get a rejection back in the mail six months to a year and a half later.

Sometimes the rejection is a nice one. Whoever is repsonding liked the piece enough to note it personally, even though, ultimately, they're turning you away.

Most times, though, I just forget who I've sent it to and move on.

This morning, even before I signed a lease, my phone rings. It's a 212 number I don't recognize.

"Hello, This is Malachy."
"Hi, Malachy, this is Maria Striar from Clubbed Thumb."

Clubbed Thumb is something I've written about before on this blog as one of the things about NY Theatre that I will miss most. Fortunately, not as much as I thought however.

Maria, whom I've only met once, briefly, following a show, offers me a space in Clubbed Thumb's Boot Camp to work on BEYOND THE OWING. Though I've sent her many plays - this is a play that I sent her in the spring following a workshop in Ashland at the OSF. After a reading in September at the NJ Rep, I worked on a new draft to send to the O'Neill. Matthew Arbour and I, (he's the director I've worked closely with on this piece for the past year) were recently talking about this new daft and thinking how good it would be to have a more formal workshop of it where we could really put some time against it together.

Maria is offering us that chance.

After I signed the lease, I bought a plane ticket to NY. I'll be there from Nov 29 through December 11.

Two of the other writers involved are Karl Gajdusek, who I admire and know through mutual friends, and Ann Marie Healy, whose work I've actually seen and admired often at Clubbed Thumb.

***********
Miracle 3?

I get a call from someone with a job I applied for through HotJobs. They're not sure I'm right for them - and since it's in an area of expertise I'm not completely versed in, I'm not sure I'm right for it either. But they want to talk. Next week.

Hmmmm.....
****************

This all happens in one day.

I have a lot of work to do.

Where cookies will come from very soon.

7: The Director

One of my biggest fears about LA is that I'm not cool enough.

I mean, you watch the movies and there are plenty of depictions of agents, actors, directors, production assistants and hangers-on with so much cool, well, southern California begins to feel cold. (For me, it got so I started worrying that even the parking valets sit at the unattainable lunch table of hipness.)

The next biggest fear about LA is that cool is all that counts.

When these two things are combined with a third fear, cool never has any substance, well, I have a pretty potent cocktail in my head: I start thinking that I need to have a more Vince Vaughn delivery and need to pitch movies about Nazi zombies and the action stars who blow them up.

But I don't have Vince Vaughn's patter (and certainly not his looks) and I have no passion for Nazi zombie movies (which, by the way, I actually overheard someone pitch to someone else at the Farmer's Market on Fairfax one evening).

If anything, I am sincere to a fault.

This truth about myself occasionaly sends me into a depression. I despair that there's no one like me out there on the LA highways, that they've all come here and gone back to the midwest where they were raised, that substance is incidental, that seriousness is unimportant and that sensitivity is an obstacle to be overcome.

Then I meet the Director - a guy who I'll call, Steve - and I realize I am way way way wrong. In fact, I'm wallowing in foolishness and fear.

Not that Steve isn't cool. He is. In fact, very.

But when I meet him at a Starbucks in Westwood, I also find him to be kind, warm, funny and accessible. He has worked in commercials as well as features and tv. In the 80s he invented an interesting cyber icon right out of art school. There's been some luck in his life, but I know too there's been a lot of talent backed up by hard work. This is reassuring.

He definitely knows the world (advertising) that I'm coming from. And the world I'm trying to get to.

His advice echos that which I got from the agent a month earlier.

"If you haven't been produced, it's very very hard. When people find that out they back away. It's very hard. So I reccommend that you try to make something. It doesn't have to be very long, but it has to be good. It should also be something that's part of something else that you want to make. That way you can show people what you want to do and they can see it. They'll say, Oh, I see. And you can get financing that way. Once you have a project done, it will be much much easier."

He asks what kind of movies I like. I go through a list of 70s films I love (5 Easy Pieces, Last Picture Show, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore) and then name a few more recent features (Lost in Translation, Eternal Sunshine, Little Miss Sunshine) I'm crazy about.

He also asks about my plays and my screenplays. I summarize them for him.

"This is good. All good good," he says. "I see."

Then he suggests something I can do in addition to - perhaps in lieu of - shooting something.

"There is a television channel that makes 40 movies a year with budgets of less than $1 million each. You don't have to write the whole script to sell an idea to them. You could write a really great logline and if they show interest, you could get in that way. It's something someone like you, from advertising, should be able to do. It's what people in advertising are good at. You should develop 10 or 12 loglines. Really work on them. Polish them. That's another way."

What is great about this advice is not just its directness, but also the feeling I get from Steve as he offers it. He clearly seems interested in helping. Of sending me in the right direction. He's floating ideas based on what I've told him. It makes me want to work for him in just about any capacity.

He presses me about my commercial reel. (To see it, click on the MY TV WORK link off to the right - the file's big, so you'll have to wait, but it's all there; or go to IDEAS BY A PLATYPUS - it's all there too.) Again, echos of the agent.

"That could be a big thing. It's a kind of production. Especially if there's comedy. People can see that you did that and they'll feel that they might be able to trust you."

Naturally, I love hearing this, but as our meeting ends, I know I can't rely on it alone.

"Send me your screenplay and if I respond to it, then, well, maybe we can talk some more," Steve says. "In the meantime, I'll look at your TV commercials online, too."

I get in my Mini-Cooper and drive home feeling upbeat, feeling that while being cool may be important, being good is important too.

Then I get out a pad of paper and start working up loglines in case Steve likes my script and calls me. As I start, I feel grateful that no logline I write will have to include anything about Nazi zombies.

Maybe someday, of course. Just not today.

Two Rabbits

Can you hunt two at once?

This weekend a friend from advertising who has also been creating his own music wrote me with a question. It's one that's been around a bit in a variety of forms (see Laura Axelrod's Gasp!), but I thought was particularly well put.

And, as someone who has written for advertising, theatre, film and more, I thought it very ap-pro-po for this blog - a kind of record of a copywritin' playwright trying to swim in waters that are decidedly different for him. (And maybe even foolish as the previous Post suggests.)

Here it is, a bit excerpted but generally in tact.

********************

M-

So, my friend, I don't know what you did to deserve this but I am very interested in your answer to a question.

I just heard a fascinating comment. From all things, a script for CSI - the TV world you are trying to break in to.

It said "If you chase two rabbits you end up losing them both."

You and I are friends, I think, because we have in common the fact that we are chasing two rabbits.

With you it's script-writing - whether for TV, film or the stage is of no importance. With me, it's writing also. Definitely songs and maybe things I've never even attempted yet.

But we both have the other rabbit. Advertising.

By chasing both do we lose both?

Let me know what you think.

(----)

ps I know paying the bills is important. But as Leonard Cohen once said "I never wanted to work for pay but I want to be paid for my work."

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Here was my answer:
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Interesting question. Especially since a lot of times the right answer is the one that sounds the best in a given a moment.

Also makes me want to say a lot of smart sounding things like, if I made art with a gun it would be as simple as hunting rabbit. etc. etc.

Certainly, there are a lot of ad people who'd say that hunting two is bad. Nick Cohen of Mad Dogs & Englishmen really frowned on the writers and art directors who had "hobbies".

On the other hand, David Ogilvy thought creatives without outside interests were boring.

I've never really thought I was ever pursuing two rabbits though. I've always wanted to entertain and engage people by using language as a starting point for creation.

I've done it in advertising. I've done it in theatre. Now I'm trying to do it in other forms.

That said, when I'm hired to do one of those things, I pretty much am devoted to it until the project is over. I found this to be true the last two years I was in advertising: I could never really leave the office at the office. Yet the training and experience I have in other forms always helps inform the answers I come up with in whatever form I'm working in - which is to say sometimes thinking outside of the box really means to get outside of the box.

Anyway, there are plenty of examples of writers and artists who did more than one thing with their talents - often doing something to make money during the day while doing something completely different at night.

Joseph Heller, Bernard Malamud, Ted Bell and James Patterson were all copywriters for a while. Wallace Stevens worked at an insurance company. Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol worked in the commercial arts before going on to pop greatness. Many teach.

And there are currently lots of directors who cross freely from commercial forms to theatrical release forms; and writers who move between screenplays and theatre and television.

Of course, there are purists out there - and some may have been successful enough early on to go on being purists throughout their life. I'm somewhat glad to say, I'm just not one of them.

-m

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I'm sure there are plenty of purists out there who disagree.

What have I done?

OKAY, you tell yourself not to look at the freekin' bank account, but you do.

You tell yourself, not to worry about the phone bill, but you can't have a conversation without a less than philosophical discussion in your head about the nature of time.

You promise yourself to be yourself when you meet other people, but somewhere in the middle of hello, you hear the silent cry, "Help me."

You go by houses on the block and do everything you can to look away from the brightly lit rooms you see behind the windows, but you just can't help yourself.

You step into your shoes every morning thinking, today I will not consider what I'd have if in my 401K if I'd stayed in New York and took full advantage of the matching plan, but the calculator in your head adds it up anyway.

You look in the mirror and plug your ears to the sound of the little man inside yourself that shouts, "You shoulda gone to LAW SCHOOL!" but you hear him anyway like a muffled voice through a shitty hotel wall.

Yeah, you do, you do, you do.

Cuz that's what you do when you do what you do, word boy.

6: The WGA Library

I am writing this post from one of the best places on earth for a writer: The WGA Library.

Located at 3rd and Fairfax - a stone's throw from the Farmer's Market and The Grove - the library is a collection of tv and film scripts that are available to anyone who can read.

It's a great great thing. And it's the first place I came to read a teleplay - specifically SMITH. (It was an amazing experience since it was incredibly fast to read and gave me the sense that all good guilty pleasures do: Let's do that again and hope we don't caught.)

While not exactly huge, my guess is that there are probably 5,000 or so scripts here, both TV and film, behind locked glass cases. The way it works is simple: You come in, introduce yourself to the librarians and then, once you decide what you want to look at, you hand them your driver's license and they give you the script. (Everything stays in the library.)

Don't underestimate the introducing yourself to the librarians bit. These folks are the gate keepers of the secret books and they know what people read, and thus what people write.

I learned very quickly that the shows that had been most popular for spec scripts in the last year or so were "House" and "Medium" for drama; and "The Office" for comedy. ("Two and a Half Men", I've since learned, is the other 1/2 hour comedy everyone's supposed to write for.)

The librarians also know what people are talking about - which I hope will give me a good jump on next spring's scripts to write. (I'm placing big bets on DEXTER, FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS and HEROES.)

And they do favors too. One of them, when I asked whether they'd get a copy of DEXTER from Showtime, told me that they wouldn't but that he had a friend who was taping them. "I'll email you when I get them."

Now THAT's a librarian I like.

But even if they didn't have these wonderful people and fairly large library, it's a great place to hang out if for no other reason than hearing the sound of other writers writing. Yes, indeed, to sit in the library is to hear ambitions songs played out on computer keys.

It's beautiful.

5: The Playwright

"Theatre is like the long legged girl I used to be in love with but that still comes over to my house to kick me in the balls and steal all my money."

This is what the playwright, whom I'll call Robert (to protect the innocent as well as the guilty), says to me over lunch at Grub in LA.

"I know what you mean," I reply. "Only I'm still in love. And since she's already taken all my money, she now comes over with a blood bag and a needle to extract a pint or two to hock on the open market."

The first time our paths crossed was in San Francisco about a month before I headed to NY and Columbia. We were playing softball. When he discovered what I was about to do, he told me he was a playwright who'd been through the MFA mill himself. Between home runs (boy, could he smack a ball), he gave me one of the best pieces of advice I was to ever get about grad school and theatre.

"When I got out of school, I got out with all these friends from the program. I thought they'd just make my career automatically blossom. That doesn't happen. Well, maybe it happens for some people, but most people, that doesn't happen. Still, you'll have a great time. Especially if you're going there just to write. It's a lot of fun if that's what you're really interested in."

In NY, I discovered that Robert was not only correct about grad school, but a fairly successful playwright, a member of New Dramatists, a gifted screenwriter and a writer on a television show or two that I happened to have a lot of respect for. He'd moved to the West Coast several years ago.

Now I wanted to find out about writing in Hollywood. And that included playwriting. Sort of.

"I've just found that the darker themes I'm interested in are more frankly handled in television and film than in theatre," he said.

Huh?

"Well, theatres seem to be interested in producing plays that are nice little unchallenging things. They want audiences to be comfortable. Television and film are actually less afraid."

I had to agree - or at least, let me say, my own experience suggested this was true. FIRE BABY, my dark comedy about generational problems that are played out when a kid tries to kill his parents (only half successfully - his mother proves to be quite a challenge to kill) had won a few awards but had been rejected everywhere. DRESSING THE GIRL, a story about our darker mental habits and prisms, had met the same fate. And almost every play I'd read for the Public that had some dark heart to it never made it much beyond a New Work NOW! consideration. Yet on TV, I could get THE SHIELD, THE WIRE, THE SOPRANOS, RESCUE ME, DEAD LIKE ME, ROME, FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS, BIG LOVE, SIX FEET UNDER, DEXTER, all the Aaron Sorkin shit and more. Hell, even the GILMORE GIRLS was occasionally more provocative than some of the programming at the major non-profits in NYC. And film, well, among all the blockbusters, you still had Aronofsky, Nolan, Gondry, Egoyan and Soderbergh working - to name a few.

"What do you want to break into? Television or film?" he asked.
"I've got a few movie scripts, but I thought I'd try my hand at television."
"Well, I think you'll find it easier if you go for one rather than both. There's really not as much cross over as people think."

I asked him to expand on that since he seemed to have actually avoided making a decision about which to do for himself.

"That's actually why I suggest making a decision. It's kind of hard to run between them. It's a lot."

Feeling like selling a screenplay was like winning the lottery, I told him I was probably going to pursue television pretty hard.

"I think being a staff writer on a television show is the best creative job in the world right now. You get paid well, the audience is there, the outlet is terrific and the quality of work is high. And nothing squeezes your brain harder. It's really amazing."

Any drawbacks?

"It's a great job for someone who's single, but it's not really for a family person. You work a lot. The hours can just be insane."

The bill came and we both produced credit cards. As we made out the tip amounts, I told him about the agent that had suggested making a film and putting it on YouTube.

"With technology being what it is, now anyone can make a thing. But unless they have access to some kind of cleverness that no-one else can get their hands on, I'm not sure there's anything to it."

I mentioned one of my favorite YouTube videos, THE EASTER BUNNY HATES YOU. We both agreed it was funny, but not exactly the kind of sustained narrative that says, trust me, I can write your movie.

Still, making a movie. There had to be some value to it. Strangely, it brought us back to theatre.

"Sure. I made a movie a couple of years ago. It wasn't any good, but it made me remember what it was like to do theatre once. You work with a small group of people, very closely, very intensely and you really believe it's gonna be great so that you hardly notice that you're sitting around working with lights and actors in some hole at 3 o'clock in the morning. It was good to be in touch with that."

Yep, I knew exactly what he meant - after all, as I said at the top, I was still in love with that long legged girl.

Which is why, when we finished lunch, I went home, rolled up my sleeve and let her plunge that needle into my arm one more time: She needed that pint of blood much more than I did.

On her way out, she gave me a good knee to the groin.

I told her to come back tomorow morning. I was sure I'd have some more for her by then if she wanted.

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Take a look at this on young audiences courtesy of the Playgoer. It's way worthwhile. In 20 Years Everything You Love Will Be Dead

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For two years, there's been 3,000 miles between us. Here's how we did it. Or, well, thought about it.

(Yes, all my obsessions in one link - but it also serves as a nice rebuttal to those who say the arts can't sustain you.)

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More of "The Industry - People I'm Meeting" in LA to come early next week.