THINGS THEY WON'T TELL YOU IN FILM SCHOOL

THIS BLOG IS RATED JULIE

2007-07-07T11:49:00.000-07:00

There’s a Website—a dating Website of all things, and not even a Christian one—that scans blogs for objectionable material, suggesting various levels of parental supervision all the way up to FBI intervention and possible notification of the Department of Homeland Security. Mine rated the dreaded NC-17, the lowest of the low, right down there with those offering up guided tours inside Paris Hilton’s vagina, random clips of bestiality and kiddy porn, and graphic information on how to make and detonate a suicide bomb. To be directed to one or more of us, all the kids have to do is accidentally leave an “o” out of the word Google.

Since the program is only able to ferret out scandalous words rather than images, my alarming rating was apparently determined based on my aggregate usage of profanity. Over the years, I’ve employed the word fuck no less than fourteen times, although ironically this was all in one recent post meant to satirize the hypocritical nature of the relationship between language and censorship. There were ten references to porn, six to sex and three to death. I twice uttered the word dick—although I'm certain that one or more of these was in reference to a certain "private dick" played by Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon—and once referred to someone, or heaven forbid something, as “anal.”

I am a dirty, dirty girl, and for that I have been bitch-slapped. That’s right, bitch-slapped, I’ve said it twice now, like a prison inmate already living under the death penalty who up and offs another guard just for sport. Damn, another death reference. And damn, another two damns!

Well, two can poke around the Internet digging up dirt and naming McCarthy-era names, which is how I came to learn that the Supreme Court twice decided that the First Amendment didn’t apply to filmmakers. Larry Flynt, yes, Alfred Hitchcock, no. Both Psycho and Some Like It Hot were released without the required Motion Picture Association of America stamp of approval due to their “objectionable themes.”

I made it all the way through film school without learning that the Hays Code—banning the glorification of “crime, wrongdoing, evil or sin” from the nation’s theaters—remained relatively intact from 1930 (coincidentally the same year they gave liquor back to the people) all the way up until 1968. The MPAA then devised a four-tiered ratings system—G, M, R and X—that lifted virtually all restrictions on what elements could lawfully be in a film. M was later changed to PG, and the elevated PG-13 was added in response to the level of violence in—gasp!—Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. The dreaded NC-17 replaced the X rating not in relation to content, but because the MPAA had failed to trademark the designation by then widely in use by the porn industry.

This happened right around the time they stopped making good movies altogether, instead offering up family fare that ever so covertly slipped in adult themes like dead babysitters, rat love and monster sex in the hopes inspiring kids of all ages to forgo a week’s worth of groceries in exchange for sitting through them as a four-quadrant unit on opening weekend.

In all fairness to the contemporary American viewing public, I propose a new ratings system based not on outmoded moral self-righteousness, but rather on, oh, I don't know, audience appeal. G would be for Geeks Only, PG for Pubescent Geeks and Above, PG13 for Pubescent Geeks and Thirteen Screaming Friends, R for Really Rude Pubescent Geeks with Fake I.D.’s and NC-17 for the The 17 Remaining Films Not Created By Pixar. Damn, I miss movies with people in them. I mean, darn I miss the people movies. Darn I miss the fucking porn, sex, death, anal, dick movies about humans.

FOURTH OF JULIE

2007-07-05T11:46:00.000-07:00

My sister’s home feels like a luxury California resort and spa, with a yard three times the size of the house itself, an outdoor kitchen and bar with built-in beer taps and an infinity-edged pool and Jacuzzi with a waterfall overlooking a canyon and protected bird sanctuary. The lawns are expansive enough for a planned putting green, as well as bocci ball, horseshoe and badminton courts. In addition to the three separate picnicking areas, there’s a wooden grape arbor shading a farmhouse table for twelve.

At night, she fires up a lava rock fire pit and a wood-burning brick fireplace and pizza oven, with tiki torches and hanging lanterns providing optional firelight. Lavender and rosemary patches become most fragrant in the noonday sun, and in the summertime peach and apricot trees drop fruit around the yard. Yesterday she gathered all that to make homemade jam, barbecue sauce, cobbler and Fuzzy Navels for an impromptu Fourth of July picnic for sixteen.

Among her well-heeled suburban guest list in North County San Diego were two financial analysts, a mortgage broker, a State Department official, an Olympic-level athlete turned swim coach, and a contractor known to have cornered the local market on epoxy flooring. There were assorted children and mix and match wives whose names I didn’t catch. At least one was pregnant, although I only did a cursory spot check, along with plenty of talk about C-sections, Elmo, healthy snacking, squirt guns and time outs.

My sister’s husband is a stockbroker who wanted to be a television producer, and my sister is a lawyer who wanted to be a gourmet chef. In college, she studied in France and learned to speak flawless French but hasn’t made it back much since. Since he is bald and so white he actually glows, it was hard not to worry about the fate of his enormous head in the scorching sunlight reflecting off the sparkling, free-form pool, where he wondered aloud what “the poor people” were doing right now.

“We’re fine,” I told him, lying in a nearby lounger with my two farting wiener dogs at my feet. “I am a screenwriter who wanted to be a screenwriter,” I thought about adding by way of explanation. But he was on to a more pressing conversation about swim diapers and how it takes seven seconds for chlorine to kill uric acid.

In a more energetic mood, I might have interjected that, given the choice between authenticity and poverty, I chose the path less traveled by, the one with no swimmers to diaper, or guns to squirt or time outs to give. And even on weekends and holidays—when I’m occasionally compelled to go out and play with those who appear to have everything—that has made all the difference.

But I didn't bother with any of that, since he probably isn't all that big on the poetry of Robert Frost or really any of your major literary figures not recently published on the sports page. Neither did I hand him a hat and a tube of sunscreen and implore him to save himself. My sister recently told me that he and I are co-beneficiaries on her life insurance policy, and I figured if he wants to check out early from malignant melanoma, who was I to interfere? I may be a dreamer, but hell, I'm no fool.

BIG DREAMS, SMALL PENISES

2007-06-30T10:28:00.000-07:00

I happened across this charming little Website the other day that sells candy penises of every shape and variety. Succulent Hard Willies come in a handy tin courtesy of our friends across the Pond; Cocksickle Ice Pops are conveniently packaged in flexible plastic tubes; and the ever popular Vibrating Gummy Dong features a selection of five sugar-free flavors promising optimal vaginal safety and pleasure.

I think this page popped up after I expressed my admiration for the Martha Stewart Website over at Stumble Upon, a blog surfing registry that matches your interests with related content. I hadn't realized that "Hostessing & Entertaining" meant treating my sluttier bridal shower guests to the party size box of "Lollicocks".

My undying fascination with all things Martha has gotten me in trouble before, in the sense that she plays such a major role in my imaginary life as opposed to the one I live alone in a tiny Hollywood duplex with a porch the size of a doormat. Although I list cooking, gardening and home arts among my favorite hobbies whenever the opportunity to offer up such misleading personal information about myself arises, the truth is I rarely do any of that.

The closest I got to cooking last night was re-heating the barbecued chicken sandwich I ordered from Zeke's Smokehouse, after tipping the delivery boy five bucks for being both adorable and the only live human person I had spoken to all day. I did sit down to eat, as opposed to roaming around nibbling on the thing while tidying up the place, though Martha would have insisted I use a cloth napkin and light a candle if only because that's what fine linen and candlelight are there for.

After my friend B. called to tell me about his big, star-studded West Hollywood Friday Night AA meeting and how I should do some thinking about the Serenity Prayer, I tried to re-crisp my soggy sweet potato fries in the oven. I've seen Martha do this with her oven-roasted rosemary fingerling potatoes, but in my case they only got gummier.

I did catch the tail end of Antiques Roadshow from Oklahoma City and wondered what on earth happened to poor Lara Spencer's spokesmodeling career and if she would have to be on to Little Rock by dawn carrying only a tattered hobo bag.

As for my big gardening project of the day, I watered my neighbor's hydrangeas, which I've been trying very hard not to kill since she went on location in Colorado as an on-set production accountant for some Martin Lawrence Western or something equally ridiculous. I might have squirted the water too hard again, since I knocked the last of the leaves off the last of the flower blooms and lost another cup of soil over the side of the pot.

I came to Hollywood not only because I love movies, but also because I wanted to be part of something larger than life, my own in particular. All kinds of big things are indeed happening only blocks away, but most days the real action remains inside my head. Some day I will have a lavender farm in Ojai, where I will do my writing during the week and host fabulous dinner parties for artists and writers and other fascinating friends every weekend. I will sell homemade soap from an honor stand at the foot of my driveway and have affairs with the help, who only speak Cherokee and enjoy a deeply personal relationship with the earth.

God, grant me the serenity accept the things I cannot change, such as my movie being in turnaround at Universal and my ongoing failure to land a man or another assignment, the courage to change the things I can, such as declining to get dressed in the morning and sleeping with two obese, farting dogs at night, and the wisdom to know the difference, such as not having a lavender farm in Ojai yet and becoming obsessed with Websites devoted entirely to sugary penis treats. Amen.

LITTLE MISS !#%&*!#SHINE

2007-06-27T09:49:00.000-07:00

When I told the studio executive that my new screenplay was an adult family comedy, she seemed disappointed by that first word of description. "Not too adult, I hope," she said. "If we're looking for a PG rating, and we are, I can only give you one fuck. It has to be a non-sexual fuck."

"So fuck you is okay but fuck me is out?"

"Fuck me would only work if it were an expression of disappointment as opposed to a request," she explained brightly.

"As in, say, fuck me hard?" I asked.

"Exactly," she said. "Something as specific as fuck off and die would work. Go fuck yourself is fine, or I really fucked myself good on this one. But have you gotten fucked good lately? Big red flag."

She asked if any of the principals would be fucking each other. I told her there is in fact a love scene, but I wouldn't exactly describe it as fucking, per se, since the characters have been married for thirty years. "It's more like coupling," I told her. "You definitely get the feeling it's been awhile, if that helps."

"Not really, no," she said. "It's not about the quality of the fuck. A fuck's a fuck."

I reminded her that we were looking for the Little Miss Sunshine crowd on this one. A seven-year-old stripping to the musical stylings of Rick James' "Superfreak," Grandpa shooting up heroin in the bathroom, Uncle Frank trying to off himself over a gay lover he meets up with while buying fetishistic porn at 7-11. "Yes, but there was no fucking," she insisted. "Even the parents didn't fuck. I don't remember anybody even saying fuck."

"It was Dwayne's first line, bottom of the second act," I reminded her. "He said it super loud. And he really took his time with it, spitting and drooling. Is there a penalty for volume, length and wetness of the long overdue first fuck?"

"Let me make a call on that," she said.

IF I DID IT

2007-06-20T09:23:00.001-07:00

If I got caught violating my probation for the second time driving drunk down Santa Monica Boulevard eating a cheeseburger with my lights off, here's how I would have done it.

Let's say I was at a paid event, signing paid autographs while pretending not to like the greasy French guys taking the pictures I was pretending not to want. My biggest challenge, like always, was trying super hard not to make direct eye contact with anybody for free.

I am the consummate businesswoman. The media likes to portray me as "overprivileged," but I actually work like a mule anywhere in the vicinity of a red carpet. Day, night, day and night. On my hands, on my knees, on my hands and knees, whatever the fans are willing to pony up the big bucks to watch me do in or out of a ten thousand dollar dress I never paid for. They want you to believe I'm stupid, when I'm actually smart as one of my whips. Fiction, shallow and self-involved. Fact, introspective and spiritual. Lie, high class whore. Truth, generous lover of foreign-born orphans. I go to freaking church! I am a mystery, wrapped in a riddle, inside an enigma having stand-up sex from behind with someone to whom I've not been formally introduced while never once noticing the camera crew.

Oh, and if you think you know my family, think again. "Rick" and "Kathy" are actually Gypsy Travelers who met when she was skimming the front desk register at the Hilton Tempe Arizona and he was a part-time bellhop who'd gotten kicked out of Scottsdale Community College for running numbers. They absconded east with the Hilton name, had me, my sister and two not very interesting brothers nobody ever talks about. Us girls were pushed into becoming child models so they'd never have to work again. Work is so not hot.

By the time we were in eighth grade, Nicky and I had made very big names for ourselves on the New York party circuit, so we figured enough with the book learning. Soon making big bucks posing semi-nude in the pages of Vogue, we discovered we could get lots more if we forgot we ever had any clothes except the ones Marc Jacobs would give us when he'd go on a bender with Sofia Coppola.

Things got a little hazy once I became addicted to Red Bull and Hoodia, but we must have figured we'd already stolen the Hilton name, why not start our own hotel chain? We'd give out the big bottle of shampoo and use real satin sheets instead of the shit that burns Mexican babies to death in their cribs. Nicky started dating that twisted little gnome from Entourage--don't ask--while I dabbled with becoming a pop star in Europe, which turns out to be way easier than it is here where people have talent. I even landed a Greek shipping heir who came from a really good Nazi family that ultimately spurned me due to my lack of breeding and education. Oh, who needed them when I could begin and end my acting career by being full body waxed to death in a forgettable re-make of a cult horror classic? Like my personal idol Evita Peron, also known as that old whore Madonna, I've always had a head for what the workers wanted.

Sensing that teenage girls everywhere wanted to smell like me, for example, I started my own fragrance line that costs you minimum wage slaves a half-day's pay per spritz. I opened a couple of totally off the hook nightclubs nobody could get into except me, which was cool because you tacky bitches couldn't afford my nachos anyway. Do you think it's easy getting a reality show on Fox? Do you think they'll give one to just anybody willing to exhibit poor judgment and bad taste in a motor home? My stand-in had to hug a farmer! My hand double had to milk a cow! Year after year after year, I had to work with that tubby Nicole Ritchie, who I'm pretty sure you've heard was adopted by some has-been musician with a barren wife.

I can't explain why the law would suddenly want to target me after turning a blind eye to so many minor infractions--public urination, civil rights violations, mowing down paparazzi with my car. Why the Los Angeles Police Department up and decided to do its job and treat me like some regular person, you'll have to ask that queeny little flack of mine whose fault this whole mess is to begin with.

All I can say about the night in question is the last time I had handcuffs on, they were mink--that's right, you PETA freaks, the bloody, screaming, dead animal kind--and they looked supercute with my Todd Oldham blindfold. I don't want to get into too many details, since Fred and Kim Goldman might go after me for the publishing rights, but let's just say if I did it, I may have spewed Appletini and Double Double With Cheese all over some ugly lieutenant's shoes and then called him a fat, poor jewboy from Compton.

Anyway, I have to go back to hugging myself from the cold and rocking back and forth in my cell like Sally Field in Sybill. I'm hoping one of the guards gets a good cell phone picture, since we're planning to split the half mil they're paying us at OK! I also plan to use it on the cover of my jailtime memoir, excerpted here without permission by that no-name blogger who calls herself "Julie Goes To Hollywood." As if anybody cares where that bloated, tired-ass, Perez Hilton wannabe goes and what she does when she gets there. So, so, so not hot.

JULIE BLOWS HER COVER

2007-06-15T09:04:00.000-07:00

I went to The Grove last weekend and paid eleven bucks to see a movie, eight bucks for a shrimp po'boy at that great Cajun place in The Farmer's Market, and twenty-two bucks for parking. For an additional three bucks I could have parked on the street and taken the expired one-hour meter ticket, so it's nice that they give you the option.

Granted, I parked at the fancy valet that looks like you could be pulling up to The Beverly Hills Four Seasons. They have couches, coffee tables, magazines and Tiffany lamps, and naturally they're going to want extra for that. There were only nineteen spots left in the regular parking, and the wait was estimated at half an hour, which would have meant missing the entire first trimester of Knocked Up. Either way, valet parking was a bold choice, since I've recently filed for unemployment, and my friend B. quit his sensible, well-paid job to find himself.

Living below the poverty line here in Hollywood, we are strangers in a strange land skulking around under cover. Since we are both loquacious, alarmingly overeducated and impeccably well-dressed, it's not much a challenge for B. and me to pull one over on our would be peers living the life that somehow eludes us. Passing muster with the ever suspicious help, however, is another matter. A guy who knows desperation when he smells it doesn't appreciate you masquerading around as one of them when you're really one of us.

I sensed I'd been made right up front when the valet made me an offer on my car. He was one of those fast talking young Latinos with a future in either high end auto sales or the ministry. I'm pretty sure he wasn't having this conversation with the drivers of the Mercedes and Lexus SUVs lining up all the way out to the curb for a crack at one of those monster salads at The Cheesecake Factory and a quick buzz through the housewares department at Barney's.

No, it was definitely the dented, 1998 Civic hatchback my mother passed down when she bought herself a new hybrid that gave me away. You have to roll your own windows up and down, so I shouldn't have been offended by his lowball offer. He seemed somehow hurt when I politely declined it, as though he couldn't imagine any other reason I'd be in this neighborhood if not to make a quick cash sale of my most valuable personal belonging.

In retrospect, my biggest mistake was laughing at him out loud, brushing him off and going back to my really important conversation with B. about Steven Spielberg's choice to support Hillary Clinton for President over Barack Obama. Three hours later, when I went to retrieve my car from the enormous, high-end operation, defying all odds, the same valet hopped out. He'd adjusted all the seats and mirrors and was listening to a festive Tejano station on the stereo. He'd either taken it to the car wash and asked for their cheapest air freshener or spent enough time driving it around town that his own cologne--I'm guessing an Aramis knock-off he picked up at Rite Aid--had perma-stamped his signature fragrance throughout the interior.

He seemed disappointed when I offered proof that I had indeed been able to pony up the colossal sum for the parking, as if my failure to do so might have resulted in his ownership of the vehicle by default. B.'s generous tip only added injury to insult. Taking my keys from him, I looked directly into his eyes, something people rarely do in this town, and I felt a twinge of guilt. While I have a dream to cling to like a life raft, bobbing up and down in this ocean of endless possibility while patiently awaiting my rescue, any number of equally deserving folks never even make it off the boat.

JULIE GETS NASTY

2007-06-13T13:24:00.000-07:00

You can always tell whether or not you're at a big Hollywood party by how many police roadblocks you have to pass on the way. Having been instructed to turn up my nose, wave and keep driving, I counted two en route to my friend B.'s the other night. He lives in a white-washed Mediterranean villa in Whitley Heights, the fancier part of town that can't help but look down on the rest of us. He's close enough to the Hollywood Bowl to hear the late night fireworks spectaculars. Since intermittent explosions lighting up the sky are actually quite startling when you're not expecting them, somebody mentioned the firecracker scene from Boogie Nights. In the waning days of his film career, porn star Dirk Diggler sets out to rob a heavily armed coke dealer, whose stoned Asian houseboy keeps setting them off in the already tense background. B. had read somewhere that Mark Wahlberg hadn't been told when to expect them, and thus the fear on his face was real.

My host further boasted an alarming knowledge of the inner workings of the adult film industry you wouldn't necessarily expect of an accountant who reads political blogs, buttons his shirts all the way up and drives a sensible Volvo. B. shared that they know him by name at the local Triple X video store and rattled off trends, genres and names of top stars and directors with the authority of a respected porn critic for Daily Variety. His next door neighbor N., a successful location scout who just wrapped an HBO pilot, claimed he'd be just as happy arranging permitting, insurance and a good place to park the honey wagons had he been coordinating a hard core porn shoot. Sadly, he reported, there's just no below-the-line money in porn, despite the attractive benefits package, friendly co-workers and inviting workplace environment.

L., a fortyish hot chick with a really good job, freely admitted to arranging weekly porn screenings among fellow well-heeled female professionals in Boston. I'm not sure exactly what L. does, but she was in town for the big digital filmmaking show last week so I think she's partly to blame for movies no longer having people in them. She said something about her father having gone to Wharton, which I misheard as her father having been a warden, but I'm pretty sure she grew up a pampered East Coast intellectual rather than a hard scrabble civil service legacy with a sweet view of the prison yard. She said she's open to any kind of porn--girl on girl, boy on boy, animal, vegetable, mineral--in the interest of learning new positions she can explore when things get dull in her next long term relationship. When I told her that the Showtime series Weeds offers a frank and graphic look at teenage sex, she wrinkled her nose, since she finds the idea of watching teenagers having sex disgusting.

I'm not sure of the age of the average porn star, but I'm going to go with eighteen last Tuesday. I didn't share this estimate, nor did I denounce the adult film business as the modern answer to slavery. Then again, at this type of uptown gathering I am generally the only person who actually has friends working in the sex industry, and I don't know any of them who are in it for the good times. They are in it because they like to eat. They wanted to be real stars, and when that didn't pan out, their bodies were all they had left to sell. While purveyors of porn insist it's all in good fun and otherwise right thinking consumers everywhere seem to agree, I can't picture any little girl enrolling in tap, jazz and ballet class in order to become a porn star when she grows up. You do this when your dream dies, and you don't know where or how to find another one.

While I wasn't interested in ruining anybody's cinematic fantasies, it happens I have a few illusions of my own. One is I like to believe I'm the only girl in the room when I'm having sex. In fact, my little kink is feeling as though I'm the only girl in the whole wide world, if only for a few stolen hours on a rainy afternoon. I do like pirates--as in Erroll Flynn, not Johnny Depp--so some good old-fashioned pirate porn might work for me if it were nominated for a Best Costume Oscar and directed by James Ivory. Oh, and if they would just hold a breathless moment or two longer to yell "Cut!" after Daniel Day-Lewis rolls up Michelle Pfeiffer's lace sleeve in the back of the Hansom cab in The Age of Innocence, that would do me just fine. To my mind, the hottest love scene of all time was the one between Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet in Titanic. It involved one red Model-T Ford and one steamy hand print on the back windshield.

I also like cowboys, cops and firemen, so any movie sex scenes involving any of those guys works, Brokeback Mountain notwithstanding. I'd happily take Jake, Heath, Jake and Heath, or any combination of Jake and Heath types offering themselves up for a little harmless voyeurism among consenting adults. That is until I found somebody real to be with. At that point, I wouldn't even have to watch movies. I would be living one, and there would be no need to go up to the Bowl to watch the freaking fireworks. How's that for pornographic? Of course, I didn't share a peep of this at my hillside Hollywood gathering. I wasn't so embarrassed about being a party pooper, a prude or a former Catholic schoolgirl as much as I was loathe to admit I'm just another dreamer from the flats trying to make the rent another month without having to call home and cry. This, like even the loveliest, best-endowed and most adventurous would be starlet, eventually gets old.

ROGERS AND ME

2007-06-10T12:46:00.001-07:00

I've been thinking a lot lately about Sally Rogers. My favorite character on The Dick Van Dyke Show, she was the first girl comedy writer I ever heard of, so as far as I was concerned, she must be what we were all supposed to look like. If all I needed was a smart mouth, a pair of sensible pumps and a dime store bow in my hair to make it in network television, show me the way to Woolworth's. Imagine my disappointment at learning that they won't let a woman meeting Sally's general description anywhere near the lot nowadays, except maybe to work the cash register at the commissary.

In the pilot episode, Rose Marie, the former film actress who played Sally, was thirty-eight years old. Her writing partner, Buddy, who got his start in vaudeville, was in his fifties, but they were inexplicably portrayed as being around the same age. She even called him "kid," but then she called everybody that. I was never sure what the deal was between Buddy and Sally, since he was supposedly married to somebody else--but even back in third grade, when I became hopelessly addicted to classic TV watching re-runs after school--I felt a certain forbidden tension in their relentless banter.

What really didn't add up for me, though, was the way Sally was far savvier than either Buddy or their head writer Rob at answering the senseless demands behind the scenes at The Alan Brady Show. As smart as she was, the poor girl couldn't get a decent date to save her life. Laura Petrie, meanwhile, was played by a twenty-four-year-old mother of a six-year-old child, putting Mary Tyler Moore in eleventh grade at the time old Dick knocked her up and moved her out to New Rochelle for a life of leisure. Remarkably, this fundamentally accurate depiction of socio-sexual politics driving the industry hasn't changed much over the last fifty years. This despite all that nonsense with the Women's Movement and the thousands of girl soldiers dying and dismembered in Iraq and that loud mouth one with the philandering husband who's running for president.

The upshot of all this is that I'm feeling a tad miffed today at having been unlinked by fellow bloggers Ken Levine and Craig Maizin. This is the blogospheric equivalent of asking a girl to leave a party because of an embarrassing drunken rant. I actually know Ken, peripherally, through his writing partner, a fellow Miamian who came to see me performing in an improv club back before South Beach was a cool place for either one of us to be. Coincidentally, they had a sitcom about a girl writer called Almost Perfect on the air at around the time I came out here. The character was the show runner of a hard-nosed cop show who would call her daddy and cry when the guys beneath her were mean. Although I didn't know it at the time, that too was a spot-on skewering of the goings on in a typical writer's room.

What I like about Ken's blog is that unlike everybody else in Hollywood, Ken actually does know everything, and he really has been around forever. He's not old or anything, just a very young success I'm told was running M*A*S*H* by the time he was in his mid-twenties. I was like eleven at the time, so by all rights the job should have been mine. I suspect the real reason his blog is so popular is that deluded fans like me honestly believe he'll have an astonishing late career success and start doling out jobs based on the pithy one upsmanship going on in his comments section.

Craig I don't know personally, but when he first linked "Things They Don't Tell You In Film School," he probably expected semi-relevant screenwriting tips from someone who actually has some of those to share. A top feature writer and longtime activist, his site offers a valid service to aspirants--though I'd wager that the bulk of his anonymous commentary is left by major screenwriters representing warring factions within the Writers Guild. Half the time I have no idea what the heck they're talking about, the other half I find it a bit hard to care, inasmuch as gender inequity, fat discrimination, how to extend an unemployment claim and other super important stuff that's all about me so rarely comes up among the big boys.

I don't personally know any girl bloggers in the Scribosphere, although I like Jane Espensen because she always tells you what she had for lunch. I think that's an important thing to know about people, as is what they choose to wear in front of the computer and whether or not they drink and blog. A turkey sandwich, pajamas, and hell yes are my current stats. Diablo Cody isn't really one of us, since she was a blogger before she was a screenwriter as opposed to vice versa. She's also a former stripper who wrote a memoir called Candy Girl resulting in a three-picture blind deal at Paramount. What can I tell you, powerful men like whores. Not that I'm accusing her of being a whore, just because she sold her body for money and got a career out of it, so please don't have her lawyers call my lawyers. And yes, I am just jealous, especially since she also wrote an impossibly buzzworthy first screenplay, Juno, which white hot director Jason Reitman just wrapped for John Malkovich's production company. It's about a girl who sells her baby and thinks it's funny. I'm predicting this one becomes next year's Little Miss Sunshine. As for Jill Soloway, her post entitled "Courtney Cox's Asshole," may be the funniest piece of American literature to come down the "pike" in the last century.

Sometimes I think we're this big Algonquin Round Table in the sky, and I only wish I were a latter day Dorothy Parker, who never wrote a novel or any real masterpiece and is thus best remembered for her easy way with a quip fueled by talent, martinis and bitterness. If she had a blog in her declining Hollywood years, I might have unlinked the poor dear myself. Other days, I'm good old Sal, only with too much fashion sense to shellac my hair into an immovable wave and paint my lips into a permanent smile--and too many street smarts to believe the truly important thing is to keep them laughing in the aisles. Unless of course you're writing about the bleached anal canal of a certain Mrs. David Cox-Arquette. Damn, I wish I'd come up with that one.

POMP AND UNFORTUNATE CIRCUMSTANCE

2007-06-09T09:51:00.000-07:00

Three years ago next week, I graduated from the world's top film school with an MFA in Screenwriting. Since that time I have exhausted two unemployment claims, sold off family heirlooms at the Fairfax Flea Market, worked in the subscriptions department of The Hollywood Reporter as the world's most overqualified temp, and landed a highly overpaid studio writing assignment at the behest of a major movie star. To know what kind of mood I'm in on any given day, I have to check my calendar and get back to you.

The good news is screenplays are either worth nothing at all or a whole lot of coin, and I made enough selling one recently to support myself grandly over the next four years. That is as long as I downgrade my Netflix subscription, cancel Showtime and HBO, and knock off the Starbucks except when I happen to be there on a blind date that's not going well. I may also have to read The National Enquirer in line at the grocery store while cool people point and stare rather than surreptitiously sneaking it into my cart. I did clear the guild minimum to qualify for medical benefits over the next two calendar years, although my Fancy Pants Beverly Hills Lawyer had to call the studio and beg for an extra eight hundred and fourteen bucks, which is coincidentally the amount of his tab at Mr. Chow's when he takes his real clients out to lunch.

As for my creative achievements, I've met with several hundred producers, two of them Best Picture Oscar winners. One invited me to touch his. The other proposed I write a little talking dog movie for him off the clock, which he and I would take out together in the event he liked it. He didn't and we didn't, which was okay by me because Lord knows I didn't. Besides, by the time I was finished with the third free draft he was really busy producing a critically acclaimed box office blockbuster that won the Golden Globe that year. I plan to go back and touch that any day, except in the event that I don't finish my second buzzworthy spec feature in time for the writers strike and have to head back to the flea market with my dwindling box of heirlooms.

I've completed the aforementioned big budget R-rated comedy, which went into turnaround at the studio before the ink was even dry on my contract. I've written three unsold screenplays, this blog, a book proposal based on this blog, and a sitcom pilot about a blogging screenwriter whose life begins to change when she moves into a legendary bungalow village peopled with crazy Hollywood types. This was just picked up as a series at CBS, although it was written by somebody else--and the fledgling filmmaker in question, in a nod to authenticity given the industry's unapologetic gender bias, is a dude. It stars Jeffrey Tambor, who definitely would have played
Opera Boy in my version; and Raquel Welch, who could have been the lonely music magazine editor with the bum leg across across my courtyard who has her beer trucked in from Albertson's once a month and stacked in cases in her living room. I propose a new college drinking game where every time somebody steals my life and sells it to Hollywood for big bucks, another starry-eyed film student must knock back a fifth of drugstore brand gin and change majors.

I remember looking at the merry-making undergrads during commencement ceremonies--a particularly loud and showy bunch, given their status as newly pedigreed theater and film freaks--and thinking, wow, this is the last happy day of your life. Talent is a curse I'd learned to live under all those years I denied mine, and it was hard to watch it preying upon the innocent. The showbiz bug is something akin to a vampire bite promising a swift death followed by an endless quest for fresh blood and the paradoxical promise of immortality. Even with the occasional trickles of success--the thrills of victory, the agonies of defeat--it isn't any kind of life, just a possibility of one that never quite seems to deliver. And I wouldn't trade a day of it for a truckload of drugstore gin and a lifetime of free beer at Albertson's.

WE'LL ALWAYS HAVE PARIS

2007-06-07T09:22:00.000-07:00

I happened on a TV documentary about hookers in Hollywood and couldn't help but notice they all live on my block. At least that's the way it appeared, since they get their nails done where I get my nails done, shoplift at my Ralph's and frequent my Jack-In-The Box on foot through the all-night drive-thru. I never really see them there in real life, so maybe we're on different schedules with our errands. Especially since they seem to be getting work in network television while I can't get arrested these days.

I did see a pair of trannies on the street yesterday, one splayed out on the sidewalk in black vinyl shorts and a cotton candy pink wig, the other one cradling her head. Although the pink-haired one was unconscious, her friend was chatting away as though they were a couple of seventh graders at a really fun slumber party. I couldn't hear what she was saying, since I had my windows up and the air on. But it was definitely something out of a Gus Van Sant movie. Something tragic and beautiful, a scene so sexy you're ashamed it's happening in public and you're some ghoulish spectator watching it as though it were street theater rather than somebody else's sad little Hollywood story.

Which brings me to The Paris Hilton Matter. I am deeply concerned that she's been released from the slammer due to an "unspecified medical condition." I'm sure the tranny hookers from my side of town have all kinds of unspecified medical conditions, but when the judge gives them forty-five days, I'm guessing my girls do forty-six. Take away the money, the Bentley and the pedigree, and what is Paris, really, other than another flashy, trashy, overdone Hollywood working girl? I mean if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck.

How is it that this no talent "spokesomedel" "actress" "singer" "entrepreneur" even survived getting caught on tape using a certain racial epithat that got a certain formerly beloved comedian banned from the public eye for life? When she was heard dissing some "public school girl from Compton" on her second most memorable video, I had to wonder if she ever in fact attended any school, anywhere. I can't imagine her having graduated from one of the Seven Sisters colleges in the grand tradition of even the sluttiest and most depraved heiresses from days of yore. As troubled a youth as Gloria Vanderbilt had--one marked by scandals, affairs and tragedy--it's hard to picture Anderson Cooper's debutante mother walking around town with her skirt up around her head and her panties gone missing. Or stumping for Carl's Junior soaped up in some back alley garage with a wedgie up her ass. Or hanging out with a foul-mouthed friend who goes by the name "Greasy Bear" and fancies himself the next generation of American royalty. I say bring back the Kennedys. At least they had that one great generation--the war hero who died young, the guy with the bad back and the great speeches, the one in the underrated Emilio Estevez movie--who came just this close to changing the world, with or without their pants on.

I know I live in a rough neighborhood--you've got Lindsay Lohan's underage drinking at the Hotel Roosevelt, Nicole Ritchie's heroin takedown on the Hollywood Freeway, Phil Spector blowing away the hostesses over at the House of Blues. But if they're going to let the hotel heiresses out of jail to drive around town eating cheeseburgers with their lights off and their legs up in the air without fear of retribution, tonight's the night I lock the door.

ALL MY EGGS IN ONE BASTARD

2007-06-05T09:37:00.001-07:00

Two friends of mine went to see a new stand-up comic at the Equity-waiver Hudson Theater last week, and one of them asked if he could buy her baby. Actually, he asked if she was still interested in being an egg donor, the subject of her monologue, and also her former day job. No, she wasn't interested, thank you, not in the least. This would be the equivalent of asking me if I wouldn't mine running down to The Hollywood Reporter and taking a couple of subscription orders for fun and profit. It's one thing to use past humiliations as fodder for our creative work, another thing altogether to suggest we go back and re-live them.

This got me to thinking about the Warner Brothers Writers Workshop, the coveted and prestigious studio apprenticeship program in which I landed a spot, only to learn I wouldn't wish such an "honor" on Ossama Bin Laden. It was my first year out here, and I hadn't yet learned my way around the inviolate rules of a town so deceptively boastful of not having any. The first of these, my father warned me, is that there's always a catch. There was something suspicious, he said, about "winning" this rare and invaluable career opportunity over thousands of other applicants--only to be asked to pony up five hundred bucks for the pleasure.

Not everybody has a dad with a checkbook. During the first meeting of the two dozen of us who'd been chosen from the throngs to be groomed for a lucrative future in sitcom writing, I met V., who was eight and a half months pregnant. Had I known how the program worked, I would have wondered about the wisdom of timing two such blessed events--motherhood and a knock down, drag-out race to earn overpaid employment on the mangled bones of weaker competitors. However, as we went around the room to explain in thirty seconds or less why we were so clearly deserving of our seats, V. freely admitted to being a womb-for-hire. Actually, she said "surrogate mother," but the math was done either way. V. showed up a couple of weeks later no longer pregnant, put a big smile on her face and delivered a hijinx-driven Dharma and Greg script ready for tabling.

Soon selling family heirlooms at the Fairfax Flea Market to make the rent, who was I to judge? Especially since I fell substantially short and had to borrow it from my parents anyway. It wasn't that they didn't have it to give, it's just that by then it came with The Big Lecture about how my life wasn't working and how much community respect and vacation time you get when you teach junior high school in Umatilla, Florida. My time at Warner Brothers hadn't gone so well after a series of political missteps that had nothing to do with the writing and everything to do with inadvertently insulting one of the sluttier studio executives. She'd given a script note about strippers at a bachelor party in an Everybody Loves Raymond spec, and I couldn't help quipping about her choice to go braless that day. This was supposed to demonstrate my comfort with becoming the scant girl in one of those unapologetically filthy little boys clubs known as sitcom writer's rooms. I was quickly shown the door, having failed miserably to "advance to professional status." Sadly, neither had V. I'm not sure what became of her, but she never worked as a credited writer.

I think the reason they want writers to be so painfully young in this town is so we don't know anything yet. Not who we are, not who they are. Not that some people sell their souls to the devil for one shot at making it, and others sell their unborn children. Certainly not that the luckiest of all just sell out. Or maybe it just looks that way. Maybe the real lucky one was the comedienne up on the stage in that ninety-nine seat theater, the one who lived to tell the tale, learned to laugh along the way and developed her own means of spreading it around. Yeah, that's the girl I want to be, the girl I have to be or die trying. Like Dorothy Parker, who famously quipped her way around Hollywood with a drink in her hand and a flagrant disregard for the whole damn lot of local naysayers, "I put all my eggs in one bastard."

JULIE KICKS #*&!#!! AND NAMES NAMES

2007-06-01T20:19:00.000-07:00

Alright, enough with the initials, monikers and obtuse insider references. It was E. N. who saved my life. Yes, that E.N. The two-time Oscar nominee, the actor’s actor, the thinking woman’s matinee idol. After a decade of spectacular failure, Universal Pictures—yes, that Universal Pictures—hired me to develop a big budget motion picture for him to produce and maybe even star in. Believing that I’d finally managed to “break in” through the heroic intervention of an A-list movie star, friends began inquiring what the real E. was like. “E. is just awesome,” I’d reply, bravely bypassing first name basis to entertain something even cheekier, such as “E-Man,” “Norto” or “Eddy From The Block.” I gushed about how supportive the big guy had been, how close and dedicated a collaborator.

I probably wasn’t the best person to ask about any of this, since E. and I had never met. Apparently this isn’t done when one of you is something of a household name and the other a no-name recent film school graduate. Only after surviving my epic struggle to ink that first big deal did I discover that “uncredited screenwriter” ranks somewhere down near “celebrity stalker” on the slippery Tinseltown totem pole.

Because he’d previously been positioned as a character actor rather than a romantic lead, I didn’t initially comprehend just how big a star he was. Though I was vaguely aware that he’d played a pornographer’s lawyer, a Neo-Nazi skinhead, an underground poker player and a guy who beats up his buddies for sport, I had never caught any of the testosterone-driven flicks in which he did so. No, this was hardly the brand of overheated chick fare I’d have rushed out to the theaters to see three times on opening weekend alone like, oh say, Titanic. If E. were Leo, or even Brad—if he’d been Keanu Reeves, Russell Crowe, or anybody else I’d seen bare ass naked—I’d have lowered my expectations in the way of face time.

It was only by coincidence that E. and I were scheduled to cross paths at a Writer’s Guild screening he was hosting to generate support for a little art house film he produced. Since his partner B. was headed for New York that weekend, I said I’d go ahead and introduce myself. “Oh, I really can’t recommend that,” B. waffled uneasily. My first thought was that B. had secretly been arranging a poolside lunch introduction at E.'s remote, solar-powered canyon home, and here I’d gone and spoiled the surprise. My second thought was that E. had no idea whatsoever that I even existed! Had I never seen an episode of Entourage? When B. admitted to fending off people like me at these events, my big deal “producer” may as well have been Eric, Turtle or the ineffectual Johnny Drama. I stressed that this was an industry gathering, not some P.R. stunt at the Hoboken Galleria. “I am a writer,” I insisted. “I’m his writer.”

“We work with a lot of writers on a lot of projects,” B. responded in that bemused voice grown-ups use to correct adorable toddlers. He assured me that E. would slip out the back door and into a waiting Town Car before the lights came up. “Don’t take it personally,” he added. “Don’t you know celebrities are the new royalty?”

It wouldn’t have mattered a whit to me if E. were the old royalty, with a furry crown on his head and a bejeweled orb protruding from his person! He was also my champion, my white knight, my devoted benefactor, if only by silent proxy. The least I could offer him was a nod of gratitude with a meaningful squeeze of his hand. Part of me knew that B. only meant to shield me from the receiving end of some awkward movie star snub that makes Defamer the next morning beside a horribly unflattering photo. The other part didn’t care.

Determined to assume my hard-won place in E.’s spotlight, I marched into the screening to size him up for myself—albeit from a safe distance, third row, far left. After the film, a remarkably relaxed E. materialized at last, taking center stage to answer audience questions. He seemed jovial, open and warm—genuinely humbled by the writing community’s support of his passion project. Deeply moved by this exhibition of mutual respect, we all quietly pledged our bloc of Academy votes to him throughout the upcoming awards season.

As things wound down, I defied B. altogether to make a beeline for this clearly receptive, ordinary Joe—until a terrible thought stopped me cold. E.N. can make you believe whatever he wants you to believe. That's his thing. Hadn’t he first waltzed onto the big screen a total unknown and waltzed off with with Richard Gere’s career? He’d literally blown away the whole cast ten minutes into the movie with the boat races through Venice and the Mini Cooper races through wherever that was. You might call this man the original illusionist for God’s sake, and I couldn’t let him shatter the last of mine just when I’d finally arrived.

No, I hadn’t come this far to force myself on him like some sort of giddy fan. Anyway, he and I would become inseparable once our film got up and running, working as one to hone the nuances of another powerfully E. N.-esque vehicle. Oh, how the two of us would laugh about the night we almost met while campaigning together for our own round of awards.

Or maybe I’d somehow allowed him to stand as a metaphor for my entire Hollywood experience. Here I’d spent so much time looking for E. I didn’t know how to stop—even when he was standing right in front of me. I watched him disappear into the thinning crowd before I slinked off alone, making a quick visit to the ladies’ room. Exiting moments later, however, I nearly plowed into him. “Hi E.,” I considered sharing with a sly smile. “I’m Julie.”

“Oh yeah?” I imagined him firing back, looking me up and down. “Julie who?”

Instead, our eyes meeting for the briefest moment, I chose to look through Mr. Edward Norton and keep right on walking. Yeah, he might be the king. But we all know who the queen is.

JULIE, FULLY LOADED

2007-05-29T19:05:00.001-07:00

I have officially experienced my most surreal, life imitating art, Hollywood moment to date. Taking one of my many daily scheduled breaks from writing my latest spec script, I tuned in to CNN to watch my personal idol, Nancy Grace. Naturally her topic was the Lindsay Lohan Affair, not to be confused with the many previous Lindsay Lohan Episodes or Lindsay Lohan Scandals, none of which involved fleeing the scene of an accident, subsequent arrest at the hospital, and the alleged possession of cocaine. Apparently the poor dear's felonious odyssey began at the Hotel Roosevelt, which is just far away from my house for me to have the ideal view of its famous, seventy-five-year-old sign. Nancy's correspondent, Sibila Vargas, was reporting live via satellite from a place that looked strikingly familiar. I walked outside to discover her crew just down the block and her cameras pointed in the general direction of my house.

I don't write much about movie stars here, except the few I've met, most of whom have gone on to annoy me enough to inspire only thinly disguised identities. To my mind, this town doesn't belong to them at all, but to the rest of us. The people who truly run Hollywood do so on the sheer force of our undying desperation, fueled by those big dreams and persistent passions even protracted failure can't quite seem to tamp down. For people like me--who've enjoyed some measure of success only to find even sporadic employment is no guarantee of Hollywood immortality--talent is a curse. With it comes the indefatigable belief that moving on, rather than staying to put up a fight, is clearly the hollower of two flawed dreams.

All this makes me wonder what life here must be like for someone whose meteoric rise to the top began at the age of ten. My friend D. was a child star, appearing as Winnie Cooper on The Wonder Years from the time she was in seventh grade. We met in film school, where D. was auditing screenwriting classes, and she went on to play the role of me in a staged reading of my semi-autobiographical thesis script. D. told me she hadn't been interested in acting until a friend of her mother's--the actress Lesley Ann Warren, who played Cinderella in the Rogers & Hammerstein movie in the early 60s--told her she had star quality. Though D. had a recurring role on The West Wing a few years back, her adult career has been less than remarkable. She remains, however, both suprisingly balanced and completely realistic. She writes and develops her own material, manages her money well, does stage work to hone her creative muscle and studies ballroom dancing for fun. Once in awhile I see her posing on some red carpet for the fashion page of the National Enquirer, which I'm not the least bit ashamed of telling her I read, adding that I always buy it along with that week's edition of The New Yorker.

I suppose the difference between D. and other child stars is superior parenting. D. is very close to her mother, who really looks more like a sister, as well as to her actual sister, who was also a child actress. The three of them sent me a Christmas card last year costumed as full-on elves, complete with North Pole scenery and prop reindeers. It's the kind of thing my family would do if we were all show-offy instead of only me.

Would I trade all my struggles for a shot at being an A-list actress by the age of twenty? You bet. Would I like to be rich and famous and skinny as a rail? Absolutely. Would I like to have my pick of all the best projects, to spend my days shopping on Robertson Boulevard, my afternoons poolside at Chateau Marmont and my nights sipping cocktails at Teddy's? Hell yes. What I wouldn't dream of trading in exchange is a mom and dad who love me with all their hearts and would be there if I fell, no matter how far away I was or how long it took to bring me home. I don't think Lindsay Lohan has any of that. I don't think she has anything.

JULIE TALKS SHOP

2007-05-24T23:03:00.001-07:00

I don't tend to dwell on industry issues here, since it's the only place in the world that actually is all about me so I don't have to waste energy feigning interest in things that might detract from that happy delusion. However, with all the talk about the looming writers' strike--the male posturing in the trades, the accusatory he said he said e-mails, the foreboding "Pattern of Demands" postmarked today that requires my urgent attention and support--I figured I'd offer a shout-out to the guys in charge. We don't care.

We want to care. We know we should care. But inasmuch as we can't imagine any of it ever applying to us, we can't seem to get invested in figuring out just what it is you're getting at. There are 13,000 WGA West members and 12,910 of us are really busy looking for our next jobs. As for the remaining ninety of you, I am dubious about your steadfast insistence that I receive "the first opportunity to write the interactive game" based on my feature films and original television series.

The thing is this hasn't come up lately--okay, ever--nor have "certain ancillary uses" of my comedy-variety materials, since only one in seventeen writing jobs in this particular area go to a girl in the first place. When's the last time you saw one of us standing up there in a tux behind Jon Stewart at the Emmys? If The Daily Show had seventeen girls on staff, it would be known as the biggest dykefest on the airwaves. Most perplexing of all is some obtuse demand for increased funding of showrunner training. This comprises the most exclusionary and highest paid of all branches of the guild, so it's unclear as to why these guys should receive more money to find creative new ways to shun me.

Don't get me wrong, boys, I'm very pro union, and you can rely on my vote to support whatever agenda you ask me to support. I will vote to strike and I will walk the picket line, as long as I get the free sunscreen and t-shirt. I mean, "Norma Rae!" and all that. How cute was Sally Field, fists raised, in her blue collar belly shirt and tight little Jordache jeans? No wonder Charlize Theron copied her hairdo when the movie was re-made as North Country, also formerly known as Erin Brockovich. My point being that there is strength in numbers, and I am damn happy to finally have defied my age and gender to be counted among the ranks of the "working" Hollywood writer.

I also know that without the union screenwriters would routinely be expected to clean the producer's pool when delivering a two hundred million dollar Jack Black vehicle we were hired to write for ten bucks an hour plus lunch and gas. For that, I am forever grateful to the Hollywood Ten and the rest of the McCarthy-era organizers who risked being branded commie pinkos in an effort to seek fair treatment for generations of writers to come. I just think we should all be focusing on things that are more important to moi.

My personal Pattern of Demands begins with certain improvements to the Health Plan. I think it should include free plastic surgery treatments for underemployed female writers approaching forty. There are only twelve members who meet this general description, so really, what could it cost? I think spa treatments should be covered at ninety percent after meeting the lowered annual deductible, along with manicures, pedicures and the removal, shaping, or conditioning of any and all unwanted hair. The Pension Plan should kick in at thirty-eight, but you should only have to admit to thirty-four in order to become fully vested. One-hour television episodes should include a new pair of shoes of the writer's choice, and the minimum basic agreement on original features should be expanded to require daily deliveries from California Pizza Kitchen. Re-writes, well, they shouldn't be allowed at all. In the event I ever want another writer's opinion on my work, I'll be sure to ask for it and get back to you.

That's about all I can think of for now, but I will not be ignored, and I will not go away. One person's voice is where it all starts, and mine will be raised until somebody sits up and takes note. Imagine my twelve-year-old wiener dogs' surprise when I lie in bed with them chanting--Norma Rae, Norma Rae, Norma Rae--until one or both roll over and fart to express unflinching support of my cause.

WHAT TO DO WHEN YOUR DAD BECOMES AN ACTION STAR

2007-05-20T11:09:00.000-07:00

It's a tricky thing, writing about people you love. And I don't only mean from a legal standpoint, which is a whole other can of worms when most of them are lawyers, but also on a more emotional level. The one where you're afraid they might get together and shun you if they ever so much as read your blasphemous diatribe, officially disown you if anybody else reads it, and execute you as a heritic in the unlikely event it actually gets made.

I like to write about my family. I suppose I'm inspired by people who once lived in my house over those living in other people's houses because I know this particular bunch much better. Also because I love them. Oh, and because we are a loud and aggressive clan, particularly when confronting one another as a group, and I'm not sure any of them fully understood my point of view the first time around.

My mother is a retired English teacher with an advanced degree in British Literature. Naturally I expect a degree of objective professionalism from her when offering up my work for a proofread. However, when recognizing characters she may have married or given birth to confronting situations she remembers quite differently, her reaction is as mixed as the rest of the family. On the one hand, they are all flattered to be memorialized, even in something as flimsy and irrelevant as an unproduced screenplay. On the other hand, they are highly insulted. An indignant re-working of a "scene or two" is requested at once, and since I asked, one particular character's over-arching motivations could use some re-tooling throughout!

What loved ones have trouble undersanding is that regardless of who inspires them, characters exist only to serve the story. If I were looking for historical accuracy, I would be a failed documentarian, not a failed screenwriter of heartbreaking and poignant adult family dramedies. Back in film school, My Legendary Story Structure Professor handed out a sheet of loglines of various classics, which in and of themselves were open to extreme interpretation. "Traumatized Kansas runaway suffering a severe head injury falls under the spell of three homeless men in the grip of their own psychiatric issues," for example, would become a very different film than The Wizard of Oz in the hands of, say, David Lynch. My professor's point was not only that there is no such thing as an original idea, but also that there is no such sin as thievery. Writers who don't borrow from their own lives in an effort to imbue their stories with an air of authenticity are otherwise known as hacks.

I'm in this midst of writing a new spec script loosely based on a family vacation whose protagonist is a man vaguely resembling my father. Him and Steve Martin, actually, since I'm no fool and I'd like to actually sell the damn thing this time around. My goal is to make my dad not only my real life hero but also the hero of a big screen Hollywood adventure. Then again, I hope he knows that fictional heroes are flawed. In movies that do any box office at all, they are often animated, lacking in personal insight and the butts of their own jokes.

Though he's now retired, my father was once a big, blustery Miami lawyer, whose unlikely connection to Hollywood was a cameo in The Birdcage. In the scene where Robin Williams convinces Christine Baranski to meet Calista Flockhart's parents, she is held up by an open causeway leading to the mainland. At the request of a city official he knew from the Rotary Club, my father agreed to sail his boat at full mast again and again beneath the draw-bridge. Though amused at the idea of his becoming an action star, I'd have been even more impressed had his direction been provided by Mike Nichols himself rather than some no-name second unit A.D. with a bullhorn.

Dad also once negotiated a Hollywood deal for a client whose bayfront mansion served as the primary location for Two Much, memorable only as the film on which Melanie Griffith first met the then married to someone else Antonio Banderas. The sexy European superstar was attempting to cross over on the heels of his early work with Pedro Almodovar. Never having heard of any of these people, Dad walked right past "the little Spanish guy," likely mistaking him for a cater waiter. I'm not sure if Dad asked the leading man for a Myers on the rocks, but that was Dad's drink, so it's a safe bet if his big star sighting happened to occur around cocktail hour.

Dark rum and expensive steak and cigars. That's how I remember my Dad smelling growing up. I remember him stepping into his big white Mercedes at the valet of a fancy restaurant after treating me to a special birthday lunch. "Have a martini," he would say. "You're old enough now, aren't you? Go on and order the Caesar salad, they make it right at the table." But that's not the dad I'm writing about, mostly because that one doesn't work with the story. I need to focus on the hapless dad bellowing orders on his sailboat while the rest of us did our best to ignore him. The dad who wants something, in this case a loyal and receptive crew, and can't get it until the bittersweet end when he learns the price was too high. That's the movie version. For the Hallmark version, I'll have to spring for the oversized card come Father's Day. And pray that this is the one that gets made, because while he may not know a thing about Spanish independent cinema, I sense my father will recognize a loving homage when he sees one coming his way.