Super Sunday Follow-up

A commenter on my Anna Nicole Smith spot (he also did not find it funny) reminded me that I'd promised to point out which of the Super Bowl spots I did some very very peripheral work for.

My reply to "eric" is below - with some simple revisions to the original (which you can see in the ANS spot comment section).

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Here's where you can find the Super Bowl spot:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQKk3PI-DW8

John Hage (writer) and Bernie O'Dowd (art director) at Deutsch/LA came up with it. I have to say I liked it from the first time I saw it - which was in a rough cut two Fridays before the Super Bowl. It's a very good spot in my opinion.

It didn't get a lot of talk, but all of the talk it got was positive. And it was one of the higher scoring spots with regular people too.

Unfortunately, I've heard through the grapevine that there was one major complainer. NAMI (National Assoc for Mental Illness) thought that the spot made lite of suicidal ideation. GM - after a few days - decided to alter the spot to soften this. I haven't seen the remake.

Knowing the people at Deutsch, I'm sure it'll be good, too.

The thing I worked on (guided/oversaw might be better words) was a "movie trailer" for the spot. It was to be used on the Internet to "tease" people into looking for the spot when it ran on the game and, then, after the game to get those who hadn't seen it yet to watch the full 60 second spot elsewhere.

I found the trailer as recently as early last week on YouTube. It has since been removed from that YouTube page - presumably because of the above NAMI controversy.

It was more or less a cut down of the 60 with a Don Lafontaine-like VO along the lines of "See what happens when everything you once loved is suddenly taken away. And you're a robot."

It had a melodramatic flair that matched the emotional tenor of the original - though there had been a version of the spot that was also funny that made it look like one of those ridiculous action adventure stories of a Robot driven to madness when everything he ever lived for turned into a nightmare.

This is a snap I took of the Robot in the Deutsch/LA lobby the week before the game. It took several puppeteers to animate it.

Very cool.

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ps. the Bernie O'Dowd mentioned here is, indeed, the skateboard guy. I knew nothing about him before sharing an office with him, but apparently he was quite well known at one time. Google his name and you'll see.

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EDIT: Here's where you'll find the Robot spot with the new ending.
http://www.gm.com/company/onlygm/quality/index.html?cmp=RobotOLA_Branding

I am sleepy

The whole day was spent worrying about finishing a script to send to an agent by the end of the week.

The whole day.

This meant I was isolated from my wife the entire time and now she's asleep.

I should've gone to a meeting today.

And spent less time worrying about things I have no control over.

Let's start again, tomorrow.

My Anna Nicole Smith ad

Done just after she won the first round of the lawsuit over the money her ex-husband left her.

I have always hated it - not because Anna was bad, but because I never found it funny. However, my art director at the time had come up with it and would not let it go. There were many fights over how to improve the ads - but I lost them all. Even the ones with the client where I tried to tell them the campaign would not be effective in generating calls without major revisions and a new media plan. (Media departments at most agencies drive creative - this is what has happened in the last 10 years and it is bad: It leads to irrelevant messages in places that are even more irrelevant. Ugh.)

Interestingly, I never thought I'd actually have to shoot the ad because while the client had bought the idea of celebrities applying - but discovering they're not qualified - for jobs at 21st Century Insurance, nobody wanted to do it for the money they were offering.

Then Anna said yes.

Turned out she was the cheapest of the three celebs we used (the others were Alice Cooper and Randy "macho man" Savage).

The day before the shoot I thought I'd get a reprieve from it when Anna broke her arm in a "weight lifting accident" and tried postpone the shoot.

The client played hardball and she came out to fulfill her contract.

The producer said Nicole asked for Crystall and Godiva Chocolates in her trailer. She stayed in Santa Monica under the name Norma Jean.

Yeah. Norma. Jean.

She never came out of character. But she was completely professional at all times. Even when the client made her try on shirts though she was clearly in pain from the arm injury which turned out to be real.

I will also say this about her: In person, she appeared to be nothing more than a big boned Texas woman with a lot of make up, but something different happened under the lights in the camera's eye. She seemed to radiate. I've seen a few actors since who do this - appearing rather normal in rehearsals or auditions, but becoming incandescent in front of an audience - but this was the first time I ever experienced it.

It is a very special thing for which there is no real explanation.

I have a picture of me and her together on the set somewhere but I can't find it right now.

As I've already said, I never liked the ad - strategically it was wrong for the company - and entertainment-wise it wasn't funny (there'd been arm wrestling). Plus, I never like creative driven by celebrities - always seems like a cop out to me. But everyone was too busy trying to have a story to tell their golf buddies over a round of 18 holes to care.

Ultimately, it didn't matter. The ad was pulled after one weekend because it didn't create enough calls.

Over a $1,000,000 was wasted on this effort.

The TV Spec Script: 4 - If painting by numbers doesn't make great art, what makes anyone think writing by numbers will work any better?

Are you writing a 4 act or a 5 act?

Does your show have 35 scenes per hour? Or 48?

How many times does your main character talk?

How many pages does your script have?

Does yours have too many? Or too few?

THESE are just a few of the questions you are told to ask as you sit down to write a spec script for TV. They're similar for movies.

But since writing a television spec is about showing you know how to do it, these questions are emphasized over and over.

Of course, this nonsense is akin to saying that because you've written a poem in perfect iambic pentameter in 3 quatrains and a couplet (abab, cdcd, efef, gg), you've written a good sonnet.

It's all part of the anyone-can-do-it myth that's grown up around an auto-pilot, mass manufactured world of entertainment.

I blame Syd Field for doing this first (though I'm sure he was not the first) and JAWS for making it seem like the only way to get people to spend money on a story. The misuse/overuse of Joseph Campbell's ideas hasn't helped either.

The combination has, at its worst, led to dull, predictable emotional and action tropes.

It's lazy storytelling and, worse, it's led to an even lazier "teaching of storytelling".

I say this because it seems rather than tell someone, "Hey, you know, this script doesn't have a strong idea" or "Go back and figure out what this character is interested in emotionally" people are told to watch shows and make hash marks every time there's a cut to a new scene.

Other, less numerical, but just as mindless tidbits are often shared.

Things like, "don't use 'is' and 'was'" and "make more stuff happen" and "think of your story like a mountain range with valleys and peaks" and, my favorite, "no scene in a movie should ever be longer than a half page".

Does anyone else find this annoying?

All I can say is, thank god Sam Shepard didn't write True West, Buried Child, Curse of the Starving Class, Fool for Love or Lie of the Mind this way. And thank god Fornes didn't give a shit that Mud is too short for a "real evening of theatre".

In fact, thank god for theatre in all its baffling, unwieldy beauty.

A prediction that came true... except for the tropical part

In August we drove up 1 along the Oregon coast. Along the way, we got into some kind of bickering thing and when we pulled over, my co-dependent self wanted to make up for everything and get back on track.

My extroverted self decided to record it.

And then I made a prediction about conceiving a child.

For some reason I thought it would happen in November.

I also thought it would happen while we were on a honeymoon that we hadn't taken and that we still haven't taken (for financial reasons, mostly).

As you know, I was wrong about one of those predictions.

But what I'm really wondering is: Does anybody in the blog world actually watch these posted videos?

ps. this video is only 50 seconds long.

Something to write for: The Coppola Theory

There’s a theory about art and artists.

Kids get in the way.

They take up time. They take up energy. They take up money. They change your life focus.

Then there’s another theory. I’ll call it the Coppola Theory because he’s the first one I ever heard make it.

And that’s that kids make you better. Faster. More urgent.

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When my wife and I got married a year ago, we knew we wanted to have kids. However, we were both still working and, because our jobs had us separated on a temporary basis, we weren’t in a hurry to get going (plus, you try getting pregnant with 3,000 miles between you).

Naturally, as we planned to move to LA, we hoped that by finally living in the same place we’d be able to start the family we’d always talked about – but even then, we were cautious.

We were both going to need jobs. And a place to live. And cars. And… well, you get the point.

Plus, I really wanted to take a stab at film and TV, which meant breaking into a new field from my bread and butter career: advertising.

But I was certain I’d find work. And all the rest would follow quickly.

Then I moved. And work was not easy to find. And it was more expensive than I thought. And then there was the housing problem – which I’ve already blogged about.

Things came to a head the weekend in November when Heather came down from Ashland to look for a place with me. It was a tough couple of days for us. I was particularly down since my worst employment fears were being recognized. And she was upset by the lack of livable housing that we seemed to be confronting.

The subject of kids and starting a family came up when one potential landlord (who is now our landlord) asked us if we were planning to have a baby anytime soon.

I didn’t hesitate.

“Oh, god, no,” I said flippantly. “We have other things to do first. Like a find jobs, a place to live. Stuff like that.”

Heather brought up my response later that evening. Apparently she was worried that we were not on the same page.

I backpedaled.

“What I meant, was, uh, that right now, in the immediate moment, while I don’t have a job and it doesn’t look like I’m going to sell a screenplay or get a staff job on a TV show anytime soon, and well, the ad agencies don’t seem like they need help, well, I don’t think it would be a great time to have kids, cuz, you know, well, uh, do you think it would be good?”

A very very very long conversation ensued.

And, of course, we, uh, well, you know what we did.

About a week and a half later, I got the call that landed us the address at Sunset. And the same morning, an invitation from Clubbed Thumb to go to New York and work on my play, Beyond the Owing – about two people struggling as artists under huge grad school debt.

All this made me happy and so I went up to Ashland to celebrate Thanksgiving and then to NYC to workshop my play.

And, boy, was the workshop intense. In fact, I was quite worried that I was going to embarrass myself if I didn’t write better faster when I got call one night from Heather that started: “I have to tell you something…”

Now, I don’t know what it has felt like for others when they were told they were going to be a parent, but me, well, there was a little thing that started at the top of my head and shot down through me like a field of soothing electricity and there I was born all over again myself right there in a studio apartment overlooking West 43rd Street between 8th and 9th Avenues.

I mean, I was like, Shit. Happy happy happy shit, but Shit.

I don’t know how long it took me to stop smiling (though my wife claims that I went back to my dramaturgical issues within 10 minutes), but I do know I felt there could be no greater event, no more positive a thing than being told I was going to be a dad.

Until my first sonogram, that is. (The above is the second, most recent sonogram.) I watched in disbelief as a doctor pushed and poked my wife’s flat belly looking for something that could, potentially, some day be a child but for now would look like a grey pea. It was a miracle perhaps that the doctor could find it – but when she did, well, the look on my wife’s face was maybe the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

Part wonder, part fear, part joy, part love, part true amazement.

On arriving in LA, two friends who’d had a child only a few weeks before recommended a doctor in Beverly Hills and I got another look at that expression.

Only this time, it came with a heartbeat.

(There was also some prodding and poking required that I had to turn my head from since, if I was looking, I’d have had to have kicked the doctor’s ass but good. After all, here’s only so much a man will let another man do to his wife before such displays of macho-ness are required, regardless of the medical degree from Stanford.)

I’m pretty sure the doctor turned the volume up real high, but even without that, I think the Notre Dame marching band drummers couldn’t compete.

We’re due in August.

And despite all I’ve written here, it still hasn’t quite sunk in. (I told my wife this weekend something like, “When the baby arrives in 9 months we’ll – “ and she interrupted me to point out that it would only be 6 months. Doh!) But I’m reading books, er, well, a book and asking about prenatal vitamins and thinking about my job search in a totally different way.

But I’m still a writer.

And now, to all the other changes in my life over the last few months, I have another thing to prove with words.

That I can be good enough with them to make a good life for someone I’ve never met yet, but who I’m completely and totally responsible for.

Which makes me a Coppola Theory acolyte.

Amazing.

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This photo was taken 24 hours after H told me I would be a father.

Some day, we'll all be old

I'm perpetually unhappy about how hard it is to successfully write and make theatre.

Or anything good, for that matter.

This missive from friend and musician, Dave Tutin, makes me wonder if I'm a little overly self-concerned.

And glad, in theatre, my advanced age might work for me as opposed to the music business where anyone who hasn't made it before the age of 25 is rejected.

The excerpt comes out of his observations on an interview with John Cougar Mellencamp (whom Dave is not a particular fan of) that caught Dave's ear.

...But what {Mellencamp} had to say about Tom Petty was more illuminating. He described how a song on Petty's last album had blown him away and how he expected it to be a huge success, a bit of a comeback, for Tom. But silence. No radio plays, no video, nothing beyond the delight of those people wise enough to buy Tom's album. John claimed it was this fear of not being heard in today's market that led him to advertising. And a guaranteed, captive audience - despite the fact that even that is far smaller than TV used to deliver.

There's always been a youth music machine. But it was always just one more choice of music in a vast array of appreciated styles. So why is this no longer the case? In an age when just about everything ever recorded is available thanks to digital technology the success of new performers who are outside the machine is more doubtful than ever. It wasn't meant to be this way.

It's easy to criticize the digital kids and their naive expectations that music should be free. But the truth is, all those stolen downloads would hardly matter if the people who once believed music could change the world still believed it. And still bought it.

Right this way, old man.

Me and the Super Bowl

Advertising is the true poetry of America.

Does that seem a little sick?

I'm sure it's at least offensive to many of my playwright/theatre/art house friends. But if you really think about it, what this big stupid country is about, what people really vote with (pocketbooks), what they vote for (their own financial security - as they see it), how we state who we are to others (through our purchases of clothes and cars and tickets to entertainments), how our consumer culture actually works, well, it may just be possible that it's a bitter pill of truth that we all have to swallow.

Sunday, this poetry reaches its yearly zenith during one of the arguably most theatrical events in the world: The Super Bowl. (That's a trade marked name, by the way, which means if the NFL finds this blog, I may have to replace it with "the Big Game".)

And if you're a company who wants to take part in the iambic march to the cash register, well, you have to put out as much as 2.7 million bucks per 30 seconds.

Few of us will ever see that kind of money in a lifetime, let alone help someone spend a fraction of that. I, however, have been fortunate enough to work at an ad agency this past week that IS helping spend twice as much.

That's right. I've worked with a group of people who've put together a 60 second spot that will air sometime during the second quarter. Their client will shell out something over - or close to - 5 million dollars to tell people something they may not already know.

I did not come up with the spot. In fact, when I arrived, it was done.

But I liked it a lot when I saw it and was flattered to be asked to help create a little movie trailer teaser for the spot that could run on the Internet after Sunday - you know: Come see the epic at...

I'll let you know where to check it out on Monday. In the meantime, stock up on tortilla chips and get ready for a great game.

And the song of commerce that's going to be riffing away in the background.

Where we live - visual reference

A friend sent this to me just after we moved into the new place late last month.

His pointer actually goes to the Buddhist Temple just down the block from where we live (we're on the north side of that parking lot, if you can make it out).

His caption reads:

Is this your place?
I'll be watching you.
Kinda creepy, wouldn't ya say?
Happy New Year!

There's another pointer that asks: Hey, is this a Starbucks?

You can see the Chateau Marmont (where Belushi did himself in), the Mondrian (where that stupid Sky Bar is) and (sub) Standard just West of us on Sunset.

Elsewhere online, I found this little piece of trivia about our corner:

Lastly in Hollywood, there's a wistful spot at the southwest corner of Sunset Boulevard and Crescent Heights. If you remember Joni Mitchell singing "They paved paradise, and put up a parking lot" in the song "Big Yellow Taxi," then take note. It was written about a hotel that used to sit here. The Garden of Allah was Hollywood's famed apartment-hotel that welcomed transient show business guests from 1935-1955. Errol Flynn, Clark Gable, Greta Garbo, W.C. Fields, Humphrey Bogart, F. Scott Fitzgerald, the Marx Brothers, Orson Welles - they all lived here. Mitchell wrote the song about this place, as a supposed metaphor for the destruction of a cultural monument. (And yes, it is a parking lot today, for a bank that's here now.)

Now it's a parking lot for a McDonald's as well.

The TV Spec Script: 3 - Notes

Well, the notes on my first "Industry Standard" outline came back and generally I'm good to go to draft.

Apparently, I've got plenty of industry and lots of standard.

Which made me a little more cheerful about going to class.

Until I got there and realized I had to give notes to one of the other students.

I'm simply not good at this and then, the story outline I was charged with discussing was in such an embryonic state that to criticize it seemed unfair. And worse, from a certain point of view, part of me wanted to say to the writer: Start over.

Of course, this wouldn't be helpful. Instead, I asked the author where in the development of the story she was. This made it easier for me to be honest about how under-cooked it still was.

However, there were so many specific writing problems and so much to be worked out thematically, it was hard to tell if I was helpful at all.

It makes me wonder if I'll ever be able to give good notes. Unlike many, I simply cannot be cut and dried about what's wrong and what needs to change. 9 times out of 10, I end up in a conversation about character wants and desires and sounding wishy washy about how to follow and explore those wants and needs.

In grad school, Eduardo Machado was famous for giving notes that were hardly notes. You'd get things like "I think you should really figure out what she wants and then write it from her point of view" and "You should write the part that you're most afraid to write. I don't feel that you're afraid yet."

Some in the program hated this. They wanted literal direction about what exactly to write and cut.

For me, generally, I've found that when people do that, they often have some "idea" in their head about how it's supposed to be rather than allowing you to explore and make discoveries that might me more interesting than anyone could imagine. (I've been guilty of this by the way.)

With something like television, a very tight structure must be adhered to, so a concrete course of action - do this, do that - might be okay.

And yet, thinking through the whole idea is more important than ever because of this. You really have to know what you want to say - and use every draft as a sketch toward the finished painting.

Still - on the one hand - when something's not right, you can't tell if it's because the writing is not good (ie, vague) or if it's that way because the writer only knows that something has to be there, but don't know the story they're telling yet and thus don't know what to do.

It gives me sympathy for the advertising creative directors I've worked with in the past. I've walked into offices with ideas in all kinds of different states - some ready to be made, some hardly breathing at all. And I didn't always know the difference.

Yet, those people had to figure out not only what was wrong, but how to fix it - and more importantly, what to say to me that would help me solve the problem.

The best, of course, found ways to get me to solve it on my own. But under deadlines.... whew...

Notes. Ugh.

The TV Spec Script: 2 - Fish and water become separated but good

Care for a slushee?



When I've never done something before, I usually find it helpful to talk to someone who has.

I either ask them to walk me through it. Or ask them to point me towards someone who will walk me through it.

This may seem overly-cautious, but honestly, as much as I'd like to be able to produce new, perfect, whole forms the way Zeus was able to produce Athena, well, this is my road.

Which is why I enrolled in a UCLA extension class for writing the 1 Hour Drama.

Plus, I know that as solitary as writing can be, it's more collaborative than one might first think. For television, this is especially so.

I also calculated there would be other beneifts: I'd get to meet more writers; I'd have a bunch of deadlines to work against and be motivated by; I'd get regular critiques - good or bad - of my work, thus encouraging me to constantly re-evaluate my writing with an eye toward improvement.

But even those who recommended taking a UCLA extension course offered some warnings about what I'd also find there.

The biggest warning was about the focus of the students. Apparently, most of the students who take extension courses do so because they have a passing interest in the field they're trying to break into. Abby, a great writer and close friend who did some screenwriting work at UCLA night school, put it this way: "People just don't do the assignments. I don't get it. I mean, why would you pay all that money and not do it?"

Indeed, why?

In any case, my first class was two Thursdays ago on the 11th.

Immediately, I felt out of place becasue when I arrived I didn't find the usual sullen, lonley writer types exchanging anxious glances, but a roomful of 20-somethings deep in conversation about television shows. It was their familiarity not with the shows, but each other, that made me feel just a little alien.

The teacher, himself, remarked on how unusual it was to find a group starting out with such lively talk. "You must know each other," he commented.

Turned out half had had a class together previously.

They also all had an "Industry standard outline". Or, at least, when asked who didn't have one, I was the only one stupid enough to admit to not only not having it, but not even knowing what it was - or at least the "Industry standard" part of the idea.

The teacher immediately looked at me like I didn't belong. I started to worry about it, too.

Then he asked us to pitch our shows - the story ideas we had. I stopped worrying so much.

See, my story idea for my MEDIUM episode was considered good. Then when I heard the ideas from others, I wondered, how could all these people be so confident? I mean, few ideas were clear. And there were only two ideas that were even interesting enough to be memorable.

It didn't help that 5 out of 15 or so people were writing HOUSE episodes and hadn't really worked through the medical gobbledegook yet.

Even more weirdly, several people were writing for 24 and HEROES. Both great shows, but tough to spec since the shows are not self-contained stories. Characters have arcs that just go forever. (Ken Levine does a nice send-up of the 24 spec here.)

I felt the same way about those people trying their hand at LOST (there were 2 of them).

(This is one reason I'm not trying to write a FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS - Where do you start? How do you end? What the hell?)

Anyway, the guy teaching the class made some suggestions to all and then asked us to come back with our outlines next week.

I finished mine up and sent it in Friday.

I'll let you know what he thought when I get his notes back.

This should be interesting. Especially starting as someone no-one in the class seems to feel should be there.

And now a word from...

I'm working at an ad agency next week and getting my ass kicked. So, here's one of my favorite ads.

Theatre people take note - the people behind the ad took a weakness and made it reason to buy something.... (ie, If "liveness" is a reason people hate to sit in a theatre, what can you do to make that a reason to go?)

Jonathan Glazer (Sexy Beast) directed.

The weakness last night

In the previous post, I talked about writing for MEDIUM.

However, if you tuned into the show last night (about a boy in a well and the sex crimes of a high political official), you might wonder if I was talking about a different show.

For the record, last night's program was weak. Actually, bad.

This would be another reason to write for the show: To fix that.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming...

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.