A cool Hollywood story

So I figured after writing so many blog posts about things going wrong I'd write about a time things went very right. Like "holy shit, did that just happen?" right.

In May of 2004 I sold a screenplay to Universal for the proverbial low against mid six figures. It was reported in all the trades and it was a big deal because I was still a "hot" writer at the time and after the sale went down I had several producers call me angry that they hadn't had a chance to take it out themselves. More on that later.

I described the script as "BROADCAST NEWS set in a high school." Now, I know you're saying "Simpsons did it. Bob's Burgers did it. Every show on Disney Channel did it for Christ's sake!" but the concept hadn't been done to death 11 years ago and I had written it very much in the dark tone of ELECTION and HEATHERS, two of the best high school flicks by any measure. The center of the story was a rivalry between two very different girls who would do just about anything to screw the other one over.  In other words, my wheelhouse.

The week I sold the script was the first week of May. I know this because the sale was not just helped by but pretty much dictated by the unexpected success of MEAN GIRLS which opened at the end of April. My script sold, unequivocably, off the heat of that film's success. The goal was to get Amanda Bynes to play opposite Hilary Duff because they had a real life "rivalry" at the time. I took people's word for it. I can't claim to know if that was true or not.

But here's the thing. I was completely unaware of MEAN GIRLS during the months I wrote the script. I wasn't trying to capitalize on the success of something, because it had yet to be a success. I wrote the script because I love a good, weird high school movie (THREE O'CLOCK HIGH anyone?) and I liked the subject matter. The fact that my script was "finished" at the exact same time that I had heat AND a similar movie killed at the box office was nothing I could have planned if I had wanted to. I can barely plan a pack lunch. It just broke in my favor.

To make the story even more serendipitous I hadn't even finished the script! I had handed the first draft to my manager for his input. He had printed it out and was reading it poolside over the weekend (Hollyhollywood, y'all!). A producer friend who was hanging out with him saw my name on the title page and asked to read it. His company made an offer a few days later, which is why no other producers got a whack at it. I hadn't even run a spell check on it.

So, there you have it. The "easist" fuck-ton of money I've ever made which I fell bass-ackwards into due to the sort of impeccable timing that can't be planned or even prayed for. If this post reads like bragging or something I'd like to think I've earned it after the numerous tales of woe I've subjected my reading audience to over the months of this blog. Even 11 years later I still remind myself that this did indeed happen and I like to think that it could somehow happen again. This was the sort of Holy Grail/Holy Shit! moment that we writers dream of. These things do happen. If it happened to me, it can happen to any writer who does the work.

Now if they'd only made the fucking movie.




Next time I'll get back to the shitty stuff. That always gets a lot more clicks!

Why Smokey and the Bandit is a National Treasure

I know every word to this album to this day.

Anyone who knows me knows that if I say "I'm going to write a super long blog post about one of the greatest movies of all time" it's not going to be about a film by Kurosawa or David Lean or even the guy who makes those incredibly dark superhero movies that everyone but me seems to get a kick out of. No, I'm not a cineaste. I wouldn't even attempt to say that word aloud. I like and appreciate great movies to be sure but I don't go on and on about them because frankly they tend to speak for themselves.

"Look at that excellent use of light and shadow" 

"Gee, ya think?"

No, I spend most of my time banging on about movies that I love that I don't think are given the appreciation they deserve. AKA Big Fun Comedies. I can go on for an hour about why Animal House is a much better movie than people give it credit for being. Or why Dirty Rotten Scoundrels should have won a couple of oscars. These aren't overlooked or forgotten films, they're just not the sort of movies film bores spend their time dissecting because popular comedy is rarely given that treatment.

Anyway, I was watching Smokey and the Bandit for the umpteenth time the other day and I was struck by just how simple, funny and goddamn FUN the movie is. So I figured what the heck. Why not write a blog about it. People blog about considerably less consequential things on the daily.

So here goes!

So this movie came out in 1977 when I was 8. For reasons I can't possibly explain, America was obsessed with long haul truckers in the mid to late 70's. I'm sure it had something to do with the song CONVOY and the rise in popularity of CB radios but whatever the reason, truckers were - for a brief shining moment - cool. We all wanted to drive big rigs and say breaker one nine and have cool handles like Rubber Duck or Pigpen and call cops Smokey and take 10-100's instead of pees.

According to the internet S&tB was released two days after Star Wars and ended up making a pretty unbelievable $126 million.  I probably saw both in the theater an equal number of times. Burt Reynolds was pretty much my movie hero back then. I went to see everything he was in, whether it was The End or Starting Over. Burt was The Man.

And he was never more The Man than in Smokey and the Bandit.


Let me begin by putting on my screenwriter hat and observing that the film is deeply flawed structurally. There is no third act. In fact in the place where the third act should take place, Bandit is chased by a bunch of anonymous cops and Justice is inexplicably sidelined until the final scene. Why would a movie take the antagonist out of the picture as it's reaching it's peak? Well it's safe to assume that Burt, Hal and Jerry were more concerned with having a good time than worrying about egghead stuff like act breaks and escalating tension.

Also the film has no real stakes. Sure, if the Bandit is caught he'll go to jail for a while and Snowman will lose his license, but those are self-imposed consequences brought on by what could be construed as a very bad decision. If you take a step back and think about it, Cletus is a blue collar father of six and is risking his livelihood for this run just to make some quick cash. Is that a Bad Dad move?

So there's no real reason for the boys to make the run other than "they say it can't be done." Now that's a good enough reason to do something and perhaps it speaks to the characters more than some artificial external "need" ("we have to make this run to pay for that operation/tax lien/orphanage") but I can't help but think that in the process of modern development someone would insist that there be a very specific reason why this run has to happen and why it can't fail.

The movie starts with an information dump. Over the opening credits Jerry Reed sings about the Legend of the Bandit - a trucker who's outsized feats of driving expertise and general derring do have made him a sort of gearhead folk hero. It helps because we never actually SEE Bandit drive a semi. Right off the bat we see a random trucker being arrested for bootlegging Coors beer over state lines.  This is the horrible fate that awaits anyone who runs afoul of interstate commerce laws!

I plan to make this a Halloween costume for my son and I.

The director Hal Needham knows not to dwell on this boring information stuff and instantly takes us to a truck rodeo where Big and Little Enos Burdette are looking for the legendary Bandit to make him a bet. According to Paul (Little Enos) Williams, Burt Reynolds was preparing to go on The Tonight Show when he saw Williams standing next to Pat (Big Enos) McCormack who was a writer on the show and Burt said "I need to put the two of you in a movie."

That is what we call a stroke of sheer genius.

They find Bo "Bandit" Darville (He introduces himself to Sally Field as "Bo" and refers to himself as "Bandit Darville" to Justice in case you're wondering if and when his name is said in the flick). The first sound out of Burt's mouth is that laugh. Another stroke of sheer genius. There may be an entire generation of young people who are unfamiliar with Burt Reynolds' laugh and that is a goddam travesty. The Burdettes lay out the challenge - bring 400 cases of Coors beer to Georgia from Texarcana in 28 hours. If he can make it they'll give him $80,000. If not well.... they never really say. We know he'll get arrested if he gets caught, but if he runs out of time without getting caught I guess he gets to keep the beer? It doesn't matter but it's something I noticed.

(Also I shall refrain from making comments about their beer of choice but suffice it to say I could write an equally long and opinionated blog on that subject as well.)

This is one of the greatest guitar players
that ever lived. BTW.

So the stakes of the movie are laid out. Bring the beer, get the money. Simple. Bandit heads to call on his partner and best buddy Cletus "The Snowman" Snow played by underrated guitarist/country singer/70's variety show fixture Jerry Reed. Cletus is a fellow long haul trucker with six kids who is resistant to Bandit's plan because of all the trouble Bandit has gotten him in in the past. But when he hears how much money is on the line he quickly signs on. Burt pulls a gorgeous black 1977 Trans-Am out of the back of his truck. As their costar was so famous for saying, AND AWAY WE GO!

Would you buy a used car from this man?

The run to Texarcana is almost entirely uneventful but there is a car chase with a single cop at the 13 minute mark. Bandit distracts the cop with the Trans-Am so Snowman can continue haulin' ass. Bandit easily evades the cop and just in case anyone was mistaking this for a serious, perilous car chase like the one in Bullit or The French Connection, Burt breaks the fourth wall, looks right down the barrel of the camera and smirks at the audience. And we love him for it.

They pick up the beer without event and head back. Looks like this is gonna be the easiest $80 grand they ever made! Not so fast, on the run back Bandit picks up a runaway bride played by Sally Field. This is Carrie, a high strung motormouth with Broadway aspirations who was adorkable decades before we knew that was a thing. Bandit and she are mismatched opposites but their chemistry is - as they say - undeniable. He calls her Frog and that's easier to type than Carrie so I shall as well.

And then we meet Justice.

Sheriff Buford T. Justice. Jackie Gleason in a hall of fame performance from start to finish. I believe that the unexpected mega-success of this film is largely because of Gleason's tour-de-force performance. You make this exact same film but replace Gleason with one of Burt's equally qualified  buddies like Ned Beatty or Brian Keith (both fine actors) and the movie is still good but probably not a mega hit that bloggers spend their precious time on this Earth writing long posts about.

I'm a 300 lb alcoholic who chain smokes
and I'm gonna live to 71. Take that, fuckers.

Gleason is pure rage and fragile Southern dignity in human form. There are moments in the film where it looks like he will literally explode. So much can be said about his performance and how unlikely it sounds on paper so I'll just move on and try to mention some of the highlights as I go.

Justice's son has been left at the altar by Carrie and the sheriff intends to run roughshod over the sombitch who is helping her get away. Justice is aided by some dudes scavenging Carrie's car who helpfully saw and memorized the Bandit's personalized license plate, state and everything. Good eye, dudes! Also good work getting a personalized plate on such short notice, Bandit. Although is a personalized plate a good idea when you're trying to avoid capture?  Who cares.

Along for the ride with Justice is his son Junior and this is the one casting flaw of the film. Junior is played by a fellow named Mike Henry who was a former football player and while it would be gilding the lilly to stick Gleason in a car with a fellow comedic genius, Henry isn't even a particularly good straight man. Yeah, I get it, we have to understand why Frog left him and he exists as basically an object for Gleason to be enraged by but in a film full of perfect performances he still seems wooden and out of place.

As you know most of the movie is a series of long and well choreographed car chases with some super practical stunts. Justice is on his ass and closing in and Bandit is always one step ahead. Frog and Bandit are total opposites but they begin to fall for each other. Jerry Reed has his basset hound with him. For most of the film Bandit and Justice only speak over CB radio.

That is until 37 minutes in when the Bandit and Justice wind up at the same lunch counter in a greasy spoon diner. This scene is - as the kids say - epic. Bandit knows who he is but Justice has no idea he's sitting next to his nemesis. Bandit playfully winds Justice up to the point where he looks like he's going to have a heart attack in real life while trying to choke down his Diablo sandwich. This is one of my favorite scenes in movies and kills me every time I watch it.
Click here to see the scene (TRT 2:00)

The rest of the movie is more of the same - cars crash into cars and buildings and trucks. Cops are made to look like fools, many "beaver" jokes are made and as Bandit's fame spreads via CB radio other truckers and CB enthusiasts come to his aid to elude the Smokeys. It's anti-authority at its finest.

Toward the end of what should be the second act, two things happen. Bandit and Frog hook up romantically and Cletus gets the shit beat out of him in a roadside diner when he takes on some punk-ass bikers who were harassing his dog. At first the scene is oddly out of place in the movie, it's a gin-u-wine beat down and Cletus takes the worst of it but he can still drive and they aren't that far off schedule so it doesn't affect the plot. It seems like this scene doesn't serve any real purpose but upon a moment's reflection it actually plays out like a verse from a classic outlaw country song and for that reason it's in fact perfect for the film.

Also Stroker Ace is a metaphor for the first Punic war.

I did have one of those useless bullshitty revelations while watching the movie this time. Bandit is the downhome southern blue collar fellow and he wears a RED shit. Frog is the big city, artsy dreamer and she wears a BLUE shirt. He represents red states and she represents blue and they still fall in love and work together to get what they both want!! CAN'T YOU PEOPLE SEE HAL NEEDHAM SENT US THIS MESSAGE OF COMPROMISE AND UNDERSTANDING 37 YEARS AGO!!

Sorry. I should have mentioned I had a few beers when I was watching it.

Anyway, as things wrap up Justice is incapacitated for reasons the movie isn't clear on and Cletus is pulled over by an anonymous cop. To get the cop off his ass Bandit pulls up and Frog gives the cop the finger and the chase is back on. More and more anonymous cars follow bandit and Snowman and a helicopter joins the chase and Justice is nowhere to be seen. Regardless of his inexplicable absence it looks like it's all over for our guys. They have a helicopter for the love of George Jones! But in that moment of hopelessness, the Snowman rallies the fuck up, puts the pedal to the medal and makes it across the finish line with mere minutes to spare. Yay! The rich rednecks get their shitty beer! (Sorry I said I wouldn't comment on that)

Contrary to popular belief, much like The Matrix
there are NO sequels to this movie.
Not even the second one which while funny
isn't on the same plane of existence as this movie. 

Justice pulls up as Bandit and crew are taking off in the Burdette's Caddy. bandit gets him on the CB and they compliment each other on the good chase and then our crew heads off for Boston to get clam chowder. Everyone - except Justice - lives happily ever after.










So why do I love this damn film so much?  Because it's pure, unadulterated anti-establishment fun. Justice is never portrayed as corrupt or evil, just hubristic and impotent. Bandit is a criminal but the laws he breaks don't hurt anyone. It's pretty much a Warner Brothers cartoon in live action form. Bugs vs. Yosemite Sam. Roadrunner V. Coyote. There's no message here, no lessons, no big picture. A bandit runs from justice. Simple as that. There's a real art to simplicity like that executed well.

These days car chase movies are deathly cool and complex. Yes, the Furious movies have a self-awareness and a sly wink behind the antics but they are also heavy on an "attitude" that I like but just isn't the same as the simple "fun for the sake of fun" of Smokey.  Like the Marx Brothers outwitting those stuffy society types or Delta House tormenting Dean Wermer and Omega house, Bandit outruns justice and that's all that matters.

(Also I think we all agree that car stunts are much better with real cars crashing into each other instead of CG creations defying the laws of physics and logic. But that goes without saying.)

So that's it.

I like Smokey because it's fun and purely fun movies are few and far between anymore.

What a deep insight!

Thanks for reading (if you did) this was longer than I expected but it was fun to write!

The best thing I've done.

Since it seems like most of my posts are about something going wrong I thought I'd go for a change with something that went very right.

If you thought this caption would be an
easy pie joke you're wrong.

In 2007 I wrote a script for a short film that incorporated some of my favorite elements - awkward dates, Groundhog day, and manslaughter. THE GLITCH is 10 minutes of excellently timed comedy performed by Jason Biggs, Ed Ackerman and Melinda Sward. I owe an eternal debt of gratitude to Nathan Reimann for making the film happen as he pulled together a professional crew seemingly out of thin air.

(FOD, no thumbnail?)

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/9eb2662310/the-glitch-with-jason-biggs-from-jason-biggs

Life in the Slow Lane In Belgium

I made this poster. I used to know
how to do things besides blog. 

Through most of the 1990's I worked with a sketch comedy group in New York City called Bangers and Mash. The performers were all British but the writers - myself, the aforementioned John Reynolds and a funny guy named Jim who doesn't like me (although I think he's a fine fellow) - were all American.


Makes perfect sense, right?

The group performed around the city for years. At our peak we were selling out the cabaret stage at the Duplex in the Village for entire runs.  We even filled the Triad up on 72nd street a few times. It was great fun, built a lot of commeradere and not only did I make some life-long friends from that group, but I met my wife who was a performer in the troupe.

In late 1998 I decided to shoot a film version of one of our successful sketches called Editing Is Everything. The sketch had always worked on stage and I had a vision of shooting in a black and white "Howard Hawks" style - a name I frequently dropped when referencing my idea although I have no idea if that was even correct or appropriate. I wanted to do the 40's newsroom thing, slatted blinds, fedoras, cigarette smoke, rapid-fire patter etc. Honestly my knowlegde of non-Billy Wilder movies before the 1970's is limited to say the least. I don't know how many - if any - movies in that style I had ever seen all the way through, but I used "Howard Hawks" to describe the look I was going for undaunted, the way people who don't read use "Kafkaesque" to describe having to pay a parking ticket they don't think they deserved or the time the cable company didn't show when they said they would.  

Anyway, thanks to the hard work of my wife, Paul McCartney and Mick Reed on the production end (which is of course the "heavy lifting" end) and the actors and crew we made what I think is the greatest possible version of this short. It was shot on 16mm black and white film over two full shoot days. Everyone who worked on the film brought their A-game as I think the short shows.

My wife submitted us to a ton of film festivals and we got in almost every one we submitted to! Back then there were nowhere near as many short films in the world as there are since the internet blew the format up, and we were on programs with some top notch stuff from around the world. Of the many showings of our short, the high point was definitely winning the New York Shorts International Festival (comedy category) in 1999. We beat out a very popular short at the time known as George Lucas In Love which was "viral" before there was such a thing as viral.  I think those guys did okay though.

We got into a film festival in Gent, Belgium and since we wanted to go see my wife's family in the UK around that time, we planned a whole two week jaunt around the festival. We flew into Brussels, arriving at dawn, and rented a red Peugot that we promised to return in Paris in ten days or so. We hit the highway to Gent with morning rush hour traffic, the first song on the radio was Sexx Laws by Beck which had just dropped and I was feelin' BALLER!  (Although that term had not yet been coined and honestly I'm not 100% sure I'm using it correctly now.)

We arrived in Gent, which is a beautiful medieval city that has become a modern college town, parked the Peugot and checked into the Hotel Gravsteen which is just as awesome as it sounds. I was probably as on top of the world as I had ever felt before or since. My li'l movie was showing in Europe. It had won awards in New York. It would be showing in Los Angeles later that year. What could possibly go wrong?

The night of the screening my wife and I arrived at the theater early and met the festival staff and participants and some of the other film makers. Meeting people has never been my strong suit but I was feeling pretty invincible at the time so it went fairly well. I was sure big things were going to come from this!

Our theater probably seated 300 or so and it was packed. The lights went down, our movie was opening the bill. The film starts with Handel's Hallejuia Choir and I knew something was wrong the moment it began. It sounded like it was being sung by a choir of hungover baritones.

The film was showing at half speed.

It was as if everyone in the film had slammed a handful of quualudes and the room was full of ether. I kept expecting someone to say "nighty night, Rabbit."

My wife frantically ran to the projection booth to try to figure out what was going on.  The audience, to their credit, sat patiently and watched the now over-ten-minute-long film and even laughed at two jokes. Granted these were scattered titters and probably as much out of nervousness and confusion as actual humor but they were laughs nonetheless.

My wife came back, defeated. They didn't know why the film had run half speed and they weren't going to run it again at regular speed even if they could figure it out.  The festival had a schedule to keep.

Now this is the point where I was supposed to melt down. I was supposed to freak out about how we had come all this way and spent all this money and how our entire careers were ruined and how un-fucking-fair the universe was that this would happen to ME! I had frequently lost my shit over much less than this disaster in a professional setting. I mean at that point in my life, if an account executive at work politely asked me to rewrite a piece of generic radio copy (per the terms of my employ) I would hissy-out as if I'd been asked to alter my artistic masterpiece or sacrifice my creative integrity!*

(*If I did this to you, I apologize profusely)  

But I didn't hissy. I shrugged it off and went to a bar where we sampled every trappist ale on tap and regaled the bartender and anyone who would listen the hilarious tale of how we had come all the way

Trappist Monks: The original bros. 

to Belgium of all places at great expense to see our work die a horrible and anonymous death in front of 300 people who must have thought we MEANT for our film to be tortorous rather than funny. We laughed. Everyone laughed. Because the whole thing was so stupid and preposterous and didn't matter and I didn't make it into a Thing.

I don't know why I handled that moment so well. It honestly wasn't like 1999 me. But I did and that moment changed my outlook on everything. Yeah, we had big expectations and they had been blown to shit by cirucmstances beyond our control - but that's exactly it - they were  BEYOND our control. Nothing worth getting worked up over.

Now, if you're a functioning human being this story may not seem significant to you. But I consider this a truly formative moment. I look back on that trip to Belgium as a major turning point in my life when I realized that it's not what happens, it's how you react to it that defines if the situation is a success or a failure.

We spent a couple more glorious days in Gent before driving up to Amsterdam (natch) and over to Paris before Chunneling it to see my wife's family in London.

I loved and appreciated every minute of that trip.

The First Taste of "Success"

In the late 90's when I was still working in advertising I was sent every year, all expenses paid, to Los Angeles to attend the E3 Expo. For the uninitiated (or those who didn't click that link) E3 is a big video game convention that they hold at the convention center in downtown LA. I was working on Hasbro's interactive business at the time and it was essential that I participate in this annual boondoggle.

My company would fly me out, put me up for a few nights in a nice hotel and I would gamely go to the showroom floor and see the exhibits and talk to the clients as much as necessary....

But I was really in LA to take meetings.

By this point my writing partner John Reynolds and I had procured our first agent, a hard working woman in Oneonta, New York who had responded to our snail mail query/request to read our specs of Simpsons, King of the Hill and Pinky and the Brain that we had managed to write between bouts of binge drinking and disappointing our girlfriends.


SIDEBAR (Feel free to skip)

This is my "sidebar" image.
It is a WB cartoon representation of Ray Milland
in Billy Wilder's The Lost Weekend
hocking his typewiter for booze.
In a BAR. (Get it?) This is funny - to me - on various levels.
Okay, I'll let you go now.

That Simpsons spec was solid AF! The concept: Frink creates a fen-phen like medication that makes fat people skinny. Homer, Wiggum, Barney and Comic Book Guy all participate in the test and become skinny. But soon terrible side effects manifest. They become comically weak (and impotent) and the former fatties have to decide if being skinny is worth ruining their lives. The show's been on the air for 543 years, you think they would have accidentally done that plot by now.




END SIDEBAR

Glamorous Glendale

I had asked our new agent to co-ordinate some meetings for us around E3. I took some vacation time after the convention ended and stayed in LA at my own expense (at the Rodeway Inn on Colorado Blvd in Glendale, $48 a night and worth every penny).

When John arrived in LA we still hadn't gotten our marching orders from our agent. Honestly I don't remember the specifics of this. I think she said "Yeah, go out to LA and spend your money I'll get you your meetings, you dopes."

The point is this. At some point John and I were in LA with a motel and a rental car and no plan and our agent sent us a fax to the front office of the fucking $48 a night Rodeway Inn. The fax was several pages long and it was like 20 meetings! She had booked us more meetings than either one of us had ever imagined possible. Animation, movies, TV. It was all there.

As far as we were concerend, this fax was going to change our lives (how many people can say THAT about a fax?).

The meetings didn't start for a day or two. So I suggested - as one does - that we go to Las Vegas to celebrate.

To celebrate a fax.

Like most 20 something guys,
 this is what I thought our trip would be like.

This was the first, of many, many times I would drive from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. Full disclosure: I love Las Vegas. Everyone who knows me knows that. I think it's a silly, ridiculous place to go and park your car and forget your troubles and just be an idiot for 48 hours before heading back home to the routine and grind of life. I understand why people don't like it, it's hot, phony, expensive, crass, ugly, dumb, loud and just wants your money. And honestly I don't enjoy it the way I did when I was younger. But when I can't get away to a "real" vacation destination Las Vegas picks up a lot of slack.

Anyway. We made it to Las Vegas without too much trouble. I'm sure we hit traffic or something but we got there at a reasonable hour. We hit the strip in nighttime traffic and swam upstream as far as we were willing to go and wound up in New York, New York.

The details of the night are, naturally, hazy. All that mattered was that we were there to celebrate that fax, goddamn it. We drank copiously. We gambled a bit (me more than John, a pattern I would repeat again and again with my friends). At one point John fell off of one of the stools at a blackjack table and we were asked to leave the casino floor for our drunkeness.

Imagine that. Being asked to leave Las Vegas due to drunkeness.

We went to the front desk to get a room for the night. How much could it possibly cost? Well cost didn't matter because the hotel was booked. So was every hotel on the strip.

I was outraged the way only a drunken rube can be. Convinced I was being sold a bill of goods to get me to fall for some short con. "Oh you know what? Now that you mention a hundred dollar bribe I DO have a room!"

"You mean to tell me that every goddamn building in this entire CITY is full of people PAYING to stay here?" I shouted, indignant, "That's impossible. There's no way that many people just HAPPENED to be in Las Vegas at the same time."

The guy - who in retrospect was just trying to help - told us that we could get a room at the Lady Luck (mind you, we were still paying for the Rodeway Inn we had uncerimoniously left vacant that night). Okay, whatever. We said we'd take it. He reserved the room and we went out to get a cab, not knowing that The Lady Luck was on Freemont street several miles away.

Glamorous Las Vegas
Note: No longer exists

We got in the cab and he got on I-15 and at some point I asked the driver if he knew where to score some weed. He asked if I was a cop and then asked to see my driver's license, which I handed him and he read without slowing the car.

"Sixty an eighth," he said. I handed him sixty and he rifled through his glove box and produced an eighth without slowing the car. It was probably 2 am at this point.

I remember NOTHING about the Lady Luck. I've been back in the years since in an attempt to refresh my memory, but it's gone. Of course we got high. And we (I) may have gambled some more.

And we laughed.

A lot.

There was some sleep and the next day we drove back to LA so sleep deprived and hungover that I remember pulling off to the side to nap but being woken by the semis shaking the car. I remember screaming at the top of my lungs and punching the roof of the rental car to stay awake in the Cajon pass.

I remember being young and invincible and feeling like we were about to turn that fax into everything we had ever wanted.

The trip was a success. We scored some work writing for an animated series at Disney called Teacher's Pet. We met some other great people who hired us on various projects over the years including Dic's version of Inspector Gadget. I would say that we way more than made up for our trip's expenses with the work we procured.

Did that fax launch our careers into the stratosphere?

Of course not.

But at the time it felt like it could have.

And when you're doing something as preposterous as trying to start a career in entertainment you have to allow yourself to feel like anything is possible and act accordingly.

An Uphill Battle from the Very Beginning

This is my "trade announcement" from the July 7, 2003 edition of Variety
Industry secret: by the time a deal is announced is in Variety, it happened months ago.

One of the first studio rewrite jobs I got in 2003 was working for a man (not mentioned in the article above for reasons I can't claim to understand) named Charles Roven.

I'm using his name despite my no names policy because frankly the man is larger than life and definitely in the top three Hollywood characters I have ever met. I have nothing but respect for him. His career is so legendary that he is - like his company name Atlas Entertainment - a Titan of the industry.

(Also the story is funnier if you know that it involves one of the biggst producers in the history of movie making and not just some guy.)

I honestly loved the project. It was the kind of big silly comedy that I had come to Hollywood to be involved with, a big, sprawling high concept road movie in the vein of Dumb and Dumber with a gigantic set piece ending that involved the St. Louis arch and "the brown tone" in the third act. It was pretty funny stuff in a broad over the top way which is right in my wheelhouse.

For a guy who makes a ton of really big movies Roven was surprisingly involved in this rewrite of a script with no attachments or greenlight. He had copious notes and lots of smart input. I don't know how he had enough hours in the day, but he did mention at one point that he only slept four hours a night. If he told me he slept with his eyes open so he could watch rough cuts of his other films and give notes when he woke up I wouldn't have been surprised. My point is the guy was a tireless, hands-on film maker. And a fairly intimidating guy. I saw him just a few months ago for the first time in a decade and was surprised that he's pretty much the same size as me. In my memory of working with him he was a giant. But I think that's just his personality.


We had a notes meeting at his house one weekend. Just the two producers, Mr. Roven, and myself. I had the address and was told to buzz the gate to be let in. I had never spent any time in Beverly Hills (believe it or not) and didn't know gate-protocol so I parked on the street, got out and buzzed. When the gate opened I walked in, thinking the house would be, like any normal house, just around the corner.

The house was up an impossibly long driveway at the top of one of the "hills" mentioned in the name "Beverly Hills." It took me 15 minutes to walk the series of switchbacks. Every time I came around a turn I thought "it's right around this corner." Nope.

Imagine this but at a 15% gradient that keeps changing direction

And of course it was a ridiculously hot May day. I was sweating through my shirt within the first five minutes. I thought about turning back to get my car a couple of times but worried that would take even longer. I was holding up this very important man's time and making an ass of myself.

By the time I got to the compound I was exhausted and embarrassed. There was PLENTY of room to park of course. Only a rube like me would think I was expected to ditch my vehicle and drag my ass up the damn hill on foot.

"You walked?" He asked incredulously.

"Yeah. I thought I was supposed to park on the street. I've never been here before."

He just shook his head. "The fate of my movie is in this idiot's hands?" he had to be thinking.

The rest of the notes meeting was cordial but uncomfortable. I was trying not to sweat on his furniture or blurt out "Holy shit this is the biggest fucking house I've ever been in and it's the guest house?!"

The movie didn't go after a different movie with a similar vibe underperformed and the project was never discussed again. I'm sure he's long since forgotten the project but I'd like to think that if I said "I'm the goddamn idiot who walked your driveway" he might recall that if nothing else.

Anyway, I'm telling this story A: because it's kinda funny and B: it's very indicative of, almost a metaphor for, my career:

• Since day one it seems like I've gone on foot when everyone else knows to drive. 
• And even when I am fairly certain I'm doing it wrong I refuse to start over for fear of making it worse. 
• And when I've been given partial instructions, I've been too timid to ask for more specific direction. 

The one thing I've gotten better at is laughing about situations like this. Today if I did this I would play it off as a joke, (God knows I'd have had enough time to come up with something while trudging up that hill) "Why didn't you pay the ransom!" I could say, lifting from Richard Harris. Or "Sorry, I illegally parked at the Starbucks half way up and got towed." Or just, "Banditos!" I don't know, none of those jokes are all that funny, but it would have been better than standng there with a dumb "Hi, you're paying me six figures to write and I don't even understand what the word DRIVEway means" look on my face.

You live and learn.

So they tell me.

The First Three Feature Length Scripts I Finished

Dieter passes LA landmarks:  the Hollywood sign, Mann's
Chinese, and the LA COUNTY SCREENPLAY LANDFILL, where a
bulldozer pushes around a mountain of scripts.

- From the unmade SPROCKETS adaptation written by Mike Meyers, Jack Handy and Mike McCullers 

I think I read somewhere that the average writer will complete nine scripts before they sell one. I don't know exactly how many I actually finished before getting paid (and let's not even try to count the ones I started and didn't finish, that number may approach infinity) but here are the first three...

The first actual feature length script I completed was a character driven dramedy about a New York yuppie who goes insane and thinks he's a trench coat-clad vigillante in the vein of The Shadow. Mind you I had only a passing awareness of The Shadow (my version predated the Alec Baldwin movie that I never saw either) but I name checked the character frequently whenever I would pitch the story. I would also say that it had the same tone as Vampire's Kiss  a 1989 Nic Cage movie about a New York yuppie who goes insane and thinks he's a vampire. Because it was basically a lift of that entire film. This began a pattern of mine, name checking characters and stories I knew almost nothing about  to sound smart and referencing poorly received films in the context of my work. A winning combination.

Anyway, the script was called THE CIMMERIAN, a word I randomly found that meant 'dark or gloomy.' I can't find the script anymore which is odd because I am usually pretty obsessive about backing up and keeping track of old files. Not that I would subject anyone to it at this point, but I don't think it was bad per se, just probably a bit unstructured and predictable. I can't remember any big scenes, there was a sequence where the protagonist swims across the Hudson river but I can't remember why. And of course eventually he dies trying to fight crime. The whole story was about guilt. The lead character felt guilty about what a horrible, empty person he was so he created this character in his mind to absolve himself. American Psycho is another story I like a lot. Apparently I dig stories about young men going insane with guilt and lonliness. I'm a pip at parties. 

My contribution to the "OMG so many scripts!" picture collection.
This stack is in my office. I didn't write these
but in 20 years I've written that many and more.

The second script I wrote was so meta and so 90's and so "indie" I should have to apologize to the makers of Living in Oblivion for bogarting their vibe. BELOW THE LINE was a black comedy about a young, idealistic guy who falls for kooky female production assistant he meets on the set of an indie film. Then he discovers that she's going around killing actors in the independent films she works on. Fun for the whole family! The whole thing was heavily influenced by Heathers and if you're into that sort of thing was actually pretty fun. I made a lot of Post-Tarantino self-indulgent 90's mistakes like a three page scene where some stoners argue on the phone with a diner owner who won't deliver six side orders of bacon and nothing else because it's not a meal. (Hilarious and way ahead of the bacon-craze curve). In my mind I'm sure the script was supposed to be about the pretense of being an artist in a world where so many people are just scraping by or something pretentious like that. Also two scripts in a row about crazy people! A theme emerges!

My third script was a doozy. My first attempt at a big budget Hollywood family "4 quad" movie. VERTICAL LEAP: ADVENTURES IN REAL TIME was set in the not too distant future and was about a holographic AI video game character that exists in the real world and is framed for murder. He goes on the run with a young boy (his biggest fan, natch) to clear his good name.  The comparison to Who Framed Roger Rabbit is of course inevitable and deserved. The script is an unstructured mess that takes forever to get going and has gigantic plot holes in it. In other words WHY DIDN'T HOLLYWOOD BUY IT!? The real fun I had with the script other than the world building was developing the video game character Vertical Leap. I wrote him as a brash, loud mouthed, egotistical action hero by day, lounge singer by night.  I spent way more time on his character than the story or the plot, such that there was one. Thinking about it now I wonder how I handled "the rules" of the universe I was trying to create. It's awfully hard to make a story about a hologram have any real stakes.  I'm guessing that a lot of seasoned pros would have a hard time with that one so I'm sure I didn't do a very good job of it.

Anyway, those were my first three. I think in total 10 people read those scripts.  Not 10 people read all three, but like 3 read one, 5 read another 2 read one. I sent out some snail mail queries on each of them, but not many, and only got a couple of read requests. Those read requests resulted in polite form letter passes except for one lengthy, helpful critique I got about Vertical Leap. I owe the guy who wrote it a debt of gratitude because that kind, thoughtful letter of his was the first affirmation I had gotten from a stranger that my writing, while flawed, showed promise.

BUT I kept going because I really enjoyed the work and I was getting to know what few strengths and many weaknesses I had as a writer and it became as much a problem solving process as a creative one.

So while I would never claim to have any actual advice or wisdom to pass on to screenwriters trying to "break in" I will say that in my case I had to write a bunch of stuff before I was even ready to be read. These three scripts just scratch the surface. And I was doing all this between having a full time office job and crippling drinking problem!

What I wouldn't give for that much energy and time management today!