Movie Poster for Aftershocks

Look what I found! CNN made me the movie poster for Aftershocks! For free!

See? The guy has a dvd drive in his head!

The Very Pinnacle of Man’s Achievement

Ever wondered why they invented the internet? Wonder no more. I give you nothing less than Shatner and the very pinnacle of man’s achievement. Crank up you audio and start rockin!

I Thought I Saw You

It was 2006 or 2007. I was leaving work, pulling my car onto Flower Street, when you zipped by right in front of me on your bike. I had to brake to miss you. I could have sworn it was you. But what would you be doing – at our age – zipping a bike through downtown L.A.? 3,000 miles and 20 years away from home? We made eye contact and you disappeared behind parked cars. I know it was you – you gave me that look. It was 1987 you, the last time I saw you. But it was you.

Are you even still alive? Google won’t tell me.

Last night I had this dream. My two sons (age 9 and age 4) and I had broken into your house. And you were pulling into your driveway and we were desperately trying to get out before you could get inside. But we couldn’t find our way out. You were putting your key in the door and we had to hide from you and get out before you could discover us. You try doing this with the 4-year old whose idea of playing hide and seek is yelling out where he is as soon as you stop counting so you can find him. Terrified of never being found again.

Somehow we made it out and walked past on the sidewalk just as you went inside. But you knew. You knew. You glanced backward and gave me that look again. That look like you knew something I didn’t.

My dad was in the military when I grew up so we moved around. Not nearly as much as some do, but I changed schools a few times. Different states. It’s rough when you’re a kid, but one huge thing I learned was how to come into a new situation and figure it out immediately. Intuitively. The politics, the dynamics of the relationships, all that. Every time we moved my parents told me not to be sad about the friends I left behind, but instead to just go to school and make new ones. I got practice at this – I got good at it. Figuring out who to be friends with and who not to. But there was one thing I never learned.

When my dad would come home from work and tell us we were moving again, we would be devastated. We would cry, we’ll never see our friends again, all that. But you learn to put that aside because it hurts too much. You learn to figure out the place you’re moving to, not to dwell on the one you just left. You learn to forget your old friends. But I never learned how to say goodbye – it hurt too much. Terrified of never being found again. So I never have.

So I never did.

Are you still alive? I saw you. Are you a ghost? I see ghosts. Different states. I see dead people. I saw you. Sometimes it feels like I can’t see alive people anymore.

In Deep

This is what I love about writing. This is what I hate about writing.

I wrote a scene of Psycho Ex last night. A quick, simple, self-contained, direct, 1-page, 2-characters-in-a-room scene that I has pretty happy with. So what did I do? I screwed it up and asked some people to read it, with a couple of simple questions. Of course, instead of answers they had loads of questions, all of which I thought were irrelevant: do we know these people? do they know each other? why are they in the same room? But what else should I expect from sending people a scene on page 80-something with nothing else to go from?

If the script wasn’t so overlong and fat I would send the whole thing to this point, but that would require me to shift over from “creative” mind to “critical” mind, and then a lot of time to edit and tweak, and I don’t want to take myself out of “creative” mind until the first draft is done. Plus I don’t want to waste all the first impressions of a large number of readers – must wait until the big obvious problems are fixed, otherwise they will just focus on the big obvious problems. The first draft will be WAY long but I can’t worry about that now. I just have to write scenes. 

The writing process of this script is so unbelievably different from any I’ve ever used before. But then again they are all different and there is no “standard” process. Despite all my efforts to sit down and map out the specific timeline of the rest of the script (I have the note cards all written up), I cannot seem to do this. My process lately has been to just look at the note cards, take a scene that I know will HAVE TO be in the script, and then just write it. Then I go to the next one. I will sequence them later. Usually I will figure out that scene X would be perfect right after scene Q while I am deep in the middle of writing scene F, so I’ll switch over and move them into sequence with the screenwriting software. This is the most random access digital editing process I have ever used to write. Some times my brain cannot really do it, and I cannot figure out how to resume this way of thinking/working, and it kills time with all the gear-switching. But as soon as I get into the flow of writing a scene I am okay. This is why I say “I just have to write scenes” and not think about the structure at all. Currently the “document” (script outline with full scenes written until page 80-something) comes in at 108 pages. An overlong disorganized monster that keeps growing with many many scenes to go still. The bad news is that I am deep into it. The good news is that I am deep into it. I guess this means I have hit critical mass of brain involvement so there is no going back now. Now I just have to go forward without a plan for going forward. This is what it is – not necessarily fun but a waking dream that is impossible to stop. This is the zone. Is the script/story any good? That is an impossible question with an unknowable answer that is less than irrelevant. Must… shut… up…

“Strep Throat” or “New Year’s Resolution”

I get weird when I get sick. And when I get very sick, I go into some kind of altered state. I become helpless, like a two-year-old. Seriously.

I can’t think straight, I can’t function. My mind races in a kind of dream/nightmare/panic logic. I become super-emotional and have been known to profusely and tearfully thank people for being born, usually while lying on the floor. This can last for days.

But then when I take the very first step toward getting better, something beautiful and earth-shattering happens: I wake up from that mental state and look out the window into the world for the very first time. And it’s not the cliched “the grass looks greener, the air smells different” stuff, it’s more than that – I’m seeing the grass and smelling the air for the first time. The world is the same, but it is a completely new me, completely mentally reset after a few days in the wilderness. Routines are forgotten and my patterns have been erased. I re-invent them again in time, but for a few days I do confront and explore this world for the first time – everything is new, and none of my rituals have been invented yet. I don’t already know how or what I think about things – I have to think about them again, from zero. I have no preferences or predetermined structure in the way I think about anything. I have no ego because I don’t even know who I am or what the world is. I am outside everything, even myself.

This is a strange and wonderful gift. As a writer/creative thinker, it is ideally supposed to be the optimal permanent state. But as a real person living in the real world, this is impossible and often unattainable. Except for these odd days.

A few weeks ago I had strep throat, so I got to experience this panic and exhilaration again. I have re-embraced the world and re-invented my routines and rituals since then, and those moments are only memories now. But I hope those moments are not wasted or forgotten. I hope the inspiration of those moments can remain close and serve as a powerful motivator when I need it.

I resolve to keep those moments close in my mind for as long as I can in 2009 and beyond. I resolve to remember that all my routines and structures and assumptions can be dropped at any time because they are merely empty illusions. The world is bigger than my eyes can open. Everything is stranger and more beautiful and heavier and lighter than even the headiest head can take in. Even though the sight will blow your mind and knock you on your ass, you’ve got to look at the Whole Thing sometimes.

And if these memories fade away as they inevitably do, I can always get really sick again…

Quote of the Day

                              AL
                        (to Renee)
                Do you own a video camera? 

                              RENEE
                No. Fred hates them.

The detectives both look at Fred.

                              FRED
                I like to remember things my own way.

                              AL
                What do you mean by that?

                              FRED
                How I remember them. Not necessarily the
                way they happened.

- David Lynch and Barry Gifford, Lost Highway, 1997

Quote of the Day

“Events” don’t occur; they are invented after the fact by someone trying to tell a story.*

- some friend of my sister

 

*In the spirit of the quote, I tweaked it somewhat in order to better make my point.

“Confidence, Man” or “The Genius I Was”

I used to know this girl, years ago. We were in love with each other. We never talked about it, we never said a word, but we both knew: we were in love with each other. You could just tell.

We both had steady “significant others” at the time. Well, I did. I think she did, but maybe not. I can’t remember. This was years ago, back in film school, and because we were working on the same movie we spent a lot of time together. A lot of time together. Much more than we spent with our “significant others.”

Don’t worry, nothing happened between us.

Well, that’s not exactly true. Nothing physical happened (I’m not a jerk), but it didn’t have to. We were in love, and in the best possible way. “Best possible” because, well, we didn’t have to live up to anything. Nothing was going to happen between us. There was no chance. Nothing could possibly happen. And that was the beauty of it.

Nothing physical happened, but sometimes the physical stuff is the least important.

It was like high school. On the set we could share knowing smiles, make secret eye contact, or just sit together alone silently during breaks. Falling in love is so easy – every raised eyebrow is a valentine, every smile is electric, each eye contact a caress. Everybody could see us, everybody knew. Or maybe they didn’t, I don’t know. It sure felt like it then. It felt great.

And then we didn’t have to go home to each other. We never had a chance, so we never had to live up to anything. We could be perfect – all potential, no obligation. I could flash a devil smile of promise but never had to deliver anything. All ambition, no reality. No gravity. I was a genius because I said I was, because I acted like one, because she believed I was – because I believed I was.

I was a genius because I never had to prove that I was.

All we shared was our best – funny, charming, lovable – because that’s all we could share: the make-believe. It seems like too often our “significant others” get only the worst: the reality, the having to prove, day-in, day-out, who we are. You know, the crap. I don’t know about you, but my killer devil smile doesn’t get too much mileage in the real world.

And I’m not just talking about the people in our real-world lives, I’m talking about our “art” and our passions, too. Our ambitions. It’s easy to be a genius when you’re young and naive and you tell yourself you’re a genius: you just get up and do it, because you don’t know any better. Magic happens because you let it happen. You believe it is possible, so therefore it is. You don’t have to prove anything because you don’t recognize even that obligation. If you wrote something, it was genius. It just was. End of story.

But then you grow up. And before you know it, it’s hard to see anything but the obligation. Is this any good? Can I sell this? How bad does this suck?

It’s not really “negativity” I’m talking about, it’s not about “just think positive,” it’s bigger than that. It’s about, I don’t know, how do I put it… ambition? Magic? Self-delusion? No, it’s about one thing:

Confidence. It’s about confidence.

It’s about the work being good and energetic because you believe it is and that makes it – magically – get better. How could it dare not be good? It’s about that girl being in love with you because you’re being you, because you are loveable, and that makes you more loveable because that makes you even more “you” than you can usually dare to be. And it’s about you knowing this but not needing it – not needing anything at all. It’s about you knowing this so well you don’t even have to dream about living up to anything. You wouldn’t even conceive of the idea of having to live up to anything, not in a million years.

I haven’t seen her in years, which is the perfect end to the story.

I’ll never forget her. Or my devil smile.

“Playing With the Pieces” or “Why It Takes Me So Long”

I don’t like to outline. I used to, I may again, but not right now.

In school I outlined – we all did. I wrote 3 features this way, with each outline getting better and more detailed than the last. I would refine the outline first and then write. If an idea came to mind while I was writing, I would stop writing, add the scene to the outline, and then tweak the outline again and again before resuming writing. By the third feature, my process was disciplined and precise.

And completely lifeless.

It was actually a chore to complete that third feature. Part of this was because I was writing the script on spec for a producer (based on his idea) who bailed halfway through, but the other part was because the writing was so lifeless – all the “fun stuff” had been explored and laid out before, at the outline stage, so the writing itself felt like dictation. The script turned out okay I guess, but the process was an exercise in drudgery, without life or spark or energy. Without discovery.

So with my fourth feature I decided to try an experiment: I would take the 4 structural chunks of the script and only look at 1 at a time. I could outline, use index cards, anything I wanted, but I could only work on 30 pages at a time – thinking about anything beyond that 30-page unit was off limits until it was done and polished. To challenge myself, I consciously tried to write myself into a corner every 30 pages. And each section would end with an ambitious climax or cliffhanger, one which I had no idea how to top or get out of. It was great.

The good news is that this fourth feature ended up being Aftershocks, still the script I am most proud of. The bad news is it took 7 years to write. I honestly had no idea how to end the thing as I would set it down and then pick it back up months or even years later, letting it breathe as I worked on other scripts and other ideas in between. False starts and dead ends on the second and third acts took years. But once I figured them out… well, as I said, I’m pretty proud of it.

Something changed when I started writing Aftershocks: I started writing an idea that

Random Question #29

If Darth Vader told a joke, which joke would it be?