I'm sitting in a messy hotel room that overlooks downtown Chicago. I'm beginning to panic. I have two things to do during this weekend, and I don't feel like they're ever going to get done:
But there's the rehearsal dinner tonight and the brunches and the wedding and the flight back to California and...
Panic. Somehow I have to make panic my friend.
I have the book Screenwriters On Screenwriting -- a series of interviews by Joel Engel -- here in front of me, and I came across this passage in the Scott Frank interview:
William Goldman once said to me, "I think I'm a fraud every time I sit down at my typewriter. So I tell myself every time I sit down that I'm the best there is, and then I start going." In his case, he's right. But whenever I sit down I feel the same way, that at a certain point no one is going to like what I'm writing.
I know this feeling. And I, sir, am no William Goldman.
I have to try this trick of telling myself that I'm the best there is every time I sit down. I wonder if that will at least get something put on paper.
Or perhaps I'll go make coffee. That is why they include coffee makers in the hotel rooms, right? So you can procrastinate before beginning to write?
Friday
Darin and I woke up very, very early and got on a flight for Chicago. I dozed most of the way, but it was that ineffectual kind of dozing where you're not sure you were ever asleep or not. Darin said he was sure I was asleep because I would be sitting there with my mouth hanging open and he'd lightly touch my arm and I wouldn't stir. (Normally I'd jump up and go, Why'd you do that? And let me tell you: jumping up when you're strapped into an airplane seat is a damn neat trick.)
I wanted to nap when we got to the hotel, but we had to go shopping instead. We went up and down Michigan Avenue looking for the things we needed to get. We got back to the hotel and Darin had to get ready for the bachelor's party, which he'd arranged (since he's the best man). I was going to stay in the hotel and (try to) write, but he asked me to go over to Scott and Lauren's and spend Friday evening with Lauren and a couple of her bridesmaids and Darin's cousin Jody (who was overseas for the past two Thanksgivings while in the Peace Corps, so I really wanted to see her). So I went.
And it was okay, except Lauren and her bridesmaids have been friends forever (so I was definitely the odd chick out) and there were already some weird dynamics between the four of them (Lauren, Stephanie, Jenny, and Emily). Like Jenny, who's already married, wanted to look through bridal magazines and talk about every little detail of Lauren's wedding...right in the middle of The X-Files. (Not a good way to make me happy.)
Then Jody went to sleep for three hours, leaving me alone there. Eeek.
Saturday
Darin and Mitch and their father went out to get their tuxedos, so I stayed in the hotel room to write. Mostly this consisted of panicking (see above) and trying to sketch out my short script for Tuesday's writing class.
Darin came in from the tuxedo place and found me on the bed, staring at the ceiling. "I thought you were going to be writing," he said.
"I am writing," I said.
He was not totally convinced, especially as I immediately fell asleep for a half hour before we got dressed and left.
We went to the rehearsal dinner, the first one I've been to at which there was an actual rehearsal involved. Lauren was taking no chances with this wedding -- everything, from the order in which the wedding party entered to the table arrangements to which music could be played when (and which music ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY could NOT be played AT ALL, like the Macarena and anything by Yanni), was pre-planned.
After dinner/during dessert we watched a video Lauren and Scott had made of pictures taken throughout their lives, from baby pictures through very recent photos. During a montage featuring Darin, Mitch, and Scott the song was "Three is a Magic Number" from Schoolhouse Rock, which I thought was cool.
After we fled -- err, left -- the rehearsal dinner, Darin and I, in our finery, went upstairs in the mall to see The Long Kiss Goodnight, which we both really enjoyed. We both thought it was one of the more enjoyable action films we've seen for some time. (Except I have a new rule for these flicks: NO MORE DREAM SEQUENCES. EVER.) Darin thinks it'll be one of those archetypal action pix future movies are judged against, like "It's Long Kiss Goodnight...only in Europe!"