Today, I saw people commenting on a ribbon worn to the Queen’s funeral.

I don’t know what is to be gained by pointing out you know an obscure rule.

I only see a woman in mourning with a black ribbon.

I guess you see a chance to be right?

So strange.

It used to cling to me like an electric skin whenever I emerged from the NY subway.

A film that crinkled uncomfortably with every motion.

Sometimes it made its way from within, a buzz anchored in coffee and a glazed raspberry filled donut from the steel plated cart at 53rd and 3rd.

These days it stalks in the evening when children complain and disobey and the fucking HBO won’t work properly.

It drives thoughts to places that are unhelpful and unloving. Lonely, miserable corner of self-pity.

I can’t walk it off. I can’t sleep it off. I can’t read it off. I can’t drive it off. I can’t talk it off. I can’t drink it off (Oh, no, I can’t drink it off.)

I’d like to fuck it off, but that takes two and it makes me unattractive to her and too selfish to want anything but self-satisfaction.

Agitation.

I fucking hate you.

I’m noticing lately that I lose words mid-sentence.

I will be rolling along and then WHANG! there’s an open space where the word should be but isn’t.

When it first started I’d flail like someone who’s lost their glasses in the dark. I’d see myself on my hands and knees crawling the floor of my mind feeling around: I put that damn thing somewhere but where. Shit. Where is it?

Occasionally, in a panicked desperation to fill the air, I’d use it before realizing it was the wrong one.

Sometimes I feel it as it is happening — the way you do when you force a puzzle piece into a place where it does not fit. But more often than not I find myself on the other side of the sound of the word and know that is it wrong. The sharp light of judgement from others only makes this awareness more awkwardly painful, harder to pull back from.

Oh, god, now where am I going? Should I follow it or just keep hemming and hawing until I get the right one? Or should I pretend it’s the right one and see where it takes me?

It can be subtle, a quick detour in a moment anyone might take as a normal pause. A. And when the words do re-appear right where I left them so my flail looks more like a strain for accuracy than outright gap, the swift recovery can make me wonder if recent work on my self-awareness has created the noticing of a problem I’d always had.

But it’s been happening enough now that there’s no doubt I’m kidding myself with that thought. Plus, my memory of words is sharp and sure. I’d never had trouble making it through the monkey bars of thoughts and conversation. My ideas and responses were synonymous with my language choices, as seamless and smooth to touch as a satin skin.

These days, I can feel listeners leaning forward trying to figure out if they can help while I search. They’ll offer answers in darts and when I’m lucky they are right. Real embarrassment blossoms though when they are not and I have to say, No, that’s not it and either move on in an incomplete state or push on with the search.

Some chalk it up to lack of sleep. Surely that could be it.

But it’s been happening enough that I ask myself if something deeper has changed.

(And I wonder if others ask the same.)

That’s when the darkest fear creeps in under the door — beyond the chaos of a world without language. Is this the noticing of the slow decline? The first signs of the unpeeling that happens to us all?

It’s mixed with loss, too. The loss of all things words have led me to and the potential to lead me to more.

(Oh, words, you have brought me so many things. Ideas and plans. Surprises and sweetness. Love and friends. Forgiveness and change. You have brought me theatre and poetry. You have brought me into the great minds of others. You have let me share my thoughts and helped me feel less alone in this skin. You have led me to a woman who I’ve built a life with. You’ve helped me manage tears and navigate friendships. You brought a career and a living. You have gotten me in trouble and save my life. You have crystallized moments and helped define who I am. The prayers I’ve made with you have been answered in ways I can’t use you to express.)

When I am really down, I worry it will lead to silence. Not the kind of silence that is a choice that brings clarity and peace and makes every word count more — a silence that is a word itself. But the other, a silence that smells like a coffin that you are buried alive in.

And all this now comes to me in the space that comes when WHANG! I reach out and there is nothing…

Arthritis is showing up in my right hand these days.

I wake up to painful flexing and stiffness.

It gives me pause to wonder about the direction of things.

Even though I am aware of the finiteness of the world as never before, I (and we) keep living like there’s still plenty of time. In fact, like there’s no end to it.

But conversations with friends keep popping up that have nuggets like this in them: ”I talked to my financial advisor who pointed out that I probably only have another 10-15 years of work like this in front of me. My career coach asked me how do I want to do it?”

Aside from the immense privilege implied by all of it, it makes me consider how little I’ve really planned.

How unintentional I’ve been.

I followed my heart and passions in any direction they took me.

I realize now that this blindness has been aided and abetted by the ignoring of time.

I’m a father of two boys. Husband to a woman I’m worried is deeply unhappy about the choice to marry me and what the decisions that came after have meant for her career.

We sleep without touching and I miss the potential of that love.

I’ve played with desiring others, flirted with the sober women at the meetings, led myself to think I had more attraction that I really do.

But I look in the mirror and the the 35 year-old is nowhere to be seen.

I don’t write much any more and I miss the thought of maybe being great — but realize that maybe greatness was never within anyway.

Truth is, I don’t know what I’m doing.

I never did.

I have to admit, I miss the counselor.

Is it because I want someone to complain to without truly living with the consequences?

Is it that I want a relationship that’s really mine?

Is it a way to have a tantalizing dream that there’s still a chance at a another life - even though I know time is running out?

Or something else?

Hard to say. But at least I’m asking.

We aren’t what we used to be. But I don’t know what we’re becoming.

We are like once-upon-a-time lovers who are now roommates and managers of children who we see with separate eyes.

We flirt, but we are too tired at 9 pm to do anything except pass out from exhaustion and old age.

I’m not giving up, but I’m trying not to hold on to what we were so that resentment can’t build the way I know it can.

We are still beautiful. We are still here. We are still together.

Still…

Let’s get through this part and make love again, soon.

The last three years have been looking back.

That coincides with this blog almost perfectly.

But for some reason, I’m looking back less.

I find myself not as interested in who I was.

What’s right in front of me holds more appeal.

Is that the reason I threw out all the memorabilia on this move?

Is H finding the same thing? A loss of interest in who we were? I saw she’d thrown away old photos of herself — and even the kids. It felt like a violent rejection of who we’ve been. Of the ghosts that make us who we are.

Yet, looking at the letters from the old friends and women I’d loved I have to confess: I simply didn’t feel anything. Instead I thought, Why am I holding on to this?

I haven’t thought of Rachel in years. I haven’t read this letter from her since I opened it the first time 30 or more years ago.

Ascha has kids in Oakland now. Does she remember this moment captured in the polaroid of us in front of a bookstore?

And so it went.

Maybe we’re really ready to say farewell to the ideas of who we were — preserved in frames that sit on our bookshelves and in letters we keep in shoeboxes at the back of the closet.

Today is one of the last conversations I may have with L, my therapist.

Her hobbies take her to the improv world and so we know some of the same people.

She seems to know me well. But we’ve never met in person.

When I was up in the Bay last spring, I snuck over to her office to see where she worked. But to my knowledge, she’s never talked to me from that tiny room, since we met in the time of zoom.

I think that zoom has surprisingly made the relationship healthier, the therapy more impactful.

Somehow it’s been deeply meaningful without feeling dependent on her presence.

She came after E, my first therapist.

I actually made sure they talked partly because I was so attached.

L helped me get through that relationship with E. She helped me understand it. She helped me see the pattern.

L’s way of EMDR, the distance of zoom, but the intimacy of our conversations were all healthier than the ones I developed with E.

Now, it’s time to move on here, too.

We’ll reconnect in two months to see how it goes.

After nearly 5 years of therapy, it’s time to fly on my own.

I remember once attending a reading and getting a ride home from the director.

The car was crowded with actors he was taking back too. It was tight, but I was happy to be inside, away from the cold, foggy, San Francisco night.

One of the actors was an older man in what seemed to me to be ridiculous artist garb.

Black pants. Black turtle neck.

I remember his white hair in particular because it was the one thing I was jealous of: It was thick and wavy — very Samual Beckett, of all things.

As we drove down Polk Street, his stories started to dominate the conversation.

He’d been part of the old San Francisco avant-garde. He recounted a theatre of experiment and self-exploration. He recalled stages that were indistinguishable from audiences. He talked about shows that ended in wild naked orgies.

At a stop light deep in the Tenderloin, I looked out at a man in drag asking passersby if they had a match for the stubby broken cigarette he held in his crooked fingers. He leaned up against an old, wobbling secretary desk someone had abandoned on the corner.

The old actor spoke up.

“Where are we?” he asked with a hint of glee. “That’s a beautiful desk. I need to come back and get it. It’ll look great in my apartment.”

We were at Polk and Ellis, just a block past the O’Farrell Theatre.

For a quick moment I saw him 30 minutes into the future, out on the street with the man in drag. I saw his frail frame in theatre blacks bending with the weight of the desk as he dragged it across the street to get it up to his small one bedroom apartment.

It scared me enough to remember it 30 years later.

Don’t be fooled. We are doing very well.

But to buy a house, we have to put up everything.

And to keep it, we have to use everything we have at the end of the month.

That means no room for anything else.

No therapy.

No acupuncture.

No sailing lessons.

No vacations.

Not even music lessons.

So that’s what happened this weekend.

We said goodbye to the music teacher.

All so we can live in a house.

Seems crazy, doesn’t it?

When I wake up you are still twisted in dreams so I get up and pad across out of the room to the kitchen.

I make coffee and mix it with the soy milk you say is better for you and the tasteless protein powder you say helps your joints creak less.

I place it on the red tray with a glass of cold, clear, water, a napkin, and a bowl of cut strawberries.

Then I go back to the room careful not to let in the dog who will jump on the bed with wagging tail to lick your face if she gets past me.

I lay on the edge of the bed and look for signs of waking while trying to clock my own internal needs.

Is making love a possibility? (Oh, I do love to make you moan — I miss those easy days of sweet warmth and caresses.) Is today just a holding you day?

I can’t tell so I go back to the kitchen and start laying out the breakfast for the boys: Turkey bacon, fresh cut mango, halved strawberries, a bagel if we have it, eggs if I feel ambitious.

Then I sit down here to write. About lost moments. And feelings that I don’t understand yet. And love I wish I could express better.

But the breakfasts are good. And when you come out a bit later and you kiss me with a peck and say “Thank you. That was nice.”

And that is a good thing. A sweet thing. And how I love now.

I wish I could still love like I used to.

I wish I still had the hunger that kept me up all night walking city streets and wondering where you were and what you were doing.

I wish I still felt the quickening at the heat of your elbow resting on my armrest at the movie.

I wish I still wondered what the answer would be to the question my lips asked and worried about how far to push it.

I wish I was still uncertain about what your eyes were saying to me across a slice of cherry pie at the dinner.

I wish I could still surprise you with an afternoon of hooky in the snow of caked out Central Park.

I wish I still caught your look over your shoulder that drove me crazy and made me like the luckiest man in the world.

I wish you still let me take pictures of your smile in the big and lovely lens of the Diana F+ you gave me for fun one Christmas.

I wish you still saw me as the kind and thoughtful man you could trust with your beautiful heart.

I wish I still….

I wish…

She called me on Wednesday and told me the exam had been odd.

In my hotel room 500 miles away, I heard the distress in her voice.

The next morning she called me early. She was hoarse from sleeplessness.

“I turned all night. What happened wasn’t an exam. I was molested by the man. I was assaulted.”

Not this year. Not at all.

You show up more in my mind than you aught to.

I know that.

But you pop up in moments when I’m stressed or unsure.

So I think about why a lot — which only brings it on more (like a wiggly tooth that you can’t help but push with your tongue — partly just to feel a little sweet pain).

It makes me feel ashamed. Dirty. Secretive.

Because I can’t really tell anyone.

So you become a kind of drink I have in the alley. In the dark. Before I go in and pretend everything is alright.

What’s funny is that when it started I needed help. That was your job, to offer help.

You made me feel special, oddly, by doing just that.

You gave me advice that opened the door to trust.

It was a great thing, for sure. In it I found a stone I could build on and that brought down my defenses. I needed that because I’d done damage to H, the woman I’d married 12 years before and I needed help.

Baffled, I was ready. Evenso, I still needed convincing.

That simple way you had was good enough to help me open up just a little.

But, ironically, from the start, I also understood you had a secret wisdom. Because you told me where to go with a specificity only those who know have. So I felt I shared something with you that was outside the room. (How often did I note this at the end of sessions — that it really was quite something — the knowledge you had of the places to go, the meetings that were near me?)

I was right but didn’t dare guess it then. It was too new. I was too raw. I was too pre-occupied with my own problems.

It didn’t help that your office was in my office building and that I’d run into you occasionally in the hallway. The secret relationship was confirmed with every passing “Hello.”

There’s no doubt that I fed on it like a slow drip IV that opened up even more when the company plan ended and you said you’d take me on for a deal.

I felt special again.

That’s how the Tuesdays began.

From there, the needle dug deeper into the groove as I slipped into the pattern that a babysitter ignited long ago.

There were other things that — now when I look back — my mind wound itself around. Things you can’t do anything about and that only a pattern in a mind can create: Like you, S was tall and big chested and wore glasses, too. Like you, S had a nasal twang at moments. Like you, S had a hardscrabble character to her.

But it went deeper.

Like EMDR. Careful as you were, you used your hands and that meant you had to approach and get close. And suddenly there was your body, knee against knee close. My breath would change in those moments and I’d think, this is weird: I want this but it’s forbidden.

Compounding it was the fear of losing this specialness if I told you about it.

And the fear of being seen as dirty if I ever told you about the one time in EMDR that I saw you giving me a handjob in the back and forth movement of your hand.

How could you have known about this?

I did confess at some point that I occasionally imagined sex with you. I didn’t lie that they were momentary — as fleeting and dismissable in the moment as the fast fantasies I had occasionally about other women — T and Shez and R.

What was different was that none of those others had the secret knowledge. The relationships with them were on the table. Public. Worklike.

You said that it was normal. And you were firm and clear about your boundary.

I remember saying back then, it wasn’t you I was worried about, it was me. Not that I’d actually do anything (I knew even then how deeply committed I was to H and how an action like that was not appropriate, invited or fruitful — how destructive it would be to all I loved). Still, it was me I worried about because while it would never be a thing I (or you) would cross, my mind freely crossed under the bar anyway and did what it wanted to. Enjoyed the heat of it. The forbiden-ness of it.

When these moments came up, you met them as you could, as you were likely trained. You wrapped it in the “transference/counter-transference” gobbledegook that is no better than a prayer uttered as a habit.

Looking back, you probably should’ve thought about it all a bit more. (And maybe you did: Hindsight is an unhelpful friend.)

I certainly was too chicken shit to get into it myself. How could I know the way? Every step would make everything that much more special. Yet I think you knew: you saw it curling around the edges. The way I dressed. How I looked at times, or didn’t look at other times. The way I read the books from Jung to Yalom.

I did try to leave once. I was sure it was time and it felt right. (It really did.) Perhaps it was only an attempt to rid myself of the pattern. Or just walk away from it. In any case, you said there was more work to be done: “We’re not done yet” I think was how you put it.

You might’ve been right, but the real mistake was not to push more about why the end was better then.

Later, there were other opportunities to talk about it: Moments when I’d say something between us was odd — like the time I came to your SF office and told you how distanced and disoriented it felt. Other times I wondered allowed what this “therapeutic relationship” really was. (Who was I really talking to in our 50 minute hours together?)

It all fueled a desire to know you better. Who you were. Why you had a tattoo of a phoenix rising up your calf. What the sanskrit said on your arm.

Sometimes you hinted that you knew. “I don’t want you to become too dependent” I remember you saying once. To the little boy within these were only comforting hints and confirmations that you knew something odd was happening.

The crazy last straw was when we finally did the “termination” because I was moving. You told me the source of your secret knowledge. I’m not sure why you did. Maybe it was to say, “See, it’s nothing special.” But it confirmed my feeling that something was shared between us. You even told me you knew some of the people I knew.

It really baked my noodle.

What meetings did you go to? What was your story? Who are you?

I talk about you with L, my current therapist — whom I have never met in person and who does EMDR not with her hands but a foam clown nose on a wand.

I wonder aloud to her about the relationship because, dirty as it can make me feel, at least I learned to be brave enough to voice what I am noticing.

I’ve told her that leaving you was akin to leaving a girlfriend behind. But now I know that isn’t enough. It’s not accurate.

Because you still pop up in my mind.

When I’m angry. Or stressed. Or unhappy. Dis-satisfied with the emotional bed that Heather is offering (or not).

You are a place to go where I’m special. Different from the others. Taken care of.

Certainly, you pop up less than before, you are still with me and lately I’ve been really wondering why I'm still in the same place now.

My wife is in pain.

I still look at things I don’t want to.

I still think about you when I know I shouldn’t.

It leads me to hating you. And that brings back a babysitter who I also hated, and wanted. And made me feel special.

But I wonder now if that need to be special was also fed by AA — the secret that you can’t tell others about but that you need to stay alive and well.

Are all secrets this way? Is this the deeper reason I write out these notes and show no-one?

What a pattern.

But that’s real and true, X.

I have to say goodby in a very final way. I think I have to fire you for real.

I’m wondering, oddly, if I should do that by ending the relationship with L. Should I simply close the door on this place that makes me feel special? It seems like an odd thing to do — end it with L to end it with you — but I wonder if it would let me come fully into myself?

This doesn’t really make sense when you truly examine it. After all, it’s not a problem with therapy per se, but a very specific instance of it — and even then the benefits outweighed this specific and strange and unforeseen echo of an old pattern.

And I know this is not the whole reason I come to this hour every week on Friday. It is just part of the puzzle. A hunk of something I have been reluctant to look at, but has always been there.

Like all good problems, there is no obvious path.

Perhaps it’s just enough to notice it.

Written 15 years ago. Seems so dated. And I don’t remember much about any of the shows mentioned — except Deadwood and the Sopranos, of course.
—
Recently, I had lunch with a network executive (from one of the big three) who is a friend of a friend of an acquaintance.

It was not a long lunch, though it was clear that he'd read some of my blog and was very nice about it.

"What's it like to have done work that's been inducted into the NY Museum of Modern Art?" he asked.

I gave him my standard line: the best part about it is that if any of my kids (or my kid - who really knows) get in to Harvard I can always say, "So what? Until you're in MOMA, that's nothing." It was a quintessentially Irish answer and very, very Walsh. (I can hear my Dad in that quip.)

He confessed that while he'd received my play, my screenplay and my spec TV script, he hadn't read any of them. Which was cool with me because these days, I've yet to find anyone who really has the time to read. That he was meeting me at all was a total fluke and more than generous on his part.

It was indeed a favor.

Then he asked what television I was watching. DEXTER, THE SOPRANOS (even though it's over), FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS. I said I'd enjoyed the first third of HEROES but that I'd fallen behind somewhere and that when I got back to it, it was so convoluted with so many stories I couldn't follow it. I said I had been peeking at the new JOHN FROM CINCINNATI which had been intriguing but that I was also having trouble following along. Finally, I noted the show DAMAGES which at the time was to start soon with Glenn Close. (I missed it, by the way, but am hoping to catch it on the rebroadcast this Sunday.) Finally, I mentioned THE TUDORS which for some reason hasn't hooked me the way it promised to.

He commented that at least some of the shows I was watching were still on and that he was tired of meeting writers who gushed about DEADWOOD.

I volunteered that I understood why people would mention it. It certainly was a gush-worthy show.

He asked why I'd written a MEDIUM spec. I told him why the DuBois family interested me - the focus on her job even though he's a Rocket Scientist, the way Allison's girls affected the flavor of the show, the way the whole family seemed to be a pretty good metaphor for the way most Americans are making ends meet. I made my way back to the beginning by saying that while I wasn't sure I loved the way the show was produced (they're always whispering), the scripts at the WGA were great reads from start to end.

I asked him what he looked for in new writers. He said, "I look for people who are interesting. People who don't just watch TV. When you come into my office, don't have the same conversation that everyone has. Talk about something different."

I knew what he meant, but since our conversation was already the same as everyone else's I didn't know what he meant at all.

We chit-chatted a little more and then the check came. We split the bill and went our separate ways.

Nice guy. Though, when I reflect on the meeting, well, I have to say, I somehow don't think I'll be hearing from him again. But all in all, that's all right

Two months ago my wife was assaulted by a medical professional during what should’ve been a routine gynecology exam.

There was no-one else in the room except her and the doctor.

The clinic did an exam two days later but “lost” the photographic evidence due to an “equipment malfunction.”

Several days later they simply said it was a “rough exam.”

The anger has been growing ever since.

It is like a bubble that she moves in and sees through but that she can not see herself.

It sits in her jaw and hides with a dullness in her eyes.

She wants me to see her and touch her, but it is like staring at the sun or knowingly putting my hand on the hot stove. And I just can’t.

Her therapist tells her to let it out, to recognize it, but from where I stand it feels like she is fanning the furnace of rage and I am the only outlet for it’s scalding heat.

This event has changed us and what we are. I have great fear about the loss — for I have loved who we have been and the life that we made together that has brought us here, difficult as it has been.

So I am so afraid these days to say anything. And to say nothing.

And that is leading to a build of my own anger — because this is not my fault and I don’t know how to take care of the woman who has done so much for me, changed me in such deep and good ways.

My past keeps showing up. Here’s more evidence of another life I led.

*****
One of my biggest fears about LA is that I'm not cool enough.

I mean, you watch the movies and there are plenty of depictions of agents, actors, directors, production assistants and hangers-on with so much cool that, well, southern California begins to feel cold. (For me, it got so I started worrying that even the parking valets sit at the unattainable lunch table of hipness.)

The next biggest fear about LA is that cool is all that counts.

When these two things are combined with a third fear, cool never has any substance, well, I have a pretty potent cocktail in my head: I start thinking that I need to have a more Vince Vaughn delivery and need to pitch movies about Nazi zombies and the action stars who blow them up.

But I don't have Vince Vaughn's patter (and certainly not his looks) and I have no passion for Nazi zombie movies (which, by the way, I actually overheard someone pitch to someone else at the Farmer's Market on Fairfax one evening).

If anything, I am sincere to a fault.

This truth about myself occasionally sends me into a depression. I despair that there's no one like me out there on the LA highways, that they've all come here and gone back to the midwest where they were raised, that substance is incidental, that seriousness is unimportant and that sensitivity is an obstacle to be overcome.

Then I meet the Director - a guy who I'll call, Steve - and I realize I am way way way wrong. In fact, I'm wallowing in foolishness and fear.

Not that Steve isn't cool. He is. In fact, very.

But when I meet him at a Starbucks in Westwood, I also find him to be kind, warm, funny and accessible. He has worked in commercials as well as features and tv. In the 80s he invented an interesting cyber icon right out of art school. There's been some luck in his life, but I know too there's been a lot of talent backed up by hard work. This is reassuring.

He definitely knows the world (advertising) that I'm coming from. And the world I'm trying to get to.

His advice echos that which I got from the agent a month earlier.

"If you haven't been produced, it's very very hard. When people find that out they back away. It's very hard. So I reccommend that you try to make something. It doesn't have to be very long, but it has to be good. It should also be something that's part of something else that you want to make. That way you can show people what you want to do and they can see it. They'll say, Oh, I see. And you can get financing that way. Once you have a project done, it will be much much easier."

He asks what kind of movies I like. I go through a list of 70s films I love (5 Easy Pieces, Last Picture Show, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore) and then name a few more recent features (Lost in Translation, Eternal Sunshine, Little Miss Sunshine) I'm crazy about.

He also asks about my plays and my screenplays. I summarize them for him.

"This is good. All good good," he says. "I see."

Then he suggests something I can do in addition to - perhaps in lieu of - shooting something.

"There is a television channel that makes 40 movies a year with budgets of less than $1 million each. You don't have to write the whole script to sell an idea to them. You could write a really great logline and if they show interest, you could get in that way. It's something someone like you, from advertising, should be able to do. It's what people in advertising are good at. You should develop 10 or 12 loglines. Really work on them. Polish them. That's another way."

What is great about this advice is not just its directness, but also the feeling I get from Steve as he offers it. He clearly seems interested in helping. Of sending me in the right direction. He's floating ideas based on what I've told him. It makes me want to work for him in just about any capacity.

He presses me about my commercial reel. Again, echos of the agent.

"That could be a big thing. It's a kind of production. Especially if there's comedy. People can see that you did that and they'll feel that they might be able to trust you."

Naturally, I love hearing this, but as our meeting ends, I know I can't rely on it alone.

"Send me your screenplay and if I respond to it, then, well, maybe we can talk some more," Steve says. "In the meantime, I'll look at your TV commercials online, too."

I get in my Mini-Cooper and drive home feeling upbeat, feeling that while being cool may be important, being good is important too.

Then I get out a pad of paper and start working up loglines in case Steve likes my script and calls me. As I start, I feel grateful that no logline I write will have to include anything about Nazi zombies.

Maybe someday, of course. Just not today.

Another one from the vault.

Of course, in today’s world, none of this would work. Goes to show you how much can change.
******
The first time I met him - "Jake" - was at Columbia University in a screenwriting class.

It happened to be the week one of my screenplays was being presented and he was visiting the professor, an old friend, who was teaching the class. We were actually short a reader, so being a good sport, he took a part and read.

I remembered two things about him from that afternoon. The first was that he had a gruff voice that seemed to justify every bit of anxiety I had about whether or not he'd like my script.

The second was, after the reading was done, he gave me the best, most insightful fucking advice I ever got on a screenplay - advice that actually started from an understanding of what the story was about.

But then, what else did I expect from one of the best, most respected story analysts in Hollywood?

I certainly didn't expect him to call me back when I arrived in LA. And I certainly didn't ever expect to be sitting across from him at the Broadway Diner in Santa Monica one morning listening to the story of how he became one of the best.

"When I came out here I didn't come out to be a reader. But I had this interest in comic books and Joseph Campbell and it turned out that I was good at analysis. I'm not even sure I'd say I was the best at it - there was one guy who was very successful and actually in some ways I just followed in his footsteps. When he left a studio for another studio, he'd call me up and say, Hey, I'm clearing my desk and they need someone. Call so-and-so this afternoon and tell them you're ----- and I recommend you. Usually I got the job. It was the easy way, really."

Over hash I told him that I'd gotten quite a bit out of his book, a book that outlines the heroic journey at the heart of so many movies and that most people must know if they're interested in writing screenplays.

"I'm more crafty than anything," he said. "Every studio has its own way. If you can't figure out what that way is, then you're not going to fit in. {One of the studios} I worked at was run on memos. It was the way the top guy did things. If he wanted something, he didn't have a meeting so much as sent out a memo. So everyone there communicated that way. I was sort of low on the totem pole. I couldn't just send out one of those things. But I had these ideas about story that I'd been kind of building on from my interest in comic books and Joseph Campbell - eventually I became the guy everyone turns to when they want to work with comic books - yet, back then, what could I do? I decided to write a memo that outlined some of my thoughts. Then, I'd just left it on the copier. Other people saw it and read it. Eventually, people started copying and holding onto the memos. I know someone's really been around when they tell me they read my book on the Xerox machine."

Though I'd been a reader in New York for a theatre company or two, that wasn't what I was out here to do. Did he have any advice?

He said a few things that have been echoed by many others, but also built on it: "You'll need an agent or a manager. But you can't get one until you've done something or have a deal cooking. What you'll need to do is go over to the bookstore and pick up the creative directory. Look through it for studios that might be interested in the type of material that you have. That's how you'll have to start."

I've got an MFA in playwrighting. Will that help?

"Right now, playwrights are respected. So when you sit down with people, you've already got something going for you. They'll expect you know how to create good dialog. It's a good thing."

We split the bill and walked down the promenade.

I told him about the type of material I had to see if there was any direction he could give me there. I unfortunately realized that I was pitching him right there. He seemed disappointed - like this was a transgression of our breakfast relationship. I regreted it since it was unnecessary. And on reflection, I know it came across as a desperate, giant, "Please save me" sign in little verbal blasts of story idea.

That was not only NOT within his power to do. And it wasn't why he'd agreed to see me.

Stupidly I pressed on saying that none of my work was tricky. That I was developing simple, straightforward stories with large social contexts that people could hook into easily. I put story over style since I never knew who'd be reading the scripts.

"That is very smart," he said tersely. "How do you like LA?"

"It's great. Not just the weather, but the people. I'm finding that most people will talk to anyone at least once since no one seems to know where the next big thing will come from. I like that."

We shook hands. He seemed like a very gentle man to me.

Then I wondered which of my screenplays to leave on the copy machine at Kinkos.

Written 15 years ago

When I told a director friend I was leaving NY for LA last summer, he flattered me by exclaiming, "Shit" - as if something of value had been lost to him in a moment. The next thing he did was give me the name of an old friend of his who'd done the same thing to him thirty years before.

"She's a great person," he said. "She may not be able to help you, but she'll definitely talk to you. And she's a good person to know."

When I got to LA, she (I'm going to call her "D") was the first person I called. She had a deep voice - the kind that makes you think of Lauren Bacall and lets you know you're in touch with someone serious.

"Why don't you come out to my house next Tuesday morning," she said. "I'll make you bagels and my fresh squeezed orange juice. Everyone likes my orange juice." She lived out in Mar Vista - which, for those of you unfamiliar with LA, is out toward the beach but east of Santa Monica. She had a low simple ranch style house about 23 blocks from the Pacific. There was nothing pretentious about the place or the neighborhood.

I parked under a palm tree. She was waiting at the door.

"I'm early," I said.

"That's okay," she said, "I just made another pot of coffee."

We sat at her kitchen table for about a half hour. As I wolfed my way through an everything bagel and a glass of her OJ (it was excellent), she told me about her life.

In digest form: She'd been an actress in NY who'd come to prominence along with the major non-profits - Playwrights, MTC, etc. (She said she actually knew John Seitz who'd been in a reading of my play FIRE BABY.) She came out west to do some film and tv and though she thought she'd go back, she never did. Instead she became enmeshed in the theatre circuit out here, working at South Coast and the Taper on a regular basis. She bought the house in which we were sitting some 20 or more years ago and confessed that these days she would never have been able to afford it. She'd also had some children, one of whom had just gotten out of college and was now breaking into production.

From odds and ends that I saw about the house (pictures in the bathroom, snippets of conversation), I got the feeling her partner had died sometime in the last 5 years - and that the loss had been hard on her -- though she was handling it well.

Oddly, though she'd been in LA much longer than she'd ever been in NY, she said people still thought of her as a NY actor. She seemed to feel that was a good thing, that it gave her some cache, that it said she was the real deal when it came to acting. When we moved out to the porch she told me that our mutual NY director friend had given her one of my plays, DRESSING THE GIRL. She said she'd been unable to put it down.

I asked if that was because she'd had to actually throw it down. In disgust. She laughed. "I can't really tell you much about what to do to get in to the writing part of what's going on out here. I'm working on a book right now and I think the UCLA extension is a great way to go. The instructors are very good. And they're already working so it's one way to get to know people. Generally the thing to do, if you ask me, is to not really have any expectations. Then when something happens, it's gravy."

We chatted a little more and she offered to meet with my wife when she came down, but then it was time for me to go.

As I got back in the car and waited for the top to come down on my vehicle, I took another look at her house and thought about her buying it way back when. It was clear that she had a lot of talent - which made me feel pretty good about LA and "The Industry." After all, talented people don't always make it. Then I wondered if my time in NY would label me a NY writer for the rest of my life...

If I was talented enough.