Fame and fortune makes people weird

The LA Times had an article on one-time uber-screenwriter Shane Black, who disappeared in the mid-90s. He’s back, having written and directed a new flick named Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. The story contained what must be one of the weirdest anecdotes I’ve ever read:

A falling out with his best friend in the mid-’90s only added to his guilt. The man, whom he’d first met at UCLA, had decided he wanted to be a writer too, but his career never caught fire. Black said “he was very angered by my success,” and several months after they stopped speaking Black received a letter. “[It] said, ‘I still hate you, I don’t want to see you anymore, but here’s a bank account number. Wire as much as you think our friendship is worth into it.’ ”

Black, who sent the man a large sum, remains stunned. “I said, ‘Is this what writing does? Does it make you lose your friends? Make people hate you?’ ”

Okay, I’m right with you on this up until who sent the man a large sum. Say what? You sent the guy money?

Since reading that, I’ve been trying to come up with possible explanations for that. None of them are particularly flattering to Mr. Black.

I know fame and fortune makes things tough. Money does, in fact, change everything. And writers, who should know better, are often the worst: writing can be the worst sort of competitive sport, with rounds decided on advances, print runs, and glowing features in the NYTBR. There’s a screenwriter in Hollywood whose name is synonymous, for me (and quite a few others), with shitty, awful screenplays—and even worse, he has an Oscar! A true “There is a God, and boy is she a mean and vicious bastard” type of moment if there ever was one.

And I don’t even know the guy personally.

It goes the other way too: if you have success, and someone else doesn’t, your ego (the Evil Ego, natch) can whisper in your ear, “Me good. Them…not so much.” One woman at USC actually came out and said that (slightly more grammatically) exact sentiment. (Haven’t heard from her since. ) If you don’t have a good handle on what’s you and what’s your work, you’re going to lose perspective. And it’s going to hit you in bad, bad ways.

In the end, though, somebody else’s success is not about you. You can pretty much only handle what you can do: work on your writing, be your own expert, write better stories. You may think somebody else grabbed the brass ring under false pretenses, but who cares? Their success has nothing to do with you. You worry about you. And if you’re successful…that has as much to do with who you are as a person as your failures do. You can analyze it—substituting it for a strong sense of self is deadly.

Dare I mention that I feel really, really sorry for Shane Black that he lost his friend…and then felt obligated to pay his former friend off? Whether he did it to soothe himself, to relieve feelings of guilt, or for more nefarious reasons, that he did it is messed up. Both success and friendships are tough enough without attaching monetary values to them.