hey, people pay big bucks to wallow in mud in calistoga.
What's the most interesting feature of the new soda machine Coca-Cola has developed (and is testing)?
(Don't send me your answers. This is just a little way to expand your horizons. Honest.)
Darin flew up north today to meet with the people at his new company. That's right, Darin's taken a new job in Palo Alto, a full-time one...although he'll still be working here at home. He'll have to go up once in a while--hopefully, once in a very great while--but most of the time he'll put those plays-well-by-self skills developed as a consultant to good use and stay right here.
It's weird being at home alone. Of course, I have simply taken this as encouragement to get into all sorts of trouble. Well, all sorts of goofing off. Well...
I'm not having an easy time of it writing, okay? Len always impressed upon us that coming up with the story is the hardest part, and most important part, of what screenwriters do. And without a story I feel as though I'm floundering about in the muck. An idea is not a story, no matter what every single person who hears you're a writer thinks. "Boy, do I have a story for you." Ha!
Not having brilliant ideas every other minute makes me feel as though I'm wasting my time. Not putting pen to paper (or fingertips to Final Draft) makes me feel as though I'm a faker. Not having a fucking story makes me feel as though I'd best never refer to myself as a writer. I don't know if you ever get over this--I constantly see debates about at what point people are allowed to call themselves writers (hint: it's not simply when you want to)--but it's agonizing. And I'm not even spending time in that pity party of late--I'm mostly wrestling with my story, or lack thereof.
I know how I want the movie to end. This is an improvement over just having the logline. I think I know some of the stuff I want to happen in the movie, but I don't know when or why or who does them. That's the problem, of course: I don't know my characters yet. Why are these people doing these things, and how can I show them doing it such that it's understandable (if not always sympathetic)? It's easy to make people doing extreme things (and I have extreme things in mind) into buffoons. I want the audience to say, Yup, that's me, I've done that.
This is the script, by the way, my manager thought had a great logline. And wants to see ASAP.
Nothing like a little pressure. It's amazing I get out of bed.
I'm feeling more pressure than usual because I have a rather firm deadline on this script -- that, and the positive reactions I've gotten from people on the (rather vague) idea. You know: "Oh dear, what if my take on the story isn't what they're expecting?" That, in fact, can almost be guaranteed, because when presented with a vague idea, people fill in all the blanks themselves, with their own viewpoint and prejudices.
I always think of Stephen King's little aside in the vastly underrated Danse Macabre about how he and Louis L'Amour could sit by a lake and L'Amour would come up with a story about cowboys sitting around a fire and King would come up with a story about something slithering out of the lake. And they were both a little weird.
So I have expectations and a deadline and the usual pressure of wanting to start something going in my career and none of that is helpful to getting word one on the page.
(Of course, then I read Toni's descriptions of being Little Miss Busy Writing Bee and I want to whup her upside the head, saying, Stop being so goddamn productive! This is why I'm never going to get anywhere: because people like Toni are too fucking industrious! Squish! Squish!)
Jette quotes me as saying of American Beauty "The message of the movie is that redemption comes through immature behavior, and I don't like that." I'm going to have to poll the others who were there in Austin: did I really say that?
Because I'm not sure that's how I feel about the movie--my main complaint is that a movie reportedly about revelation and seeing the beauty in things left me totally cold toward the revelation and the characters (and I hated Annette Bening's character). But maybe I did say something complex about a film I haven't been able to pin down in my own mind since seeing it (and I still think about it, which has to be a sign of something).
Also, I'd love to hear me be able to come out with something complex like "redemption comes through immature behavior" in normal everyday speech (when I'm usually limited to "I like string"--my apologia for my inability to speak like an adult is "I'm a writer, I use words"). But I might have been high off the second-hand smoke.
Is this a great year for movies or what? It was a little touch and go there for a while, but...if you haven't found something at the cinema that's made you say, "Yay!" I'll wager you haven't been going to the movies. There are two movies opening tomorrow I really want to see--Being John Malkovich and Princess Mononoke--and I haven't even gotten to Fight Club yet.
I think the studios will really look at these weird, offbeat movies and go, Hey, there's a market for this. I'm actually a little apprehensive: I'm feeling the pressure's on to be original and quirky.
Of course, they'll look at the box office legs of Double Jeopardy and schedule a whole slew of female-revenge movies. But whatever pads out the slate.
Y'all may remember my mentioning visits to the totally excellent Cafe N'awlins in downtown Burbank. I don't know if I mentioned my bummage when the restaurant was shuttered--there was some kind of rumor of tax troubles or something, but I knew it couldn't be the restaurant: it was too wonderful to have gone out of business on its own.
The SF Weekly--yes, the San Francisco sister paper of LA's New Times--clears up the matter this week. Damn. A Cajun chef on the lam.
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Copyright 1999 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@spies.com