So Where Were We?

Shortly before I last posted here, my “big break” had arrived in the form of a big studio screenwriting  assignment for two-time Oscar-nominated actor/producer Edward Norton. Though the project was never produced, I lived off the proceeds for several years—eventually going out on strike with the Writer's Guild that had only just let me in. Truly, luck and timing were never my thing.

While picketing a Desperate Housewives location one wee morning, I pondered a looming image of Wonder Woman greeting the day from an overhead studio water tower. Surrounded by hundreds of out-of-work film and television writers, I remembered that my advanced degree had not only been in dramatic writing, but also in “digital media”—a major point of contention in our eventual settlement with the studios. I soon landed an interactive producer job at the most mouse-nificent entertainment company in the world -- eventually succumbing to round after round of lay-offs.

So here we are again.

Ironically, my long struggle to fashion a second career in show business is one rarely seen in the movies, where in very short order the girl gets the job, the guy and the Vera Wang wedding ensemble over a thinner rival with younger looking skin. What big screen career challenge can’t be conquered by a whitened smile and a plucky attitude? What weight problem won’t spontaneously correct itself by the end of a charming musical montage? Armpit stains, broken heel, panty lines? Somebody call wardrobe! This girl’s real life shortcomings serve as daily proof that Hollywood’s reliable sense of justice owes itself mainly to our famous way with illusion.

I never gave up on my dream, I just gave myself a few “story notes,” as we in the business call our little tweaks. While cultivating an online digital entertainment clientele, I continue to write feature screenplays and television pilots on spec. I just finished up a great long-term temp assignment helping run a recording studio inside the world's largest talking toy company -- and yes, this was as fun as it sounds; I hope to be back there very soon on assorted freelance gigs. I also teach screenwriting part-time at the college level, attend a weekly writer’s group, and “like” on Facebook my old film school pals’ network series commitments and feature film distribution deals in somewhat transparent hopes of joining their ranks.

Oh, and there's this blog. Since I first posted here in 2005, I've had hundreds of thousands of visitors and a half a million page views -- traffic that mysteriously continues to arrive by way of Google searches for "film school" and "big deal Hollywood screenwriter" and "failing up,"one supposes, regardless of how long it's been since my last update.

The point is, my story is far from over, you folks still seem to want to read it—and nobody gets to write the rest of it but me.

If Jesus Went to Film School

If Jesus went to film school, his work wouldn’t be terribly well received. 

“But it’s the greatest story ever told,” he’d say in all humility while pitching it to the Million Dollar Screenwriter in whose eight-member script workshop everybody was clamoring for a spot. 

“I'm not sure I'm following you, Hay-Seuss,” the culturally-savvy industry mentor would say, pronouncing the name as if the Light of the World were just another emerging Chicano voice.

"Jee-zus,” the savior would politely correct him. “I’m from Nazareth, not the barrio. "Though I am researching a promising new doc over there."  

Two Overtly Competitive Third Years sitting cross-legged on the floor would roll their eyes at this slick bit of grandstanding. Jesus would forgive them their transgression at once, since he can’t see a future in Hollywood for either one of the no talent bitches.

Matter of fact, one will eventually sleep with the other’s husband, marking the end of the fair weather film school friendship. The spurned wife will become a lesbian and start an all-girl Oregon playwriting festival for juvenile offenders, while the unapologetic adulteress will attend her first and only movie premiere as a cater waitress.

“I’m a little concerned about the modern relevance of your tale,” Professor Godbucks would delicately inform Jesus. “Maybe we should focus on something a little lighter that might appeal to say an Adam Sandler or a Jim Carrey.”

“They could do Herrod,” Jesus would say, getting a little annoyed at this point. “Haven’t you ever seen that Andrew Llloyd Weber musical?”  

“Good God, talk about dated.” This from a Ballsy Directing Student known for both his experimental visual style and total lack of story sense.  

His Perpetually Offended Girlfriend, who once scrawled “If you want to direct, you’re in the wrong bathroom” on the stall of the women’s loo, might be concerned with theme. “I’m offended by the whole 'final judgment' concept. I'm offended by yet another tired take on yet another tired whore-Madonna,” will add the tired whore-Madonna.

“What’s up with the ending?” one of the Third Years would chime in uninvited. “Downer.”

“I don’t get the love interest,” said the future lesbian on the floor, passing some Tic Tacs among a select few cronies. “Are they doing it or aren’t they?”

“If this is supposed to be some kind of black comedy, it’s got to end with a wedding. Not a crucifixion.”

“And forget that lame resurrection. The kids won't even buy that kind of hat trick.”

“You really need to clarify the unique motivations of all these apostle characters. Haven’t you read Legri?"

“Catch up on your Campbell, dude.”

“Aristotle. 'Nuff said.”

Jesus would now be thinking he should have gone to law school or dental college like so many other Israelites. Wasn’t this supposed to be a safe, nurturing environment where he could test his dramatic mettle before being thrown like the Lamb of God to the Hollywood wolves? 

The trouble with film school is everybody knows very well if you can’t reach the top of the heap here—if you’re not recognized with the big scholarships, the best classes, the highest public praise—your chances for any success afterward are very poor indeed.

During break, when the other students huddle within their closed cliques in front of the vending machines, nobody would even notice Jesus turning water into Diet Peach Snapple and multiplying the Pepperidge Farm Goldfish like so many cheesy loaves. "Father forgive them," Jesus might even mutter, "for they know not what's up." He would stand there alone, fading into the background along with the last remaining shreds of his dream.

If only he were lucky enough to have the fates smiling down on him that day, the Loopy Little Theater Major practicing her jazz combination with total abandon in the courtyard might take the empty seat beside him. “Tell me a story,” she’d say, helping herself to some Goldfish. “All you big bad screenwriters have one.”  She’d grab his notebook without bothering to ask, paging through it with a complete lack of guile.

“I’m Jesus, King of Jews,” he’d say. “Bet you thought that was Spielberg.”  

"I'm Mary, as in Martin. Triple threat."

"Mary was my mother's name."  

She'd look up from his treatment with stars in her eyes. "Jesus, this looks like a good story." 

Note: A London blog fan wrote a few years back asking permission to adapt this post as a film. Certain this would never happen, I happily agreed. Imagine my surprise to get his trailer. 

Fourth of Julie

My sister’s home feels like a luxury California resort and spa, with a yard three times of the house itself, an outdoor kitchen and bar with built-in beer taps and an infinity-edged pool and Jacuzzi with a waterfall overlooking the canyon. The lawns are expansive enough for a planned putting green, as well as bocci ball, horseshoe and badminton courts. In addition to the three separate picnicking areas, there’s a wooden grape arbor shading a farmhouse table for twelve. 

At night, she fires up a lava rock fire pit and a wood-burning brick fireplace and pizza oven, with tiki torches and hanging lanterns providing optional firelight. Lavender and rosemary patches become most fragrant in the noonday sun, and in the summertime peach and apricot trees drop fruit around the yard.

Yesterday she gathered all that to make homemade jam, barbecue sauce, cobbler and Fuzzy Navels for an impromptu Fourth of July picnic for sixteen. Among the well-heeled suburban guests list in North County San Diego were two financial analysts, a mortgage broker, a State Department official, an Olympic-level athlete turned swim coach, and a contractor widely known to have cornered the local market on epoxy flooring. There were also assorted children and mix and match suburban wives whose names I didn’t catch. At least one of these was pregnant, although I only did a cursory spot check, along with plenty of talk about C-sections, Elmo, healthy snacking, squirt guns and time outs.

My brother-in-law is a stockbroker who wanted to be a television producer, and my sister is a lawyer who wanted to be a gourmet chef. In college, she studied in France and learned to speak flawless French but hasn’t made it back much since. Since he is bald and so white he actually glows, it was hard not to worry about the fate of his enormous head in the scorching sunlight reflecting off the pool, where he wondered aloud what “the poor people” were doing right now. “We’re fine,” I told him, lying in a nearby lounger with my two farting wiener dogs at my feet. “I am a screenwriter who wanted to be a screenwriter,” I thought about adding by way of explanation. But he was on to a more pressing conversation about swim diapers and how it takes seven seconds for chlorine to kill uric acid.

In a more energetic mood, I might have interjected that, given the choice between authenticity and poverty, I chose the path less traveled by, the one with no swimmers to diaper, or guns to squirt or time outs to give. And even on weekends and holidays—when I’m occasionally compelled to go out and play with those who appear to have everything—that has made all the difference.

But I didn't bother with any of that, in part because my hunch is he isn't all that big on the poetry of Robert Frost or, you know, anybody else. Neither did I hand him a hat and a tube of sunscreen and implore him to save himself. My sister recently told me that he and I are co-beneficiaries on her life insurance policy, and I figured if he wants to check out early from malignant melanoma, who was I to interfere? I may be a dreamer, but hell, I'm no fool.