Living the Romantic Comedy

The Practice

   

Eighty percent of success is showing up.     -- Woody Allen

I have tea with a writer I'm mentoring who's having trouble doing the writing she needs to do.  I come home and visit a blog friend to find she's struggling with the very same issue.   There's a lot of this going around.  The devil in me says, tell 'em all to give it up.  The angel is appalled.  And the snark -- smart little shifty guy lives in the back of a shirt drawer -- suggests I just spill the obvious secret.

How to become a writer?  Someone who not only starts projects but finishes them?  Someone who's always learning the craft and mostly getting better at it?  A for-real, do-it-for-a-living, legitimately call-yourself-a-writer? 

The answer's so obvious, so hiding in plain sight, that I feel a little silly going on about it, so I'm gonna try to make this brief.  I can give you the whole kit and caboodle in four words:

Do it every day.

You know I love romance as well as -- well, probably more than -- the next guy, but there's one romantic notion I would dearly love to explode, and that's The Romance of Inspiration.   We've all got a touch of it, this fantasy of being touched by the muse, bolted from the blue, stealing the fire from the gods and blazing with it through the pages, and sure, such shit happens.  But waiting around to be struck by lightning is a high risk, sucker's odds game.  No, the true path to being a successful writer, in every sense, is very simple and pedestrian:

Do it every day.

 

Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.      -- Thomas Edison

Here's what works -- and I have this not only from my own experience but pretty much all the writers I've read and known: commit yourself to a fixed writing time.  One hour minimum, if your life is truly so jammed that it's all the time you can steal.  One to three hours first thing in the day is a popular slot.  I'm not alone in finding the just-out-of-dreamland quiet, pre-conversation, pre-world-at-large time especially productive.  You may be a nightbird, by inclination or necessity, and that's fine, too.   But whatever it is, train your psyche to "show up for work" at a designated time (and perhaps even, place) six days a week.

This is the tried-and-tested best way to create a writing practice and its rewards are huge. 

Doesn't even matter what you write -- think of it as going to the gym for your writing muscles.  Would you run a marathon without daily sprints?  Try to play Rachmaninoff's Third without daily scales?  How the hell do you expect to have and sustain the facility to get a writing job done if you're not in shape?

Writing is easy.  All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead.     -- Gene Fowler

I'm not saying it's a breeze.  A daily practice is in fact acknowledgement that the work is hard.  But the secret within the secret is this:  if you put in that hour-plus, day after day, your brain gets trained and your soul gets goal-oriented, your unconscious gets engaged.  The work you're working on begins to have a life, as it's a part of your life, and you'll find that ideas come to you when you're not in the room, come to you in your sleep... because you have tripped the mechanism and the machine is on.

And as I've mentioned before, what you're writing doesn't have to be "the draft."  It can be thoughts about it, a self-interview, illustrated index cards -- babble.  But whatever it is, when you do it every day, the muse is more apt to drop by, drawn by the energy you're putting into the ether.  And when you do it every day, you're more likely to be able to show her a good time -- to rise to the occasion and make with the funky-sweet music.

Some days will be awful.  Some will be Huh?  Some not bad and it doesn't matter.  Just show up.  The beauty part is, whether your pages suck or soar on a daily basis, when you get into that rhythm and discipline, over time you will become a stronger, better writer, guaranteed.

So give yourself the Sundays -- even the Big Guy (or Girl) took a break.  But as a general motto?

Do it every day.

 

Zombies of the Blogosphere

Tuesday night, under the influence of Ambien, I apparently published an incoherent post about zombies.  I woke the next morning to find myself 8 pounds overweight, with a duck-billed platypus named Maisie in my bed (she's sweet, but I don't think it's going to work out).  If anyone has more information about what else I was up to that night, or has my pajamas, please do let me know.  Thanks!

Mysteries of the Unrepeatable

Some days stuff pops out of the matrix that says hello to a stream of thought you're already swimming in, and generally such a synchronicity, random though it may be, suggests paying attention.  Though not too much attention, of course, otherwise you may end up pushing a shopping cart down Venice Boulevard in your pajamas explaining to all your invisible friends why pundits from the Planet Zygon are sending you messages encoded in the waves of Donald Trump's combover.

At brunch I met a fellow from London who's left a lucrative job in advertising to pursue a screenwriting career here in L.A. (brave lad -- tried to talk him out of it, but no go), and he asked a question that had a familiar ring:  "Should I try to write something personal, do you think, or should I go after a commercial, thing-that's-gonna-sell kind of screenplay?"

Familiar because just last night this comment came up on my last post:  For writers like myself that attempt romantic comedies, is it better to be more conventional when trying to break in, or can we stray from the blueprint a bit ala "Spotless Mind?"  This from Scriptweaver (whose own neat screenwriting blog posts some of the best movie cheesecake on the web -- but I digress).  Anyway, given the intersection of these 2 questions within the same 24 hours, let me respond with a question.

When a reader (professional reader, producer, actor, director, civilian, et al) reads the first page of a screenplay, what is the last thing this reader wants to see?

Something they've read before.

As a reader and a writer, nothing deadens my soul, puts my hope and imagination to sleep faster, than the sense that I'm being told One of Those Stories in the Same Old Way.  Now it's true that what the studio is looking for is a project that's "commercial," which by common wisdom is a story deemed to be a familiar, acessible, sellable.  But in truth, the studio ideal is a story that's the same, only different.

So what makes the difference?

First, to define "the same," let me try to readjust a subtle misconception about conventionality.  Here's the thing about a conventional script that's meant to be commerical (i.e. a workman-like version of what's already been done and what's done all the time to fill programmer slots on a studio slate).  There's a lot of established pros doing exactly that, and chances are, they're already better at it than you are.

Yes: if you're an aspiring screenwriter, you really ought to familiarize yourself with traditional form and structure and the requisite craft stuff that goes with it, so that you're literally and figuratively on the same page as the professionals working in the industry.  Every storyteller ought to understand the basic time-honored fundamentals of how to tell a story, and it behooves you to know how it's done in this medium. 

But while writing a formulaic, by-the-books script might give you a grip on what works and what doesn't, that doesn't have to be the spec script you go out with.  In fact, I'd highly recommend it, not.   The industry doesn't need it.

What makes a script stand out from the crowd is the difference.

What makes the difference?

You.

You and only you can write the story that only you know how to write, and this is where "personal" becomes key, in terms of breaking into the biz.

And what's the difference between personal and who cares?  The nightmare version of "a personal project" is that script written by a struggling widget salesman from Ohio that's all about a struggling widget salesman from Ohio and widgets, widgets, widgets.  It's the equivalent of the guy with the shopping cart on Venice Boulevard getting messages from the Planet Zygon -- I call them OPI specs -- they come from someone's Own Private Idaho.

This is where craft comes in.  I'll wager that someone who understands screenwriting craft and how to keep an audience involved could make even a widget story interesting -- the problem with OPI scripts is that their writers, who often aren't really writers, aren't really interested in creating a good movie.  They've just got a lot to get off their chest about widgets.  No, you -- the pre-pro screenwriter -- want to tell a good story that people will respond to, and you've got the chops to tell it well. 

And how do you know that your personal story, told well, has a shot at getting a response from the industry?  How's this: say you're with some people at a restaurant.  Guy on your left wants to tell you a story about how he met his wife.  Woman on your right, when asked about her last relationship, blushes a bit and says there's nothing to say.  When pressed, she says it's a story, alright, but it's not the kind of story she really can repeat.   Which story do you want to hear?

I want the unrepeatable.

What the audience wants is the secrets -- the inside dope, the hidden scars, the don't-know-whether-to-laugh-or-cry truths about what it feels like to be human.  We want to know the thing about you that might even be more outrageous than what we know about ourselves -- in essence, we want to recognize all the possibilities that are there, in all of us.

So instead of writing what you think is the thing that sells, try taking the risk of really owning what's different -- what's unique -- about your world.  Show us the difference.  Surprise us with your weirdness. 

Personal means repeating what's supposedly unrepeatable.  And of course the more you're really yourself on the page when you write, the more honest you are about your point of view... the more universal your story gets.

Ultimately we're all walking mysteries, unknown to ourselves and each other, eternally unable to be one another.  What a great movie does is give us the sensation of piercing that veil.  An Unrepeatable story acknowledges how shockingly familiar our secrets and feelings are.  Your personal story, if it's a true and honest down and dirty one, is everybody's tale.

The mystery of what makes a person strive and thrive is one of the most primal fascinations in storytelling.  I'll wager that the movies you love are the ones which remind you of both what you know and what can't be comprehended, about being in these bodies.   

Seems to me those are the movies you'd want to write.  They're surely the ones we really want to see.

(top photo from jen at Law of Sympathy)

Failure's Success

Maybe you've seen the trailer for Thank You for Not Smoking.  It features a great bit where Aaron Eckhart, playing a Big Tobacco lobbyist, meets with Hollywood  "super agent" Rob Lowe to discuss how to product-place cigarettes in movies, and Lowe suggests a new sci-fi project, positing the sexy notion of cigarettes in space.  "But wouldn't they blow up in an all-oxygen environment?" Eckart asks.  "Probably," says Lowe, "but it's an easy fix.  One line of dialogue: 'Thank God we invented the y'know, whatever device.'"

The terrible beauty of this kind of logic was much on my mind when I dutifully sat through Failure to Launch last night (the things I do for you guys!), feeling more like a social anthropologist studying the strange habits of a foreign culture than a romantic comedy fan enjoying a movie.  Because Failure is nothing if not an unfortunate triumph of Easy Fix thinking.  Its characters are more simulacrums of human-like behavior than recognizable humans, and they clearly obey the dictates not of common sense, but of Studio Sense.

Don't get me wrong -- though I love indie movies, I currently work for a studio, and quite often the studio's ideas of what will make a movie work are smart and impressively effective.  But in this case, you can see the studio system's blatant How To Make This Marketable ploys in overdrive.  As critic Stephen Holden put it, Failure's folks come from "the romantic comedy planet" -- this in one of the movie's few positive reviews -- and as a longtime lover of the form, I found watching them a depressing experience.  Because there is such a thing, goshdarnit, as a rom-com with sort-of real life people in it (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind's poignantly dysfunctional couple comes to mind), and it really bugs me that such creatures seem few and far between.  It's one of the things that gives our genre a bad name.

That Failure is an anointed success -- it won its first weekend and then some, giving star Sarah Jessica Parker her best to-date opening -- is actually not a bad thing for so-called chick flicks, in that its predominately female-skewed audience has made the biz pay attention to them.   Watching it, I found myself shifting into analytical mode -- my only choice, really, because the movie failed to get me from the get.  Herewith are some observations on what in the Failure construct shouldn't have worked but evidently does, with some guesses as to why.

[Note: what follows is full of so-called SPOILERS, but if you're someone who fears having the plot turns of this movie SPOILED, then I'm actually a little worried about you, especially since you'd have to be someone who's never SEEN a romantic comedy to be surprised by it.]

CONCEPT: Matthew McConaughey has been living in his parents' home for so long that in desperation, they hire Sarah Jessica, an expert in "extractions," to trick him into falling in love with her and thus be motivated to move out.   

PREPOSTEROUS PREMISE: Matthew is in his late 30s, yet his folks still cater to his every whim, feeding and laundering him, et al, so he has no reason to want out of this arrangement.  EASY FIX: Matthew, we later learn, suffered a traumatic heartbreak 6 years ago when his girlfriend died, and thus has been coddled ever since.  UNANSWERED QUESTIONS: Fine, but what about before said girlfriend died?  If he moved in after college, isn't that still some 7-9 years of pre-trauma slacker sponging?  And 6 years on (or 13-15, if you total it up) wouldn't these supposedly desperate parents have perhaps... talked to their son about the deal?  Or at least be showing some signs of dissatisfaction (i.e. why are Mom and Dad so bewilderingly sanguine)?

PREPOS. PREM: Nobody else in Matthew's universe seems to have any big problem with his lifestyle.  EASY FIX: Matt's two best friends are also 30-somethings living at home with their parents, thus further justifying his happiness with the set-up.  UNANS. Qs:  In what state of the Union is this over-30-stay-at-home-sons phenomenon a commonplace?  Japan's having an issue with this, Italy, too, but America at large?   

PREPOS. PREM: Matt uses his set-up to break up with any woman who becomes too interested in him, since none of them can abide this (arguably creepy) way to live... and yet Matt is the romantic hero of the movie and meant to be empathetic.  EASY FIX:  He's Matthew McConaughey.  UNANS. Qs:  Really?    (Doesn't work for me, but I'm a guy; though I do understand how his smile and biceps evidently make him catnip to femmes, McConaughey's appeal (c'mon, there's just no there, there) is as inexplicable to me as say, Scarlett Johansson's may be to many female viewers.) 

PREPOS. PREM:  a) Despite all her duplicities, Sarah is supposed to be our empathetic romantic heroine, and b) despite working one town, has never been found out.  EASY FIX:  a) Sarah has been successful at her extractions without ever having slept with a client (because that would be wrong!) and b) she is discovered by Matt's friend Ace, who at least articulates the issue in dialogue ("you've never been caught?!").  UNANS. Qs:  So due to the multitude of such 30-something stay-at-homes, Sarah makes a good, steady living by duping and devastating these guys... 'cause she's helping them grow and helping their folks?  She's able to seduce and abandon these guys without even a helpful handjob along the way?

PREPOS. PREM: Sarah lives with a quirky roommate played by Zooey Deschanel, who's clearly 15 years younger than she is.  EASY FIX: None.  The screenwriters fall back on romantic comedy convention, assuming rom-com heroine must have a quirkyroommate (she comes with the rom-com kit).  UNANS. Qs:  Can I find one like Zooey on Craig's List?

PREPOS. PREM: Zooey falls for Ace, despite having evinced nothing but contempt for him; when he shoots a troublesome bird for her, she leaps on top of him and they immediately start to have sex.  EASY FIX: see rom-com conventions above; opposites attract and isn't that always the way it goes?  UNANS. Qs:  Can I find one like Zooey anywhere?

PREPOS. PREM: Matt and Sarah fall in love, though all we see on screen is a guy trying to get laid and a woman trying to fool him into falling for her so she can get paid for a job well done.  EASY FIX: all the standard TV commercial rom-com montage cliches you'd expect.  UNANS. Qs: For a movie that riffs on Sarah "playing" Matt by employing standard rom-com approaches (e.g. having him console her and bond with her emotionally, etc.), how is it that the screenwriters neglected to show them emotionally bonding, et al, for real?

PREPOS. PREM: Matt's Mom suddenly evinces fear of living alone when Matt moves out, since "what if your Dad decides he doesn't like me?" -- despite the two of them having been portrayed as nothing but a happy, loving couple.  EASY FIX: Mom is Kathy Bates.  UNANS. Qs: Isn't the fact that her husband is suddenly found to be a nudist a more pragamatic pressing issue?

Yes, that's right, Dad (Terry Bradshaw) is a nudist.  And Matt keeps getting bitten by unlikely animals -- a chipmunk, a dolphin, a lizard -- a nonsensical running gag that gets a fleeting Easy Fix in a line of dialogue (this happens because Matt is so "out of step with the natural world").  And meanwhile, the potentially substantive issue that the movie should and could explore -- what's it really like, to have a grown son live at home, and what is that really about? -- is the very thing that's glossed right out of the picture. 

Finally I'll make one last observation about how the hell they're selling this.  Some reviewers have noted that the amount of athletic set-pieces (e.g. a paintball war, rock-climbing, etc.) is a means of making the movie more male-friendly.  I think this is a red herring that distracts from the true subtext of what's appealing to the movie's core audience:

This is a movie about lovable, pliable, tacitly neutered boy-men.  Every man in the movie is a virtually toothless overgrown kid -- a passel of yes-ma'ms, in fact, who are relentlessly controlled by women who mother them, manipulate them, and have their way with them when, where and how they want them.  Outside of Matt's one hissy fit, there's nary a moment when these supposed Guy-Guys evince the kind of reprehensible disturbing (i.e. violent, insensitive, arrogant, unfathomably incomprehensible) behavior that makes men in the real world a problem (true to form, the only villainous men in the picture are some sexist paintballers... who are easily defeated by Sarah J).

Ah, wish fulfillment fantasies, you gotta love 'em.  Apparently the success of Failure lies in the studio's savvy understanding of what some women really want: the malleable himbo with a McConaughey grin.  That's the y'know, whatever device that's really making this particular romantic comedy planet spin.

Clouds in My Coffee #7: Sunday in the Kitchen with Stephen

A reminiscence of a time when greatness reached out and touched someone, mainly me.

[Another installment in the ongoing true life adventures of Periphery Man, who has had myriad peculiar encounters with celebrities, while not being a celebrity himself.]

 

Back in the '80s, being no stranger to grand and foolhardy ventures, I wrote the book, lyrics and music for a musical. As a proposed endeavor, trying to get a musical up and running is a bit like saying, "I think I'll move the Alps a few yards to the left." Nonetheless I was giving it a shot.

Musicals have their own kind of Development Hell. In Manhattan, a number of theatrical organizations make up the stations-of-the-cross pit stops on this road, where you can showcase your show and be basted, then roasted over the flames. If you're not slowly tortured to death with hope, sometimes you're lucky enough to find financial backing, and then you may earn the privilege of seeing your labor of love be blown to smithereens, on opening night, by the terrorist -- sorry, I mean critic -- from the New York Times.

Not bitter! Just reminiscing. Anyway: me and my little musical won a slot in the Dramatist Guild's program, which meant I would do a partial presentation of my work-in-progress for a panel of some of Broadway's most venerated writers and composers. That Kander and Ebb (Cabaret), Stephen Schwartz (Godspell), and Peter Stone (1776) were scheduled to sit around and critique me was scary enough, but also on board that year was Mr. Sondheim. There was no other living personage in that milieu who could inspire such balls-shrinking awe in an aspiring musicalist.

And -- typical of Periphery Man's peculiar life -- Sondheim lived around the corner from my parents. From the bedroom window of their apartment on E. 48th Street, you could see the back of his three-story brownstone and its cloistered patio. Now and then I'd stand at that window gazing across the courtyard in a state of near-and-yet-so-far reverie, thinking how the hell does he do it?! and imagining his grey eminence padding around the place in slippers, a byzantine acrostic puzzle in one hand, the fate of the American musical in the other.

The thought that Sondheim would actually sit in a room and listen to my work was enough to keep me up nights during the long summer I rewrote, rewrote and also did some rewriting on the show. Amidst the chaos of creation, the paranoid demon of doubt often overtook me: maybe I didn't know what the hell I was doing -- and Sondheim and co. were going to tell me I shouldn't be doing it.  But though a tape of my partial score had been forwarded to the Guild gang for assessment, at least I had time to sweat -- I didn't have to personally confront him and the other big guns until a night in October.

Thus I was totally unprepared on Labor Day Sunday morning, as I sat hungover in my pajama bottoms, eating a bowl of cereal at my kitchen table, when the phone rang and a coolly urbane, very awake-sounding voice on the other end said, "Hello, this is Stephen Sondheim calling." I nearly choked on my Special K, and did in fact slosh half the contents of my cereal bowl over the table as I bolted to my feet -- because he hadn't stopped there, he was already launching into a full-blown analysis of the songs on my tape, as if this phone meeting had been prearranged.

I was desperate to take notes, and Mr. Sondheim is a fast talker. I reeled round to grab a pencil and flip over the New Yorker I'd been reading, where a perfume ad luckily gave me enough white space to madly jot what phrases I could. He had a problem with the rhyme scheme of the show's title song, which wasn't unexpected; Sondheim's an old school stickler for exact rhymes, and I come from the drop-out school of rock, where writers "near-rhyme" (e.g. "time" with "mine") when they bother to rhyme at all. In Sondheim's realm, to near-rhyme is to cheat, and he was of course the most exacting rhyme taskmaster extant. He chastised me for having rhymed "doctor" with "rocked her."

My first act's pivotal love song, I Want to Hurt You So Bad, luckily passed this acid test. Something in its mordant black humor (You used to call me sweetheart, now you just don't call / You used to make me dance, but now I'd like to make you crawl) appealed to this famously dark writer. I remember him saying, sounding wryly amused, that the song should prove "very effective" in performance.

I'll be honored to have "Very effective -- Stephen Sondheim" chisled on the tombstone of this song, but I can't recall much else of what he said. I'm pretty sure my entire side of the conversation consisted of some reverent "uh-huh's" and respectful "really?!"s. But I know he had some ideas about the sequencing of the songs and suggested some characterization adjustments that made inspired sense to me at the time. What was really important (as I imagine he must have known, he who was calling from his beach house in the Hamptons at the unlikeliest of times, possibly enjoying the dramatic subtext) was that he'd treated my score with respect -- that for a few minutes, he'd made a neophyte feel like a colleague.

I got off the phone with my head spinning, the back of a magazine scrawled full of truncated, nearly incomprehensible Sondheim-isms, and a kitchen table spattered with soggy cereal. After hitching up my pajama bottoms, I replayed the conversation in my head, taking more notes, and headed for my upright piano.

Though the maestro's critique did in small ways help to improve it, my musical never did make it to the stage. But that's not really the point. When I look back on that muggy summer morning now, the scene takes on a quasi-Biblical cast. We don't get much in the way of angels and visitations in our modern urban life, and that day I received the equivalent of a bolt from the blue. I was wandering in the wilderness, and a voice from on high called upon me, with some wise words of guidance. If the gods of celebrity be good for anything, they have rarely given me a gift more pragmatically valuable than this: a moment's validation and acknowledgement, assuring me that, as my old friend Charlie Chin used to say, I hadn't been pissing on my head.

Romancing the Settlement

Graceful exits are a beautiful thing, but when it comes to the goodbye stage in romance, things often have a way of getting ugly.   I know that you're not supposed to look back, but in my occasional dark nights of the soul (meet my neuroses, episode #143), I'm tortured by unpleasant memories of how a particular break-up broke down.

We've all had that experience the French call penses de l'escalier (literally, "thoughts on the stairs"): you've already left a scene, and you think of that perfect thing you should have said to someone.  Well, wouldn't it be splendid if you could rewrite one of your unhappy endings so that let alone what you said, what the other person said -- and says about it, after -- could be exactly the dialogue you want to hear?

Enter Hollywood and its attorneys.  That magical task has already been performed, according to this juicy little article in today's NY Times:  when Garry Shandling broke up with his fiancee Linda Doucett, a co-star on his HBO Larry Sanders Show, she was provided (in addition to a tidy $1 mil settlement) with a one-page script that gave her the precise lines to say to the media about the affair.

You can read all the dialogue if you click on the graphic (Sticking to the Script) that accompanies the article, but here are some highlights.

Q: Relationship with Garry Shandling?

Permitted response by Doucett: Yes, I was in a relationship; it ended; all was resolved amicably.

Q: Did you sue Garry for wrongful termination?

Permitted response: That case has been resolved; no comment.

Q: What do you think of "The Larry Sanders Show"?

Permitted response:  It is a really good show; he is very funny.  It is still the best show on television,  I enjoyed playing Darlene, but it was time to move on.  I really learned a lot; Garry taught me a lot.

Q: Do you have any resentment towards Garry?

Permitted response:  I take 100 percent responsibility for my life, no matter how it turns out.

God, that's good! And I guess a cool million can go a long way towards getting someone to memorize their lines properly.  If I had that kind of money to throw around, I could have written up a nifty page for my ex-wife.

Q: Marriage with Billy Mernit?

Permitted response from the former Mrs. Mernit: Yes, we were married; it was heaven, but all good things must come to an end; it was resolved amicably, because Billy is a prince.

Q: Why did you leave him?

Permitted response: Well, he was so good in bed, but it was exhausting, and what is a woman to do when her every wish and need in life has been so masterfully fulfilled?  I suppose I just have a restless soul.

Q: What do you think of Billy's work?

Permitted response: It's a shame we live in a time when the word "genius" has lost its currency, since he is one, clearly, and why he isn't paid more for what he does remains one of life's unfathomable mysteries.

Q: Do you have any resentment towards Billy?

Permitted response: I realize now that I was 100 percent responsible for any and everything that might have gone wrong in our relationship.  And did I mention how good he is in bed?

That's just a first draft, of course, but in working it up, it occurs to me that I may've stumbled onto something.   Media-pursued couples are breaking up by the hour out here, but not all rich Hollywooders can put an elegant sentence together.  Take that Kevin Federline guy (please).  When Britney's shit hits the fan, he's going need to hire a pro, dude.  And as a screenwriter who's had more than his share of lived romantic comedy penses de l'escalier, I think I bring a unique perspective to the table.  I can see the ad I'll take out in the trades... 

Going through a messy break-up? 

Need to punch up the dialogue for that post-nup settlement agreement? 

Let me put the words in your ex's mouth that will make you look -- and sound --like a million dollars!

How to Become a Reader, Pt. 2

Seriously, though.  People do keep asking.  So here am I to testify: this is what it is.

THINGS YOU WILL NEED

a) A certain amount of writing skill.  Can you synopsize a story coherently, within a page or word count requirement? Can you summarize a story's concept in a sentence?  Are you well-versed in descriptive adjectives (e.g. how many synonyms for "boring," "bogus" and "give me a break" can you think of?)

b) An analytical mind.  Can you recognize a three-act structure?  Know ye what makes a characterization empathetic?  Can you tell credible dialogue from not?  Can you give a straight-faced reason for why a movie set entirely inside a coal mine in Albania in 1933 with an all-male cast of three may not be, despite its writer's claims, Heath Ledger's next big hit?

c) Industry savvy.  Do you know what the #1 box office movie was last weekend and what was the take? Do you know which stars "can open a movie" and can you name Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn's next project?  Can you cite the most recent success in a given genre and do you know why you should care that Madea's Family Reunion made money? 

(I could tell you the answers to all these questions, but then I'd have to kill you.   Note: I didn't ask, do you know who Keyser Soze is? Because such film buff/film snob trivia is well and good, but it's gravy.  And the sad truth is, your average current young movie biz executive hasn't even heard of any movie that was made before, say, 1990.) 

d) Speed and stamina.  Can you read a 120 page screenplay, synopsize it in detail, write up an incisive commentary on it, and deliver the coverage within the first half of a working day?  And then do the same thing again with a second script after lunch, if necessary?  And not throw up your lunch?

e) Diplomacy.  Are all of your opinions defendable, credible, and above all, palatable?  If all you had to do was scrawl "this sucks" across a piece of paper, a reader's life would be truly beautiful. But it takes skill to be the smiler with a knife.  And ultimately, that's...

WHAT READERS ARE FOR

Consider the poor executive.  How he or she got his or her job is often truly mysterious to the rest of us, but there they are, with desk, office, assistant, Smart Water (evidently not enough), sharp shoes and a very cool cellphone.  They are now earning the privilege to compete with thousands of other execs in this town whose reputation, nay, their very livelihoods depend on getting a movie made.  If you are an exec who fails to get a movie made, wherever it is you work, you will soon be outtie.

Note that I didn't say, "getting a good movie made."  A good movie is a movie that makes money, no matter how awful it may be (e.g. the current Pink Panther remake, etc.), and in keeping-your-job terms, even getting a bad movie made (i.e. a movie that tanks, no matter how wonderful it may seem to some, e.g. last year's The Woodman, etc.) at least means you're in the game.

Given this, the exec spends a great deal of time keeping up: staying on top of talent -- directors, actors, even writers, and networking with agents and producers, and dealing with inner-company politics while finding the bigger, cooler wall screen and the hottest dog psychiatrist, etc.  Meanwhile, considering the avalanche of material, solicited as well as un, that's coming across that miles-wide desk on a daily basis, who has time to read?  And since nurturing relationships is such a vital part of the process in a town where articulated honest opinions about material are about as common as unicorns, who wants to give an opinion?

Enter the reader: an unseen, anonymous drone who reads all the material, distills it into bite-sized, quickly absorbable information pellets, and offers a considered opinion on said material's commercial viability, equally easily digestible.  I've seen it happen myself, I've heard it from other readers, it's not apocryphal: an exec will get on the phone to the agent repping a script he hasn't read, and say, reading from the reader's coverage in front of him, verbatim but for the shift in pronoun, "I thought it fell apart in the second act, and it doesn't have enough comedic set-pieces."

The reader's primary job is to give executives the language with which to turn things down.

Everything else is secondary.  Yes, you can cheerlead a great piece of work, on occasion; yes, you can suggest the right writer for a project on the basis of an impressive writing sample, and yes, in some cases, such as my job at Universal, you can actually contribute notes to a project, which may, incredibly enough, have an active impact (however small) on a movie that's going to be made.  But mainly you're giving executives an informed way to say, "No." 

There is also, BTW, one vital reason why even that rare executive who personally reads a submission will have it covered by a reader, simultaneously.  Studios and production companies need a paper trail, a record of what's been submitted, by whom, and when -- because despite Shakespeare's good advice, we did not kill all the lawyers.

HOW TO FIND A READING JOB

1) Play "Six Degrees."  Surely you can link yourself, however long the chain, to someone who works in the industry.  By hook or by crook, get your hands on a) some sample coverage from somewhere, and b) the screenplay for a movie that hasn't been released yet, but is either in production or has made the rounds in town.

2) Write up your own coverage of said script.  For help with these matters, read the one (slightly out of date but generally accurate) book, Reading For a Living: How To Be a Professional Story Analyst, by Terry Katahn. 

You now have at least one sample to show prospective employers.  They'll want you to read a trial script for free as a sample for them, anyway, but at least you've got a leg up -- you're showing them you know how it's done (and hopefully, that you're a smart and savvy writer).

3) Call all contacts and exploit them ruthlessly re: anyone who's hiring freelance readers.  Additionally, the Hollywood Creative Directory lists, I believe, thousands of production companies in L.A. that hire freelance readers, and turn-over is commonplace.  Find the ones who are making movies that make sense to you, and hit them first.

Cold-calling in these circles is an industry norm.  Though knowing someone who knows someone of course always helps, as does sleeping with someone (Did you hear the one about the Polish starlet, who slept with the reader on the movie?)  But for starters, if you're qualified and follow these simple pointers, you've got at least a decent shot at getting a reading gig. 

And then you can kiss your brain goodbye.

How to Become a Reader, Pt. 1

 

People are asking me, friends and strangers alike.  Billy, they say: Billy, how does one become a reader of screenplays for the major studios?  How does one attain the glorious position of reading reams of mediocre-to-terrible material (and the occasional wonder script) on a daily basis, of being asked to write synopses often more coherent than the screenplays themselves, and to render your opinion quickly and incisively and then be generally ignored, of doing junior creative executives’ jobs for them for about a tenth of what they’re paid?

There is no single path, young film-literate one.

Many are the ways.

1.

Be the last kid picked for your second grade softball team.  Nonetheless, while benched for most of the game, charm the girl who wants to go out with the handsome pitcher by criticizing his performance, noting that while his wind-up looks great, his follow-through is shaky.  Later, when applying ice and bandaids to the damage wrought by the handsome pitcher and his Cro-Magnon sycophants, watch the original King Kong for the fourth time on TV’s Million Dollar Movie.  Refuse to weep, while knowing you are the beast and you are not the beast, but realize that beauty must end up with the handsome leading man, that this is what the people find believable.

2.

Your seventh spec script, the one that makes everyone who reads it laugh and cry, has earned the interest of five different indie prods in succession, none of whom has succeeded in getting it set up.  Take a meeting with K., the producer from B., who is like this with director T., a frightening but excited guy who sees the movie and just has a couple of notes.  Spend three months rewriting the draft for the 14th time to satisfy T's whims, only to learn that K has pitched your story to his buddies at B and that another writer is already being paid to write their gender-reversed version of your movie, and director T is going into rehab and you are going to be evicted if you don't come up with next month's rent.  Realize you've been living in a Kafka story, and call J, who owes you a favor and reads for Lion's Gate.

3.

Have a debilitating illness in elementary school (mine was synovitis of the hip) that keeps you in bed for a couple of months, and when a friend of your parents’ brings you a young adults mystery book from the library, devour it in one feverish afternoon.  Subsequently inhale piles of such books, including classics like Alice in Wonderland, thus beginning a lifelong literary addiction.  Decide to become, in succession, J.D. Salinger, Rimbaud, and Milan Kundera, among others.  Read Lorrie Moore’s astonishingly good and funny short story How To Become A Writer, and think, I can do that.  Try it.  Find out that actually, you can’t.  Discover drugs in high school and pick up your dad’s old 8mm camera.  Make movies, go to film school, deciding to become Fellini, Godard, Woody Allen, among others.  Go west young man, where undoubtedly the heads of studios will be waiting for you by the drive-in gates, waving fistfuls of money.  Wake up suddenly some years later, hungover on Venice Beach, realizing you must have made a wrong turn somewhere.

4.

Read, and be movie mad from an early age.  See everything.  See all the good Hitchcocks, from The Lady Vanishes to Frenzy.  See a Brian DePalma film and realize it is a good Hitchcock film, only not so good.  Read.  Read Syd Field’s Screenplay.  Read a screenplay, like the legendary unproduced classic Harrow Alley, by Walter Newman.  Throw out your copy of Screenplay.  Agree with Pauline Kael.  Disagree violently with Pauline Kael.  Read. Recognize that Forbidden Planet is Shakespeare’s The Tempest (Robby the Robot = Caliban), and you’re not even high.  Console a screenwriter friend who got “coverage by an idiot” at a studio.  Read the coverage and find you agree with most of what it says, only you’d never say it that way.   Go to a Hollywood party where you meet a producer who laughs at all the films you talk about, because they’ve never made any money, and who explains to you about points, and franchises, and what kind of shit genre programmer movies support everybody’s salaries.  See Jodie Foster's new thriller Flight Plan and realize that it is, in fact, The Lady Vanishes.  Consider becoming a critic.  See Billy Wilder eating his customary liver dinner at Kate Mantalini’s and be profoundly affected when you hear him quote the old saw about critics: “They're like eunuchs in a harem.  They know how it's done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves.”  Wonder: what kind of gig could you get where you might make a practical and perhaps positive contribution to the moviemaking process?

5.

Go out with the attractive development executive.  Comprehend over sushi and sake that it’s not actually your fabulous spec script she is interested in.  Chauffeur the attractive exec home and when invited in for coffee, marvel at the accoutrements of her Hancock Park abode, noting that her leather couch alone is worth more than your apartment and automobile, both of these possessions, you realize, having been “temporary” for some half a dozen years now, in expectation of the sale of your fabulous spec script.  The attractive exec would love to settle down on said couch and watch a DVD with you, but she has this damn script she’s supposed to read tonight.  Note how the exec looks now that she’s taken her hair down.  Pick up the script.

6.

Be born into a family of bibliophiles, a family of film collectors, a family of insurance claim drafters.  Have a photographic memory, a catastrophic love life, a whole lotta gimme and a mouthful of much obliged.  Have a drink with your friend who’s having marital problems and after listening to his longwinded tale of woe, inform him what he really has is second act problems, that his female lead isn’t empathetic, that the arc of their relationship is contrived, that what would really play better for this beat is a Mexican divorce.  While nursing your black eye, run into that guy who was the pitcher on your softball team in second grade, now the CEO of the corporation that owns Paramount, and ask him if you can send in some samples and a resume.

Next post: the pragmatic logistics of reading for a living in Los Angeles.

Emptying a Folder

Act 1:  Protagonist confronts problem

My paper pack-rat-ism (the urge to hold onto everything in print that's of momentary interest) is a genetic disorder, I believe: my father is the worst.  He's always been a compulsive clipper of newspaper and magazine articles, some of which are mailed to me or my brother, but the majority of which pile up, often unread and un-clipped (i.e. the entire magazine, opened to folded page) in an elephantine stack on his bedside table. 

Dad is also a gold medal-level procrastinator, which goes with the pack-rat stackage (the subtext here is that he'll finish reading, or "do something" with these things someday).  He's so good at putting things off that we once bought him a book on how to overcome procrastination, and -- this is gospel truth -- some months later, I discovered that book, open to a page about one chapter in, already buried beneath a pile of other to-be-read material in his bedside stack.

I love my father, but no son wants to be his dad.  So due in part to my dad's troubling example, I've gotten good at throwing things away.  Though the urge to divest myself of printed matter routinely comes and goes, like the waxing and waning of the moon, unlike my father, at least I do clear the decks on a regular basis.  I was feeling pretty good about having cleaned my desk of such materials again today, when I sat down to compose this post and opened up my "Blog Saves" folder.

That's where I save links that may be worth writing about.  Most items come and go fairly quickly, getting used in various posts.  But over time, I realized to my chagrin, a huge amount of unused Saves have piled up here, a list so long that it requires scrolling to access all the titles.  You might call it... an elephantine stack.

Perfect -- it's bad enough that even when I clean my desk, the things I do save get shoved into a file cabinet drawer (I think it's one of the many labeled "Denial") -- but now, shudder to think, I've become a Dad-like pack-rat of cyberspace.  So I decide, right here right now, to empty this folder.  Surely, if I haven't used these items up until now, they're easily disposable, and conversely, if they're truly worthy of posting about, why not use them in my current post?

Oh what fools we mortals be.

Act 2: Protagonist struggles with problem.

Right off the bat I'm in trouble.  I understand why I've saved, but haven't used this article on how less than 5% American films are made from spec scripts, because why do I want to bum out my already troubled spec script-scribing readers?  They already know how hard it is to do what they want to do, and I try to promote a glass half-full outlook.  But the pie chart is so attractive...

And what of Jon Stewart's Commencement Speech?  Hilarious, yes, but too late to tie it into the Oscar telecast, and way too early to pair it with this David Foster Wallace Commencement Speech, also a thing to make my readers smile, for some "graduation post" later this spring.  So this means I've got to keep them both in my folder until June?

Now, the list of Jack Bauer gags from Rob Roberge's blog -- there's a sure shot, for at least the 24-lovers in the audience, and I'm within the vicinity of Monday night's new episode, but what does one say about it, besides... isn't 24 great this year, and here's funny Jack Bauer shtick?   I could tie it into this photo and article about the pin-up- worthy Bin Laden family member I've been holding onto for ages, for a thought-provoking "terrorists in entertainment" rumination as the ballast, but it feels like a stretch, and... what does any of this have to do with romantic comedy?

I'm having a blog post anxiety attack.  To calm myself, I think to turn on the radio -- hey, maybe that DogCatRadio station that chills out house pets 17 hours a day (what do you do with them for the other 7 hours, have them watch a season of 24 on DVD?).  I harbor a rebellious impulse to just forget this whole thing and go to a movie, but the wonderful "changes ahead for theaters" cited in this article have yet to be implemented, so who wants to deal with a movie theater?

Coffee.  That's what I need, and some fresh air.  So I leave the apartment, entering remarkably crisp Venice Beach Winter air, and some beautiful light -- kind of like the light that must have inspired Lou Reed to take all those photographs of NYC he talks about in a Salon interview.  As I pass the back of the little restaurant row on the next corner, with its Smelly Place that was a favorite of the late great Minni the dog, I wish Venice, too, could have a mysterious good smell episode like the one that confounded New Yorkers not so long ago.

I get my coffee from the Italian place, still in a funk over my overloaded file/unfocused post imbroglio.  Maybe I'm taking this task too seriously, but I really throw myself into whatever work I do.  Not so far as that poor rock singer who killed himself leaping into a crowd in England. Nor, if dissatisfied, do I follow the example of all these bunny suicides you see so much of, still... 

Back at the keyboard with coffee in hand, I think romantic comedy.  I consider this update on writing romance novels that relates to my "Life as a Woman" post, talking about the new erotic brand of Romantica...  But then what am I really talking about, here?

Follies of the Humans in Love, always a dependable theme, as in this article about weddings that are absurdly theme-customized for its brides and grooms, e.g. the gun enthusiasts' reception, complete with an ice-sculpture Cupid carrying rifles...  But no, I'm reaching, reaching.  Ugh. 

There is nothing I despise more than one of those "Let me talk about how I have nothing to talk about" posts.  Point one of those ice Cupids my way and just shoot me, now.  Actually, there's where to go: why not do a post on the season premiere of The Sopranos?  Oh, there's something I'm sure nobody out of 30 million blogs'll be writing about tonight...

Act 3: Protagonist resolves problem

How about the singer from Weezer who's still honoring his vow of celibacy?  I'm concerned about his health, because some scientists now say that kissing lowers blood pressure and cholesterol levels.   Not that scientists always get it right, I mean, these supposed professionals presenting a more scientific, pragmatic approach to dating are just putting a highfalutin spin on common sense.

Like the jokers who recently announced that creative people are luckier in love, to which I could either say, oh yeah? (if I'm talking about me) or Duh! (if I'm talking about all those other creative types).   But I'm bumming myself out again, as scientists are also making a link between artists' sexuality and schizophrenia, thanks a lot, why do I want to make me and you anxious about what should be rom-comedic? 

Forget it.  None of this is sticking, I'll never get rid of my Blog Saves, and sad and exasperatingly ouch-ful as it may be to admit, I am my father. 

Maybe if I just slap up a graphic, like this "word cloud" created from my blog via the neat Snapshirts program I found on the Blue Tea site, and I stare at it long enough...

Surely, some way to empty the folder will occur to me.

The Golden Age of Bathroom Reading

Alongside all the millions of daily blog reports (here's Me, and how I feel, and what I think about how I feel, etc.), reporters, as if competing in some perverse "who can fill up the most columns of print with material about other columns of print" contest, keep writing about blogs. 

And much like an older sibling who can't resist the temptation to smother the family's new arrival in its crib, these media scribes keep smacking down the bloggers, pontificating as is their wont from a relatively unassailable position, i.e. Those Who Are Paid to Pontificate, on the general uselessness of bloggery.  What real purpose is being served, be it high or low, by the existence of the majority of such blogs, beyond the stroking of some 27 million navel-gazers' egos?  What, goes the cry of thems who care, are blogs for?

Well, it's taken silly me a little while to catch onto this, but I believe I know the answer.  Blogs are for putting better books in your bathroom.

Oh, sure, there have been some "literary" successes born of blogdom -- that Washington D.C. insider whose big-deal novel came and went, etc.  But the blogger-authored books that will really endure, I think, are the ones with either a highly visual content, or the kind of bite-sized, pick-it-up and put-it-down-at-random prose that's just perfect for your visits to that Littlest Room in the House where every human spends some finite amount of time (a probably mind-boggling lifetime total, if someone's done the theoretical stats on this).

I'm always curious to see what kinds of reading matter gets stocked in people's bathrooms.  It's a great indicator of character (Screenwriter Alert!  What does your protagonist read upon the throne?).  You can tell what things are in there for show (e.g. anything suspiciously highbrow) and what things are truly near and dear to your host's heart (e.g. well-thumbed back issues of a magazine that somehow never gained show-piece status on their coffee table). 

Someone whose bathroom is completely devoid of reading material is someone who engenders suspicion, at least to a rabid readaholic like me (it's 2006 -- why aren't you multi-tasking?).  More often than not, I'm reading from my first waking moments (i.e. over morning cereal) to my last (i.e. nodding out over a book in bed).  So to me, reading while... relaxing with one's pants around one's ankles is one of life's great little pleasure combos.  In its low-key way it's like the Seinfeld episode where George went for the hedonist's trifecta -- trying to have sex, eat a sub and listen to a Yankees game at the same time. 

At any rate, a well-stocked bathroom library is de rigeur in my digs, the fuller the better.  (The only time I've ever seen too much of a good thing in this regard, was when my downstairs neighbor at 178 Bleecker died -- a Beale Sisters-like recluse, weird with a beard, whose name, I kid you not, was Mr. McQuier -- and his bathroom was revealed to be filled with books -- literally: the bathtub was overflowing with stacks of them, the shelves, cabinets, all available space.  Which did at least offer some explanation for why he, um, smelled a little funky.) 

But I digress.  I'm here to announce what seems, undeniably, to be a Golden Age of Bathroom Reading, specifically brought about by the preponderance of bloggers who've segued from cyberspace to the printed page.  It seems like not a day goes by without your reading about yet another blogger who's gotten That Deal.  And one commonality among them is that these are largely the kinds of books you wouldn't be apt to read in public (cafe, subway, etc.) or settle down with in your favorite chair for a committed amount of time.  I present for your edification a handful of what's already becoming a deluge: the Best of Crapper Lit.

The Joys of Engrish, via Engrish.com, is a picture book full of the malapropisms and delirious misuses of English that have been lost in translation, known to all lovers of things Japanese, found on t-shirts, food product wrappings, and billboards, et al.  At its best, "Engrish" reads like found Dadaist poetry.  Representative prose: This is the most comfortable notebook you have ever run into.

Overheard in New York comes from my #1 favorite website, and it's simply, brilliantly, just what its subtitle advertises: true, verbatim "Conversations from the Streets, Stores, and Subways."  I find it to be the most consistent giggle-generator I've read in ages -- and in fact, that's the only drawback to its inherent bathroom-osity: sometimes performing two disaparate body functions simultaneously can be um, messy, if not dangerous.  Representative prose (said by Guy at a party, Boerum Hill): Facts are such a distraction from the essence of what's really happening.

The Bar Mitzvah Disco Book is a wild card, in that I don't actually own it, and first perused its site today, thanks to FunJoel, but it surely seems to fit the bill.  A loving tribute to Bar Mitzvahs from the 1960s-1980s, it features jaw-dropper photos and personal essays by such Funny Jews as Sara Silverman.  Representative prose: Dressed like mini-corporate raiders or one of Charlie's Angels, they have waited a whole thirteen years of their lives for this moment...

PostSecret, from the understandably popular site where anonymous contributors write up deep dark secrets on graphic postcards, is the closest to a coffee-table book of this bunch.  But its peruse-a-few-at-a-time nature makes it uniquely compatible with taking a dump (I'm sure there's a neat metaphorical gag in here re: spiritual cleansing, but I haven't been able to like, squeeze it out of my psyche).  Representative prose:  People think I've stopped lying, but I've just gotten better at it.

The Film Snob's Dictionary slips in here under borderline pedigree, in that other "Snob" volumes not associated specifically with blogs have preceded it (I believe the Rock Snob's book had its origins in a Vanity Fair piece), but co-author Lawrence Levi has recently outed himself on his blog, as being one of the perps, so...   This is a wryly funny, pithy -- and educational! -- send-up of people who don't go to movies, but to Films, listing all the idols, terms and oeuvres one needs to know, if one wants to hold one's own among devotees of cinemah.  Representative prose (describing the Italian studio where Fellini shot most of his movies): For Snobs, the ability to pronounce "Cinecitta" (Chee-nih-chee-TAH) is a crucial demarcator between the savant and the idiot.

Meanwhile, I can't resist citing what may well become the next book trend for bloggers, heaven help us: according to this article, anyone can now create a blog "book," printing up favorite posts in a glossy bound package.  So soon, you can look forward to the true blog narcissist's bathroom reading material: while you're doing your business, here's a few volumes of Me, and what I think about Me... 

I suppose that someday, when you can flick on your free-floating virtual computer screen and keyboard anywhere in the house (futuristically improving on set-ups like the one in this photo), to read blogs and yes, post them from the bathroom will become commonplace, giving new meaning to the phrase "dropping a load."  By then, you'll know that the handbasket we've all been going to Hell in surely has hit bottom.

Meanwhile, I'll be happy to hear what's on your Littlest Room bookshelf.  Always looking to enhance the joy of , you know -- doing some paper work...