Living the Romantic Comedy

Seeing Like a Screenwriter

Good fiction sets off a vivid and continuous dream in the reader's mind.  -- novelist John Gardner

When I write a screenplay, I describe a movie that's already been shot.   -- screenwriter Robert Towne.

2006 is shaping up as a banner year in quality fiction -- quite the crop of heavy-hitters, with new novels released by Ishiguro, Roth, Cormac McCarthy, one bonafide "new" masterpiece (the late Irene Nemirovsky's Suite Francaise), the long-awaited second novel by Charles Frazier (Cold Mountain) imminent and even Pynchon's next gigantoid tome due in December. 

But it's truly been a stellar year in books about writing.  Sure, how-to and critical screeds are ubiquitous, but I doubt we're going to do better any time soon than 2006's one-two knockout punches of 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel by Jane Smiley and now, Francine Prose's Reading Like a Writer.

I've already touted the Smiley here, which is a massive work to savor and graze through over time.  Reading Like a Writer: A Guide For People Who Love Books and For Those Who Want to Write Them  is a book I inhaled in a couple of days.

The simple premise of Prose on prose (sorry, that was unavoidable) is: to learn how to write, read the masters.   Not an unheard of supposition, and the fun here arises from "reading along with Francine" and getting into her expert, savvy analysis of different craft issues as they arise in writers as diverse as Chekhov and Gary Shteyngart.  But I couldn't help thinking, as I read (in between gnashing teeth and rending clothing over how my own fiction seemed to diminish, page by page, in comparison), that I've yet to read a cinematic equivalent, a "Watching Like a Filmmaker" book that would do the same for screenwriters.

For example, Prose quotes Chekhov on how a telling detail can totally enliven and illuminate the reality of a transcribed moment:

"You will get the full effect of a moonlit night if you write that on the mill dam, a little glowing starpoint flashed from the neck of a broken bottle, and the round black shadow of a dog emerged and ran..."

Similarly, here's a bit from Shane Black's opening screenplay page of The Long Kiss Goodnight:

A bed, dappled with moon shadow.  A LITTLE GIRL, fast asleep...

And there's MOM, kneeling beside her.  Vague shape in the dimness.  The full moon throws light across one sparkling eye.

Painting with light -- the  same principles apply.  God in the details, whether at the service of art or box office.

I've been teaching a course in Cinematic Storytelling at UCLA Extension that's all over this turf.  The premise is, following the Robert Towne edict quoted above, that screenwriters should see the movie in their minds and then get these visions on the page, i.e. write scripts that fully utilize the whole arsenal of filmic technique (lighting, editing, set design, et al), so that a reader "sees the movie" as well.  It's kind of a crash course in film direction and filmmaking for writers.

The seemingly heretical (to some) subtext here is that a screenplay can be pre-directed -- that instead of "leaving the visuals to the director" (let alone the aurals, thematic image systems, etc.), the alert and imaginative writer can imbue his/her writing with enough use of the medium to hand any director a fully realized vision on a platter -- to make a script, in a sense, moviemaker-friendly and/or director-proof.

How?  Without hideously over-writing, and alienating prospective talents?  I'll show you in microcosm, with an example I employed in Writing the Romantic Comedy.  Here's a way to suggest how the camera should deal with a character's dramatic entrance in an imaginary movie -- without ever using one word of camera terminology:

At the far end of the cavernous ballroom, the silhouette of a tall thin figure appears in the doorway.

It's clear how Bean "Pole" Baxter earned her nickname as her heels pause on the threshold and the silver barette in her hair grazes the top of the doorframe.

The tiny crescent-moon scar under her left eye seems to glow in the light from the open door.

Obviously, that's long shot, medium shot and close-up.  But not only are the camera positions merely implied, there's still plenty of room for inventive directors to do with it what they will (e.g. though the separation of lines on the page suggests a 1-2-3 cutting pattern, a Scorsese-like "Look Ma, no hands!" show-off might choose to whiz from long to close in one virtuoso tracking shot or zoom).

All of this has been on my mind of late in the wake of looking at the late Sven Nykvist's work, because he made choices in his lighting and shooting that were, on some level, much like the revisions and re-interpretations of a master screenwriter working on a draft. 

Coincidentally -- better, synchronistically -- I just perused a dialogue going on in the scribosphere between Mystery Man on Film and the Unknown Screenwriter (and their readers) that got me thinking about this from another angle.  Mystery Man's manifesto posits in part that screenwriters ought to share more about their craft issues, competition be damned; Unknown's worthy rant in response notes, along the way, that screenwriters would do well to school themselves in how to create solid, movie-able concepts, with niceties of craft a secondary consideration.

Amen to all of that, I say, but what it brought up for me is an ever-present issue in teaching screenwriting and storytelling.  Sometimes -- an uncomfortable truth that must be told -- I find that I'm trying to teach finer points of craft to writers who have yet to grasp fundamentals.  So what's the point?  If a writer doesn't even know how to construct a working story, isn't talking to them about "painting with light" like rearranging window seats on the Hindenburg?

These are the kinds of thoughts (among others) that keep one up at 3 a.m. on an insomniac night, and Unknown's post brings them out in the clear light of day.  But having had some time to muse on Why We Do What We Do, I offer this defense of teaching cinematic storytelling, in the form of three observations about its purpose and application.

1) Screenplays are a sell.  The old "screenplay as blueprint" saw is a valid one, and what any screenwriter's trying to do when they go out with a script, is convince readers that there is a movie there.  So any technique a writer can apply that will enable a reader to see a movie is a valuable one.

2) Visions are viral.  The imaginative screenwriter wants to get across his/her personal vision as clearly and specifically as possible.  If you use filmic technique on the page -- editing with sentence syntax, set-dressing with a carefully chosen adjective, etc. -- you up your chances of the reader seeing the same images you see in your head.  An imaginative vision engagingly expressed plants that exact vision in someone else's mind.

3) The medium is the message.  Finally, writing with light -- dealing in images -- speaks to the very heart of film.  If you can use a color to express a thematic idea, you're using the medium in the way it was meant to be used.  If you employ rhythm to create mood, use an active, vivid gesture to express character... that's moviemaking.  Using exterior elements to express an inner life is central to what cinema is about (as opposed to fiction's ability to write from the inside out), so... why not learn how to do it well? 

So see like a screenwriter, I say.  Watch like a filmmaker.  Whether Scott Silver, the screenwriter of 8 Mile, used the words that suggested these images to cinematographer Rodrigo Pietro (in collaboration with director Curtis Hanson), is actually moot; what's important, in terms of deepening your craft, is what the images suggest to you, for your work to come.  What words would evoke your characters as say, shadows before the blaze?

What words would suggest say, the light of love bursting between them?

Study the visions of light that a Nykvist, Storaro and Willis have set before us.  How would you utilize what illuminates their imagery, to make your own dreams real?

The significance of a dream, we're told, has less to do with its overt drama than with the details; a long time ago it struck me that the same was true of real life, of what passes among us for real life.

-- Gregoire Bouillier

Light and Shadow

Ingmar Bergman:  Most of all I miss working with Sven Nykvist, perhaps because we are both utterly captivated by the problems of light, the gentle, dangerous, dreamlike, living, dead, clear, misty, hot, violent, bare, sudden, dark, springlike, falling, straight, slanting, sensual, subdued, limited, poisonous, calming, pale light.  Light.

“A motion picture doesn’t have to look

absolutely realistic,” Nykvist says. “It can be

beautiful and realistic at the same time. I am

not interested in beautiful photography. I am

interested in telling stories about human

beings, how they act and why they act that

way.”

The world lost one of its masters of imagery this past week,

as Swedish cinematographer Sven Nykvist died after a long

illness.  What needs to be known about this man and his

formidable filmography (2 oscars, 121 films) has been aptly

explicated in these NY Times and L.A. Times pieces, and

there's lots of good technical/spiritual talk from Sven

himself in this article written when he became the first

European to get a Lifetime Achievement Award from the

American Society of Cinematographers, eg.:

"Spring-like light is a little

warmer, and falling light is when

the angle is very low and you get

elongated shadows. Sensual light

is for love scenes... it is difficult to

put it into words, because film is a

visual language. That’s the role I

play as a cinematographer in

understanding the script and the

director’s intentions, and

translating it into images that express the ideas.”

I often tell student screenwriters to be a director of photography when they're writing a draft.  See the movie in your head -- and then, while not writing every indulgent thing down, put the essence of those images on the page.  One thing you can learn from Nykvist is to look for the one striking visual idea that will pin a given scene to the screen.

"He's been an inspiration for introducing a natural, simple style of lighting to film," said Swedish director Lasse Hallstrom, who worked with Nykvist on What's Eating Gilbert Grape.  "His camera helped to tell stories that were true to the world and real characters that helped create something alive. And he wasn't afraid of simplicity."

A look at Grape reveals "real characters" sometimes glimpsed, however, through a peculiarly mundane but dramatic prism -- like this shot of taumatized lover Mary Steenburgen taken between the shelves of the grocery store where she's avoiding her ex-lover.

"For Sven, it was a matter of simplifying," Variety critic Todd McCarthy said, "using an innate sense of taste and editing things out."

So what do you put in?  What was it Nykvist would see, when he looked at a scene in rehearsal, that would compel the choices he made? 

“The truth always lies in

the character’s eyes,”

Nykvist says. “It is very

important to light so the

audience can see what’s

behind each character’s eyes.  That’s how the audience

gets to know them as human beings. It opens up their

souls."

Oh, let's say it out loud one time, because isn't the name also

beautiful?  Sven Nykvist.

In a 1973 review of Bergman's Cries and Whispers, New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael wrote: "The incomparable cinematographer Sven Nykvist achieves the look of the paintings of the Norwegian Edvard Munch, as if the neurotic and the unconscious had become real enough to be photographed."

This speaks to the truly masterful range of Nykvist's oeuvre: he could do it rapturously expressionist, whether in late-career color, and in his earlier Bergman black and whites...

...Or he could go quotidian casual, all natural light and documentary-like in a seemingly "realistic" mode.  But how far are the two worlds straddled by Crimes and Misdemeanors protagonist Martin Landau --

-- from the more stylized contrast between dueling realities in Persona? The basic thematic intent in the two film's lighting concepts is fundamentally identical, while light years apart in  execution.

While Sven is justly famous for the 22 films he made with Bergman, he shot for visionaries as disparate as Polanksi --

-- and Woody Allen (who was, in a sense, trying to borrow Bergman) and Phil Kaufman, who again employed Nykvist's ability to create distinctively disparate visual worlds for different characters to inhabit:

"In addition to being one of the greatest cinematographers, he was also one of the fastest," Nora Ephron said, "because he worked with Bergman and they never had any money."

One of the reasons her preposterous movie works is that it looks so damn good.  No-dummy Nora knew what she was doing when she got Sven for Sleepless, as this still attests; in the film proper the scene's much darker, suffused with a deep blue-purple romantic night-in-the-car glow, subliminally imbuing the beautifully modulated cute meet over the radio (she in a car, he on a porch thousands of miles away) with exactly the fantastical-in-real-life feeling that this crucial moment of the movie needs.

"He maintained a style that appeared to be effortless. His work was extremely subtle," [former Nykvist apprentice, Oscar-winning cinematographer] Robert Richardson said. "But it altered the perspective toward lighting. It blurred a line between documentaries and features that you see often today. It was all in the way he shaped light...  His work was fundamental to cinematography.  It's a tremendous creative loss."

This week's immersion in all things Sven has inspired me

to look again at his work (ordered the documentary on Dad

made by director son, Light Keeps Me Company, and now I

have another excuse to look at Ornella Muti in Swann in

Love) and has me thinking on using light to speak to

subtext in screenwriting, which reminds me:

Hie thee quickly to the Mystery Man's blog, because the

Man has been doing an exquisite, wildly informative series

of posts on subtext over there, and the current post is table-

of-contents, easy-access entree to the whole fun ride.

Then please do tune in here anon, 'cause now I want to do a

post on cinematic storytelling.

“It’s an unusual occupation,” Nykvist says. “It’s both an art

and a craft. Every time I start a picture, the first day is like

I am starting all over again. I love it. You can always

learn something new. Sometimes it is about manipulating

light. Other times it is about finding another angle into the

human soul. That’s what keeps this work so interesting.

Until I find something I like better, I’ll probably do this

work forever.”

[Sven at home in Stockholm in '94]

Bedding

All the world’s a bed, and men and women merely dreamers.

--James Broughton

Finally.

It took them long enough, but after sticking their educated noses into just about every conceivable aspect of the human animal's experience, scientists have at last tackled a frontier I should have thought they'd've gotten into a lot sooner: how people sleep together.

Not sex!   What happens in the bed.  How two humans share that twin, queen, king or oval-sized ship of dreams every night, be the voyage nightmarish or in some cases, sleep-free.  You'd think it would be obvious, but remarkably, the field of sleep research has up until recently focused rather narrowly on the habits and disorders of the solo sleeper.  With the publication of Two in a Bed by Dr. Paul C. Rosenblatt, we now get the skinny on how two people sleep together -- more often than not, heterosexual mates (though same-gender pajama parties also get coverage).

Nothing earth-shattering to report as yet, as this article in the NY Times by Kate Murphy points out (and yes, I know that for some frequent readers of this blog, I'm fast becoming "that guy who does nothing but read the NY Times every day," despite the fact that I live in L.A., but I can't help it, they keep writing romantic comedy):

The couples reported conflicts over bedroom temperature, where to locate the bed and how to make the bed. Watching television, reading and eating in bed were other contentious issues, as was sleeping in the nude. There were quarrels over the alarm clock and whether to allow children or pets into the bed.

“Each couple had to do a lot of problem solving to work out their systems for sleeping together,” Dr. Rosenblatt said...   The subjects he interviewed often had signals for when they wanted affection, wanted to talk or wanted to be left alone.  "How they arrived at these systems could be said to mirror their relationships,” said Dr. Rosenblatt.

Not big news, nor the notes on how a partner's snoring and insomnia "profoundly affected the couple's sleep dynamic."  It was interesting though to learn "how many people thought they were alive today because they shared a bed":

...a woman’s seizure was noticed immediately by her husband with whom she spooned every night. Similar stories came from couples where one partner had a heart attack, stroke or went into diabetic shock.

Here's the part that intrigued me the most:

Intimacy and comfort were the primary reasons couples gave for sleeping together.  “Some mentioned sex, but not a lot,” Dr. Rosenblatt said. Most reported that the bed is where they talked. “The bed is where they found privacy and were able to leave behind the distractions and separate interests that keep them apart during the day. There’s also something about late night that allowed them to open up and connect.”

Common knowledge, of course, and yet...  In my book on rom-coms, I've proselytized to screenwriters that they take advantage of precisely this -- not the sexual pyrotechnics, but the intimacy that comes of two lovers sharing a pillow, to plumb the depths of human experience.   It seems to me that what happens between two people under the covers -- before and especially after the sex, actually -- is a goldmine for digging into character and theme.  One last quote from Dr. Rosenblatt:

"Even though we may take sleeping with our partner for granted, it’s through these kinds of shared social systems that we build and nurture our relationships, and perhaps uncover the underlying meaning of our lives.”

Beyond the intimacy of sex, there is a special kind of intimacy that happens in the bedroom, where people tend to expose themselves in psychological nudity and all kinds of intriguing truths emerge.  For screenwriters, keeping your characters in bed (as opposed to showing a hand clenching the sheets and... fade out!) can be a potential sodium pentathol shot situation.

Sure, you may say, write a scene in which my hero and heroine just lie there -- that'll get me my big spec sale.  But in fact, there have been some wonderfully memorable romantic comedy moments born of precisely this kind of stuff, from Harrison Ford's apres-amour confessional to Melanie Griffith (i.e. how he got that scar on his chin) in Working Girl to Hugh Grant's sweet, brief just-before-the-shit-hits-the-fan morning-after idyll with Julia Roberts in Notting Hill.

You may remember this scene from Sleepless in Seattle: Meg Ryan, playing an engaged woman whose romantic leanings have been more deeply stirred up by listening to widow Tom Hanks on the radio than by her Bellamy of a fiance played by hapless Bill Pullman, lies in bed wide awake besides Pullman... whose allergy-related snoring keeps rhythmically blowing a bit of sheet up and down in front of his face.  Short shot -- wealth of information succinctly delivered, re: the future of their relationship.

Or Scarlett Johansson and Bill Murray in Lost in Translation, lying together in bed fully clothed, drifting off to sleep while ruminating on the meaning and future of their respective lives... and the story reaches its apogee of intimate eroticism as, assuring her that she's "not so bad" as she claims to be, he gently... takes hold of... her foot with his hand.  Which is tantamount to a sex scene's mutual orgasm moment in this perversely, beautifully underplayed movie.

I experienced a real-life rom-com-in-bed moment not long ago that called to mind an apropos famous movie scene.  My date and I had put away copious amounts of sake and were into some woozy, comfortably low-key foreplay, but she'd been up early that day and was really, really tired.  When she said, with evident reluctance, that she supposed she'd have to get into her car and go home, I suggested she stay.  "We don't have to have sex," I told her (so gallant!) and she loved the idea.  "But no sex," she repeated, "I'm comatose."  I nodded, seeing she was relieved to have the pressure off, and assured her this was fine with me.

Reader, I meant it.  I was very tired, myself; she and I had yet to do the deed, and I was looking forward to doing it right.  I mean, I love sex as much as the next healthy male, but I prefer having it with partners who are mostly conscious, as opposed to nearly un.  So I gave her some time to get ready for bed, and when I did re-enter the bedroom, lights out but for one flickering candle, I started putting on some pajamas... only to stop when she, evidently clothes-less under the covers, started laughing at me.  Didn't I usually sleep in the nude?  And wasn't it, in fact, a warm late summer night?

Well, yeah.  So sans pjs, I slipped into my side of the bed.  My date snuggled up next to me, warm and nubile-naked, head nestled against my shoulder ("This is nice," she murmured, and "I'm soooo sleepy..."), and since the signals were very clear, I chastely kept my hands to myself, and attempted to close my eyes.   And...?  Surely you remember that justly famous shot from When Harry Met Sally, right after Meg and Billy have finally had sex: there's a slow zoom out from Meg's blissfully smiling mug, eyes closed on his shoulder... and Billy's absolutely terrified "what have I done?!" eyes staring into space, beside her.

This time the Billy was me, and the eyes staring weren't terrified, just absolutely wide awake.  Tired, huh?  Like there was any chance in hell --  Talk about being hoisted (alert and erect) on your own petard... I ended up climbing out of bed, leaving her to pleasant dreams, and sitting in the living room reading instead (I'm beginning to fear this is the story of my life -- my tombstone will say he read a lot) until I finally did get so sleepy I was able to rejoin my quietly snoring bedmate. 

It was in retrospect I realized I'd done a Harry Met Sally variation (minus the sex), and thought: good shot for a romantic comedy -- homage and gag in one.  I added it to the file (it's both mental and physical) I've had going for a number of years; I've been back-burner-ing a rom-com project that's set entirely in a bedroom.  It's the same room, with the same and some different beds over a long stretch of time, and that's all I'll say about it here (though even pitching this much into cyberspace gives me a twinge of "uh-oh, there goes that one").

The only other movie I can think of that's so bed-focused is a 1960s short by the late avant-garde filmmaker James Broughton called The Bed, which features a bed that travels down a hill and then settles into a forest for some surreal revels.  But anyway:

As reader Binnie pointed out in the comments on the last post, comments seems to be the big fun here lately, so I open this up to you Living RomCommers.   What eloquent, revealing and/or funny moments, not overtly sexual (i.e. even while you -- or they -- were sleeping), have you had with a partner between the sheets, that could conceivably be rom-com fodder for a Scenes We'd Like To See?

 

Please Break My Heart, I Need To Create

I'm a little worried about Michel Gondry.

Christened Le Romantique in Lynn Hirschberg's profile of the director in the Sunday NY Times Magazine, he sounds a bit far gone in his forlorn romanticism even for a Frenchman (hey, I kid the French -- I'm such a defender of Gallic culture that I've been meaning to have a t-shirt made that says Don't hate me because I'm French, except wearing it would confuse people and possibly get me assaulted).

Gondry, in case you haven't been following his oeuvre, is one of the world's great video directors (see Bjork's Human Behavior, the White Stripes' Fell in Love With a Girl, Daft Punk's Around the World, et al) and a great film director as well (see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and I rest my case).  You may have seen the trailer for his forthcoming The Science of Sleep, featuring sexy Spanish Gael Barcia Bernal losing it over sexy French Charlotte Gainsbourg amidst Gondry's trademark charmingly chaotic low-fi animated images of giant hands and crayoned horses springing to life, etc. (and if you haven't or want more, you can access a lot of clips'n'stuff on Gondry's site).

The Times article documents, among other artistic pursuits, the director's preparation for an art show at the Jeffrey Deitch gallery in Soho:

“These are all about an ex-girlfriend,” he said, as he took several curious-looking items from the box and placed them, one by one, on an oval conference table. “I made all these when she left me, two years ago.”

Gondry held up a bra with exaggeratedly uneven cups. “I made this because her breasts were two different sizes,” he said. He displayed a necklace constructed out of the tips of his fingernails. “She complained about my long nails,” he said, “so I added some chain and made them into jewelry.” There were pages taken from a French book and an English book that he had overlapped so that the resulting text spelled out his former girlfriend’s name. He had modified a Nike sneaker by inserting into it a doll that held in its hand a key to the apartment that he and his girlfriend once shared. He picked up a cartoonlike illustration that he had made of another girlfriend heading out the door of their apartment; he had mounted the image on a tree-shaped piece of cardboard that had been cut out of a composition notebook. “I still use the notebook with the tree part missing,” he said, as he stared rather forlornly at the remnants of his love. “It always reminds me of her.”

Don't you just love how the psychotic behavior that might get some people put away gets some other people one-man shows in Soho?  Ah, art.  Oh, artists.

Let me be clear about this, especially since Gondy is such a sensitive fellow: I love the man and his work, which has given me and millions of other folks such profound pleasure.  And is he alone in fueling his creativity with unrequited love and unceasing romantic suffering?  Please! 

We all know (that would be, all of us who pay attention to such things) that at least half -- more than half? -- someone really ought to do the stats on this -- of the greatest artistic creations in history have been born of heartbreak, from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet to Kelly Clarkson's Since U Been Gone.  Without it we wouldn't have Goethe's Faust, Godard's Pierrot Le Fou -- God forbid, we wouldn't have had Nick Drake (or The Smiths, or sub in the le romantique gloom-god of your choice).

Look at contemporary literature.  Take for example, another article I read today, in the same paper (!!!) about another guy, a writer named Gregoire Bouillier -- okay, also French -- whose memoir is the direct result of having had his heart figuratively ripped out, sauteed and served to him, steaming, in a nice Gallic sauce:

Bouillier’s girlfriend left him, just like that; vanished without saying goodbye. Years pass and he’s stuck with nothing, no explanation, only mystery and sorrow. Then the phone rings, and it’s her, calling to invite him to a party, a party for her husband’s best friend, who happens to be the artist Sophie Calle. “Yes, exactly, Sophie Calle,” Bouillier writes, “the one who followed people in the street — anyway, every year this friend had a birthday party and invited as many people as she was years old plus a ‘mystery guest’ who stood for the year she was about to live, and this year she was in charge of bringing the mysterious stranger and she couldn’t say no, and so she’d thought of me (another faint laugh), and that was the reason, the one and only reason, for her call.” So there’s the setup for the book...

And having read an excerpt from The Mystery Guest in The New Yorker which was quite funny, in a mordantly painful way, I've already got it en route from amazon.  Just as I will, of course, be the first on my block to see Science of Sleep (also based, as Gondry's quick to admit, on an early failed love affair) as soon as it opens.

Which brings us back to me, thank goodness (what took me so long?!) and a confession: the reason these two items kind of jumped out and said "Hello there!" to me today is that I am a writer whose most recent work was born of heartbreak and deep desolation (a work of fiction that's a romantic comedy, of all things), who's just started a new book -- barely, getting my trepidicious little toe dipped, is all -- and I have a problem.

I'm not unhappy.

I'm not happy, mind you, as in gamboling about the streets of Venice Beach with an idiot grin on my mug -- happy is a very big word, and I don't mean to imply that I'm living stress-free and bereft of the need for a better... um, almost everything (except my car; I love my car), for am I not human?  But what I mean is, I'm not heartbroken, I'm no longer one of the walking wounded.

Having spent three-plus years in productive lovelorn misery and post-misery, writing that last novel, I find the sensation of beginning a new one when I'm relatively misery-free downright peculiar.

I'm not saying it can't be done.  There are centuries of great writing and art born of happiness, from Dante's Divine Comedy to Outkast's Hey Ya! to set me a good example. 

But I admit to you (not proudly) that it has been on occasion easier for me to write from pain.   So I do feel a bit challenged, writing from okay.

The thing about writing from romantic grief and mourning is that these feelings are so intense and present; you wake up with them, they haunt your dreams.  It's no wonder that so many writers go all Gondry on their shit -- the materials are right there (they won't go away, the bastards) and they positively invite expression and dramatization.

Happiness, on the other hand, is infernally ephemeral. 

Moments of joy can spur on creativity (speaking of oeuvres, just look at Matisse), but as many of us have learned the hard way, the work that comes out of a giddy high often doesn't make the grade in the cool and sober light of day (it can be like picking up the meaning-of-life message you ecstatically scrawled in your notebook at the peak of a mescaline trip and finding that it reads: the sky is blue!).  And if you're really, truly content... why do the work?  A good deal of the artistic impulse comes from some kind of itch that wants scratching. 

But all too often writing from misery is just an excuse to puke, mewl and wallow.  So I'm not advocating pain-as-the-means-of-creativity.  I don't really believe in it.  I have done good work that didn't come from Wound and know many writers, musicians -- artists in every medium -- who don't require a proper grey cloud over their heads to do what they do.  I believe a good writer is someone who shows up at their desk every day, regardless of the emotional weather, so I don't at all promote the You Must Suffer To Create School.

Even Michel Gondry has found other means of inspiration; his next project doesn't even have a whiff of the unrequited about it:

“Be Kind Rewind” takes place in a car junkyard. In the movie, Jerry, the character Jack Black will play, accidentally becomes magnetized by a power plant. His magnetic field erases all the tapes in a video store where his best friend, Mike, played by Mos Def, works. The duo end up re-enacting and refilming their own versions of movies like “King Kong” and “Ghostbusters.”  These re-enactments will allow Gondry to recreate well-known films, many of which have elaborate special effects, in his inventive, handcrafted style.

Again, I am like, so totally there.  Even though it's set in New Jersey. Nonetheless, there is something a little... heady about the concept in Be Kind Rewind.  I wonder where the heart of its matter will lie.

And I do find it takes a little more ingenuity to access the ready emotions necessary to get me into the heart of the story I'm writing now, one that isn't heartbreak-motivated.  How to write a romantic dramedy when it's not motored by the throes of romantic upheaval?  I'm genuinely curious to know what you, my stalwart, clever and deep-feeling Living RomCommers, think about this issue.

The Book of Love 2

INT. TRAIN -- AFTERNOON

The Eurail rolls along.  Inside, passengers sleep, read, and stare out the window.  A few walk up and down the aisle.  CELINE, a young woman in her mid-twenties, is curled up in her seat reading George Bataille's Story of the Eye... Sitting four rows back and on the other side of the aisle, JESSE, also mid-twenties, is engrossed in Klaus Kinski's memoir, All I Need Is Love...

You may remember this as the opening of Before Sunrise (screenplay by Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke).  What I like about what follows is how -- typical of the entire film's sensibility -- the obvious aspect of the set-up is willfully ignored.  Celine and Jesse do start up a conversation, but it's triggered by an arguing couple stalking out of the train car, and when our heroine and hero compare books... neither has much to say about either title, and the dialogue moves on.

Nonetheless, Linklater & co. were at least acknowledging that in an encounter between strangers of the opposite sex, next to clothing and accessories (including perhaps slogans on t-shirts), nothing serves as a better shorthand indicator of character -- or offers a better opening --than choice of reading material.

Over a year ago I posted a piece here about encountering a woman in the gym whose choice of reading matter short-circuited any thoughts I might have had of flirting with her.  The question I asked of readers then was, what books would they consider turn-offs?

Recently, reader Grieg brought this article from the Guardian to my attention, which goes at the same issue from the opposite end.

According to a survey of over 2,000 adults carried out by internet pollsters YouGov for Borders bookstore, books play a crucial role in influencing our opinions of strangers. Half of those asked admitted that they would look again or smile at someone on the basis of what they were reading...

Not only does sitting with your nose in a book positively influence others' opinion of you, it could actually - get this - lead to sex. A third of those surveyed said that they "would consider flirting with someone based on their choice of literature". It's finally official, people. Reading is hot.

But before you trip off to the park clad in your most fetching sun hat and clutching your copy of the latest Jilly Cooper - be warned. Not just any book will do...

Indeed.  And actually, while the article itself is amusing, the real fun can be found in the lively discourse that follows it, as some very disparate people make their wildly all-over-the-map (and of course, revealingly personal) choices for what constitutes an arousing title.  In some cases, you get a kind of plaintive snapshot of the lovelorn, such as this from chris1984:

any girl reading kafka or beckett or dostoevsky...but the day will never come.

A few comments later, hapless chris1984 does get a kind of closure, from literelief:

Chris1984, you missed me reading Kafka a couple of months ago, but it wouldn't have worked between us because I thought it - and bloody Kafka himself - was miserable and life denying. Am back reading Irish non-fiction and having more of a laugh.

Eightball provides a real-life cute meet (resolution unknown):

I pointed out to 2 strangers standing side by side on the tube that they were both reading the same book, 'Down and Out in Paris and London'. Hopefully that led to romance, she was beautiful. And a lesser known book by the author of several classics has obvious pulling power.

I liked MetaMaa's flair for drama:

You know what would be love at first sight? Someone (attractive) tossing [The Da Vinci Code] out of the window. Or getting up to stamp on it. Something to illustrate their hatred on a grand scale.  More generally, I love checking to see what people are reading. If I can't get a look, I've been known to follow the person until I catch a glimpse. Maybe I shouldn't admit to that.

Inevitably, there are exchanges like this -- Joana giving a thick para of specifics...

Some books which would make me sit up and take notice: anything by Murakami; any Ishiguro after (and including) The Unconsoled, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer...

And six minutes later, a response from bananawater:

Joana: you've pretty much summarised my literary tastes. what are you doing this weekend?

A query from Oscolai:

How about those of us who get queasy reading on public transport? Are we doomed?

Albion71 plays the other side of the coin:

I have no wish to make eye contact with judgemental pseuds lusting after my book choice. All I want is a bit of quiet time to read something that interests me.  Anyone approaching me while I read on the tube will therefore be thumped soundly with whatever book I am reading, so I advise you to try me when it's poetry - there's less damage to be taken from a slim volume.

Not to be deterred, northernnomad asks:

So, does anyone have any suggestions for potentially useful opening conversation lines for bookflirters?

And gets one good answer from finishedfortheday:

'Is that a DeLillo in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?'

Alright, Americans (and all other nationalities including Brits who missed the Guardian issue): what book -- in the hands of a perfect/imperfect stranger in a public place -- would cause you to make a wannabe-lover's leap?  Living RomCom wants to know.

Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

Though it’s a perfectly logical and understandable thing to do, I have a little trouble getting my mind around the idea of observing the anniversary of 9-11.  What happened 5 years ago is something I still carry around in my daily life.  The way the world changed that day has seeped into the very fabric of how all of us have lived ever since.  So while it’s appropriate to honor the departed… and as a born New Yorker I can’t help but think about the event… to talk about my personal experience of it feels somehow inadequate and irrelevant. 

A couple of fellow bloggers have been eloquent about the anniversary, however, so I refer you to Brooke’s piece and Betsy’s.  Let’s continue to remember, not just on this turn of the calendar page, and to contemplate not only the ashes, but what possible renewal could be born from them, as we all shoulder on.

Myth v. Dream

Uma's looking for a date, and eligible men are in short supply.  Think I'm kidding?  No, Ms. Thurman wants to start a celebrity dating site, to help lonely beautiful movie stars like herself hook up.  There's something both counter-intuitive and sad about this.  To hail hundreds of men happy to take her out, shouldn't Uma be able to just put her lips together and blow?

But I found the news oddly cheering, since its subtext takes a swipe at a prevalent myth about life at the top.  Apparently being rich, famous and gorgeous does not automatically guarantee happiness.  If Uma Thurman can sit alone by the telephone on a Saturday night, maybe those who have everything do not, in fact... have everything.  Maybe the myth that money = happiness is at least contestable.

Myths are everywhere in Hollywood.  Some remain accepted wisdom, no matter what evidence appears to the contrary.  Though the idea that stars are primarily responsible for a movie's success has been statistically disproven, and films both Lord of the Rings big and Sideways small have made millions, studios still religiously court, hire and absurdly over-pay stars. 

The one myth pervading the pre-pro screenwriting world that refuses to die is the Myth of the Major Spec Sale. 

When I started teaching screenwriting, it used to bewilder me that so many fledgling screenwriters seemed uninterested in doing the work it takes to really become good writers.  But after awhile I caught on to the syndrome, a kind of subtle but endemic disease that's rampant on this turf.  One night I walked out of class with a student who seemed very invested in getting his movie made, but who never seemed to do the rewrites that might make his script work.  I asked what he wanted to do with the script when it was completed.  He smiled and looked a little sheepish and said, Sell it for a million dollars.

Well, sure.  Occasionally some lucky dog sells a spec script for seven figures.  And occasionally (like, every 100 years) somebody wins three consecutive U.S. Tennis Opens (congratulations, Roger!).

As Clint Eastwood once said, "How about it, kid?  Are ya feelin' lucky?"

Selling My Spec Script is the lottery win of our profession, and many pre-pro writers are slaves to the myth that Selling the Spec will equal success; it's all the screenwriter needs to get to Happily Ever After.  No matter that lottery winners are now infamous for suffering from major depression and unhappiness. Or that, while selling a spec script can indeed be a fast track to the realm of good meetings and plum assignments, many a spec script is sold and never made, dying a slow death in Development Hell, and selling one doesn't guarantee a sustained, successful career.

So my reply to this student was, And then what? 

I was kind of kidding, but not.  And now I'm not going to go on about how real screenwriters know that you only win Wimbledon by working on your serve night and day, etc., since I've covered that in another post.  But I do want to make a case for developing dream specificity.

One writer friend of mine recently asked me, "If a genie came out of a bottle and said you could have one wish, what would it be?"  Now, I've read enough fairy tales to know how this goes; you don't ask the genie for say, a billion dollars, because you're likely to find yourself locked in a Fort Knox vault buried under a thousand bars of gold.  Genies are funny that way.  They like to fuck you up.

No, you have to word the wish very, very carefully -- you really have to think it through.  Instead of saying, I want to do some real good in the world (this generality could backfire in so many ways), I might say, "I want to be successfully ending starvation in a Third World country (one that's not too hot or insect-infected), working side by side with decent, life-embracing colleagues by day... and coming home to a sweet little lakeside cabin where my loving wife Uma awaits me for a night of ribald fun and revelry."

Now that's doing real good in the world.

Because my novel is already completed and in the hands of people who are strategizing how to best take it to the marketplace, I can freely fantasize about its future.  The wish I'd request of my genie, re: the future of this project is:  "A year from now I want to be giving a jam-packed reading at Book Soup on Sunset Boulevard, and as I sign a copy of the already bestselling and critically acclaimed hardcover for a reader who's been moved to laughter and tears, whose life has been changed by the book, she asks me, ' So who's starring opposite John Cusack in the movie?"

"I want a million dollar spec sale" is way too generic and dull.  What do you really want?  Why not develop a specific dream that truly embodies what you want out of the work you're doing?  The more specific you are, the more you'll find out about your actual intentions. 

Intentions is the word people in L.A. tend to throw around in lieu of hopes.  I don't hope my book gets published, I intend to have Random House or an equivalent imprint publish it (with a jacket, don't you know, designed by Chip Kidd).  Might seem indulgent, but this is a path towards getting what you want: design it, down to the last detail.  Make your dream genie screw-up-proof by figuring out every little thing about it.

If you're really honest in the process, there's an interesting by-product.  Nailing down the specifics in your personal dream tends to reveal the real needs your fantasy embodies. 

Are you a screenwriter whose genie wish is, "I want to sell my romantic comedy spec script so that I can move to Paris?"  That's a lot different from telling the genie, "I want to sell this romantic comedy spec script so that I can become the next Richard Curtis and write a series of wonderful sophisticated rom-coms that will give new life to the genre and enable me to keep writing them until I die." 

If you're the first writer, it's possible that living in Paris is more important to you than writing rom-coms, in which case... why are you spending so much time on that spec script, again?  Aren't there easier routes to the Left Bank?  For that matter, how's your French?

Delmore Schwartz said, In Dreams Begin Responsibilities. Imagining in rich and vivid detail exactly what you want out of your career is one way to be responsible for your dream; knowing more about what you want gives you more power to go after it. 

It's also a fun way to think about your work without having to do any real work, for a few minute's pleasurable procrastination.  So now that my naked vain ambitions have been unveiled, maybe you can tell us -- in glorious specificity -- exactly what you intend to get out of the work you're presently doing.   What would you ask your genie for? Living Rom-Com wants to know.

Back To School Issue

It's so over, that summer thing.  Gone.  Boom, like that. 

As everyone knows, just as the stroke of midnight instantly changes an old, old year into a spanking fresh new one (as the strains of that horrible song rend the air), or just the way you're suddenly supposed to be a whole year older the moment your birthday cake candles are blown out (and another bad song gets badly sung)...   Well, as soon as the sun rises on the day after Labor Day --

Oh, poppycock, I say (though poopycock! would be even more satisfying).  If summer's over, why was it 103 degrees in the Valley yesterday?  If summer's over, why is it still re-runs on TV, bad movies at the multiplex?  More importantly, if summer's over, how come I still don't feel like going to work?

You're with me, aren't you, my faithful RomCommers?  You understand.  So many of you are writers, who don't know from official dates, holidays, et al, because you're busy living in your head, where there are no calendars and nobody can hear you scream. 

But even if you're with me in spirit, no one else cares.  Nobody out in the "real world" wants to know.  Nope, it's the Tyranny of Tradition out there, so all the little tykes are shouldering their brand new backpacks as the school doors swing wide their gaping maws, and all the larger sharks are swimming into their offices in new Armani suits with fresh bottles of (evidently useless) Smart Water in hand.  The bell has rung, and it's time to get to work.

I should be happy about this, I suppose, since the first week of September is when the editors at publishing houses and the useless executives at movie studios dutifully show up behind their desks to at least satisfy appearances.  And this means that the stalwart little cabal surrounding my project (is there any other?) can at last shepherd it down those hallowed halls (the long, long corridors where your "hal-looooooo!"s can sometimes echo hollowly unto infinity).

There is a problem, however, with having actually completed a project (project: a tangible thing written by you, be it book or book-long blog-blather, that others can exploit, ruin and/or steal for their own fun and profit): once the project is done... you have to find another one to do. 

And there's nothing like the post-Labor Day days -- since writers excel at nothing better than procrastination -- to make your head near-explode with the stress of Coming Up With the New Project, or (be you so fortunate as to have more than one idea rattling round your summer-soddened brain) Picking Which Project Is Worthy of the Stress to Come, or (should you have found, picked and begun to piddle with it) Getting That New Project Off the Ground.

I'm speaking obviously of spec work (writing on spec: a "speculative" activity willfully chosen by writers, apparently a near-psychotic breed, that involves writing projects for no money, in the hopes that someday -- perhaps the fateful date that hell finally freezes over -- the writer will be showered with adoration, recognition of brilliance, six or seven-digit figures of validation and of course, great and copious sex). 

If on the other hand you're lucky enough to have been hired to work on a new project, come September's first Tuesday you have a whole other set of stresses to contend with, but don't come complaining about them to the rest of us.

No, the rest of us have our hands full, even if this means full of nothing.  Since creativity comes not from a can, and inspiration arrives not according to any known schedule, many writers are right now all too aware that everyone else is back to school and back at work, while they can only quote Maynard G. Krebs.

Maynard G. Krebs, the beatnik buddy of one Dobie Gillis, had a standard reaction whenever he was informed that there was something to be done and that now was the time for him to do it.  With an expression of pained and honestly befuddled incredulity, he'd yelp, voice cracking: "Work?!"

Because misery loves company, or at least tolerates it, I herewith offer my fellow scribes one basic strategy for dealing with cases of The Krebs (i.e. anguished post-Labor Day cries of "Work?!").

Rub a couple of sticks together.

I was pretending to work this morning when thankfully my friend Bob, biking to the gym, hailed me from the street.  As we were talking outside, I happened to glance down and beheld an amazing sight: on the dead-ish grass near the curb, a small oblong piece of dog shit had been crowned with a sparkling silver ring (literally: inserted and astride the turd, the ring's top was shaped with the tiny spikes and curving scepter-ends of a traditional royal crown).

People not picking up after their dogs pisses me off, but in this case I was grateful.   Eloquent artwork!  Bob and I immediately started riffing on what spurned lover might have constructed this perfect metaphor.   After he biked onward I ended up lying on the sidewalk with my Polaroid camera.  The results alas are too fuzzy to share with you (time to go digital w/telephoto), but if I were looking for something to write about...

Triggers are everywhere.  You may not have the luck to be presented with a poetic sculpture lying a few yards from your front door, but I guarantee this: if you go actively looking for a writing jump-start, you will find it.  No, the theme, plot and characters of your next opus will not appear before you on a flaming pizza, but the trick is simply to start writing something -- anything.  Form, ideas, bigger thoughts will follow.  Need to get the juices flowing after a period of inactivity?  My advice is: with eyes and ears wide open, take a walk around your block.

One of the big attractions of Project Runway is exactly this spirit of creativity.  There was an episode this season where all the designers were taken to a recycling center and told they had 30 minutes to sort through the garbage and come up with the materials for designer outfits. 

Of course, with a fashion show and Elle-spread, et al, dangling at the end of the competition, everyone leapt in.  The results varied (sublime, meet ridiculous) but a couple were knockouts. And a tacit subtext to this seemingly capricious exercise was that there were skills to be learned in the doing of it.  I'm sure the smart designers, whether they were winners or losers of this round, picked up... something that would come in handy, further down the line.

Get pen in fist and start with the first notion, however small, that strikes your fancy.  Start your engine, though you have no idea of where you want to go.  Use whatever's in front of you.

Yes, you have hours of prodigious research to do if you're going to do that Big Project right.  Sure, you need all your plot point ducks in a row to get that Major Story ready to go.  Indeed, you need to wholly comprehend all of your characters when you set them in motion within the Important Work.  But when all is said and done?  All you have is right now and your only tool is you, in the current state you're in. 

Me, I'm logey and a little out of shape and intimidated by the size of what's in front of me.  All I could really do today was... one little thing.  I used a magazine ad I half-looked at over morning cereal to kick-start half a page.  Just sketching, trying to find my protagonist's voice.  I did it and I threw it out.  But now I know a tiny bit more about what I do and I don't want to do with this character.

Maybe what you've got to work with is a piece of dog doo and an engagement ring, but... Make it work, people!  Rub a couple of sticks together.  Get your motor running.

Meanwhile, for those of you who've actually used the summer to complete a draft, Screenwriting Guy over at I Am Trying To Make You Laugh has provided a handy guide for the revision process.  Think you're done?  Think again. This post on the various specific passes to put your draft through ought to keep you busy for awhile, before you pronounce it truly finis.

And for writers at any point in the process, it's always easier to listen to people talk about writing than to sit down and do it, right?  Here's a procrastination bonanza -- and in truth, an adrenaline shot of creative stimulation: the UCLA Extension Writers Program Writers Faire is this coming Sunday (September 10th, from 11 am to 3 pm on the UCLA campus) -- over 70 instructors, solo and in panels, talking for free about writing, with topics ranging from Conquering the Dreaded Second Act to Creating Inspired Poetry.

I'm chairing a Creating Compelling Characters panel with Karl Iglesias and Chris Webb at 11, so I guess school's in for me, after all.  If you're desperate to keep away from your desk and you've done the walk around the block thing already, come by and say hello.