Well, after all that, the proposed terms for the WGA-AMPTP settlement are now posted:
THE TENTATIVE DEAL
The link above sends you to the WGA site where you'll find a rather unassuming 4=page PDF of the critical terms of the proposed settlement.
Is it the shining golden Holy Grail of great deals for writers? No—not even close, really—but neither is it the total screw-job the Alliance seemed hell-bent on delivering early on, either. It seems pretty squarely in the middle ground between what the writers wanted and what the studios wanted, so now both sides will have militant elements screaming that "we got screwed!" and more moderates saying "meh, we can live with this—let's get back to work, already."
They say that in a good negotiation, neither side gets to claim victory. Using that standard, this seems (potentially) a good negotiation.
If you're going to the membership meeting tonight in LA or NY, Godspeed, bon chance, good luck, and may the Force be with you. I expect it will be a long loud and exhausting affair.
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B
just another online spittoon
09 February 2008
05 February 2008
04 February 2008
things not found here
POLITICAL DISCUSSION
It's an election year, which means a lot of armchair pundits are out in force, sharing their "thoughts" (ahem) with the entire world, usually in the form of strident drool-soaked ad hominem attacks on whomever or whatever it is they claim to NOT support.
Look, I respect the right of every human being to have whatever opinion they like, but nowhere is it written that I have to respect the opinion itself, or the opiniator, or the stumbling bumbling manner in which they try to pontificate. If someone wants to support some candidate or cause, then that's great. Power to the people. Rah rah. Tippecanoe and Tyler too.
Whatever.
Just don't act like I have to give a flip that you care.
Oh, and by the way: every time I have ever tried to express my utter disinterest in the blathering bloviation of many political windbags, I come back to find someone somewhere has decided that I must surely have been speaking specifically about THEM. Trust me: if you are reading this, then you have no idea who annoyed me to the point of feeling a need to repeat this little mini-rant. I have a LOT of friends who post and comment on politics from pretty much every conceivable point on the political compass, and seldom ever do I get bothered by what they post (as I tend to ignore most of it anyway!).
In other words, "this rant was not sparked by you." This morning, while surfing pointlessly around the web, I was taken aback by a total stranger, spewing opinions (more like "hate speech") which I was staggered to see anyone admit to, much less take pride in.
This was not stuff from anyone I know or have ever seen before (or hope to see again). In fact, I normally would never have seen when I foolishly followed a link from a link from a link from a link and apparently wound up in the online town of East Dipshit, Putzylvania. We're talking Grade-A mental snot blown onto a screen by some paste-eating gaboon who likely has to have grown-ups operate the toilet for him, opinions so idiotic and nonsensical that you wonder if perhaps this person is not engaged in some sort of Dada-esque text art project where they paste together random snippets of other sentences cribbed from other people, resulting in an alpha-numeric stew which has the appearance of language but none of that pesky context, relevance, or meaning.
When you try and have a political discussion online, this last class of ass-hat is as often as not the kind of moron who steers the debate (and then often into a ditch or cesspool).
So I don't "do" politics online. It's just not fun or interesting for me.
OVERLY SPECIFIC REFERENCES TO MY WIFE AND KIDS
I love my kids, but that doesn't mean I need to post pics of them here so that any assholes who feel like it can use those pics to paunch hateful attacks on me.
That's not far-fetched. Twice before I was shocked when friends of mine had posts made online or emails sent to discussion groups wherein old innocuous family fun photos had been copied, morphed and then used as vulgar jokes/attacks against them in response to some heated discussion (see above). One time I saw friend get a heartbreakingly evil comment attached to a downloaded copy of a picture of his own mentally challenged young 4-year old in a wheelchair, and I was made suddenly mindful of the fact that there are a lot of truly worthless mean-spirited gutless hate-filled people in the world, and there's no good reason for me to potentially give them a means to cause heartache to me or my family.
So while I will sometimes talk about my kids, I try as much as possible to not flaunt their names or images hereabouts. Those who have actual *need* for such info usually get it without any difficulty, but the rest of you... well, you might be nice people, but just as I do not leave my house open during the day when I am away or leave my wallet and personal documents on the room of my car when I park at the airport, neither do I offer my kids for your amusement. No offense, but I just don't know or trust you that much.
SCREENWRITING ADVICE
Clearly, if I knew enough to be in any position to have advice worth giving, I'd then be far too busy to waste time in handing out free advice to slobbering morons like you.
Also, there are already far too many places where you could just as easily go to find whatever advice you think you need. Ultimately, advice is seldom the secret. In my opinion, screenwriting is one of those things you pretty much have to figure out for yourself. Yeah, you can find a few nuggets here and there, and sometimes in discussions with people you can come to discover and understand something new or useful, but if the game were so simple that you could show up, read a blogpost, and then march off to BE A SCREENWRITER, then obviously there'd be no need for screenwriting sites and books and courses and seminars and systems: you'd just learn the five steps and then DO it, like tying your shoes or falling off a log.
I sometimes think I have some idea of what works for me and how and why that might be the case, but I do not think I know enough to lecture loudly or with intent to edumicate, so don;t come snuffling around here hoping to catch scent of The One Great Secret. I don't think it exists, and I'm pretty damned sure that if it does then I ain't got it.
RECIPES
Not that I can't cook -- I just don't like you enough to share.
-=-=-=-=-
Now... among those things you WILL find here are:
• mounds of long-winded self-absorbed tales of trivial events played up as epic quests
• rambling stream of semi-consciousness where I use too many words to say too much about something too few care too little about
• pointless and random updates on my own screenwriting projects, offered not because I think anyone cares or that I feel any need to brag, but more so I can take stock of what I am doing (or am supposed to be doing...) and maybe then stay a little better "on-point."
• scads and scads of childish puns and potty humor gussied up so as to have the slightest stink of urbane wit and charm
• misspelled words out the ass (as this is a free site and I see no reason to waste much time in perfecting content which only ten or fifteen people will ever see and which none will ever recollect or remember.
And that's where we stand.
.
.
.
B
It's an election year, which means a lot of armchair pundits are out in force, sharing their "thoughts" (ahem) with the entire world, usually in the form of strident drool-soaked ad hominem attacks on whomever or whatever it is they claim to NOT support.
Look, I respect the right of every human being to have whatever opinion they like, but nowhere is it written that I have to respect the opinion itself, or the opiniator, or the stumbling bumbling manner in which they try to pontificate. If someone wants to support some candidate or cause, then that's great. Power to the people. Rah rah. Tippecanoe and Tyler too.
Whatever.
Just don't act like I have to give a flip that you care.
Oh, and by the way: every time I have ever tried to express my utter disinterest in the blathering bloviation of many political windbags, I come back to find someone somewhere has decided that I must surely have been speaking specifically about THEM. Trust me: if you are reading this, then you have no idea who annoyed me to the point of feeling a need to repeat this little mini-rant. I have a LOT of friends who post and comment on politics from pretty much every conceivable point on the political compass, and seldom ever do I get bothered by what they post (as I tend to ignore most of it anyway!).
In other words, "this rant was not sparked by you." This morning, while surfing pointlessly around the web, I was taken aback by a total stranger, spewing opinions (more like "hate speech") which I was staggered to see anyone admit to, much less take pride in.
This was not stuff from anyone I know or have ever seen before (or hope to see again). In fact, I normally would never have seen when I foolishly followed a link from a link from a link from a link and apparently wound up in the online town of East Dipshit, Putzylvania. We're talking Grade-A mental snot blown onto a screen by some paste-eating gaboon who likely has to have grown-ups operate the toilet for him, opinions so idiotic and nonsensical that you wonder if perhaps this person is not engaged in some sort of Dada-esque text art project where they paste together random snippets of other sentences cribbed from other people, resulting in an alpha-numeric stew which has the appearance of language but none of that pesky context, relevance, or meaning.
When you try and have a political discussion online, this last class of ass-hat is as often as not the kind of moron who steers the debate (and then often into a ditch or cesspool).
So I don't "do" politics online. It's just not fun or interesting for me.
OVERLY SPECIFIC REFERENCES TO MY WIFE AND KIDS
I love my kids, but that doesn't mean I need to post pics of them here so that any assholes who feel like it can use those pics to paunch hateful attacks on me.
That's not far-fetched. Twice before I was shocked when friends of mine had posts made online or emails sent to discussion groups wherein old innocuous family fun photos had been copied, morphed and then used as vulgar jokes/attacks against them in response to some heated discussion (see above). One time I saw friend get a heartbreakingly evil comment attached to a downloaded copy of a picture of his own mentally challenged young 4-year old in a wheelchair, and I was made suddenly mindful of the fact that there are a lot of truly worthless mean-spirited gutless hate-filled people in the world, and there's no good reason for me to potentially give them a means to cause heartache to me or my family.
So while I will sometimes talk about my kids, I try as much as possible to not flaunt their names or images hereabouts. Those who have actual *need* for such info usually get it without any difficulty, but the rest of you... well, you might be nice people, but just as I do not leave my house open during the day when I am away or leave my wallet and personal documents on the room of my car when I park at the airport, neither do I offer my kids for your amusement. No offense, but I just don't know or trust you that much.
SCREENWRITING ADVICE
Clearly, if I knew enough to be in any position to have advice worth giving, I'd then be far too busy to waste time in handing out free advice to slobbering morons like you.
Also, there are already far too many places where you could just as easily go to find whatever advice you think you need. Ultimately, advice is seldom the secret. In my opinion, screenwriting is one of those things you pretty much have to figure out for yourself. Yeah, you can find a few nuggets here and there, and sometimes in discussions with people you can come to discover and understand something new or useful, but if the game were so simple that you could show up, read a blogpost, and then march off to BE A SCREENWRITER, then obviously there'd be no need for screenwriting sites and books and courses and seminars and systems: you'd just learn the five steps and then DO it, like tying your shoes or falling off a log.
I sometimes think I have some idea of what works for me and how and why that might be the case, but I do not think I know enough to lecture loudly or with intent to edumicate, so don;t come snuffling around here hoping to catch scent of The One Great Secret. I don't think it exists, and I'm pretty damned sure that if it does then I ain't got it.
RECIPES
Not that I can't cook -- I just don't like you enough to share.
-=-=-=-=-
Now... among those things you WILL find here are:
• mounds of long-winded self-absorbed tales of trivial events played up as epic quests
• rambling stream of semi-consciousness where I use too many words to say too much about something too few care too little about
• pointless and random updates on my own screenwriting projects, offered not because I think anyone cares or that I feel any need to brag, but more so I can take stock of what I am doing (or am supposed to be doing...) and maybe then stay a little better "on-point."
• scads and scads of childish puns and potty humor gussied up so as to have the slightest stink of urbane wit and charm
• misspelled words out the ass (as this is a free site and I see no reason to waste much time in perfecting content which only ten or fifteen people will ever see and which none will ever recollect or remember.
And that's where we stand.
.
.
.
B
29 January 2008
Deafened But Smiling
Elmer Bernstein
+
The Phoenix Symphony
+
Opening theme to THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN
+
Koss Pro 4 studio grade headphones
+
one volume knob rotated as far to the LOUD as God will allow
=
one big damned happy smile
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soundtrackin' B
+
The Phoenix Symphony
+
Opening theme to THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN
+
Koss Pro 4 studio grade headphones
+
one volume knob rotated as far to the LOUD as God will allow
=
one big damned happy smile
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.
soundtrackin' B
28 January 2008
Nicholl Week -- Day the Fifth
Thursday dawned bright and early as always in LA. The Wife and I slept in a bit (anything past 8 AM seems a royal luxury), then padded down the hallway to grab a breakfast from the concierge lounge where, per usual, we bumped into some of the other finalists. The day would be the first in this trip where I did not have wall to wall meetings and obligations, and we'd made casual arrangements to hook up with a friend and go visit Terry Rossio for lunch.
And yes, that is a shameless bit of name-dropping, but believe me when I explain that I drop Rossio's name as much for my own amused amazement as for anyone else's. The Wife had heard me refer to Terry numerous times over the course of previous years, and she'd enjoyed PIRATES and SHREK and other Rossio-penned works, but she'd never met him or been able to put any sort of face onto the odd and typically skewed tales I'd spun of the man, so she was curious to finally meet this guy.
Steve, one of my best pals in LA, agreed to come play chauffeur for the day, as he was on extended sabbatical as a script of his own worked its way through the development tubes at a major studio in LA. Steve met us out front and away we zoomed to Topanga Canyon.
Winding through the canyon, I couldn't help but notice how much the terrain and scenery reminded me of the Hill Country of Texas, my favorite place on Earth. Of course, where roadside signs in the Hill Country might advertise "BBQ" or "dozer work for hire," in Topanga they seemed more often about "fish tacos" and "custom pottery."
"California," I chuckle to myself.
Just before noon, we turn off the main drag in Topanga (the only drag in Topanga) and head up the winding trail that leads to Casa del Terry. As we get halfway up the slope, Steve and I point to a stucco-and-tile mission style home topping the hill before us. We pull around the front and park next to Terry's oddly run-down VW Eurovan.
Terry's place sits atop a breeze-swept hill, with panoramic views in three directions and a slight secondary peak just behind the main house. A smaller outbuilding lies slightly down the hillside, joined to the main house by a road and a wandering trail through the scrub brush, Stone paths and walls and low fences meander across the ten or so acres of the property, and the entire place just oozes a relaxed casual quietness which is by design as far removed from the noise and glitz and plastic-ness of Hollywood as can be easily imagined. It's exactly the sort of place Id dream of owning if I were told that I have incredible means and an absolute need to live within daily commute of Hollywood.
"OK, now this I like," The Wife announces.
We wander to the back door on the pergola-shaded porch, knock twice, and then Steve—himself a close and longtime friend of Terry's—checks the door and leads us in. Steve calls through the house.
Four or five seconds later, Terry plods around the corner: barefooted, in sweatpants, bleary-eyed, hair tousled, and looking for all the world as if our arrival wakened him from a very comfortable slumber. He rubs his eyes, stretches, and smiles.
"Oh, hi. Yeah... lunch...." He stretches harder and smiles. "Well, let me get dressed and give Rebecca the tour. Come on-- we can start with the closet..."
Steve and I chuckle, as this is vintage Terry. I have often described him as seeming eternally like a cat being disturbed from a nap in a shady spot on the floor: somehow there, but not tremendously impressed or concerned about being there.
Terry loves this house and property and it clearly shows as he leads us around, pointing out all his favorite views and favorite little nooks and crannies, talking about all the plans for the various buildings and property. It seems clear that this is not just a place to crash. This is home: his haven, his safe place in the world, and he intends to make it everything he has every dreamed of finding or having in such a place.
We check out some concrete work being done on a retaining wall near a building soon to become a fully equipped AV editing studio. We admire the new hilltop hot tub maybe from a giant wine cask. We admire the views, the breeze, the scents of lavender and sage.
Wandering back to the back porch, we find a delivery has been made: a large ("heavy") custom made ("extra heavy") wrought iron wine rack.
"Oh, great! It got here in time!" Terry says as he walks past without slowing. "Bring it in here, guys."
Steve and I look at each other and start giggling. "It's Terry's world, I grumble as we lift the damned iron monster and lug towards the door. "We're just workin' in it."
Terry directs us dumb laborers as we wrestle the hundred pound beast into a small recess in the wall adjacent to the kitchen. The fit is so tight I fear we'll need to grease the rack to squeeze it into place, but with one well-applied shove it slips in like a shell into a chamber. Terry seems pleased—apparently this rack has been a bit of an ongoing problem.
"OK, before we head to lunch, we have to do something," Terry explains. "I'm going to insist."
Turns out we have to play ping pong on his patio. Terry is a slightly competitive guy, so he loves this "friendly" chance to assert dominance over strangers. I and The Wife end up as a team, which is a joke in its own right, but made funnier by the fact that we might have a combined 15 years on us since the last time either of us picked up a ping pong paddle. We go down in short order, and I make a point of pointing out to Terry that we'd never think of showing up the host on his home table.
We head down the hill and meet at a local burger and sandwich kind of place -- the kind of place where you sit on nine-dollar plastic patio chairs and sweep away the dead leaves and dust from the outdoor tables, where there might well be as many people arriving by bike or Harley as by car. Terry's (cute/smart/fun/blonde/Harvard-degreed) girlfriend joins us for lunch, and we sit around and talk about movies and the strike and how weird a time is it is to be in Hollywood right now, even as a supposed Major Award Non-Winner.
After a relaxed lunch (where I think we all wound up swapping plates to nibble on whatever the others had left behind, be it chips or slaw or fries or free range jicama or whatever), I mumble that it might be good for us to start heading slowly back towards LA just to make sure we have no surprises or delays. After all, Thursday night is THE dinner, the main reason for coming to LA in the first place, when the Fellows pick up their certificates (and first installments of their cash awards!), and when I and the Wife get all gussied up in our finery.
It's well before 2 pm, the cocktail hour for the dinner starts at 6:30, and the dinner itself at 7:30, so we're in fine shape as we hug goodbye to Rossio and girlfriend.
We elect to head south out of Topanga, turning onto PCH near Malibu just a few minutes later. It's a gorgeous sunny day, the Pacific is annoyingly glorious, and The Wife suggests we pull over for a moment to check out the beach. We slide in to park behind a yellow Lambo convertible (welcome to Hollywood!), wander the seawall, and notice the Santa Monica boardwalk just up the coast, so decide to swing by and check that out since we have so much time.
The pier and accompanying human scenery is interesting, and we wander for a bit before deciding to walk down to Venice to grab a beer. Of course, by the time we make that mile hike, work down a brew, and then hike back to the car, it's time to head back, so we slide back onto the road, ease up to speed, round a bend, and... stop.
Dead stop. Before us stretches a line of taillights broken only by the curvature of the Earth.
We sit in silence for a moment or two before I finally chuckle. "So how bad of a problem do we rate this?"
"This," says Steve flatly, "is bad."
What makes this bad is not only the fact that The Wife and I need to be back to the hotel in time to shower and change and then drive back across Hollywood, but Steve also has a major social engagement -- he's the president of local men's social order and they have a major induction event that same evening, an event where he will be required to swing by his home and strap on a tux and tails.
So, this is bad.
There is some horrendous traffic snarl between us and Hollywood, and all we can do for the next 2 hours is to sit and sweat. The start time for the cocktail comes, then slides into the rearview: 6:30... 6:50... 7:15... At a certain point all we can do is giggle and sigh, as complaining and whining won't do a damned bit of good.
At 7:35, we are a block away from our hotel, still mired in gridlock, so The Wife and I roll out at a red light and spring through traffic. We reach our hotel room at 7:40, sporting a day's worth of sweat, hat-head, and tourist-funk, so a shower is mandatory. Somehow we apparently fold time, as we both sprint out the front door of the hotel, fully dressed and well-gussied, some 17 minutes later. The Red Chevy POS stands waiting, we dive in, and I smile. "Hold on. We shall now violate several traffic laws."
I can tell you from personal experience that Santa Monica Boulevard is interesting at 74 MPH. I was frankly a bit surprised that we neither killed anyone nor drew the ire of the local constabularies, but God was, for once it seemed, on our side, and we slide into the breezeway of the Regent Beverly Wilshire "only" 40 minutes late.
We spring into the dining room, find everyone already seated and I note that the salad course is still in service, with entrees just starting to roll from the kitchen. I spot Joan, Greg's assistant in the Nicholl office, and she chokes, waves, and runs to me.
"THERE you are! Come on -- you're table is right over here."
We find our seats, apologize to the 8 or so people at our table, and I spin some quick and ridiculous retelling of our day as our salads and wine appear. I glance around the room and spot the other finalists. Lisa Gold shakes her head at me to say "you're an idiot!". Dave Mango's slight smile and shake of disbelief says much the same. I toast my wine glass to them and commence to socializing with my locals.
The rest of the evening goes off splendidly: apparently guests are seated at the tables of finalists based upon some scheme whereby your biggest fans sit elbow to elbow with you. At least, that's how I have to assume it works, or else there was some seriously weird juju at work. The gentleman seated to my right introduces himself and makes some small talk, then asks me if I was an entrant, and I say yes and he asks what my script was, and I tell him and he drops his mouth open and stares at me for a beat and then says "You're KIDDING me! THAT was yours? YOU wrote QUEEN OF THE SKY?"
For a moment I wonder if perhaps he intends to stab me with an unused shrimp fork—clearly there is something weird afoot.
He turns to his wife and grabs her by the arm: "Dear! Remember that script I was telling you about—the Russian pilot one? This young man wrote it!"
He then proceeds to spend the next 20 minutes of the dinner praising me to the heavens and explaining what a miraculous bit of fortune this is for him as he thinks that's his favorite script he's ever read in 8 years of reading for the Nicholls and my god it's amazing that I was able to generate such sympathy for a COMMUNIST flyer as he hates the goddamned Communists and I toast him to hating goddamned Communists and he absolutely will drink to that and he goes on and on and I look at The Wife and she's smiling and to hr left there's another slightly older couple who seems late in coming to understand that I actually wrote that script about the (goddamned) Communist flyer and then HE starts singing my praises and there's this very weird lovefest going where I am seated off to one side of the room, away from the winners of the evening, and yet I am being tongue bathed by total strangers who claim to have been deeply moved my some words I once scribbled on a page.
I gotta tell ya, people: if that feeling were available in pill form, I can see myself becoming seriously hooked on it, as it is nothing short of amazing. I glance around the room and check the other finalists, and in most cases I can see they are experiencing something of the same: strangers, industry players, people who know movies and writing and drama, all hosing us down with the sort of genuine respect and approval and validation that you never get on a regular basis. I start to get a little weirdly emotional as it finally fully starts to sink in where I am, what I've done, what this all means.
The new Fellows are introduced and step forward to receive their award certificates and the little white envelope that contains the great big check. Various industry pros—Susanna Grant, Dan Petry, etc.—introduce my friends with words and respect which would have seemed totally far-fetched a week or two previous. I see them stand at the podium and offer some fumbling words to try and convey what this means, what this feels like, and I see them take their turns posing in front of the huge Oscar statues as press photos are snapped. I smile and feel truly happy for and proud of my friends as they claim their honors. The Wife puts a hand on my knee and smiles. "You doing OK?"
I smile and shrug, and nudge my chin towards the podium where Amy and Cecilia are accepting their goodies. "I really wanted to win."
She leans over and smiles "I think you'll do OK."
Phil Alden Robinson, writer of Field of Dreams, one of my all-time favorite flicks, offers some brief fun comments as the keynote speaker, we have a few other very brief speakers, and before you know it dinner winds down and we all applaud a great evening done well. My new old goddamned Commie hating fan grabs my hand and says "Come on—I want to introduce you to someone."
I turn to try and say something to The Wife, but she just giggles and waves me away, saying "go do whatcha gotta do, man...". New old fan pulls me down front, and I wave at a few of my pal Fellows and they laugh that I again seem tangled in some goofy situation.
"Brett? I want you to meet Sid Ganis, President of the Academy."
Sid turns and smiles. "Hey, Brett. Glad to see you made it. Enjoy the evening?"
"Good to see you again, Sid. The evening was great. Thanks for all this, truly."
New old fan stares at me. "You know Sid?
I shrug. "We've met."
New old fan humphs, grabs my hand and drags me into the crowd again. He pulls me up to a large man with his back turned, and he taps on the gentleman's shoulder.
Dan Petry turns around, looks at new old fan, sees me, smiles. "Brett! What are you doing in here? I was hurrying to try and catch up to you in the bar! You gonna stick around and have a drink?"
"What do YOU think, Dan?"
Dan and I laugh, as new old fan again seems slack jawed. "Do you know EVERYBODY?" he asks.
"Not just yet."
New old fan and I wander back to the table, and we exchange business cards and I promise that I will keep him informed is this script manages to grab any success in the coming months and years. "Well, it was an real pleasure to meet you," he says. "I look forward to bragging that I met you way back when."
He leaves, and I catch The Wife giving me that look—the "don't even try making it seem like you weren't loving every minute of that" look. I shrug, give her a peck on the lips, and drag her back to the front to try and see some of my pals before they all get sucked into the night.
I manage to catch up to most of the other finalists, and I use the moment with each to forward Terry's invite to his little house party the following evening. Most seem thrilled by the possibility of meeting a writer like Rossio who is, for now, pretty much sitting on top of the moneymaking mountain for screenwriters. He is the impossible absurd fantasy that most of us are too scared to admit ever having: what if I not only sell a script, but sell several, and they become hits, and folks line up to haul truckloads of cash to my door to write yet more movies which become even bigger hits?
Things wind down and we start to ease into the Beverly Wilshire bar, but on the way I spot Phil Alden Robinson saying his goodbyes and heading to the door as well. I push over and grab some eye contact. "I just had to say 'god damn you, Phil Robinson'."
He looks at me with a moment of confusion.
"Damn you for the final four minutes of FIELD OF DREAMS, 'cuz it makes me blubber like an injured first grader to this day whenever it comes on. I can’t not watch it and I cant not cry when I do. So damn you."
Robinson laughs. "It does the same thing to me! What can I say? We got lucky and had a perfect execution to some of the best writing I've managed. It makes me cry and I wrote the goddamned thing!"
We shake hands and go our separate ways, and again I see The Wife smirking at me. "You’re actually very good at this. You now that, right?”
I smile. We head for the bar. After this day, there's drinkin' to be done.
- - -
In the crowded bar we wind up spending an hour or so hanging out with the Petry’s and most of the other finalists. I wind up with Dave Mango where we again debate the weirdness of this environment and whether or not this is really where and how we want to work. We both agree that we miss our kids, and that Hollyweird seems a truly terrifying place to try and raise kids, and we agree that neither of us would wish for that specific situation.
We polish off our various libations, shake what hands need shaking and make what hugs need making. I snap my fingers and the valet brings up the Red POS between a big mean Hammer-tricked Benz sedan and gorgeous Bentley drop top.
Yeah, I’m total fuckin’ money, baybee.
We head back to the fabo Renaissance, make the obligatory brief stop at the World’s Worst Hotel Bar, chuckle that last call comes down at 11:43, then polish off our drinks and retire to our rooms, wiped out by the day’s fun.
The Wife brushes her teeth as I stand and stare out at Hollywood, wondering if the view ever stops seeming surreal.
‘Cuz it damned sure hasn’t yet.
(to be continued...)
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drifting between worlds B
And yes, that is a shameless bit of name-dropping, but believe me when I explain that I drop Rossio's name as much for my own amused amazement as for anyone else's. The Wife had heard me refer to Terry numerous times over the course of previous years, and she'd enjoyed PIRATES and SHREK and other Rossio-penned works, but she'd never met him or been able to put any sort of face onto the odd and typically skewed tales I'd spun of the man, so she was curious to finally meet this guy.
Steve, one of my best pals in LA, agreed to come play chauffeur for the day, as he was on extended sabbatical as a script of his own worked its way through the development tubes at a major studio in LA. Steve met us out front and away we zoomed to Topanga Canyon.
Winding through the canyon, I couldn't help but notice how much the terrain and scenery reminded me of the Hill Country of Texas, my favorite place on Earth. Of course, where roadside signs in the Hill Country might advertise "BBQ" or "dozer work for hire," in Topanga they seemed more often about "fish tacos" and "custom pottery."
"California," I chuckle to myself.
Just before noon, we turn off the main drag in Topanga (the only drag in Topanga) and head up the winding trail that leads to Casa del Terry. As we get halfway up the slope, Steve and I point to a stucco-and-tile mission style home topping the hill before us. We pull around the front and park next to Terry's oddly run-down VW Eurovan.
Terry's place sits atop a breeze-swept hill, with panoramic views in three directions and a slight secondary peak just behind the main house. A smaller outbuilding lies slightly down the hillside, joined to the main house by a road and a wandering trail through the scrub brush, Stone paths and walls and low fences meander across the ten or so acres of the property, and the entire place just oozes a relaxed casual quietness which is by design as far removed from the noise and glitz and plastic-ness of Hollywood as can be easily imagined. It's exactly the sort of place Id dream of owning if I were told that I have incredible means and an absolute need to live within daily commute of Hollywood.
"OK, now this I like," The Wife announces.
We wander to the back door on the pergola-shaded porch, knock twice, and then Steve—himself a close and longtime friend of Terry's—checks the door and leads us in. Steve calls through the house.
Four or five seconds later, Terry plods around the corner: barefooted, in sweatpants, bleary-eyed, hair tousled, and looking for all the world as if our arrival wakened him from a very comfortable slumber. He rubs his eyes, stretches, and smiles.
"Oh, hi. Yeah... lunch...." He stretches harder and smiles. "Well, let me get dressed and give Rebecca the tour. Come on-- we can start with the closet..."
Steve and I chuckle, as this is vintage Terry. I have often described him as seeming eternally like a cat being disturbed from a nap in a shady spot on the floor: somehow there, but not tremendously impressed or concerned about being there.
Terry loves this house and property and it clearly shows as he leads us around, pointing out all his favorite views and favorite little nooks and crannies, talking about all the plans for the various buildings and property. It seems clear that this is not just a place to crash. This is home: his haven, his safe place in the world, and he intends to make it everything he has every dreamed of finding or having in such a place.
We check out some concrete work being done on a retaining wall near a building soon to become a fully equipped AV editing studio. We admire the new hilltop hot tub maybe from a giant wine cask. We admire the views, the breeze, the scents of lavender and sage.
Wandering back to the back porch, we find a delivery has been made: a large ("heavy") custom made ("extra heavy") wrought iron wine rack.
"Oh, great! It got here in time!" Terry says as he walks past without slowing. "Bring it in here, guys."
Steve and I look at each other and start giggling. "It's Terry's world, I grumble as we lift the damned iron monster and lug towards the door. "We're just workin' in it."
Terry directs us dumb laborers as we wrestle the hundred pound beast into a small recess in the wall adjacent to the kitchen. The fit is so tight I fear we'll need to grease the rack to squeeze it into place, but with one well-applied shove it slips in like a shell into a chamber. Terry seems pleased—apparently this rack has been a bit of an ongoing problem.
"OK, before we head to lunch, we have to do something," Terry explains. "I'm going to insist."
Turns out we have to play ping pong on his patio. Terry is a slightly competitive guy, so he loves this "friendly" chance to assert dominance over strangers. I and The Wife end up as a team, which is a joke in its own right, but made funnier by the fact that we might have a combined 15 years on us since the last time either of us picked up a ping pong paddle. We go down in short order, and I make a point of pointing out to Terry that we'd never think of showing up the host on his home table.
We head down the hill and meet at a local burger and sandwich kind of place -- the kind of place where you sit on nine-dollar plastic patio chairs and sweep away the dead leaves and dust from the outdoor tables, where there might well be as many people arriving by bike or Harley as by car. Terry's (cute/smart/fun/blonde/Harvard-degreed) girlfriend joins us for lunch, and we sit around and talk about movies and the strike and how weird a time is it is to be in Hollywood right now, even as a supposed Major Award Non-Winner.
After a relaxed lunch (where I think we all wound up swapping plates to nibble on whatever the others had left behind, be it chips or slaw or fries or free range jicama or whatever), I mumble that it might be good for us to start heading slowly back towards LA just to make sure we have no surprises or delays. After all, Thursday night is THE dinner, the main reason for coming to LA in the first place, when the Fellows pick up their certificates (and first installments of their cash awards!), and when I and the Wife get all gussied up in our finery.
It's well before 2 pm, the cocktail hour for the dinner starts at 6:30, and the dinner itself at 7:30, so we're in fine shape as we hug goodbye to Rossio and girlfriend.
We elect to head south out of Topanga, turning onto PCH near Malibu just a few minutes later. It's a gorgeous sunny day, the Pacific is annoyingly glorious, and The Wife suggests we pull over for a moment to check out the beach. We slide in to park behind a yellow Lambo convertible (welcome to Hollywood!), wander the seawall, and notice the Santa Monica boardwalk just up the coast, so decide to swing by and check that out since we have so much time.
The pier and accompanying human scenery is interesting, and we wander for a bit before deciding to walk down to Venice to grab a beer. Of course, by the time we make that mile hike, work down a brew, and then hike back to the car, it's time to head back, so we slide back onto the road, ease up to speed, round a bend, and... stop.
Dead stop. Before us stretches a line of taillights broken only by the curvature of the Earth.
We sit in silence for a moment or two before I finally chuckle. "So how bad of a problem do we rate this?"
"This," says Steve flatly, "is bad."
What makes this bad is not only the fact that The Wife and I need to be back to the hotel in time to shower and change and then drive back across Hollywood, but Steve also has a major social engagement -- he's the president of local men's social order and they have a major induction event that same evening, an event where he will be required to swing by his home and strap on a tux and tails.
So, this is bad.
There is some horrendous traffic snarl between us and Hollywood, and all we can do for the next 2 hours is to sit and sweat. The start time for the cocktail comes, then slides into the rearview: 6:30... 6:50... 7:15... At a certain point all we can do is giggle and sigh, as complaining and whining won't do a damned bit of good.
At 7:35, we are a block away from our hotel, still mired in gridlock, so The Wife and I roll out at a red light and spring through traffic. We reach our hotel room at 7:40, sporting a day's worth of sweat, hat-head, and tourist-funk, so a shower is mandatory. Somehow we apparently fold time, as we both sprint out the front door of the hotel, fully dressed and well-gussied, some 17 minutes later. The Red Chevy POS stands waiting, we dive in, and I smile. "Hold on. We shall now violate several traffic laws."
I can tell you from personal experience that Santa Monica Boulevard is interesting at 74 MPH. I was frankly a bit surprised that we neither killed anyone nor drew the ire of the local constabularies, but God was, for once it seemed, on our side, and we slide into the breezeway of the Regent Beverly Wilshire "only" 40 minutes late.
We spring into the dining room, find everyone already seated and I note that the salad course is still in service, with entrees just starting to roll from the kitchen. I spot Joan, Greg's assistant in the Nicholl office, and she chokes, waves, and runs to me.
"THERE you are! Come on -- you're table is right over here."
We find our seats, apologize to the 8 or so people at our table, and I spin some quick and ridiculous retelling of our day as our salads and wine appear. I glance around the room and spot the other finalists. Lisa Gold shakes her head at me to say "you're an idiot!". Dave Mango's slight smile and shake of disbelief says much the same. I toast my wine glass to them and commence to socializing with my locals.
The rest of the evening goes off splendidly: apparently guests are seated at the tables of finalists based upon some scheme whereby your biggest fans sit elbow to elbow with you. At least, that's how I have to assume it works, or else there was some seriously weird juju at work. The gentleman seated to my right introduces himself and makes some small talk, then asks me if I was an entrant, and I say yes and he asks what my script was, and I tell him and he drops his mouth open and stares at me for a beat and then says "You're KIDDING me! THAT was yours? YOU wrote QUEEN OF THE SKY?"
For a moment I wonder if perhaps he intends to stab me with an unused shrimp fork—clearly there is something weird afoot.
He turns to his wife and grabs her by the arm: "Dear! Remember that script I was telling you about—the Russian pilot one? This young man wrote it!"
He then proceeds to spend the next 20 minutes of the dinner praising me to the heavens and explaining what a miraculous bit of fortune this is for him as he thinks that's his favorite script he's ever read in 8 years of reading for the Nicholls and my god it's amazing that I was able to generate such sympathy for a COMMUNIST flyer as he hates the goddamned Communists and I toast him to hating goddamned Communists and he absolutely will drink to that and he goes on and on and I look at The Wife and she's smiling and to hr left there's another slightly older couple who seems late in coming to understand that I actually wrote that script about the (goddamned) Communist flyer and then HE starts singing my praises and there's this very weird lovefest going where I am seated off to one side of the room, away from the winners of the evening, and yet I am being tongue bathed by total strangers who claim to have been deeply moved my some words I once scribbled on a page.
I gotta tell ya, people: if that feeling were available in pill form, I can see myself becoming seriously hooked on it, as it is nothing short of amazing. I glance around the room and check the other finalists, and in most cases I can see they are experiencing something of the same: strangers, industry players, people who know movies and writing and drama, all hosing us down with the sort of genuine respect and approval and validation that you never get on a regular basis. I start to get a little weirdly emotional as it finally fully starts to sink in where I am, what I've done, what this all means.
The new Fellows are introduced and step forward to receive their award certificates and the little white envelope that contains the great big check. Various industry pros—Susanna Grant, Dan Petry, etc.—introduce my friends with words and respect which would have seemed totally far-fetched a week or two previous. I see them stand at the podium and offer some fumbling words to try and convey what this means, what this feels like, and I see them take their turns posing in front of the huge Oscar statues as press photos are snapped. I smile and feel truly happy for and proud of my friends as they claim their honors. The Wife puts a hand on my knee and smiles. "You doing OK?"
I smile and shrug, and nudge my chin towards the podium where Amy and Cecilia are accepting their goodies. "I really wanted to win."
She leans over and smiles "I think you'll do OK."
Phil Alden Robinson, writer of Field of Dreams, one of my all-time favorite flicks, offers some brief fun comments as the keynote speaker, we have a few other very brief speakers, and before you know it dinner winds down and we all applaud a great evening done well. My new old goddamned Commie hating fan grabs my hand and says "Come on—I want to introduce you to someone."
I turn to try and say something to The Wife, but she just giggles and waves me away, saying "go do whatcha gotta do, man...". New old fan pulls me down front, and I wave at a few of my pal Fellows and they laugh that I again seem tangled in some goofy situation.
"Brett? I want you to meet Sid Ganis, President of the Academy."
Sid turns and smiles. "Hey, Brett. Glad to see you made it. Enjoy the evening?"
"Good to see you again, Sid. The evening was great. Thanks for all this, truly."
New old fan stares at me. "You know Sid?
I shrug. "We've met."
New old fan humphs, grabs my hand and drags me into the crowd again. He pulls me up to a large man with his back turned, and he taps on the gentleman's shoulder.
Dan Petry turns around, looks at new old fan, sees me, smiles. "Brett! What are you doing in here? I was hurrying to try and catch up to you in the bar! You gonna stick around and have a drink?"
"What do YOU think, Dan?"
Dan and I laugh, as new old fan again seems slack jawed. "Do you know EVERYBODY?" he asks.
"Not just yet."
New old fan and I wander back to the table, and we exchange business cards and I promise that I will keep him informed is this script manages to grab any success in the coming months and years. "Well, it was an real pleasure to meet you," he says. "I look forward to bragging that I met you way back when."
He leaves, and I catch The Wife giving me that look—the "don't even try making it seem like you weren't loving every minute of that" look. I shrug, give her a peck on the lips, and drag her back to the front to try and see some of my pals before they all get sucked into the night.
I manage to catch up to most of the other finalists, and I use the moment with each to forward Terry's invite to his little house party the following evening. Most seem thrilled by the possibility of meeting a writer like Rossio who is, for now, pretty much sitting on top of the moneymaking mountain for screenwriters. He is the impossible absurd fantasy that most of us are too scared to admit ever having: what if I not only sell a script, but sell several, and they become hits, and folks line up to haul truckloads of cash to my door to write yet more movies which become even bigger hits?
Things wind down and we start to ease into the Beverly Wilshire bar, but on the way I spot Phil Alden Robinson saying his goodbyes and heading to the door as well. I push over and grab some eye contact. "I just had to say 'god damn you, Phil Robinson'."
He looks at me with a moment of confusion.
"Damn you for the final four minutes of FIELD OF DREAMS, 'cuz it makes me blubber like an injured first grader to this day whenever it comes on. I can’t not watch it and I cant not cry when I do. So damn you."
Robinson laughs. "It does the same thing to me! What can I say? We got lucky and had a perfect execution to some of the best writing I've managed. It makes me cry and I wrote the goddamned thing!"
We shake hands and go our separate ways, and again I see The Wife smirking at me. "You’re actually very good at this. You now that, right?”
I smile. We head for the bar. After this day, there's drinkin' to be done.
- - -
In the crowded bar we wind up spending an hour or so hanging out with the Petry’s and most of the other finalists. I wind up with Dave Mango where we again debate the weirdness of this environment and whether or not this is really where and how we want to work. We both agree that we miss our kids, and that Hollyweird seems a truly terrifying place to try and raise kids, and we agree that neither of us would wish for that specific situation.
We polish off our various libations, shake what hands need shaking and make what hugs need making. I snap my fingers and the valet brings up the Red POS between a big mean Hammer-tricked Benz sedan and gorgeous Bentley drop top.
Yeah, I’m total fuckin’ money, baybee.
We head back to the fabo Renaissance, make the obligatory brief stop at the World’s Worst Hotel Bar, chuckle that last call comes down at 11:43, then polish off our drinks and retire to our rooms, wiped out by the day’s fun.
The Wife brushes her teeth as I stand and stare out at Hollywood, wondering if the view ever stops seeming surreal.
‘Cuz it damned sure hasn’t yet.
(to be continued...)
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drifting between worlds B
23 January 2008
the new awesome post
So I spent all day working on this great new post.
Quotes?
Oh, I worked in some good ones for the new post.
Epic themes of love and loss and revenge and endurance and survival?
Bucket loads.
Bucket loads.
Wild analogies and weird metaphors and twisted looping turns of phrase that leave your tongue and mind in a textual Kama Sutra display?
Oh yeah, rolled those into the mix as well.
But then I got bored and decided to post this pointless update instead.
We're mired in a cold week of soul-sucking drizzle hereabouts, and all I can do is sit and stare at oily raindrops as they roll down the windows.
I have some fun new projects starting to get ramped up, and I likely could stand to adjust some progress bars and update some links, but instead I'll just sigh and grumble.
Man that was a great post I almost made. You kids woulda loved it.
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B
Quotes?
Oh, I worked in some good ones for the new post.
Epic themes of love and loss and revenge and endurance and survival?
Bucket loads.
Bucket loads.
Wild analogies and weird metaphors and twisted looping turns of phrase that leave your tongue and mind in a textual Kama Sutra display?
Oh yeah, rolled those into the mix as well.
But then I got bored and decided to post this pointless update instead.
We're mired in a cold week of soul-sucking drizzle hereabouts, and all I can do is sit and stare at oily raindrops as they roll down the windows.
I have some fun new projects starting to get ramped up, and I likely could stand to adjust some progress bars and update some links, but instead I'll just sigh and grumble.
Man that was a great post I almost made. You kids woulda loved it.
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B
18 January 2008
UPDATE: things seem trending suspiciously upwards
Greetings, pissants.
Been a weird week or so hereabouts, as all manner of odd project seems coming to a head one way or t'uther.
–– Had a good convo with the agents wherein they expressed their interest and support of a project I've been threatening to write since... oh. the final years of the Reagan administration. I had to laugh at their discussion, as it's not at all the sort of thing one would expect as a follow-up to a Nicholls-finalist drama, but then, I s'pose few expected that piece to become a finalist, so if we dismiss THAT as the truly odd event in the string then most anything else which follows then becomes slightly more sensible.
Sounds good, anyway.
I already have loads of old notes and ideas and a rough idea of the structure of this piece, but I'll need to sit down and get medieval on this thing if I hope to deliver pages this spring as is my hope and fervent desire.
-- am having entirely too much fun throwing ideas down for a truly warped project I am brainstorming with a longtime buddy. I'll not give away any details, but every time I sit and think on this one I suffer simultaneous pangs of "oh, that's just too damned childish to actually say, much less write down..." and "oh god that would be fun to see in a movie...". Overall, there are huge dollops of some classic movies thrown in there as homages, but this is also something I can;t recall having seen before. If it continues apace, I'll either be thrilled that we came up with it or ashamed that I wasted time upon it. Or maybe some combination of both.
-- the monster-advemture romp came out fairly much as I'd hope. What few trusted folks have read it have all come back with solid praise, and what comments and concerns they've voiced have all been 100% in line with what I expected, so the problems are as initially observed and well within my capabilities to be fixed without much major effort.
-- the agents also gave some more praise to the QUEEN OF THE SKY project and repeated their hopes to get some traction just as soon as this damned WGA-AMPTP thing goes away. The currently unfolding DGA accord seems potentially useful, but already in looking at the terms there it seems clear that any WGA deal will require a good deal more negotiation and compromise. Still, I hold out hope that I'll have reason and opportunity to return to LA sometime in the next few months.
-- a pair of other backburner ideas continue to intrigue me, so I'll keep them on low simmer and see if perhaps they suddenly bloom into Ideas Which Cannot Be Ignored.
Baseball sign-ups just started, karate now involves one of my kids, Cubs and Boy Scouts continue to call for time, and there's the usual smorgasbord of random assorted bullshit eating my time at every turn, so thing remain as hectic as ever round here.
But somehow it all feels slightly optimistic, which is alien and spooky.
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B
Been a weird week or so hereabouts, as all manner of odd project seems coming to a head one way or t'uther.
–– Had a good convo with the agents wherein they expressed their interest and support of a project I've been threatening to write since... oh. the final years of the Reagan administration. I had to laugh at their discussion, as it's not at all the sort of thing one would expect as a follow-up to a Nicholls-finalist drama, but then, I s'pose few expected that piece to become a finalist, so if we dismiss THAT as the truly odd event in the string then most anything else which follows then becomes slightly more sensible.
Sounds good, anyway.
I already have loads of old notes and ideas and a rough idea of the structure of this piece, but I'll need to sit down and get medieval on this thing if I hope to deliver pages this spring as is my hope and fervent desire.
-- am having entirely too much fun throwing ideas down for a truly warped project I am brainstorming with a longtime buddy. I'll not give away any details, but every time I sit and think on this one I suffer simultaneous pangs of "oh, that's just too damned childish to actually say, much less write down..." and "oh god that would be fun to see in a movie...". Overall, there are huge dollops of some classic movies thrown in there as homages, but this is also something I can;t recall having seen before. If it continues apace, I'll either be thrilled that we came up with it or ashamed that I wasted time upon it. Or maybe some combination of both.
-- the monster-advemture romp came out fairly much as I'd hope. What few trusted folks have read it have all come back with solid praise, and what comments and concerns they've voiced have all been 100% in line with what I expected, so the problems are as initially observed and well within my capabilities to be fixed without much major effort.
-- the agents also gave some more praise to the QUEEN OF THE SKY project and repeated their hopes to get some traction just as soon as this damned WGA-AMPTP thing goes away. The currently unfolding DGA accord seems potentially useful, but already in looking at the terms there it seems clear that any WGA deal will require a good deal more negotiation and compromise. Still, I hold out hope that I'll have reason and opportunity to return to LA sometime in the next few months.
-- a pair of other backburner ideas continue to intrigue me, so I'll keep them on low simmer and see if perhaps they suddenly bloom into Ideas Which Cannot Be Ignored.
Baseball sign-ups just started, karate now involves one of my kids, Cubs and Boy Scouts continue to call for time, and there's the usual smorgasbord of random assorted bullshit eating my time at every turn, so thing remain as hectic as ever round here.
But somehow it all feels slightly optimistic, which is alien and spooky.
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B
11 January 2008
Like The Phone Call From A Long Lost Friend
My best buddy called me on the phone from his apartment three doors down and I could hear him gasping for air and laughing at the same time.
“Man, you gotta come see this.”
“What?”
“Just... just come on over.”
I trotted to his place, barged in and saw him on his pizza-stained bachelor sofa, wiping tears from his eyes as he pointed at some strange image on his television: a 1960s-era Japanese monster movie was playing, and at the base of the screen were silhouetted a trio of heads, like we were in a movie theater behind these guys. As I listened in, I heard three horrendously smart-assed guys just shredding the movie, mocking and insulting the schlockfest in a manner disturbingly similar to the way I and best friend had done for years when we were bored and armed only with basic cable and a seemingly endless supply of cheap beer, halllmarks of our existence in those hazy bachelor days of the late 1980s.
And thus began my love for Mystery Science Theater 3000 (or MST3K for us hip kids).
Joel Hodgson and his robot pals on the Satellite of Love immediately became a Saturday night tradition for a few years after. Even when Joel was replaced by Mike we stayed true, and in time grew to love Mike just as much as Joel (I refuse to choose between the two, though I understand and respect that for many Mysties this is as divisive as Coke v Pepsi).
But like all good things, this too ended. Comedy Central aired the episodes for most of the late 90s, but by the turn of the century the show had slipped in the ratings and the show bounced around various timeslots and then right off the air. Sure, we had some old VHS tapes we watched and rewatched til the magneticnous (sorry to get all scientific on you kids) had been watched clean off the tapes.
And thus MST faded from my life except as a memory.
Until now.
Bouncing around the internet, I stumbled across a ref to a new project I’d not heard of:
When I clicked on the link, I found myself watching a grainy old horror movie as a crew of silhouetted characters just shredding the movie, mocking and insulting the schlockfest in a manner disturbingly familiar way.
And I smiled.
It turns out that most all of the original MST crew — Joel, Josh “Tom Servo” Weinstein”, Trace “Crow” Beaulieu, Mary Jo “Pearl” pehl, and even “TV’s Frank” Conniff — have reunited to pick up the MST cause and skewer an entire new crop of crappy movies. Thanks to the internet, instead of grainy worn out VHS taps, these new episodes will be streamed online, available for download, and available for direct purchase on DVD as standalone episodes.
And there most surely is joy in Mudville tonight.
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B
“Man, you gotta come see this.”
“What?”
“Just... just come on over.”
I trotted to his place, barged in and saw him on his pizza-stained bachelor sofa, wiping tears from his eyes as he pointed at some strange image on his television: a 1960s-era Japanese monster movie was playing, and at the base of the screen were silhouetted a trio of heads, like we were in a movie theater behind these guys. As I listened in, I heard three horrendously smart-assed guys just shredding the movie, mocking and insulting the schlockfest in a manner disturbingly similar to the way I and best friend had done for years when we were bored and armed only with basic cable and a seemingly endless supply of cheap beer, halllmarks of our existence in those hazy bachelor days of the late 1980s.
And thus began my love for Mystery Science Theater 3000 (or MST3K for us hip kids).
Joel Hodgson and his robot pals on the Satellite of Love immediately became a Saturday night tradition for a few years after. Even when Joel was replaced by Mike we stayed true, and in time grew to love Mike just as much as Joel (I refuse to choose between the two, though I understand and respect that for many Mysties this is as divisive as Coke v Pepsi).
But like all good things, this too ended. Comedy Central aired the episodes for most of the late 90s, but by the turn of the century the show had slipped in the ratings and the show bounced around various timeslots and then right off the air. Sure, we had some old VHS tapes we watched and rewatched til the magneticnous (sorry to get all scientific on you kids) had been watched clean off the tapes.
And thus MST faded from my life except as a memory.
Until now.
Bouncing around the internet, I stumbled across a ref to a new project I’d not heard of:
When I clicked on the link, I found myself watching a grainy old horror movie as a crew of silhouetted characters just shredding the movie, mocking and insulting the schlockfest in a manner disturbingly familiar way.
And I smiled.
It turns out that most all of the original MST crew — Joel, Josh “Tom Servo” Weinstein”, Trace “Crow” Beaulieu, Mary Jo “Pearl” pehl, and even “TV’s Frank” Conniff — have reunited to pick up the MST cause and skewer an entire new crop of crappy movies. Thanks to the internet, instead of grainy worn out VHS taps, these new episodes will be streamed online, available for download, and available for direct purchase on DVD as standalone episodes.
And there most surely is joy in Mudville tonight.
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B
05 January 2008
Love works best in a waltz-time song
One of my fave songs ever is "Catch The Wind" by Donovan, and one of my fave covers ever of this song is the one below, recorded live in Bora Bora by Shawn Colvin, accompanied by a breeze and a few seagulls.
When I listen to this song, I want to write the movie it ought to be a part of.
When sundown pales the sky,
I wanna hide a while, behind your smile,
And everywhere I'd look, your eyes I'd find.
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B
When I listen to this song, I want to write the movie it ought to be a part of.
When sundown pales the sky,
I wanna hide a while, behind your smile,
And everywhere I'd look, your eyes I'd find.
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B
Tom Cruise To The Rescue?
Rumors started going around on Friday afternoon about a huge bit of good news for writers: United Artists is poised sign a deal with the WGA, marking the first major studio to split from the pack at the AMPTP.
United Artists is now headed by one Tom Cruise, and given that this deal (if true) would be a major victory for the screenwriter's side in the WGA-AMPTP war, I'll refrain from making any Cruise jokes.
Meanwhile, Wired News is reporting that indie studio Lionsgate also appears close to inking a pact with the Guild.
Could this mark the beginning of a slew of companies breaking from the company line to start protecting their own interests? Could their greed be greater than their loyalty to their robber baron brethren? If so, then Gordon gekko is again proven right:
"Greed... is good. Greed works."
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B
United Artists is now headed by one Tom Cruise, and given that this deal (if true) would be a major victory for the screenwriter's side in the WGA-AMPTP war, I'll refrain from making any Cruise jokes.
Meanwhile, Wired News is reporting that indie studio Lionsgate also appears close to inking a pact with the Guild.
Could this mark the beginning of a slew of companies breaking from the company line to start protecting their own interests? Could their greed be greater than their loyalty to their robber baron brethren? If so, then Gordon gekko is again proven right:
"Greed... is good. Greed works."
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B
01 January 2008
2007 -- The Year That Was
Jeezmachrist. Are we done with ’07 already?
Things have been hectic ‘round these parts for years — since right around the time the second or maybe third kid appeared on the scene — but this year... this one was something out of a bad sci-fi movie, one where a time warp shoves everything into super-hyper-mega-overdrive and months last only two weeks each.
I used my own blog as a sort of journal to help me remember all that’s come down the pipe, and I was stunned to realize how quickly things have blown by this year.
I guess time flies when you’re hanging on for dear life.
Some highlights:
• I bought the wrong toilet paper
• I committed myself to completing three screenplays and to getting some traction on QUEEN OF THE SKY, the bio-drama about Soviet aviatrix Lilya Litvyak. For various reasons relating to more good fortune than I could have imagined relating to the second goal, I fell a tiny bit short on that first goal, But on the whole, I can live with that.
• As manager of my #2 son’s 9-year old Little League Baseball team (“the Brewers”) I drafted the best team I likely will ever see. I had one of the deepest pitching staffs in the league, more left-handed bats than righties, and three starter-grade catchers. We ended the season eliminated in the first round of the playoffs when our opponent’s #4 pitcher threw the game of his life, hurling three shutout innings despite having never logged a win all season long. You win some, you lose some.
• I made the first of three trips to Hollywood. This LA trip started with an overnighter to Austin (to catch both All The Boys Love Mandy Lane (produced by buddy Keith Calder) and Black Sheep (written and directed by buddy Jonathan King), which means I was of course obligated to imbibe a bit at pre-screening bar sessions and then at parties between the two screenings and then of course at the after party, so I arrived at my motel room well-blitzed at 3 am, which means I was still rattling badly when I woke at 7 am to make the drive back to Houston in time to catch a flight to LAX, and I had a beer en route there just to avoid coming off that wave, which means I hit Hollywood on the tail end of a 24-hour drunk, and went straight to a party and started drinking.
• As part of that LA trip, I had a great meeting at Paramount, hung with friends, did lunch dates with three different producers, and enjoyed myself tremendously, wondering when I’d have a chance to get back. Little did I know...
• lost (as in “the computer ate”) a very well detailed and almost complete outline to a new monster-comedy project I’d been scrambling to ready for contest season. The loss set be back a few weeks, and put me at serious risk for not having this new project ready for Nicholl deadline.
• started outlining seriously on a large epic historical piece with potential four-quadrant appeal. One of my best and most trusted pro peers laughed at me and called this project a fool’s errand, the sort of thing likely to suck a lot of time and energy on a lost cause, as in his professional and very knowledgeable opinion this particular form is fatally flawed from the outset. This advice of course only made me more eager and excited to work on the project.
• missed the Nicholl deadline for the new monster-com and had decided that I’d just not enter anything, but then, with literally one hour to spare before the postal deadline, I decided to toss in another copy of QUEEN OF THE SKY, the war drama that had been dinked in the first round in the two previous runs at Nicholl glory. ”There’s 30 bucks pissed down a hole...” I said to myself as I dropped the entry into the postal chute. And again, somewhere Dame Irony snickers....
• missed the Robert Earl Keen Texas Uprising Music Festival for the first time ever. Little league tournament action coupled with the dance recital of #1 son conspired to eat my Memorial Day weekend availability, so in the festival’s eighth year, I was a no-show for the first time ever, and yes I am still bummed.
• Grand Cayman, baybee. The inlaws finally made good on a decade-long threat to send the entire famn damily on a fancy vacation, so we wound up spending a week in a beachfront condo on the sands of Seven Mile Beach. Great weather, great food, great beach, great snorkeling, and a fantastic time, all on the in-laws dime as Grandma sat on the beach and smiled and laughed and soaked it up.
• returned from Cayman just in time to get seriously into summer tournament baseball with the team I helped co-found. Again, we had more talent than ever before, but the chemistry just wasn’t there, plus I think I missed too much practice time due to travel demands, so I was unable to help smooth out some weird interpersonal issues which contributed to that chemistry issue. We had fun, but not nearly so much fun as the year before, and we never performed as well as we’d expected to based upon the talent in the dugout. Again, you win some and you lose some.
• Received notice I’d advanced to the Quarterfinals of the 2007 Nicholl Fellowships competition.
• Spent a week on Catalina Island for Boy Scout summer camp, then slid over to Hollywood on the return leg of the trip. As part of the trip I met with some potential partners in an internet project, and then led them in a meeting with a producer excited by the prospects for that project.
• Youth football (aka, “the great suck”) started. I thought I was being smart by refusing to be head coach, saying that I’d setp back and let someone else take the hit for a change. As the season progressed, however, I hated this decision more and more with each passing week, as I found myself (and my family) victimized by crappy management, poor planning, hideously inept communication, painfully immature interpersonal fiascos, and a near-comical series of juvenile temper tantrums and power grabs by the gentlemen who were tasked with running things. It was so bad that we seriously considered just dropping out of the league before the mid-point of the season, but I refused to start teaching my son that the proper response is to give up and run away. I’m still not sure if that was the right move.
• I got word that I was a Nicholl semifinalist
• the family and a few other families all went on our annual “Tubin’ down the Blanco” river trip, which turned out to be a nice low-key ending to one crazy hectic summer.
• decided to use the “soon to disappear” heat and notoriety of being an accidental Nicholl semifinalist to try and market QUEEN OF THE SKY my own self, and actually met with decent results, getting the script in to a few name actresses, as well as a cool management company.
• looked up and realized that it was already time again to start prepping for my annual pilgrimage to the Austin Film Festival, which always seems to be a million years away until suddenly it’s right on top of us all, back again far sooner than seems possible. One of the weird things about getting older is the way the years start to fly by.
• was totally impressed with the way my kids handled their obligations and responsibilities. Oldest son remains a totally squirrelly punk of a 13 year old, but he also is among the most dependable and decent kids his age I’ve ever met. #2 son blew me away with his maturity and leadership as the ONLY quarterback on his team (the coaching staff refused to help me as I tried to teach some other kids how to play the position, leaving my son as the only player to take any snaps at that position all year). #3 son, meanwhile, stunned me with his interest in and dedication to Cub Scouting, learning ALL his required promises and oaths and mottos and such in just two days time, and the volunteering to lead their first den meeting “cuz I know how to do all this stuff!” Daughter meanwhile, the youngest of the brood, started kindergarten and showed no timidity or reticence at all, hitting the ground running and loving every aspect of the daily school grind. Sometimes I guess the lessons and work actually work out as intended, but I’m quite content to chalk it all up to blind stupid luck.
• In probably the biggest and most unexpected twist of 2007, I was named a Finalist in the 2007 Nicholl competition. That still seems something of a werid dream rather than an actual memory, but it’s a happy dream and I’m glad to have dreamt it.
• Due mainly to that Nicholl news, this year’s Austin Film Festival experience was... well... surreal. I never did have a chance to blog about the AFF this year, and I dunno that I ever will have the time and energy now, but it was a completely freaky yet wonderful experience to be fielding literally hundreds of calls and emails from interested producers and prodcos and managers and agents and lawyers and such even as you are stumbling around ina huge screenwriting festival trying to “network” in order to possibly... make contact with the very producers and prodcos and managers and agents and lawyers who are contacting you.
• A very close second place to “Nicholl” in the Biggest Weirdest News Of The Year was when I found myself >offered representation the Brant Rose Agency as a direct result of the Nicholl finalist thing.
• found myself in the very odd position of granting an interview to my old hometown newspaper
• realized with some chagrin that the looming WGA strike would likely fuck me royally in my all-expense paid trip to LA for Nicholl’s Week (and was soon proven painfully right)
• the aforementioned WGA strike came to pass, and it was as bad as advertised
• got word that I was dinked in the Finals of the Nicholls. IOW, “no cash award.” Oh well.
Dinked in the finals
• spent a week building some insanely cool stage pieces for the 4th grade musical, “GO WEST”, including a locomotive, a steamboat, a covered wagon, a caboose, a waterwheel, a mountain range, a setting sun, and some clouds. I had a half dozen housewives content to take orders and do whatever I told them even though they initially could not figure out at all what my plans were, but when it all came together... well, even I was impressed, and I’m never impressed.
• traveled to Hollywood for the big Nicholls Week Trip, and that turned out to be such a cool week that it’s ballooned into a still-running series of posts herebouts:
• I battled with smoke detector batteries
• at #2 son’s final youth football game, I was threatened with an ass-kicking twice in the spane of about 12 minutes, the first time from a fellow coach on my team who was furiously angry that I substituted for his son in the closing minutes of a 21-point loss when his sonrefused to run any more plays and decided to instead stand there hands on his hips in the backfield and not run any play called. After the game,I went to congratulate the winning coach in the parking lot, and he started screaming at me claiming that I’d been talking about him behind his back. To this day neither I nor anyone I’ve spoken to has even the slightest clue what the hell he was talking about.
• In the annual A&M vs UT football game (aka, “the texas game”), the Aggies won, and (just as importantly), the ‘horns lost.
• got a full archive of (almost) all the scripts on this year’s Black List. Of those I’ve so far read, none has blown me away to the point that I find myself saying ”I can never compete with this sort of talent!” Instead, I find myself thinking that I can and will and already do do work at least this good, if not much better. Yeah, I have an ego. Bite me.
• despite the best efforts of my relatives and fellow humans, I again somehow managed to get into the Christmas Spirit
• saw Juno, the feature debut of screenwriter/blogger Diablo Cody, and loved it totally and truly. Wizard.
• did some work on my monster comedy, my historical epic, developed a cool family holiday movie idea, and started an outline on a potentially hilarious new idea co-thunk up with a longtime writer friend. Hopefully, all of these will be completed and eradable by the mid-point of 2008.
• I composed the blog entry you are now reading (a project which turned out to be a far bigger pain in the ass chore than it seemed to be when I started...)
So.
On the whole, 2007 turned out to be one hellaciously wild and wooly ride for me. I made more headway in the screenwriting than I probably expected to, but then found that progress stopped as suddenly as if I’d hit a wall when the strike slammed the gate closed on ALL business.
I have some trivial heat in the biz.
I have some cool properties tidied up and ready to read, and a lot of cool material almost ready in the wings.
I have an agent (and I have the same stupid grin when saying that now as the first time back in October).
I have a stupidly supportive wife and kids, and a crew of friends I would die for.
And I have a Viking helmet, which is always cool.
Happy 2008, you weasels.
Now rise, sally forth, and kick ass.
.
.
.
B
Things have been hectic ‘round these parts for years — since right around the time the second or maybe third kid appeared on the scene — but this year... this one was something out of a bad sci-fi movie, one where a time warp shoves everything into super-hyper-mega-overdrive and months last only two weeks each.
I used my own blog as a sort of journal to help me remember all that’s come down the pipe, and I was stunned to realize how quickly things have blown by this year.
I guess time flies when you’re hanging on for dear life.
Some highlights:
JANUARY
• I bought the wrong toilet paper
• I committed myself to completing three screenplays and to getting some traction on QUEEN OF THE SKY, the bio-drama about Soviet aviatrix Lilya Litvyak. For various reasons relating to more good fortune than I could have imagined relating to the second goal, I fell a tiny bit short on that first goal, But on the whole, I can live with that.
FEBRUARY
• As manager of my #2 son’s 9-year old Little League Baseball team (“the Brewers”) I drafted the best team I likely will ever see. I had one of the deepest pitching staffs in the league, more left-handed bats than righties, and three starter-grade catchers. We ended the season eliminated in the first round of the playoffs when our opponent’s #4 pitcher threw the game of his life, hurling three shutout innings despite having never logged a win all season long. You win some, you lose some.
MARCH
• I made the first of three trips to Hollywood. This LA trip started with an overnighter to Austin (to catch both All The Boys Love Mandy Lane (produced by buddy Keith Calder) and Black Sheep (written and directed by buddy Jonathan King), which means I was of course obligated to imbibe a bit at pre-screening bar sessions and then at parties between the two screenings and then of course at the after party, so I arrived at my motel room well-blitzed at 3 am, which means I was still rattling badly when I woke at 7 am to make the drive back to Houston in time to catch a flight to LAX, and I had a beer en route there just to avoid coming off that wave, which means I hit Hollywood on the tail end of a 24-hour drunk, and went straight to a party and started drinking.
• As part of that LA trip, I had a great meeting at Paramount, hung with friends, did lunch dates with three different producers, and enjoyed myself tremendously, wondering when I’d have a chance to get back. Little did I know...
APRIL
• lost (as in “the computer ate”) a very well detailed and almost complete outline to a new monster-comedy project I’d been scrambling to ready for contest season. The loss set be back a few weeks, and put me at serious risk for not having this new project ready for Nicholl deadline.
• started outlining seriously on a large epic historical piece with potential four-quadrant appeal. One of my best and most trusted pro peers laughed at me and called this project a fool’s errand, the sort of thing likely to suck a lot of time and energy on a lost cause, as in his professional and very knowledgeable opinion this particular form is fatally flawed from the outset. This advice of course only made me more eager and excited to work on the project.
MAY
• missed the Nicholl deadline for the new monster-com and had decided that I’d just not enter anything, but then, with literally one hour to spare before the postal deadline, I decided to toss in another copy of QUEEN OF THE SKY, the war drama that had been dinked in the first round in the two previous runs at Nicholl glory. ”There’s 30 bucks pissed down a hole...” I said to myself as I dropped the entry into the postal chute. And again, somewhere Dame Irony snickers....
• missed the Robert Earl Keen Texas Uprising Music Festival for the first time ever. Little league tournament action coupled with the dance recital of #1 son conspired to eat my Memorial Day weekend availability, so in the festival’s eighth year, I was a no-show for the first time ever, and yes I am still bummed.
JUNE
• Grand Cayman, baybee. The inlaws finally made good on a decade-long threat to send the entire famn damily on a fancy vacation, so we wound up spending a week in a beachfront condo on the sands of Seven Mile Beach. Great weather, great food, great beach, great snorkeling, and a fantastic time, all on the in-laws dime as Grandma sat on the beach and smiled and laughed and soaked it up.
• returned from Cayman just in time to get seriously into summer tournament baseball with the team I helped co-found. Again, we had more talent than ever before, but the chemistry just wasn’t there, plus I think I missed too much practice time due to travel demands, so I was unable to help smooth out some weird interpersonal issues which contributed to that chemistry issue. We had fun, but not nearly so much fun as the year before, and we never performed as well as we’d expected to based upon the talent in the dugout. Again, you win some and you lose some.
JULY
• Received notice I’d advanced to the Quarterfinals of the 2007 Nicholl Fellowships competition.
• Spent a week on Catalina Island for Boy Scout summer camp, then slid over to Hollywood on the return leg of the trip. As part of the trip I met with some potential partners in an internet project, and then led them in a meeting with a producer excited by the prospects for that project.
AUGUST
• Youth football (aka, “the great suck”) started. I thought I was being smart by refusing to be head coach, saying that I’d setp back and let someone else take the hit for a change. As the season progressed, however, I hated this decision more and more with each passing week, as I found myself (and my family) victimized by crappy management, poor planning, hideously inept communication, painfully immature interpersonal fiascos, and a near-comical series of juvenile temper tantrums and power grabs by the gentlemen who were tasked with running things. It was so bad that we seriously considered just dropping out of the league before the mid-point of the season, but I refused to start teaching my son that the proper response is to give up and run away. I’m still not sure if that was the right move.
• I got word that I was a Nicholl semifinalist
• the family and a few other families all went on our annual “Tubin’ down the Blanco” river trip, which turned out to be a nice low-key ending to one crazy hectic summer.
SEPTEMBER
• decided to use the “soon to disappear” heat and notoriety of being an accidental Nicholl semifinalist to try and market QUEEN OF THE SKY my own self, and actually met with decent results, getting the script in to a few name actresses, as well as a cool management company.
• looked up and realized that it was already time again to start prepping for my annual pilgrimage to the Austin Film Festival, which always seems to be a million years away until suddenly it’s right on top of us all, back again far sooner than seems possible. One of the weird things about getting older is the way the years start to fly by.
• was totally impressed with the way my kids handled their obligations and responsibilities. Oldest son remains a totally squirrelly punk of a 13 year old, but he also is among the most dependable and decent kids his age I’ve ever met. #2 son blew me away with his maturity and leadership as the ONLY quarterback on his team (the coaching staff refused to help me as I tried to teach some other kids how to play the position, leaving my son as the only player to take any snaps at that position all year). #3 son, meanwhile, stunned me with his interest in and dedication to Cub Scouting, learning ALL his required promises and oaths and mottos and such in just two days time, and the volunteering to lead their first den meeting “cuz I know how to do all this stuff!” Daughter meanwhile, the youngest of the brood, started kindergarten and showed no timidity or reticence at all, hitting the ground running and loving every aspect of the daily school grind. Sometimes I guess the lessons and work actually work out as intended, but I’m quite content to chalk it all up to blind stupid luck.
OCTOBER
• In probably the biggest and most unexpected twist of 2007, I was named a Finalist in the 2007 Nicholl competition. That still seems something of a werid dream rather than an actual memory, but it’s a happy dream and I’m glad to have dreamt it.
• Due mainly to that Nicholl news, this year’s Austin Film Festival experience was... well... surreal. I never did have a chance to blog about the AFF this year, and I dunno that I ever will have the time and energy now, but it was a completely freaky yet wonderful experience to be fielding literally hundreds of calls and emails from interested producers and prodcos and managers and agents and lawyers and such even as you are stumbling around ina huge screenwriting festival trying to “network” in order to possibly... make contact with the very producers and prodcos and managers and agents and lawyers who are contacting you.
• A very close second place to “Nicholl” in the Biggest Weirdest News Of The Year was when I found myself >offered representation the Brant Rose Agency as a direct result of the Nicholl finalist thing.
• found myself in the very odd position of granting an interview to my old hometown newspaper
• realized with some chagrin that the looming WGA strike would likely fuck me royally in my all-expense paid trip to LA for Nicholl’s Week (and was soon proven painfully right)
NOVEMBER
• the aforementioned WGA strike came to pass, and it was as bad as advertised
• got word that I was dinked in the Finals of the Nicholls. IOW, “no cash award.” Oh well.
Dinked in the finals
• spent a week building some insanely cool stage pieces for the 4th grade musical, “GO WEST”, including a locomotive, a steamboat, a covered wagon, a caboose, a waterwheel, a mountain range, a setting sun, and some clouds. I had a half dozen housewives content to take orders and do whatever I told them even though they initially could not figure out at all what my plans were, but when it all came together... well, even I was impressed, and I’m never impressed.
• traveled to Hollywood for the big Nicholls Week Trip, and that turned out to be such a cool week that it’s ballooned into a still-running series of posts herebouts:
First Day
Second Day morning
Second Day afternoon
Third Day
Fourth Day
(more to come...)
• I battled with smoke detector batteries
• at #2 son’s final youth football game, I was threatened with an ass-kicking twice in the spane of about 12 minutes, the first time from a fellow coach on my team who was furiously angry that I substituted for his son in the closing minutes of a 21-point loss when his sonrefused to run any more plays and decided to instead stand there hands on his hips in the backfield and not run any play called. After the game,I went to congratulate the winning coach in the parking lot, and he started screaming at me claiming that I’d been talking about him behind his back. To this day neither I nor anyone I’ve spoken to has even the slightest clue what the hell he was talking about.
• In the annual A&M vs UT football game (aka, “the texas game”), the Aggies won, and (just as importantly), the ‘horns lost.
DECEMBER
• got a full archive of (almost) all the scripts on this year’s Black List. Of those I’ve so far read, none has blown me away to the point that I find myself saying ”I can never compete with this sort of talent!” Instead, I find myself thinking that I can and will and already do do work at least this good, if not much better. Yeah, I have an ego. Bite me.
• despite the best efforts of my relatives and fellow humans, I again somehow managed to get into the Christmas Spirit
• saw Juno, the feature debut of screenwriter/blogger Diablo Cody, and loved it totally and truly. Wizard.
• did some work on my monster comedy, my historical epic, developed a cool family holiday movie idea, and started an outline on a potentially hilarious new idea co-thunk up with a longtime writer friend. Hopefully, all of these will be completed and eradable by the mid-point of 2008.
• I composed the blog entry you are now reading (a project which turned out to be a far bigger pain in the ass chore than it seemed to be when I started...)
So.
On the whole, 2007 turned out to be one hellaciously wild and wooly ride for me. I made more headway in the screenwriting than I probably expected to, but then found that progress stopped as suddenly as if I’d hit a wall when the strike slammed the gate closed on ALL business.
I have some trivial heat in the biz.
I have some cool properties tidied up and ready to read, and a lot of cool material almost ready in the wings.
I have an agent (and I have the same stupid grin when saying that now as the first time back in October).
I have a stupidly supportive wife and kids, and a crew of friends I would die for.
And I have a Viking helmet, which is always cool.
Happy 2008, you weasels.
Now rise, sally forth, and kick ass.
.
.
.
B
29 December 2007
24 December 2007
21 December 2007
Nicholl Week -- Day the Fourth
Wednesday would be a strange day in many ways. I knew this on some level, as there would finally be that whole "Worlds Colliding" thing which had somehow never happened before.
Here's the thing: It's not as if I live my life like Harry Tasker in TRUE LIES. I don't live a double life totally separate and apart from my family, but there is surely some disconnect between my writing life and my non-writing life. As a writer I have a circle of friends whom I interact with almost exclusively via online means: email, chat, discussion board postings. In a weird way, my "office" is a virtual space where people from Florida and LA and Canada and England and New Zealand and Chile and Tierra Del Wherever all work at adjacent desks, just a tossed paperwad away in virtual space. A great many of these folks I actually have met and played with in real life, so I know them as more than just words and pixels. To me they are every bit as real as my neighbors and local peers.
To The Wife, however, these online friends are somehow slightly different. Suspicious. Suspect.
"How can you claim to be good friends with someone you've never met, or only met once or twice?"
"I dunno. How can you claim to still be good friends with someone you've not heard from in years, or only spoken to for a few minutes once in ten years?"
She doesn't begrudge me my writing friends. She just doesn't really understand who they are or how they can be described as "friends."
Did I mention that Wednesday was the day that The Wife was arriving to join me in Hollywood?
Oh. Yeah. Sorry. It was.
-=-=-=-
I woke to my alarm at 5 am and did some quickly calculations.
I'd crawled into bed around 2 am after a night spent first drinking and then writing in my underwear in my room.
(Well, I wasn't actually writing IN my underwear -- I was writing WHILE in my underwear. But I digress...)
I'd set my alarm for 5 am in case I decided to follow through on my stated desire to join buddy Ron Moscovitz (2005 Nicholl Fellow and WGA strike captain) on the picket line. I realized that I'd had slightly less than 3 hours sleep, would need to be in shorts and a t-shirt if I was picketing and would then need to proceed directly to WGA offices on Wilshire by 9 am for the photo op where Susanna Grant posed for a grip-n-grin shot in front of a large plastic Oscars™ statue as my Nicholl Finalist certificate was officially awarded, and that meant I'd not be looking as sharp as I'd wanted, and I'd also then need to leave early from that event to pick up The Wife at LAX as her flight arrived at 2:30 pm, so I quickly ran my sums and times my gazintas and decided that Ron could probably handle picket duties just fine without me, so I turned off the alarm and snored for another two and a half hours.
Among the other fun features of the Renaissance Hotel was the "concierge floor" where the Academy put most of us Nicholl folks. In the lounge area just down the hall was a very fine complimentary breakfast every day, and it was always interesting to smile and wave a piece of toast as greeting as one or another fellow Nichollite would pad in, bleary eyed and wearing footy pajamas. I had some more fun convo over coffee and fruit, then showered, dressed and piloted the rockin red Chevy POS 'cross Hollywood to the Academy's board room in their fancier digs on Wilshire.
Dan Petrie, Jr. and Dana Stevens sat in and talked for an hour or so about guild issues and the strike as they relate to writers and aspiring writers in the movie biz. Then a slew of heavy hitters joined us—the Nicholl's final round judges for the year—and we all chatted for a half hour or so about or projects as the judges foisted praise on most all of us.
Another really nice catered lunch was brought in, and we sat around in what amounted to an indoor picnic. The five soon-to-be-crowned Fellows all paired up with the judge who would be making their introduction at Thursday's awards banquet. My new buddies Amy Garcia and Cecelia Contreras, the painfully sweet gals behind Nicholl-winning Amelia Erheart and the Baloney Rainbow Highway, annoyed me hugely by collecting Susanna Grant as their lunch date and script-presenter.
Grant is the first Nicholl winner to come back to head up the Nicholl Committee, and in addition to being annoyingly talented (Oscar nommed, writer of Erin Brockovich and many other cool flicks), annoyingly cute, and annoyingly smart, she's also just a very cool and easy to talk to person. I managed to have maybe fifteen great seconds with Susanna as we posed together for my awards photo, and I was hoping to have a shot to tell her how huge a fan I am, but things got hectic.
I spent the bulk of the after-lunch period chatting with long-time Hollywood player Ron Mardigian. Ron was fun to talk to, and at one point he laughed and congratulated me on being possibly the most bitter and sarcastic young man he'd ever met. "You'll do very well in this business!" he offered as some odd compliment.
While we were all smarming about the room, acting like we knew what the hell we were doing, my cellphone buzzes, and I see I'm catching a message from Terry Rossio (yes, that Terry Rossio, and yes, I'm name-dropping again, so bite me), who wants to know when works best for me and The Wife to come up and see his place in Topanga. For reasons which still seem weird and somehow farcical, Terry and I struck up something like a friendship years back when he was a guest at the Austin Film Festval.
I've been to LA several times since then, and only once have I managed to cross paths with Terry (he's usually busy doing his damned fool movie thing, or off having premieres in two bit truck-stop towns like London or New York or Tokyo or wherever... such a sad tiresome life he leads...). This time, however, we'd swapped emails in advance and both sworn blood oaths (other people's blood, of course) to hook up and o lunch or something. Rossio had even made vague typically Terry-esque offers to possibly be in a mood to host a gathering or something at his place (he loves parties).
I respond, leave a message, and make a note to be sure and work out details with terry to do lunch on Thursday, then have to excuse myself for business elsewhere.
I took a few extra minutes to give Bill Mechanic former head of 20th Century Fox (and now a producer) a chance to kick me in the balls. I asked mechanic for some advice on the best way to present my story about WW2 female ace Lilya Litvyak to studios, and he said "don't bother. It'll never happen. This story will never get picked up."
Thanks, Bill!
I smiled, tossed my paper plate into the trash and headed to LAX to pick up The Wife.
I slide into a parking space maybe 50 feet from the doors to baggage claim, saunter in and find The Wife wandering around the claim carousel, chasing her luggage. I come up from behind and give her a hug from the side, surprising her. She looks up with a start, and then chuckles. "Well, hellooooo, Hollywood! Since when do YOU dress in all-black?"
We kiss. "Workin' it, babe."
I grab her huge suitcase and her hanger bag, ask if that's all, and she says "Yeah, just the two." I make a mental note that she must have packed efficiently, with all her makeup and gear in the big bag rather than in a smaller case as normal.
We load the car and make the drive back across town to the hotel. She smiles as we pull in and the valet guys scramble to assist us, and she smiles at the laughably clichéd collection of Hollywood characters we encounter from the driveway to the elevator. As we toss the suitcase onto the bed, she starts screaming profanities.
[Note: while The Wife is many things, shy about hurling some salty language she is not. We share that trait, in fact, as we can both cuss like drunken longshoremen with Tourette's when the mood strikes. I, however, am able to turn it off when the situation demands. The Wife, by contrast, sometimes struggles mightily on this point.]
The cause of her frustration was the aforementioned shortage of luggage.
"I forgot my fucking makeup case! Goddammit!"
Ten minutes of harsh language later and we've determined that she had packed her makeup case—complete with combs and brushes and blow driers and all manner of feminine product, as well as hundreds of dollars of makeup and hair care product—and then left it back home in Texas, sitting at the foot of the bed, waiting to be picked up and put in the car for the drive to the airport.
And we have a black-tie Hollywood banquet to go to the following night—the entire reason she decided to finally follow me to LA for a trip.
"D'OH!"
I'd already made some plans to meet an LA friend for dinner. Deborah Chesher—yes, she of "Everybody I Shot Is Dead" fame—was going to meet us at Lucy's El Adobe, which has become something of a tradition between me and Deb. I explain to The Wife that LA is a good-sized city where they have malls and stores and shit (yes, this is the way we talk), so we can surely find some place to help re-supply her with spackle and Bondo and varnish and such.
As I said, The Wife is still relatively unaccustomed to the notion of having online friends, so I think it was some great relief to her to actually see one of these names I refer to and prove to her own satisfaction that there is in fact a real living breathing human being associated with the entity known as "Deb." We have a fun little dinner—Deb fills us in on recent news with her promotional efforts for her cool book, we talk about the Nicholl week so far, The Wife talks about the annoyance of leaving her packed overnight case at the foot of the bed back in Texas. We'd called the babysitter who had confirmed "yes, it's just sitting here, ready to go—should I FedEx it?" Given the timing and the logistics, we decided to just try and replace stuff locally—"after all," The Wife explained in her typically female way where my stuff becomes our stuff and her stuff remains her stuff, "we have all that cash for the per diem!"
Grrrrrrr...
So we settle the bill at Lucy's, Deb scurries off to some movie preview premiere, and The Wife and I wander across Hollywood looking for someplace to drop coin on makeup she already owns.
We found a Macy's at The Beverly Center, dropped half my freakin' week's worth of per diem to buy duplicate makeup ("Merry Christmas," the suffering artist as husband explained...), then stopped by a 24-hour Walgreens on Hollywood Blvd to pick up all the brushes and combs and tweezers and implements of beautification required for these products. By the time the purchasing was complete, it was almost 10 pm and she was feeling the effects of spending the day traveling, and I was in need of a beer after the effects of spending all night spending, so when we walked through the front doors of the Renaissance and saw Sidney and Amy and Dave hanging out in The World's Worst Hotel Bar, I was morally compelled to pull up a stool and join them.
I assumed The Wife would just flop into bed and get some sleep, but she's a trouper, and she seldom passes on an opportunity to have a beverage and sling the shit (we do have some shared interests, as it turns out...), so she joins in and acquits herself admirably, showing a far greater interest in and understanding of the movie writing business than most spouses of peers seem to suggest. I give her tremendous grief—more in real life than in these blog posts—but in truth she has always been ridiculously supportive and encouraging and tolerant of my crazy dreams of screenwriting fame and glory, so finally having a chance to bring her along and include her in the silliness which passes for my life at these writerly events... well, it was a thrill.
She has once or twice made the observation that I lead somewhat of a double life, as when I am home and playing "Dad," i am committed to one specific set of goals and concerns, yet when I put on my SuperWriter cape and disappear into a week's worth of nights for a writing trip to Austin or LA, I clearly have a totally different mind working. I don;t know that I totally agree with the description, but I can see where she might have that impression, as the world of Hollywood is a million miles removed from the world of (example) Little League Baseball in Katy, Texas, so the idea that I am somehow equally adept and happy in both environments surely stirs some confusion.
Perhaps I am schizo and have multiple personalities running side by side and waiting for their respective turns at the wheel. Whatever. All I now is that I love both those lives, and suffer constant bewilderment that I so often bounce back and forth without much effort or problem.
We end yet one more night giggling at the bizarre way this bar shuts down without warning or explanation far earlier than can be explained, as patrons sit around glancing at their watches trying to figure out what's so special about 12:20 am that a hotel bar must shut down right then.
The Wife and I retire to our room, she collapses into bed, and I sort through email and do some late-night writing as always when on a road trip.
Outside, the spires of downtown LA shine in the hazy distance, and I can see moonlight reflecting off the Pacific west near Santa Monica.
(to be continued...)
.
.
.
very married B
Here's the thing: It's not as if I live my life like Harry Tasker in TRUE LIES. I don't live a double life totally separate and apart from my family, but there is surely some disconnect between my writing life and my non-writing life. As a writer I have a circle of friends whom I interact with almost exclusively via online means: email, chat, discussion board postings. In a weird way, my "office" is a virtual space where people from Florida and LA and Canada and England and New Zealand and Chile and Tierra Del Wherever all work at adjacent desks, just a tossed paperwad away in virtual space. A great many of these folks I actually have met and played with in real life, so I know them as more than just words and pixels. To me they are every bit as real as my neighbors and local peers.
To The Wife, however, these online friends are somehow slightly different. Suspicious. Suspect.
"How can you claim to be good friends with someone you've never met, or only met once or twice?"
"I dunno. How can you claim to still be good friends with someone you've not heard from in years, or only spoken to for a few minutes once in ten years?"
She doesn't begrudge me my writing friends. She just doesn't really understand who they are or how they can be described as "friends."
Did I mention that Wednesday was the day that The Wife was arriving to join me in Hollywood?
Oh. Yeah. Sorry. It was.
-=-=-=-
I woke to my alarm at 5 am and did some quickly calculations.
I'd crawled into bed around 2 am after a night spent first drinking and then writing in my underwear in my room.
(Well, I wasn't actually writing IN my underwear -- I was writing WHILE in my underwear. But I digress...)
I'd set my alarm for 5 am in case I decided to follow through on my stated desire to join buddy Ron Moscovitz (2005 Nicholl Fellow and WGA strike captain) on the picket line. I realized that I'd had slightly less than 3 hours sleep, would need to be in shorts and a t-shirt if I was picketing and would then need to proceed directly to WGA offices on Wilshire by 9 am for the photo op where Susanna Grant posed for a grip-n-grin shot in front of a large plastic Oscars™ statue as my Nicholl Finalist certificate was officially awarded, and that meant I'd not be looking as sharp as I'd wanted, and I'd also then need to leave early from that event to pick up The Wife at LAX as her flight arrived at 2:30 pm, so I quickly ran my sums and times my gazintas and decided that Ron could probably handle picket duties just fine without me, so I turned off the alarm and snored for another two and a half hours.
Among the other fun features of the Renaissance Hotel was the "concierge floor" where the Academy put most of us Nicholl folks. In the lounge area just down the hall was a very fine complimentary breakfast every day, and it was always interesting to smile and wave a piece of toast as greeting as one or another fellow Nichollite would pad in, bleary eyed and wearing footy pajamas. I had some more fun convo over coffee and fruit, then showered, dressed and piloted the rockin red Chevy POS 'cross Hollywood to the Academy's board room in their fancier digs on Wilshire.
Dan Petrie, Jr. and Dana Stevens sat in and talked for an hour or so about guild issues and the strike as they relate to writers and aspiring writers in the movie biz. Then a slew of heavy hitters joined us—the Nicholl's final round judges for the year—and we all chatted for a half hour or so about or projects as the judges foisted praise on most all of us.
Another really nice catered lunch was brought in, and we sat around in what amounted to an indoor picnic. The five soon-to-be-crowned Fellows all paired up with the judge who would be making their introduction at Thursday's awards banquet. My new buddies Amy Garcia and Cecelia Contreras, the painfully sweet gals behind Nicholl-winning Amelia Erheart and the Baloney Rainbow Highway, annoyed me hugely by collecting Susanna Grant as their lunch date and script-presenter.
Grant is the first Nicholl winner to come back to head up the Nicholl Committee, and in addition to being annoyingly talented (Oscar nommed, writer of Erin Brockovich and many other cool flicks), annoyingly cute, and annoyingly smart, she's also just a very cool and easy to talk to person. I managed to have maybe fifteen great seconds with Susanna as we posed together for my awards photo, and I was hoping to have a shot to tell her how huge a fan I am, but things got hectic.
I spent the bulk of the after-lunch period chatting with long-time Hollywood player Ron Mardigian. Ron was fun to talk to, and at one point he laughed and congratulated me on being possibly the most bitter and sarcastic young man he'd ever met. "You'll do very well in this business!" he offered as some odd compliment.
While we were all smarming about the room, acting like we knew what the hell we were doing, my cellphone buzzes, and I see I'm catching a message from Terry Rossio (yes, that Terry Rossio, and yes, I'm name-dropping again, so bite me), who wants to know when works best for me and The Wife to come up and see his place in Topanga. For reasons which still seem weird and somehow farcical, Terry and I struck up something like a friendship years back when he was a guest at the Austin Film Festval.
I've been to LA several times since then, and only once have I managed to cross paths with Terry (he's usually busy doing his damned fool movie thing, or off having premieres in two bit truck-stop towns like London or New York or Tokyo or wherever... such a sad tiresome life he leads...). This time, however, we'd swapped emails in advance and both sworn blood oaths (other people's blood, of course) to hook up and o lunch or something. Rossio had even made vague typically Terry-esque offers to possibly be in a mood to host a gathering or something at his place (he loves parties).
I respond, leave a message, and make a note to be sure and work out details with terry to do lunch on Thursday, then have to excuse myself for business elsewhere.
I took a few extra minutes to give Bill Mechanic former head of 20th Century Fox (and now a producer) a chance to kick me in the balls. I asked mechanic for some advice on the best way to present my story about WW2 female ace Lilya Litvyak to studios, and he said "don't bother. It'll never happen. This story will never get picked up."
Thanks, Bill!
I smiled, tossed my paper plate into the trash and headed to LAX to pick up The Wife.
I slide into a parking space maybe 50 feet from the doors to baggage claim, saunter in and find The Wife wandering around the claim carousel, chasing her luggage. I come up from behind and give her a hug from the side, surprising her. She looks up with a start, and then chuckles. "Well, hellooooo, Hollywood! Since when do YOU dress in all-black?"
We kiss. "Workin' it, babe."
I grab her huge suitcase and her hanger bag, ask if that's all, and she says "Yeah, just the two." I make a mental note that she must have packed efficiently, with all her makeup and gear in the big bag rather than in a smaller case as normal.
We load the car and make the drive back across town to the hotel. She smiles as we pull in and the valet guys scramble to assist us, and she smiles at the laughably clichéd collection of Hollywood characters we encounter from the driveway to the elevator. As we toss the suitcase onto the bed, she starts screaming profanities.
[Note: while The Wife is many things, shy about hurling some salty language she is not. We share that trait, in fact, as we can both cuss like drunken longshoremen with Tourette's when the mood strikes. I, however, am able to turn it off when the situation demands. The Wife, by contrast, sometimes struggles mightily on this point.]
The cause of her frustration was the aforementioned shortage of luggage.
"I forgot my fucking makeup case! Goddammit!"
Ten minutes of harsh language later and we've determined that she had packed her makeup case—complete with combs and brushes and blow driers and all manner of feminine product, as well as hundreds of dollars of makeup and hair care product—and then left it back home in Texas, sitting at the foot of the bed, waiting to be picked up and put in the car for the drive to the airport.
And we have a black-tie Hollywood banquet to go to the following night—the entire reason she decided to finally follow me to LA for a trip.
"D'OH!"
I'd already made some plans to meet an LA friend for dinner. Deborah Chesher—yes, she of "Everybody I Shot Is Dead" fame—was going to meet us at Lucy's El Adobe, which has become something of a tradition between me and Deb. I explain to The Wife that LA is a good-sized city where they have malls and stores and shit (yes, this is the way we talk), so we can surely find some place to help re-supply her with spackle and Bondo and varnish and such.
As I said, The Wife is still relatively unaccustomed to the notion of having online friends, so I think it was some great relief to her to actually see one of these names I refer to and prove to her own satisfaction that there is in fact a real living breathing human being associated with the entity known as "Deb." We have a fun little dinner—Deb fills us in on recent news with her promotional efforts for her cool book, we talk about the Nicholl week so far, The Wife talks about the annoyance of leaving her packed overnight case at the foot of the bed back in Texas. We'd called the babysitter who had confirmed "yes, it's just sitting here, ready to go—should I FedEx it?" Given the timing and the logistics, we decided to just try and replace stuff locally—"after all," The Wife explained in her typically female way where my stuff becomes our stuff and her stuff remains her stuff, "we have all that cash for the per diem!"
Grrrrrrr...
So we settle the bill at Lucy's, Deb scurries off to some movie preview premiere, and The Wife and I wander across Hollywood looking for someplace to drop coin on makeup she already owns.
We found a Macy's at The Beverly Center, dropped half my freakin' week's worth of per diem to buy duplicate makeup ("Merry Christmas," the suffering artist as husband explained...), then stopped by a 24-hour Walgreens on Hollywood Blvd to pick up all the brushes and combs and tweezers and implements of beautification required for these products. By the time the purchasing was complete, it was almost 10 pm and she was feeling the effects of spending the day traveling, and I was in need of a beer after the effects of spending all night spending, so when we walked through the front doors of the Renaissance and saw Sidney and Amy and Dave hanging out in The World's Worst Hotel Bar, I was morally compelled to pull up a stool and join them.
I assumed The Wife would just flop into bed and get some sleep, but she's a trouper, and she seldom passes on an opportunity to have a beverage and sling the shit (we do have some shared interests, as it turns out...), so she joins in and acquits herself admirably, showing a far greater interest in and understanding of the movie writing business than most spouses of peers seem to suggest. I give her tremendous grief—more in real life than in these blog posts—but in truth she has always been ridiculously supportive and encouraging and tolerant of my crazy dreams of screenwriting fame and glory, so finally having a chance to bring her along and include her in the silliness which passes for my life at these writerly events... well, it was a thrill.
She has once or twice made the observation that I lead somewhat of a double life, as when I am home and playing "Dad," i am committed to one specific set of goals and concerns, yet when I put on my SuperWriter cape and disappear into a week's worth of nights for a writing trip to Austin or LA, I clearly have a totally different mind working. I don;t know that I totally agree with the description, but I can see where she might have that impression, as the world of Hollywood is a million miles removed from the world of (example) Little League Baseball in Katy, Texas, so the idea that I am somehow equally adept and happy in both environments surely stirs some confusion.
Perhaps I am schizo and have multiple personalities running side by side and waiting for their respective turns at the wheel. Whatever. All I now is that I love both those lives, and suffer constant bewilderment that I so often bounce back and forth without much effort or problem.
We end yet one more night giggling at the bizarre way this bar shuts down without warning or explanation far earlier than can be explained, as patrons sit around glancing at their watches trying to figure out what's so special about 12:20 am that a hotel bar must shut down right then.
The Wife and I retire to our room, she collapses into bed, and I sort through email and do some late-night writing as always when on a road trip.
Outside, the spires of downtown LA shine in the hazy distance, and I can see moonlight reflecting off the Pacific west near Santa Monica.
(to be continued...)
.
.
.
very married B
20 December 2007
the best white christmas ever
So I was perusing for the newest updates about the WGA strike and wound up surfing past cartoonist/author Mark Evanier's site, News From Me. Mark posted a cool video which I wound up watching three times and laughing and singing along with every time.
The piece was created by a cartoonist identified only as thenosesdotcom. Who ever he/she/they are, may props be thine, dude—this rocks.
Merry Christmas, you filthy heathens.
.
.
.
sucker for the doowop B
The piece was created by a cartoonist identified only as thenosesdotcom. Who ever he/she/they are, may props be thine, dude—this rocks.
Merry Christmas, you filthy heathens.
.
.
.
sucker for the doowop B
19 December 2007
my thoughts offered unprompted on several currently hot screenplays
"PPPPPFFFFTTTTT!!!"
Thank you.
.
.
.
pissy unimpressed and surprised B
Thank you.
.
.
.
pissy unimpressed and surprised B
13 December 2007
A spark in the mind's eye
Stumbled onto a fascinating little article titled The Shakespeared Brain wherein Philip Davis, a Liverpool professor, teams with a researchers to use EEGs to measure reader reaction to Shakespeare's use of "functional shift":
It turns out that this technique of cross-purposing parts of speech creates a consistent observable electro-chemical reaction in the brain—specifically, a 600-millisecond delay in parietal modulation.
New research into the physiological aspects of linguistics suggest that different areas of the brain handle processing of different parts of speech—one corner of your head handles verbs, for example, while another seems to handle nouns. This 600-millisecond delay invoked by functional shift seems to have the curious effect of forcing a greater portion of your brain to become simultaneously engaged with processing that word and sentence. In other words, when Shakespeare uses a square peg for a round hole in the sentence, we focus more and take greater notice.
Anyone who aspires to become a more effective (and effecting!) writer might do well to glance at the article and consider its possible implications and applications.
And now, I must away directly....
.
.
.
B
"In particular I mentioned to him the linguistic phenomenon in Shakespeare which is known as "functional shift" or "word class conversion". It refers to the way that Shakespeare will often use one part of speech—a noun or an adjective, say—to serve as another, often a verb, shifting its grammatical nature with minimal alteration to its shape. Thus in "Lear" for example, Edgar comparing himself to the king: "He childed as I fathered" (nouns shifted to verbs); in "Troilus and Cressida", "Kingdomed Achilles in commotion rages" (noun converted to adjective); "Othello", "To lip a wanton in a secure couch/And to suppose her chaste!"' (noun "lip" to verb; adjective "wanton" to noun).
The effect is often electric I think, like a lightning-flash in the mind: for this is an economically compressed form of speech, as from an age when the language was at its most dynamically fluid and formatively mobile; an age in which a word could move quickly from one sense to another, in keeping with Shakespeare's lightning-fast capacity for forging metaphor."
It turns out that this technique of cross-purposing parts of speech creates a consistent observable electro-chemical reaction in the brain—specifically, a 600-millisecond delay in parietal modulation.
New research into the physiological aspects of linguistics suggest that different areas of the brain handle processing of different parts of speech—one corner of your head handles verbs, for example, while another seems to handle nouns. This 600-millisecond delay invoked by functional shift seems to have the curious effect of forcing a greater portion of your brain to become simultaneously engaged with processing that word and sentence. In other words, when Shakespeare uses a square peg for a round hole in the sentence, we focus more and take greater notice.
Anyone who aspires to become a more effective (and effecting!) writer might do well to glance at the article and consider its possible implications and applications.
And now, I must away directly....
.
.
.
B
12 December 2007
a strange little hero
At birth, she was given just three months to live.
Four years later, half-blinded and weakened to the point that she requires two days rest in order to have just one hour of waking usefulness, she still soldiers on, forced to move backwards due to a gimpy inoperative leg that she drags behind her in the dirt.
Experts cannot explain how it is she's even still alive.
Winter is coming on now, and her best shelter for these coming chill months will be a rocky outcropping in the lee of the frigid winds. If all goes well, she will somehow continue to beat the odds and waken in the spring to resume her slow meandering backward crawl.
-=-=-
Her name is Spirit, and she is one of the twin Mars rover probes NASA sent to the Red Planet in 2003.
She is a tiny lunchbox sized robotic exploration probe -- a six wheeled rolling set of eyes and fingers and taste buds for NASA researchers, armed with a tiny but resilient computer mind which can take simple instructions from NASA and somehow translate them into a course of action for the day.
When she landed on Mars in 2003, the expectation was that she would roll around, sample and photograph rocks and soil in the surrounding area, but that the extreme conditions on Mars would soon cripple or kill her. "Three months, more or less," the experts projected. Winds, dust storms, antarctic winters, darkness which would deny her tiny solar panels the energy needed to power up her tiny motors and communications devices. She was designed as a a proof-of-concept test -- a pile of off-the-shelf parts thrown together on the cheap just to see if the basic principle of a low-cost research mission could work. She was just short term disposable asset and not much more.
But somewhere along the way, she and her twin brother, Opportunity, just didn't quite get that memo.
-=-=-
Sometime during the last few months -- three years past the point where the best experts were sure she'd have long since stopped functioning -- Spirit caught some grit in her right front wheel, one of six such small rubber tires "borrowed" from a stock remote control toy of the kind sold at most any large store in America. The wheel seized up and has not rolled since.
So Spirit just decided to drive in reverse and drag the useless wheel behind her, leaving a long lazy skid mark in the sand as she happily putters around the surface of another planet.
Now, when she receives orders from NASA to "go check out that rocky outcropping to the east" or "sample the dust in that bright area 13 yards due north," she waits for a day or two until her solar cells soak up enough of the sun's far dimmer light (maybe half as bright as on Earth), then limps over without complaint and keeps doing what she was designed to do: push back the veil of ignorance and push forward the bounds of what our species knows, what our species suspects, what our species dreams.
Go. Seek. Explore.
-=-=-
Sometime this past few months NASA scientists happened to glance back at that skid mark trail now stretching hundreds of yards behind the pugnacious little probe. Someone noticed the sand turned over in the trail seemed brighter-- whiter, shinier -- than the neighboring sand. So someone told Spirt to turn around and test that bright dirt in her own trail.
No problem, she muttered to herself, and rotated back, extended her tiny spoon-like digger and tasted the Martian dirt.
Silica. Nearly pure. Trace but elevated amounts of titanium, she reported back as soon as she soaked enough sunlight to make the test and the transmission.
Silica, with traces of titanium. Exactly the residue found on Earth around fumeroles, volcanic water features such as geysers and steam vents. Water features. Of a sort long known as a habitat for an insane variety of extremely tough primitive life forms.
Exactly the sort of place where life might first start on a cold hostile planet.
Like Mars.
"[T]his concentration of silica is probably the most significant discovery by Spirit for revealing a habitable niche that existed on Mars in the past," said Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., principal investigator for the rovers' science payload. "The evidence is pointing most strongly toward fumarolic conditions, like you might see in Hawaii and in Iceland. Compared with deposits formed at hot springs, we know less about how well fumarolic deposits can preserve microbial fossils. That's something needing more study here on Earth." [see entire NASA release HERE]
Now the concern is for Spirit's safety and continued improbable survival. Her solar panels are coated with dust from bad storms earlier this year, and it's not as if she can just swing past a car wash and get hosed off. The dust-covered cells already transfer less power than designed, and if Spirit powers down into sleep mode for the winter, she might well not have enough power to wake up come spring, when the temps on Mars climb back to a "balmy" 0˚F.
But still, she was never supposed to be here in the first place. She was just a test. A gimmick. A toy.
Who has defied the experts and chugged on for 1400 days, alone under a strange pink sky on an cold and windy alien planet, sending every scrap of information and science she can manage back to that bright point of blue-white light in the sky, a point which which marks the home of those six billion humans she represents and serves.
And now -- crippled, weakened, and maybe finally doomed -- she's made "probably the most significant discovery" of her entire amazing mission.
I dunno. Perhaps it's a little dramatic, but for my money, that's pretty damned heroic.
.
.
.
astrogeek 2000 B
Four years later, half-blinded and weakened to the point that she requires two days rest in order to have just one hour of waking usefulness, she still soldiers on, forced to move backwards due to a gimpy inoperative leg that she drags behind her in the dirt.
Experts cannot explain how it is she's even still alive.
Winter is coming on now, and her best shelter for these coming chill months will be a rocky outcropping in the lee of the frigid winds. If all goes well, she will somehow continue to beat the odds and waken in the spring to resume her slow meandering backward crawl.
-=-=-
Her name is Spirit, and she is one of the twin Mars rover probes NASA sent to the Red Planet in 2003.
She is a tiny lunchbox sized robotic exploration probe -- a six wheeled rolling set of eyes and fingers and taste buds for NASA researchers, armed with a tiny but resilient computer mind which can take simple instructions from NASA and somehow translate them into a course of action for the day.
When she landed on Mars in 2003, the expectation was that she would roll around, sample and photograph rocks and soil in the surrounding area, but that the extreme conditions on Mars would soon cripple or kill her. "Three months, more or less," the experts projected. Winds, dust storms, antarctic winters, darkness which would deny her tiny solar panels the energy needed to power up her tiny motors and communications devices. She was designed as a a proof-of-concept test -- a pile of off-the-shelf parts thrown together on the cheap just to see if the basic principle of a low-cost research mission could work. She was just short term disposable asset and not much more.
But somewhere along the way, she and her twin brother, Opportunity, just didn't quite get that memo.
-=-=-
Sometime during the last few months -- three years past the point where the best experts were sure she'd have long since stopped functioning -- Spirit caught some grit in her right front wheel, one of six such small rubber tires "borrowed" from a stock remote control toy of the kind sold at most any large store in America. The wheel seized up and has not rolled since.
So Spirit just decided to drive in reverse and drag the useless wheel behind her, leaving a long lazy skid mark in the sand as she happily putters around the surface of another planet.
Now, when she receives orders from NASA to "go check out that rocky outcropping to the east" or "sample the dust in that bright area 13 yards due north," she waits for a day or two until her solar cells soak up enough of the sun's far dimmer light (maybe half as bright as on Earth), then limps over without complaint and keeps doing what she was designed to do: push back the veil of ignorance and push forward the bounds of what our species knows, what our species suspects, what our species dreams.
Go. Seek. Explore.
-=-=-
Sometime this past few months NASA scientists happened to glance back at that skid mark trail now stretching hundreds of yards behind the pugnacious little probe. Someone noticed the sand turned over in the trail seemed brighter-- whiter, shinier -- than the neighboring sand. So someone told Spirt to turn around and test that bright dirt in her own trail.
No problem, she muttered to herself, and rotated back, extended her tiny spoon-like digger and tasted the Martian dirt.
Silica. Nearly pure. Trace but elevated amounts of titanium, she reported back as soon as she soaked enough sunlight to make the test and the transmission.
Silica, with traces of titanium. Exactly the residue found on Earth around fumeroles, volcanic water features such as geysers and steam vents. Water features. Of a sort long known as a habitat for an insane variety of extremely tough primitive life forms.
Exactly the sort of place where life might first start on a cold hostile planet.
Like Mars.
"[T]his concentration of silica is probably the most significant discovery by Spirit for revealing a habitable niche that existed on Mars in the past," said Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., principal investigator for the rovers' science payload. "The evidence is pointing most strongly toward fumarolic conditions, like you might see in Hawaii and in Iceland. Compared with deposits formed at hot springs, we know less about how well fumarolic deposits can preserve microbial fossils. That's something needing more study here on Earth." [see entire NASA release HERE]
Now the concern is for Spirit's safety and continued improbable survival. Her solar panels are coated with dust from bad storms earlier this year, and it's not as if she can just swing past a car wash and get hosed off. The dust-covered cells already transfer less power than designed, and if Spirit powers down into sleep mode for the winter, she might well not have enough power to wake up come spring, when the temps on Mars climb back to a "balmy" 0˚F.
But still, she was never supposed to be here in the first place. She was just a test. A gimmick. A toy.
Who has defied the experts and chugged on for 1400 days, alone under a strange pink sky on an cold and windy alien planet, sending every scrap of information and science she can manage back to that bright point of blue-white light in the sky, a point which which marks the home of those six billion humans she represents and serves.
And now -- crippled, weakened, and maybe finally doomed -- she's made "probably the most significant discovery" of her entire amazing mission.
I dunno. Perhaps it's a little dramatic, but for my money, that's pretty damned heroic.
.
.
.
astrogeek 2000 B
10 December 2007
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