Recently in Miscellany Category

Sometimes running a blog is SO MUCH FUN!

As you all know, comments are down. We’re working on it. When the changes are done, you’ll have to register with a handle of your choosing (so Anonymous or Anonymous 2 or anthing you want is fine…you just can’t pretend to be someone else, etc.).

Meanwhile, until we fix all this, if you try and comment right now you’re going to get an error message about comment approval, etc.

Here’s a lovely note I received today.

Craig,

It’s your site. Which means it isn’t censorship.

But you set up a forum that encouraged debate and comment.

And now you have to approve those comments?

Tacky.

Go fuck yourself.

And shove that piece of shit script for Scary Movie 3 up your ass, if it’ll fit with your head in there.

Love,

[redacted]

Aw, what a lovely human being!

Thanks!

Glad you’re enjoying the site!

For the rest of you, just to be clear, the new system will NOT involve me or anyone else approving comments prior to publication. Nothing will be different except the handle registration (which isn’t through my site, but through Movable Type’s site), so that fake Priyas and fifteen different people with the name “Anonymous” aren’t confusing the discussions.

Once we fix it, everyone will be able to tell me to shove my scripts up my ass again. Hooray!

Ed. Note: Still working on implementing this. Comments will be back soon. Bear with me.

New Note: Should be working now. If you registered for TypeKey but were having trouble, clear your cache, log out and back in, and it should work now. I hope.

Don’t panic.

You can still comment anonymously.

However, with the amount of comments we’ve been getting, two problems have emerged.

First, there are many different people all calling themselves “anonymous” or “anon,” and it’s confusing.

Second, people are starting to spoof each other’s names.

Happily, there’s a simple answer.

In order to comment now, you must “sign in.” The prompt to sign in is down where the comment box used to be (if you still see the comment text box, then reload your page until it goes away…you might have to empty your browser cache as well).

Follow the sign in link, which will take to a TypeKey login page.

TypeKey is a free registration service connected to the Movable Type blog platform. Signing up for an account is free. I do not receive any of the information you enter into the registration, nor do I receive any compensation or consideration.

By registering a unique handle for yourself, you can own your name and ID while commenting here without fear of counterfeiting.

I apologize for the brief inconvenience, but it should be worth it in the long run. If your cookies are set properly, the system remembers you for two weeks at a time, so re-logins should be infrequent.

If you’re having issues with registering for comments, then go to the Forum and post your question in the Feedback section. Hopefully we can help you figure it out. It’s pretty easy.

I think.

First, I was absolutely wrong when I said the WGA would only be picketing one gate at Warner Brothers. I apologize for getting the facts wrong.

Second, some of you may have noticed your comments getting eaten by the system. This appears to be the result of an overaggressive spam filter, which was junking any comment that included the word “loan” in it (much of the comment spam out there is from companies promising you low interest loans, yadda yadda).

I’ve changed the settings, so the word “loan” won’t kill your comment.

As always, I do not screen comments at all, and I welcome all criticism. Please keep your comments civil. I simply don’t have the time to moderate the comments after the fact the way I normally do, so you’re all on the honor system for a while.

I know…strange time to be talking about anything other than a strike, but since I’m not going to write about the strike until Sunday, I thought I’d get this up here and publicize it a bit, not only because it’s for an absolutely good cause, but also because it’s in support of our Teamster brothers and sisters in Local 399, many of whom will be showing their support for us in the coming weeks and perhaps months.

During the holidays each year Blood Centers nationally, including UCLA Health Systems, struggle to meet the needs of their patients. UCLA uses approximately 100,000 units a year. Extended shortages during the November 21, 2007-January 22, 2008 season could result in blood rationing and the cancellation of surgeries.

Winter blood collections drop as several condition come into play at once. The holidays are busy and potential donors often find they just cannot find the hour to donate. Large institutions (colleges, high schools, and businesses) which often run blood drives are closed at this time. Also, often times flu season strikes, making donors ineligible to donate.

Who better to save the day then union members of Teamster Local 399? We can keep track of the number of Teamster Local 399 donors, if they will sign in on a sheet and add ‘Local 399’ and specify: casting directors, location scouts, or drivers. Perhaps we can challenge other unions to do the same and make a difference this holiday season, and, demonstrate the power of union unity.

This year UCLA blood center is offering an incentive to go and donate. Along with a beach bag, 1-3 movie passes ( depending on whether you donate platelets or whole blood), and another coupon ( Starbucks, Subway, In & Out, or Jamba Juice, depending on availability). They are also raffling off a hotel room for two on Fiji!

If you donate whole blood, it is a 1 hour process. For platelets allow 1.5-2.5 hours. Platelets are used for patients with cancer, leukemia, transplants or blood disorders. Newborns can also require blood. Also, UCLA is a Level-1 trauma center, so many patients also require platelets to stop their bleeding.

The UCLA blood center takes donors on a walk-in basis, but suggests that you make an appointment so you do not have to wait. To make an appointment to donate whole blood call: 310-825-0888 #2. Whole blood donation hours are: Monday, 10:00 a.m.-5:30 p.m. and Tuesday -Friday 8:00 a.m.- 3:30 p.m. Also every second Saturday 8:00 a.m.-1:30 p.m. To make an appointment to donate platelets call: 310-206-6187. Platelet donor hours: Monday - Friday 7:00 a.m.- 4:00 p.m. and every Saturday 7:00 a.m. -11:30 a.m.

The blood center address is: 1045 Gayley Av., 2nd floor, L.A 90024. It is 1 block west of Westwood Blvd. and 2 blocks north of Wilshire Blvd., on the west side of the street ( across from Whole Foods).

Parking is free, behind the center at Lot #32. You may obtain your parking permit via mail prior to the day of donation (this is the best way). If you need to obtain a guest parking permit on the day of your donation, park temporarily in the alley behind the center at 1045 Gayley Av. and go upstairs through the glass door.

Who can donate? Almost anyone over 110 pounds that is in good health and hasn’t had a recent tattoo, baby, transfusion, dental work (24 hours), hepatitis, or lived in certain foreign countries. For more details on how to donate: www.gotblood.ucla.edu, or just call them.

I wish I lived in a world where this was as obvious as I think it is, but I guess I don’t.

Some people out there seem to think that I either:

a) speak for the WGA, or

b) believe I speak for the WGA

I don’t.

I speak for myself.

I am one person, the articles I post on this website express my opinions, I hold no position on the WGAw Board of Directors, I am not on the Negotiating Committee, and I represent no organization.

Various new outlets contact me through the site, because they read it. They ask for quotes or interviews, which I occasionally grant, but just as often do not. I do not identify myself in any way other than as an individual. I am, for a lack of a better phrase, a “talking head.” A commentator. An independent analyst.

Oh, and a union member.

I do not pay for publicity, nor do I retain the services of a publicist.

Okay, disclaimer done. Back to the important stuff.

There’s a really nice profile of The Artful Writer in the Wall Street Journal today. I think I can declare victory if I get away with calling the AMPTP’s proposals “nuts” and still get a nice quote from their spokesperson.

Getting dubbed “Hollywood’s Must-See” ain’t bad either, and it’s probably the first and last time I’ll earn that moniker.

I did want to add a slight bit of context to one quote. I said:

When it comes to union matters, I am the only game in town on this right now…

That’s mostly true. WriterAction is also out there, but they’re WGA-members-only, so in terms of public blogs, I’m the only game in town for this stuff.

At least, the only one I know of. Apologies to anyone else doing any serious coverage of this stuff. If you are, I’d love to know about it (and possibly offer a link).

Meanwhile, here’s the latest.

Things are getting worse.

The WGA rhetoric has now turned toward DVD residuals, which is utter nonsense. Everyone in the negotiating room knows that DVD residuals are the epitome of a sailed ship. Harping on doubling that rate is as pointless and absurd as the companies’ proposal to tie residuals to profit.

The fact that we seem to be moving backwards in terms of the seriousness of rhetoric is deeply disturbing. With weeks to go, tensions have steeply mounted. Furthermore, the companies have essentially initiated a lockout on feature writers. They’re not spending any more money on feature writing (so we hear) until a deal is struck.

I am growing quickly impatient with our side’s inability to knuckle down on the only topic that matters. DVDs, jurisdiction over animation and reality, product integration…all of it should be pushed aside. We’re beyond the point where red herrings and posturing are at all valuable.

If the AMPTP won’t grow up and talk like adults to us, then it’s incumbent upon us to claim the high ground. If we won’t, then saying “well they were acting like asses too” will serve as cold comfort on the picket line.

More to come.

Hey Dad? Wanna read a blog?I know that people read this blog. Lots of people. But beyond my own thoughts and those of the people who comment, it’s all conceptual to me.

That’s probably for the best.

Still, I got an email today that just made me feel all warm and squishy inside. The sender has granted me permission to print it here.

I really don’t do much in my life that anyone can call “good” or “bad.” I live in the neutral, I guess. But every now and then, I guess some good sort of happens.

Not intentional! I swear!

Anyway, here’s the email.

(read the above sentence with Casey Kasem’s “long distance dedication” voice)

Dear Craig,

I’ve become an avid reader of your blog, which rocks, over the last month. The way in which it indirectly wound up bringing about hitherto unhoped-for levels of familial harmony has blown my mind, and since everyone likes hearing nice things about their work, I felt a kind of karmic imperative to drop you a line.

I saw the film “The Lookout”, which I thought was bloody fantastic, with my dad. Quick relevant background: I’m an actor out here, and reared from the classic middle-class-Jewish-elder-son mold (which it sounds from your blog like you may know something about). I went to Yale: I wanted to go to a conservatory, but my folks wanted me to keep my options open, and Yale’s got the fancy name/quality education/can-brag-about-it-to-neighbors thing, along with a stellar theater program. Despite becoming a theater major and doing well there, and despite achieving some success in my first couple years in LA, my father is still hellbent, titanium in his will, that I need to give it all up and become something respectable and stable, e.g. a dentist, and perhaps resume my long-since-neglected viola lessons in the bargain.

But to the point: We saw this movie The Lookout together, and got into it the way fathers and sons do. For whatever reason, it was a nastier spat than usual; in a nutshell, I was saying it was great, he was saying it was one more dumb thriller. Our fights are very Dawson’s Creek sturm-and-drang, very Oedipal Complex.

We get back to my apartment, and it has come to this. My dad: “Okay, smart guy, if this is so good, let’s see what the CRITICS have to say.” Like that’s going to prove anything. But whatever, we look, and up on the Google screen comes an entry on your blog all about the scene between Luvlee and Lewis, which was the very scene I’d been leaning on in our argument. My dad stops cold.

You see, my dad’s an attorney, and he does labor law, among other things, in Northern California. It turns out he’s read your stuff from Artful Writer and Huffington Post on the Writer’s Guild for the last however many months, and has actually REFERRED CLIENTS to it to help them understand how to discuss labor issues persuasively and with clarity. I’d even heard him mention the site before, but I’d tuned it out.

And he scrolls down the entry, takes a few minutes, and then, for the very first time in recorded history, my father turns to me and says: “Well, you were right.” He got all quiet and reflective for a moment, changed the subject, and then, five or ten minutes later, to my total shock, gave me a hug. First time in years.

Then, just as quick, the moment was over: “So you were right. Sue me for Christ’s sake. Favete linguis.” (that last part is latin for basically “shut your damn trap”, which was a running joke in my fam. Yeah, I know.)

It was actually quite a moment. It seems to’ve opened some kind of door in our relationship. He even apologized for not being more supportive, which was doubly nice because then I was able to apologize for being obnoxious for the majority of my teenage years. I’ve started to read your blog consistently since, because, I mean, clearly the universe was pointing in that direction, and when I recently completed filming on my first lead-sized part in a flick (a truly ridiculous airplane action movie in which I murder a Backstreet Boy), I got in the mail a bootleg copy of The Lookout he’d gotten from some street vendor with the note “Maybe next time you can be in a movie that’s actually good. Congrats! Love, Dad”. Still kind of a sabotaging sentiment, but better than nothing.

Corny, deeply corny, but I felt like I had to send this along, probably to die forever unread in some spam in-box. But I made the effort. Be well, sir, keep up the good work, I hope our paths will cross someday.

Well, as a father with a son, this sort of thing gets me. I’m a sucker for it. And like the writer says, it’s corny…but corny isn’t always bad.

So to the son, I say “Thanks.”

And to the dad, I say “Well done.”

It’s been a couple of years, and I’m getting bored with the look here. Also, I’m seriously considering migrating to WordPress, because it just seems…well…easier.

So here’s your chance to tell me what you think works and doesn’t work about the current design. Should we stay three columns or go to two? Should the blog stay fluid (where it resizes as you adjust your browser page size) or go fixed?

Colors?

Navigation?

Functionality?

The freakin’ quill???

Everything but the title is up for debate.

Also, if any of you know of someone really good at designing blogs for WordPress, clue me in. I’m willing to spend a few bucks to freshen the joint up.

Note: This redesign applies to the blog portion only. The forum is going to pretty much stay the way it is (for a while, at least).

Sorry, I know I’ve been a bit Larry Kingish in my quick, semi-insubstantial bulletins lately, but it’s been very busy at work. I’ll have something for you guys soon.

In the meantime, I just found out about LeapFish, a site that appraises the value of your domain name.

According to them, artfulwriter.com is worth…

…drumroll….

$26,796.00!!!!

Awesome! I am totally selling this place and buying a Buick LaCrosse!

As a point of comparison, yahoo.com appraises at $1,523,846,985.

I have some work to do…

Rachel was wrong…John August has some terrific video and a link to photos from his recent trip to Malawi.

He mentions malaria on his blog. Malaria, a disease that had been impressively curtailed decades ago, has returned with a vengeance, killing millions of children.

And why has it returned?

My opinion? DDT.

Specifically, the horrendously stupid ban on DDT.

I know, I know. We’ve all been taught that DDT is the devil’s chemical, spreading death wherever it goes. Unfortunately, the opposite is true.

To read how DDT came to be unfairly villified…and the disastrous result of that politicization…check out this excellent essay in the New York Times.

You can read more about why American and international aid organization should support the use of DDT at http://www.fightingmalaria.org/

He’ll never get to use an iPhoneA lot of people in the business ask me how it is that I find time to run this blog and our forums, when I’ve got deadlines and family commitments and the rest of life bearing down on me.

Frankly, I don’t know. For instance, right now it’s just about 11:30 PM Pacific time, and I’ve got at least another two hours of writing ahead of me.

I’m bleary.

And so, I turn to this as respite.

By the way, if you don’t understand why a writer tired of writing would write in order to take a break from writing, then you may not be a writer.

Admittedly, part of my bleariness is because instead of writing what I needed to yesterday, I spent time getting and setting up my new iPhone.

Before I add to the infinite instareviews available to you on the internet, I’ve finally got my working theory about the ending of The Sopranos.

Yeah, I know. Old news. But I’ve been thinking about it for a while, and I’m not sure anyone else has forwarded this theory yet. I’m sure someone will dig up a link to something similar.

Like everyone, my first reaction to the final moment of the final episode was “Oh God, my TiVo…” Then I sort of reeled into a bit of shock. A bit of shock. It’s still a TV show, after all. Nonetheless, Chase managed to completely surprise everyone.

The quick theories were: it’s a meaningless surprise for surprise’s sake, Tony dies, it’s a cliffhanger for a movie…

I don’t think so.

I don’t think Chase invested so much time and energy and transparent deliberation into the final scene just to lead up to a “Ha ha, here’s something you never expected, it doesn’t mean anything but at least I didn’t do any of the dumb crap you predicted” moment. It just doesn’t seem within his creative character.

I don’t think Tony was killed. Yes, Chase wanted to ratchet up the tension to lead to what might be a whacking (and more on why when I get to my theory), but if the cut to black signifies Tony’s death, then why cut out on his face? Shouldn’t it cut to black off his POV?

Cliffhanger for a movie? That’s just dumb. An uncompromising master like Chase isn’t going to pimp his entire series out just to set up a first scene in some theoretical film that might or might not happen.

So why?

Why did Chase do that?

My theory.

Remember when Carmela saw her own therapist for a single session, back in the 3rd season? A blunt man, he basically told Carmela that her problems weren’t psychological as much as they were crassly circumstantial: she’s married to a ruthless killer, and all of the money Carmela spends is blood money. The only advice a reasonable person can give is to take the kids and get away from Tony.

That was the truth.

Still, season after season, we the audience found ourselves rooting for Tony, particularly when inter-mob stories were introduced.

In the final season, Chase begins to really hammer home just how pathetic and evil Tony is. Tony kills Christopher. Tony celebrates Christopher’s death. Tony turns a session about A.J. into a whine-fest about himself. Tony cheats on his wife for the millionth time. Tony thinks about killing Pauly because he’s getting old and mouthy.

And yet, the audience (and by audience, I mean me and apparently many others) were mostly interested in how he’d make his way out of the mess with New York.

Would Tony win?

Chase seemed to recognize this. The federal agent once assigned to Tony but now on a terrorism beat apparently shared our problem. He slips Tony info to use in Tony’s war with Phil. “We might win this one!”

We?

As awful as Chase made Tony, we kept loving him. When Chase would scold us for loving him, we would nod, then love him some more.

We’re Carmella.

And our marriage to the show was a bad one. It had to end, because Tony isn’t a good guy, he doesn’t deserve our respect, and frankly, we shouldn’t give a damn what happens to a sociopath like him.

I think Chase’s finale ending was a message to the audience, and a bit of a punishment as well.

“You want to know what’s going to happen? Will he die? Is this just another day in his miserable life? Will he run the whole mob? You know what? Screw you. I’m not telling you. In fact, I’m pulling the plug on this relationship in the most vicious, unsatisfying manner just to rub your nose in your own sick need to care about this jerk.”

That’s my theory about Chase’s intention.

Tony’s intention? That’s easy. He picked it on the jukebox. “Don’t stop believing.”

Those are his last words to us. “Don’t stop.”

But Chase hit “stop” anyway, because Tony is a bad man, and we should take our TiVos and get as far away from him as possible.

So…that’s the old.

Here’s the new.

The iPhone is AWESOME. It’s everything Apple promised, and then some. If you can afford it, buy it. If you appreciate elegance in technology, buy it. If people say, “I don’t get it, it’s just a phone, Apple’s a cult, blah blah blah” then make a note that those people are idiots, and then get the iPhone.

It’s wonderful.

I’d write more about it, but it’s a quarter to midnight now.

And there are pages to go before I sleep.

We got a nice mention in the Times today.

For those of you who are new to the site, the menu bar at the top of the screen breaks everything out into categories. If you want to search for particular topics, SEARCH is to the right.

Of special note is our forum, which is our general discussion area for all things screenwriting. You can access it through the menubar, the link under the search box or…hell…

…just go here to register. Like everything else on this site, it’s cost-free and ad-free.

So go ahead, look around. Kick the tires.

I’ll have a new article up later about the Writers Guild…and for the first time in a long time, it’s going to be a positive one.

I’m working on my next entry, and I’d like to embed a pdf into the text using HTML.

If I use the EMBED tag, the pdf embeds nicely in Safari, but doesn’t work at all in Firefox, and I haven’t even begun to check it in Windows just yet.

Any tips on how to best do this?

Update: Okay, I got it working fairly well in Vista on both IE and Firefox. Firefox for Mac still eludes me. If anyone knows how get Firefox for Mac to recognize embedded PDF’s, go ahead and comment.

Some of you have been struggling with formatting in the comments section.

Some tips. Normal line breaks are fine...the program knows to format them as such.

For italics, enclose your words in single asterisks.

For instance, *these words* will become these words.

For bold, enclose your words in double asterisks.

**These words** will become these words.

The asterisks trick only works up to a line break, though, so if you start a new paragraph, enclose each paragraph in the asterisks if you want to italicize or bold.

Of course, standard HTML tags work as well.

Nappy-headed schmoOh, blog, dear blog, I've been neglecting you. I'm racing toward a deadline on my script right now, so I've been keeping you at arm's length. Then, a couple of days ago, when I was thinking about posting, I gave myself a concussion (my head + underside of my son's wooden loft bed = pain and puking). But I can't stay away from you. I want to touch quickly on two topics that have been dominating the news.

First, the Virginia Tech jerk.

It's normal for everyone to navel-gaze and point fingers after something like this happens. One of the best classes I ever took in college was a course called "The Psychology of Justice." In that class, I learned about a phenomenon that is incredibly pervasive and persistent across all cultures: the Belief In A Just World. Belief in a just world often means that we deserve what we get, and we get what we deserve.

However, in cases like the Virginia Tech shooting, it's clear that the victims didn't deserve what they got. That doesn't mean Belief In A Just World goes away. Instead, the BJW theory says that great evils must have great causes.

The space shuttle doesn't blow up because a piece of rubber got cold—it blows up because of a culture of failure and the incompetence of an entire space agency and perhaps because of humanity's hubris… You know what I mean?

In this case, BJW says that video games, isolation, access to guns, non-access to guns, popular music, coarsening of culture and ultimately society itself is to blame for the tragedy at VT. Of course, the problem with BJW is that it's not true. The world is not just. Existence is not fair. Great evils sometimes happen for the most mundane reasons. The poor people who died at VT died because a mentally ill person made the insane choice to kill them. And if someone chooses to kill you, they are going to kill you, and there's nothing you can do about it. They might use guns, they might use gasoline and fertilizer, they might use poison…

…not a very comforting thought.

But that's life in an unjust, unfair world.

Of course, one can imagine Don Imus thinking to himself, "If only this asshole could have done the shooting a week earlier…I'd still have my job."

Frequent commenter Kevin Arbouet has a post up on the Imus situation. I agree 100% with Kevin that this is not a free speech issue at all. No one has the right to a radio talk show. The government didn't fire Imus. He's free to say "nappy headed-ho" all day long without fear of imprisonment or fines.

Now, when this whole thing went down, I was honestly puzzled. Imus has been saying stupid crap like that for years. So has Howard Stern. Have you heard the stuff the comedians say on the Friar's Club roasts? Hell, any four second sample of Lisa Lampanelli's act is waaaay worse than "nappy-headed ho's."

Should Imus have been fired? Yes, but years ago. For sucking. My view of this latest debacle is that it's an example par excellence of our nation's inability to discuss racial issues honestly. We have two cultures. The first culture is soaking in racial humor, racial observations, the n-word, bitches, ho's, racial suspicion, racial resentment and occasionally racial hostility. The second culture is a color-blind, multicultural rainbow coalition where no one sees race, no one ever says or thinks anything "offensive," and we all live, work and play in a bridge-of-the-Starship-Enterprise-like world of ethnic harmony.

The first culture is true. The second is a fraud. We all burble along in the first culture, until, occasionally, someone makes a stink. It's not always Jesse or Al. Sometimes it's the ADL, sometimes it's the guy from the Catholic League, sometimes it's GLAAD, sometimes it's O'Reilly yapping about the coarsening of culture. At that point, everyone suddenly pretends that the first culture is the anomaly, and the second, fraudulent culture is the reality. Somehow, we begin doing rhetorical backflips to denounce true culture as transgressive against a fictional culture that has never been and probably never will be.

But why Imus? Was Imus' "nappy-headed ho's" comment funny? No. Was it accurate? No, not even close.

The reason Imus said that comment is obvious to me: he thought he was sounding "cool." See, perversely, Imus is not part of true culture. He's out of the sphere of what is current. His attempt to be a part of that culture immediately rang false, and I think that's what caught people's attention.

If Howard Stern says, "Nappy-headed ho's," no one blinks. I guarantee it. Why? Because Howard has been manufacturing this kind of relaxed culture for years. Not Imus. When Imus tries it, it sounds tinny and fake and creepy.

Of all the stuff I've read about this affair, the best and most honest perspective is from this guy. I don't agree with everything he says in his piece (I don't have a stake in the cultural battles between black men and black women), and I think he's too hard on Cosby in particular, but when I read his essay, I thought, "Points for honesty."

When it comes to discussions of race in this country, we're in dire need of a Diogenes.

Look around the site, and you'll see lots of little icons next to all of the links.

Welcome to Snap.

Instead of boring links that send you to sites unseen, if you hover your cursor on the link, Snap lets you see a miniature image of the page you're thinking about visiting. To visit the link, just click the image of the site. You can also search within the snap box. Kind of neat, I think (unless you use Safari…the search function seems to crash it).

If you hate Snap, just click on the options or disable link within the link bubble to customize your preferences. Admittedly, I've installed Snap if only to keep up with the Augusts (who went and installed a super nifty live comment preview function on his blog that's apparently super easy for WordPress blogs like his, but on par with nuclear fission for MovableType blogs like mine), but I really like it.

If any of you blog on MovableType or are familiar with functionality you'd like to see here, please let me know. I'm always looking to improve this site, and fussing with php tags at 1:30 in the morning actually keeps me young.

Time for rebirth…Today is my 36th birthday. It’s also Jesus’ rebirthday. No, I’m not comparing myself to Jesus. And yes, I chose the picture because it’s so ridiculous.

I just love the idea of MEGAJESUS, looming over Earth like a hypoglycemic Galactus, pissed off at our stupidity and failure. He’s so angry, the back of his head has exploded outward, forming some awesome new nebula. The moon is this painting’s version of Jackie O., and it’s getting drenched in MegaJ’s cosmic brain splatter.

The tear rolling down The Boss’ cheek? That’s his burgeoning sense of retribution, the volume and pressure of which is so great it has begun leaking in liquid form from his improbably blue Jewish eye.

Just look at his brow. It’s telling you the entire story. That’s the brow of a man who is about to take a bite out of a planet.

But I digress…

I want to talk about endings and beginnings. Those of us who write are plagued and blessed at once by an overexposure to cycles. No, I don’t believe in reincarnation or the divinity of Jesus or some of the hippier notions about how we’re all one with Gaia, etc. I do, however, believe that all human experiences begin, then progress, and then end.

I’m a writer. I’m soaking in that. And because I write, I find myself constantly beginning stories, places, ideas, people, moments…then experiencing them progress…and then watching them end.

And when they end…they end as finally as anything can. I do not know what Keyser Soze did after he got into the car with his lawyer at the end of The Usual Suspects, and I’m pretty sure I never will.

Just like that….(poof)…he’s gone.

All this beginning and ending stuff can start playing with your head. Like mathematicians who started noticing small recursive fractals as compositional blocks of larger recursive fractals, you begin to see the cycles in your own life on multiple levels. There’s breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And then there are multiyear arcs, like movements of a symphony.

Maybe you don’t see this, but I do.

Curiously, my cycles seem to take on four year spans.

I won’t bore you with childhood, but high school was an interesting four years. College…four years. After college, I spent four years trying to make my way toward something I could do as a career…a search for permanency, perhaps.

And I found it.

I spent the next four years establishing myself as a working screenwriter as well as a husband.

I spent the next four years establishing myself as a solo working screenwriter, as well as a father.

And I’ve spent these last four years establishing myself as a…for lack of a better phrase…successful screenwriter.

Ding! Four years are up.

And now?

Last week, I had lunch with a friend. Another writer. I look up to him in a very pure way; there’s no creepy jealousy or competitiveness or resentment to infect my relationship with him. I’m not particularly prone to those things, but I’m not inhuman either—I’m lucky that circumstances are such that I can admire someone as cleanly as I admire this guy.

By the way, he doesn’t blog or comment in here, so don’t bother guessing.

Hint…it’s not Josh Olson.

So anyway, we sat at lunch and this guy lectured me. He actually said, “I want to lecture you about something.” And then he did.

Best

lecture

EVAR.

In fact, it was such a good lecture, it sent me hurtling toward my therapist, but in a good way. What this guy said to me was something I really needed to hear, and I really needed to hear it from him. It was the best compliment I’ve ever received, and almost certainly the scariest too. Good for him. His lecture may very well be the thing that sets the table and defines my next four year cycle.

What I’m saying is that I think I just typed FADE IN: on myself yet again.

“Okay,” you’re saying. “Enough preamble. What was the lecture??????”

Ummm…

…would you mind terribly if I didn’t tell you?

Cuz I’m not.

It’s not for you. It’s for me. It wouldn’t apply to you, and that’s true if you’re a hundred times more successful than I or a 15 year-old desperate for some guidance. This stuff was custom advice (although if you really want a hint…I’ll say this…I doubt I’ll use the language I used to describe the last few cycles when it’s time to describe the next one…)

What I can tell you is that you’re in a cycle right now, whether you like it or not.

Did you know? Do you understand it? Is there a rhythm to it?

Are you at the beginning?

Lost in the desert of your own 2nd act?

Nearing the end (that’s the scary one)?

Do you care?

You don’t have to. Honestly. Most characters are blissfully unaware that they’re in the stories we write, so why should we torture ourselves by getting recursive with the narrative of our own lives? I only dabble with the recursion myself. I’m sure Pirandello would think of me as a self-oblivious dolt.

Still, birthdays tend to do this to me.

And so, I’ll think I’ll give some of you a gift.

This gift is for the struggling. Particularly, it’s for the struggling young. This gift is for the people who have begun the “set out on my own” cycle. Maybe you’re in a new city. You’re trying to make it in a new business. You have no experience. You have no connections.

That was me…beginning of Cycle 3.

I don’t archive much of my life, but there’s one piece of paper I’ve saved all these years. I finally scanned it and laminated it, because it’s so important to me. When I arrived in Los Angeles in July of 1992, all I knew is that before anything good could happen to me, I needed to get a job.

I stood out on the corner of La Cienega and Pico, leafed through a payphone yellowpages (ahhhh, the pre-cell, pre-net days), and started cold-calling temp agencies.

I had a pen, which ran out of ink…and a pencil.

Today, I’m a rich guy with a hot wife and two great kids and a nice house and I do what I love for a living.

But fifteen years ago…

….I was this piece of paper.

Note the boxed note in the top middle. The one where I set a meeting with Louise at The Friedman Agency for 2:30 on Wednesday, July 29, 1992. That’s the meeting that gets me my first couple of temp jobs, one of which becomes a permanent job, which becomes a writing job, which gets me a marketing job at Disney, which leads to my career as a screenwriter.

I’m particularly fond of the question mark floating above it. I have no idea why it’s there, but I love that it’s there.

This paper is not some trophy or something. It’s my reverse Ozymandias. Know what I mean?

Look upon my Beginning, Ye Mighty, and smile!

I’m not saying you’re going to be rich and happy and famous. Honestly. I don’t know what you’re going to be. Drug-addicted hobo isn’t out of the question.

What I’m saying is…treasure your beginnings. That’s where all the fun is. That’s what I’m doing right now. Because I’m beginning a new cycle.

Let’s see where it goes.

Thanks, Parallels!I was going to write this week’s essay about screenwriting analogies (you know, “It’s a blueprint!” or “It’s a roadmap” or “It’s a rough guideline!”), but I got a bit sidetracked.

See, I’ve been a Mac user my whole life, ever since my first Apple IIe clone back in ‘82 (the Franklin Ace 1000, to be exact…a computer that cost my poor dad $1400 back then…a computer I bought on eBay a few years ago for exactly one dollar), but every now and then, you find yourself stuck needing a Wintel machine. It’s not the way it used to be, where software offerings for Mac were seriously impoverished. There’s practically nothing you can’t get for the Mac nowadays, but it’s that “practically” part that still bugs every now and again.

A few years ago, feeling the need for a Wintel escape hatch for those occasional non-Mac apps (like that stupid Clifford The Big Red Dog Teaches Your Kid How To Read! game), I bought an IBM ThinkPad.

I hate everything about that machine.

Well…not everything. I am a bit fond of the little track nubbin (perhaps because it’s clitoral), but that’s about it. The case is plasticky and shoddy, the screen is horrendous, the drive is about as quiet as a VW bus going up hill, the key feel is cheap and clacky, the sound is dismal, there’s no firewire input, the CD tray is a half a foot-pound away from snapping off at any given moment, and even the power supply is bulky and ugly.

Other than that…

I didn’t mind Windows XP Pro so much, to be honest. It’s a decent system, although it comes up terribly short compared to the latest versions of OS X. Spotlight runs circles around the poky “cute li’l doggy” search function in XP, the Windows Explorer app is ugly and diminished compared to the Finder, and the entire look and feel of XP is very much…well…I want to say 90’s, but that’s almost being generous.

Even worse, any time XP had to do something on a root level (like install certain apps, reboot, upgrade some system software or run a diagnostic), it showed its true, clunky colors. Suddenly, I would find myself looking at fonts from 1983, jagged edges and all, while graphics drawing from a vast palette of about 16 colors blocked and flashed their way across my screen like the images from some awful BASIC program I wrote on my Atari 400 in 1981 (saved on cassette tape drive, natch). The overall effect was like paying for a high-class hooker, getting a low-rent one, and then watching horrified as she removed her wig, glass eye and fake leg.

Plus, if you have sex with her, you will absolutely get a virus, followed by worms, followed by a Trojan Horse humping you from behind.

Yeah, I’m not a Windows fan.

Maybe that’s why I balked at the notion of replacing my aging ThinkPad with a new one. I just hate the idea of spending more money on hardware that exists only to drive software I don’t even like that much.

Enter Parallels.

Because my MacBook Pro is powered by an Intel Processor, it should theoretically be easy to run Wintel apps, right? Well, sort of. I flirted with some apps that promised to run individual Wintel programs within the Mac OS, but they were pretty kludgy. Didn’t have much success with Crossover, for instance.

Parallels, however, works differently. Parallels doesn’t actually run the Wintel apps; rather, it works as a bridge between OS X and a separate installation of a Windows OS that you put on your Mac.

And so, off I went to purchase a copy of Windows Vista to see if this Parallels thing would work. First thing about Vista is this: hey, Microsoft…you still SUCK at packaging. You’d think getting mocked by your own design department would be enough of a sign, but apparently not. Opening the Vista container was slightly harder than convincing my very Catholic girlfriend in 11th grade to give up her virginity. Of course, the fact that they slapped a huge piece of cellophane tape over the “Certificate of Authenticity” didn’t help—in order to open the package, I had to basically shred the certificate, so here’s hoping I never need to show my papers to the Man.

Once the Gordian Knot of Microsoft packaging had been cut, I started up Parallels on my Macbook Pro and loaded in the Vista CD. I tells ya, folks…it worked like BUTTA from there. Took a while, sure, but once it was all loaded in, why, I had a fully operational Vista OS working in full-screen mode on my MacBook Pro. Hell, it somehow managed to tie right into my wireless network without me even telling it how to.

In fact…I’m writing this post within Firefox within Vista within Parallels within OS X.

I wonder if this is how transgendered people feel…

I just wrote a piece for The Huffington Post expanding my thoughts on the upcoming WGA negotiations, including what I think is going to happen. So, wondering if there’s gonna be a strike or not? Read "Something Picket This Way Comes". To those of you visiting from HuffPo, welcome to our humble site. We hope you stick around.

So this kid named Ryan sends a message to me through my never-used MySpace page (I took one out to park my name…please don’t send emails to me there, or ask me to be your friend or whatever MySpacy type of stuff you enjoy) telling me he enjoys my films, and asking for some advice about film school.

I tell him about this site, give him the best advice I can, and that’s that, I figure.

But no. See, this kid is also in touch with James Gunn (who wrote The Specials), and James tells him I’m married with kids, but my MySpace page says I’m single with no kids…so this guy now wants to know if I’m the REAL Craig Mazin, and could I tell him some fact about James Gunn that he could verify with James Gunn in order to prove that I’m really me and not some nefarious Craig Mazin impersonator.

At this point, I should I have just walked away, because I’m thinking there’s now a 60% chance that this kid is James Gunn or Jamie Kennedy or some other person who knows me, and they’re just screwing with me.

Still, he’s purportedly in college, I’m trying to be a nice guy, so I email him a fact about James that I think isn’t public.

Then I email him again to point out that pretending to be Craig Mazin has to be the stupidest charade possible. I know this, because I am Craig Mazin, and there don’t appear to be any perks or fringes to this gig, like models or concert tickets or blow. Why would anyone even bother?

He emails me back with the following.

I’m waiting for James to get back to me about the Astroburger thing, but wasn’t that on the DVD?? Even I knew about that. Why would Craig Mazin get two things wrong on his profile? If this IS the real Craig Mazin, then you’ve got to put SOMETHING on your page proving it’s the real you. Everyone I know to be legit (James, his wife Jenna, Nathan Fillion from Slither) has something proving it’s them. Take a picture of yourself in front of your MySpace page on your computer. Or something. For every real celebrity on the internet, there are 1,000 people pretending to be them. You know that. Why do they do it? Your guess is as good as mine. Honestly, take a picture of yourself in front of your page.

Take a PICTURE in front of my MySpace page proving that it’s ME? Hey, why don’t I just drop everything else I’m doing and DRIVE TO YOUR HOUSE?

Then I could have lunch with you! You could see my driver’s license, and then touch me on the arm. If that’s not good enough, I could leave some hair behind for DNA testing…

Yes, the “single” and “no kids” thing is suspicious, because no one would EVER create a MySpace page and then NOT FILL IT IN ACCURATELY, right?

Maybe when I built that page, I didn’t want people to know I had kids. Maybe I didn’t want them to know I had a wife.

Maybe…

…wait, this is starting to make me look bad.

Honestly, I don’t know why it was filled out wrong.

I fixed it now, because I’m pretty much your employee now, Ryan. My job? Proving that I really am the oft-imitated but never-equaled Craig Mazin!

Like I said, I want to believe this is just a put-on, but this guy’s MySpace page is pretty detailed. I know, I know, maybe I’m as gullible as he is suspicious, but he seems real enough to me.

So, Ryan, if you’re reading this…

…this is not the way to go about winning friends and getting ahead in life.

For the rest of you, I know, I know…things have been sluggish around here. Stupid work getting in the way. I’ve got a ton of Q&A’s built up that I’m going to answer in one big burst, and then after that, an article that a number of you have requested: a primer to explain what the hell the issues are facing the WGA in the upcoming negotiations, whether or not I think we are going to have a strike, and what this all means in simple, easy-to-understand non-wonky language.

But first, I have to send a stool sample to Ryan.

It’s that time of year. My family and I will be spending Christmas in this lovely cottage depicted to the left. We call it “Olson’s Yule”, and you’re all welcome to join us. Doesn’t it look warm and toasty? It has twelve fireplaces. No matter how cold it gets outside, inside it’s always an inviting 575 degrees.

I’ll be rerunning some of my favorites for the next couple of weeks. Look for new stuff starting in the second week of January.

In a few minutes I have to go make some pies and cook a turkey and do all the other busy things the day requires, so I’m going to make this quick.

This year, I’m thankful for solving the problem of my migraines.

The path has been long and very, very painful. About ten years ago, I started experience pain around my eyes, accompanied by frequent nasal congestion. Sinus pain, in other words. Nothing worked, so I eventually underwent sinus surgery.

The pain didn’t go away.

In fact, it got worse.

I’ll describe it like this. I would wake with it, and the sensation was as if someone was digging above my eyeball with a fish hook, curving it up behind my brow, and then pulling. When it was bad, it was debilitating.

Eventually, a physician realized that my problem wasn’t sinus pain. My problem was migraine disease.

I tried anti-inflammatories. I tried nasal irrigation. I tried Excedrin. I tried meditation. I tried deep breathing. I tried sleeping more. I tried sleeping less. I tried breathe-right strips. I tried anti-anxiety medications. I tried anti-depressants. I tried anti-convulsants.

Nope. Nada. Nothing.

The only thing that would actually stop the migraines was Imitrex. Imitrex is one of a class of drugs called triptans, and they work by disrupting the…well, I should explain what a migraine is, hmmm?

All headaches are caused by the dilation of blood vessels in the head, neck and face. Blood vessels dilate for any number of reasons, but it seems that when they over-dilate, it’s usually in reaction to over constriction. Tight muscles can constrict blood vessels. They dilate in response…and voila…you have the cause and effect of a classic tension headache.

However, it’s not the blood vessels themselves that cause the pain, but rather the nerves that they’re slamming into when they expand. The culprit nerve for many migraineurs is the trigeminal nerve. When overstimulated by surrounding vasodilation, the trigeminal begins pounding the pain drum, triggering the release of pain-causing neurotransmitters. In addition to pain, this reaction can cause swelling and congestion, leading to more irritation of the trigeminal nerve, leading to more pain…

…until you’re in a full blown migraine. Some migraineurs (but not most) experience a visual warning, or aura, that is probably the result of increasing pressure on the eyeball. For me, there was no warning. I would simply wake up in pain. Sometimes it was so intense, I would either vomit or simply lie in bed.

And mind you, I have a rather high threshold for pain.

Imitrex and the triptans disrupt that vicious cycle, and the first time I took it, I was so happy I thought I’d cry. My migraines almost always last 10 hours or so. One hour after I took an Imitrex, it was gone.

Gone!

Even better, Imitrex isn’t a narcotic or barbiturate or benzodiazepine or anything like that.

So for a while, things were okay. Wake up with a migraine? No problem. Imitrex. Feel one coming on? Imitrex.

Unfortunately, they started getting worse. And they started coming more frequently.

And during the summer of this year, they started coming every day.

Every day, I would wake up in pain. That’s when I started to really worry.

So, what am I thankful for?

This book.

Ignore the silly cover. Buchholtz, a neurologist, runs the headache center at Johns Hopkins. I reached for his book as a Hail Mary, the way I had reached for everything before.

His message was oh so simple.

My headaches had gotten worse because I was rebounding off the Imitrex. Okay, fine, but why was I getting them in the first place?

He reeled off a long list of things that can cause headaches, but the one thing he warned against the most, the one thing he said no migraineur should ever ever touch, was the one thing I had been consuming large quantities of for 15 years.

Caffeine.

In addition to perking you up, caffeine is a vasoconstrictor. In fact, it’s such a good vasoconstrictor, they put a load of it in Excedrin. That’s why Excedrin works to stop headaches in some people when plain aspirin or Tylenol don’t. Unfortunately, if you’re neurochemically sensitive (and migraineurs are almost definitionally), that vasoconstriction will lead to vasodilation…and that’s going to lead to migraine.

I was waking up with migraines because eight hours of sleep meant eight hours without caffeine.

I was waking up in withdrawal, and once the migraine reaction had started, nothing but Imitrex could stop it…but that would only make matters worse.

So I went cold turkey. Quit the Imitrex and quit caffeine.

I will tell you that on day three, I was in so much pain I punched the wall.

But the headaches slowly started to recede.

First down to three a week. Then two. Then one.

It’s been a few months now. I have maybe one mild headache a week. Tylenol’s enough.

I’m thankful.

I’m incredibly thankful.

Like most things cool on the web, wikis began as little nerd repositories. The advent of Wikipedia changed that, but wikis are ours to do with as we wish. “Wiki” is a Hawaiian word for “shouldn’t work, but does.”

Mmm, actually, I think it means “fast,” but my definition is more descriptive. The idea that a largely unregulated conglomeration of random individuals should share collective responsibility for the editing of a resource is, well, crazy.

It’s wikicrazy, even.

Still, despite the well-publicized bumps in the road, wikis do tend to work.

Enter the Godfather Of The Scribosphere, John August, and his brand new jaWiki. It’s a terrific idea, not only because it’s a wonderful screenwriting resource our community can use and nourish, but because it provides guys like me with a lazy way of answering questions with a simple link.

The jaWiki is essentially a glossary of terms related to screenwriting and filmmaking. Users can add to entries, edit entries, etc. It’s still in beta, so you might experience some technical issues (although I haven’t yet). I’ve done a pass through and added about six or so definitions, and I plan on contributing more over the coming weeks. Go ahead and bookmark it now. It’s fledgling at this point, but I expect it’s going to eventually become a great (and free!) destination.

Well done, John!

Listen to the Jew…In the nearly two years I’ve been running this site, I don’t think I’ve been quite as annoyed as I was a few days ago. In the comment section of a recent article, a reader of the site made a joke.

A joke about vaginas.

Was it funny?

Who cares?

What’s more important is that another commenter felt it was absolutely necessary to take him to task for his offensive comment.

I say this to you all, but doubly and triply if you’re in college or a recent graduate of college: no one cares if you’re offended.

Ever.

Before I go too far down this road, I want to make certain my policies and motivations are clear. In the comment section here, I have a simple rule: if you behave in a way that I think is uncivil toward another member, then I delete your comment.

Why?

Not because it offends me. I do that because I have an objective desire to host a civil discussion, because I like civil discussions. There’s nothing immoral or shocking or horrifying about uncivil discussions. It’s just that I don’t want to host them, and this is my party and I’ll cry if I want to.

Ergo, I censor.

Same with the forum. If you break our rules (pretty much the same rules), then you get censored. Same reason.

What frustrated me about the complainer in this recent case was that she implied that there is some higher law than my own here. Apparently, there is a species of human that believes that if an individual is offended, then a crime has been committed.

Nope.

See, it’s perfectly fine to say “I don’t like vagina talk or Jesus talk or abortion talk or gay marriage talk in my house,” but if you go to someone else’s house and demand the same rules on the basis of some magical theory of “I’m offended ergo it is absolutely wrong,” then you become a tragic jerk that no one wants to be around.

You’d think writers would understand this.

Borat is, of course, Sacha Baron Cohen. And with his film, Cohen has done more to injure anti-Semitism than a thousand ridiculous Museums of Tolerance could ever hope to do. That is the power of comedy. It can subvert and undermine as well as anything, and our laughter is like a polygraph—we only laugh when the intent of the joke is clear.

Sacha’s intent is clear.

Of course, there are a lot of people who find Cohen’s comedy offensive. These are the kinds of people who are so addicted to the heroin of victimhood, they hate themselves for laughing.

Consider this missive from the Anti-Defamation League, which may be the most humorless perspective on a comedy I’ve ever read.

The premiere of Sacha Baron Cohen’s new film featuring his farcical character “Borat” has raised anew concerns among some in the Jewish community about the character’s notoriously boastful expressions of anti-Semitism and stereotyping of others.

When approaching this film, one has to understand that there is absolutely no intent on the part of the filmmakers to offend, and no malevolence on the part of Sacha Baron Cohen, who is himself proudly Jewish. We hope that everyone who chooses to see the film understands Mr. Cohen’s comedic technique, which is to use humor to unmask the absurd and irrational side of anti-Semitism and other phobias born of ignorance and fear.

We are concerned, however, that one serious pitfall is that the audience may not always be sophisticated enough to get the joke, and that some may even find it reinforcing their bigotry.

While Mr. Cohen’s brand of humor may be tasteless and even offensive to some, we understand that the intent is to dash stereotypes, not to perpetuate them. It is our hope that everyone in the audience will come away with an understanding that some types of comedy that work well on screen do not necessarily translate well in the real world — especially when attempted on others through retelling or mimicry.

It is unfortunate that Mr. Cohen chose to make jokes at the expense of Kazakhstan. It would have been better to have used a mythological country, rather than focus on a specific nation.

You know what that kind of absurd blather reminds me of?

Bad studio notes.

“Does he have to be Kazakhstani?”

“Will the audience get it?”

Anything that is subversive is going to offend someone. Anything. When people write me angry emails, astonished that I do not care that they are offended, what they’re really saying is either one of two things:

1. I am a narcissist, so please adjust your world-view to my taste, or
2. I don’t believe anyone should ever make any subversive statement, because being offended is worse than being scared of offending people.

Folks, I read things on the internet that offend me all the time.

WHO CARES?

No one is going to like everything, and no one thing will be liked by all. For those of us who make a living creating comedy for mass consumption, we’re all too aware of that. And if you write, it’s okay to worry if you’re offending others. Nothing wrong with that. Then make a determination about what you’re willing to put your name to, and live with it.

But for the love of Borat, please…don’t ever say the words “I’m offended” and expect anyone other than a college R.A. or your mommy to give a good sweet damn.

For the apparently gazillion of you that logged in to The Artful Writer this morning only to discover that the domain registration had lapsed, I apologize.

And I’m flattered. Honestly. I was buried under a deluge of emails. This site is like meth to quite a few of you.

The happy news (sort of) is that it wasn’t my fault. Yes, the domain had lapsed, but it’s not like I ignored renewal notices or used a bad credit card. My host also handles my domain registration, and they usually just renew it and charge me…

…but they sort of, um, forgot.

The good news is that because they work closely with the registry (and possibly even own it, I’m not sure), the problem was fixed ten minutes after my email to the owner. It’s rare that your whole site can ‘asplode and you come out of it loving your host even more, but I do. So thanks to Stacy Tabb at Hosting Matters for her excellent customer service.

For future reference, if things should ever go kablooey, I do mirror the site using theartfulwriter.com as an alternative address. Note that all of the links on the mirror will need to be manually adjusted in your browser to get the mirrored versions, but if you’re one of the seriously addicted, this will at least keep you from convulsing.

Sorry again for the downtime.

No, don’t go that far back…I’ve been writing for this site for a year and a half, and I’ve been dreading this post since I began.

It didn’t take long after the launch of The Artful Writer for The Question to be asked. It’s been asked a lot since then. A lot. Honestly, I’ve been resisting those words “How did you get your start?” for two excellent reasons.

Firstly, I find it terribly boring.

Secondly, I don’t think it’s going to have much relevance to anyone else.

Still, people keep asking, so here it is. I’m going to write it long, because I’m too tired tonight to be concise. Wherever I find places to possibly draw conclusions that might actually be helpful, I’ll bold them out. If I were you, I’d skip all the non-bolded text, but hey, you might be one of the people who asked The Question.

In the beginning (also known as 1992), I was a college lad who wanted to go into show business. I ran a public affairs radio program at school that had been started ten years earlier by a student named Garth Ancier. My experience writing, editing and producing media for broadcast sort of lit a fire in me.

One of the other alums of the radio program was working on a new sitcom called “Brooklyn Bridge,” and he promised me a production assistant job in the fall. I was thrilled. I’d graduate, spend one last lazy pot-smokin’ summer, and then hit L.A. in the fall and begin my career in the biz.

Two weeks before I graduated, the alum called to tell me that one of the other producers gave the job to a nephew. Honestly, I can’t remember if it was actually a nephew, but that makes it sound more annoying.

There are no sure things in this business. You have acheived something only when you can talk about it in the past tense.

I didn’t panic. No sir. After all, the summer before, I had interned at the Fox Network, and I was picked from hundreds of applicants, so obviously I was special. I would make it. Sure I would.

(later, my first boss, Dan McDermott, then the VP of Current Programming, would tell me that he chose me because I was, and I quote, “the least dorky.”)

And so, on July 5th, 1992, I packed my meager possessions into my meagerer Toyota and began driving across the country. I had $1400 to my name. I pretty much knew no one.

You don’t need to “know someone.” However, I definitely recommend having more than $1400 in your pocket. That was stupid.

I arrived in Los Angeles and quickly got an apartment to share with another college buddy who had come out to L.A. too. After first, last and the safety deposit, I was basically one month away from homelessness. Time to get a job. I went to The Friedman Agency to get a job…any job…but I figured since they placed you in the entertainment business, that was a plus.

Mind you, at no point had I ever considered writing. Okay? I just wanted to get a job. Sure, I had noodled on some spec sitcom scripts and thought myself a budding comic genius, but I never once thought that writing was something sane people could actually do for a living.

Louise at the Friedman Agency wasn’t interested in my fancy degree or my GPA or my permanent record. All she cared about was that I could type 110 words per minute.

Learn to type.

My first gig was at The William Morris Agency. In 1992, their employee manual was still xeroxed endlessly from an original hard-typed document. Yours truly was paid eleven bucks an hour to type the entire thing into Word Perfect.

If you work at William Morris and have read your employee manual…YOU’RE WELCOME.

My next temp job was at a boutique advertising agency called Jacobs & Gerber. Their gig was basically to produce promos for CBS shows. My position? Xerox temp. Because I applied myself diligently to my tasks, I was granted a permanent position as Xerox Boy.

Is writing your Plan A? Is your current job Plan B? Switch the letters. Make your current job Plan A. Why? The better you do what you do, the more opportunities you will receive…and opportunity is the currency all prospective writers need the most.

It was late October, 1992. I was a $20,000 a year Xerox Boy, and I was happy. So happy, that in a fit of anarchic mirth, I created a silly Halloween memo with fake blood stains and everything and passed it around the office.

An hour later, I was summoned to the office of the President of the company, an extremely sour and unimaginative creep named Albert Litewka.

And he fired me. Improper memo protocol, or something equally inane.

Sometimes you get fired.

As I cleaned out my desk in a stunned state, I got a call from the Creative Director of the agency. He liked my memo. “Yeah, well, it got me fired.”

He got me unfired.

Talent helps.

Having appeared on the radar, I was quickly moved from Xerox Boy to junior copywriter. And while I had only made a jump from $20,000 to $23,0000 a year, the difference to me was enormous. I wasn’t an assistant anymore. I was a writer.

An awful one, but a writer nonetheless.

For the next two years, I churned out scores and scores of ads. And in those two years, I learned something that I wish every writer would learn before attempting to write a screenplay.

I learned how to write for production. That skill is something that simply isn’t taught at your UCLA extension or your USC class. It can’t be. Production is expensive. Even if the ads were only thirty seconds, I still got to write a ton of stuff that then got prepped, shot and posted.

Try and write for production any way you can. There simply is no substitute.

An exec at the agency was pals with a young marketing executive at Disney named Oren Aviv. Oren was looking for a guy who could write copy for movie posters and trailers. I was hired.

My career as a studio executive began. And for a while, I lived and breathed marketing. You can read about some of the lessons I learned (and their relevance to what we do) here.

Oren was a pretty ambitious guy (which clearly paid off…he’s only President of Production at Disney now), and he wanted to reach beyond marketing and into film production, so he encouraged me (and my then writing partner) to come up with ideas for movies.

Note again…I would not have been in this position had I not made Plan B my Plan A.

My partner and I saw Apollo 13, and while we enjoyed it, we thought it would have been much better if one of the astronauts was a complete idiot.

We pitched “Space Cadet” to Oren, he pitched it to Roger Birnbaum…

…and Roger bought it.

So there you go. Hard work and typing skills gets the boy into the right place at the right time, and he’s finally given his big break.

All I had to do is actually prove that I could write. And prove it I did. The script was good. The movie? Not so good. But the script? Good. Or at least…good enough.

I’ve been working as a screenwriter ever since.

So that’s what getting hacked feels like! No, the picture to the left isn’t what the homepage looked like. That’s just my spoof of the classic hacker yadda yadda…the laughing quaker is a staple in the forums at Fark.com. For those of you who emailed me to let me know, I thank you.

Of course, waking up to the laughing quaker would be one thing. Waking up to a screen full of Arabic text followed by a ten digit number is another. Granted, this site doesn’t seem like something terrorists would be too interested in attacking (frankly, why would ANYONE be interested in hacking me?), and as always, Google came to the rescue. By copying and pasting the Arabic text into their translator, the mysterious hacker’s true motive became clear.

His message?

“Site infiltrated by Moshari The Phallic. Questions: 4829754834.”

That’s not the real number, of course. And then he listed a fake hotmail addy.

Well, Moshari The Phallic, you have bested me today!

Sort of. I mean, it took about two minutes to undo what he did (which was basically change the index page). Naturally, I’m going to be spending a little time in the upcoming days to try and patch up any security holes here and maybe reevaluate some of the peripheral software we use on the site (possibly change our chatware), but this, I suppose, is a cost of being on the web.

For now, this wasn’t as much a crime as a bit of silly teenage vandalism. I guess, in a way…I’m flattered. I mean, it’s great to have you guys as readers, but…Moshari The Phallic? Here? On my site?

swoon

Yes, we have a box office record to crow about here at The Artful Writer. What record? Well, as it turns out, Scary Movie 4 is the biggest Easter weekend of all…

…what? Oh, right. Pirates. I didn’t check the—oh? What happened?

It did WHAT?

HOW MUCH????

::spit take::

Ladies and gentlemen, I salute Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, who are now the proud owners of the single best box office day in all of film history.

Fifty-five million dollars.

In one day.

By the time the weekend is over, they will own the record for the largest opening weekend of all time. See ya, Spidey.

Congratulations, Ted and Terry. It’s an astounding achievement.

Today, I bought a computer. Again. For like, the ninetieth time of my life. I don’t just buy computers. I collect them. Yeah, I’ve got a Franklin Ace 1000 (c. 1982) in my storage room. So what? It’s a passion.

In celebration of my latest purchase, I’ve decided to leave all of the serious bloviating behind for a bit and talk about gear.

I love gear. When you hang around people who work with gear, nothing’s more interesting to me than to hear them descend into their patois about their gadgets and gizmos and preferences and hates. I’ll sit and listen to two DP’s talk about the merits of one bit of ground glass over another, one light meter over another, one camera body over another. I’ll listen to grips talk about clamps. I’ll listen to the wardrobe department debate stitch rippers. I really don’t care. I just enjoy the minutia of gear.

We writers don’t really have specific gear, but why should that stop us from having fun? I present to you my List Of Screenwriting Gear. Some of it is cheap. Some of it is expensive. I use all of it.

We begin, naturally, with the laptop. Specifically, the one I purchased today. This is the