Lazy Sunday

I've developed a bit of a routine for my Sunday evenings. I crack a bottle of beer (lately something from a local brewery of the Pacific Northwest), head into my backyard, and grill up some salmon sprinkled with rosemary and sea salt. As the fish cooks, I sit on the bench swing that my landlord installed and sip my beer as I take it all in: the abundant greenery of my back garden; the houses dotting the hill beyond my house; the sounds of the children on the other side of the fence playing (lately, it's been lightsabers: man, I played lightsabers!); the odd, towering cone-shaped evergreen trees sprinkled around the neighborhood; the setting sun; and the soothing stillness of the evening. Everything becomes muted, and I feel calm and and peace. It is, these days, a rare feeling.

Sometimes, my landlord, a warm and easygoing film grip who lives in the converted barn behind my house, comes out and joins me, and we'll have a glass of saki or scotch and talk about nothing in particular. Sometimes I'll just sit by myself and think about my writing, or the coming work week (though I try not to), or just not think at all, periodically turning and prodding the cooking salmon like I know what I'm doing, and brushing the occasional ant of the waiting plate.

After dinner, I sit with my lady and watch a movie or the BBC mystery dramas to which I've become addicted as of late (PRIME SUSPECT begins Monday! Rejoice!). And on Sunday evenings, I fall asleep in a state of sheer contentment. Truly, this is the way Sundays are meant to be done.

Of course, next Sunday, we're seeing David Byrne and the Arcade Fire at the Hollywood Bowl, and that should make for a darn good alternative.

Lucas vs. Spielberg

Slate has an article up on one of my favorite cinematic topics: the epic friendship of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. And, unfortunately, since friendship doesn't make news, and conflict does, writer Tom Shone has gone and twisted an interesting tale of two men who happen to be the two most successful directors in the history of film into a bitter catfight. I mean, just look at the title: "Lucas vs. Spielberg - the Worst Best Friends in Hollywood." Basically, the article's a steaming load of crap, a ridiculously poor attempt to create controversy where there is none. Tom Shone, you're a jackass. Here's why.

"Lucas' Revenge of the Sith opened on May 18, while Spielberg's War of the Worlds arrives in time for July 4. It is a battle that, in terms of the box office, Spielberg is expected to lose—Revenge of the Sith has already taken in $400 million in just over three weeks, while War of the Worlds' top projections stop short of $300 million."

How does two films opening two months apart constitute a "battle?" Wow, Spielberg must take that as a bitter blow: your summer movie might not beat the box office tally of the climatic sequel to THE MOST SUCCESSFUL FILM SERIES OF ALL TIME. Does anyone really expect it to? And do you honestly think Steven's going to be crying in his cornflakes if War of the Worlds takes in 300 mil?

"Theirs is a battle fought out in box-office millions and backhanded compliments, blockbusters, and casual slights. 'He's taught me a lot about creative compromise,' Spielberg once said of Lucas, with a straight face."

Had the quote not been taken out of context, and had the snarking writer left off the asinine "with a straight face" aside, the reader would have known that Spielberg was talking about how Lucas, during the filming of Raiders of the Lost Ark, showed Spielberg that a movie could be brought in under-budget and under-schedule, something Spielberg hadn't been able to do with his last three films. "I found with these movies [Raiders, Poltergeist, and E.T.] that the compromises I made to deliver the films responsibly were actually better than the original ideas I started with," Spielberg said in a 1982 interview with American Premiere. "This isn't a a rule, and maybe I'll change my mind later, but when I had to make a compromise to save some money, I found that the second idea was better and fresher for the movie."

"And when Spielberg repeatedly begged to direct one of the new Star Wars episodes, Lucas reported the story with the glee of a child keeping his favorite toy just out of reach. 'I was getting ready to shoot in Australia,' Lucas told reporters, 'and Steven was whining on the phone all the time, "Oooh, I'm sitting here by the pool, and poor me, I don't have a movie to direct ... "' "

Impressive. Shone manages to take a direct quote from Lucas' Entertainment Weekly interview, and yet directly contradict the same interview in the same paragraph. Lucas says that he ASKED both Spielberg and Ron Howard to direct an episode of the prequel trilogy, and they turned him down. Spielberg's "whining on the phone," another quote taken out of context, was a teasing joke referring to how Spielberg came to direct a scene in REVENGE OF THE SITH, not the sneering jibe that Shone makes it out to be.

"It's a beguiling image: two young men, carving out movie empires for themselves as they build sandcastles on the beach. The important thing to remember, though, is how sad and unbalanced their relationship was at the time: Lucas was very much the top dog, with Spielberg the humble amanuensis, gratefully accepting scraps from the master's table."

"The humble amanuenis," "gratefully accepting scraps from the master's table." This is how Shone chooses to describe the man who had at that point in time directed the highest-grossing pictures for two of the major studios, Universal and Columbia. JAWS was the first movie to ever gross a hundred million dollars at the box office. Depicting Spielberg as a Cinderella scrubbing the kitchen floor while evil stepsister Lucas goes to the ball isn't only a stretch, it's absolutely ridiculous.

"At the time, it was Spielberg's career that seemed checkered. Both Jaws and Close Encounters had gone wildly over budget, as did his elephantine World War II farce, 1941—Spielberg's first flop—so that by the time he got around to Raiders, if anyone resembled a man trying to outrun a giant runaway boulder, it was he. Lucas, as executive producer, had a hard time convincing studio heads that Spielberg was the right director for Raiders."

Um, not quite. See above. While 1941 might have been a flop and Jaws and Close Encounters DID both go over budget, the sheer volume of money grossed by the latter two meant that any studio executive at the time would have given his right nut to grab the next Spielberg picture.

"'We took [Raiders] to every single studio in town and got turned down by everybody,' says Lucas, 'except Michael Eisner, and Eisner got a lot of heat for it, because of the $20 million budget.' Lucas assured Eisner that Spielberg would bring the picture in under budget and on schedule."

Again, studio execs were falling all over each other for the chance to work with the Spielberg/Lucas tag team. The reason Raiders was turned down by most of the majors was that Lucas and Spielberg were demanding that they would OWN Raiders; they would control the copyright and the negative, and the studio would only get a share of the action. This meant that, according to Spielberg, the picture would have to gross over $60 million before the studio would see any substantial money. It was a crappy deal, and Paramount took it anyway. Unbelievably, Shone manages to completely ignore this massive upheaval in the way the studios did business with creatives so that he can pitch the turning-down of Raiders as a result of Spielberg being at the helm. Nice one.

And so the article goes, taking the bond between two massively successful filmmakers and painting it as a petty rivalry for the all-time top slot at the box office. And why does this stick in my craw to such a degree?

Well, because I've always found that friendship fascinating, a sign of the pinnacle of success: to not only be at the top of your game in your chosen profession, but to have a mate who's right there with you. The image of these two guys who have just dominated the movie world sitting on a beach in Hawaii talking about movies and building sand castles, well, it's GREAT, it makes my mind reel with possibilities. How cool it would be to be so successful. How cool to do it with a friend. But everyone's heard that story, there's no twist to it, no conflict, and we need conflict in our entertainment. So Tom Shone comes along and turns it into "the Worst Best Friendship in Hollywood." And two friends enjoying each other's success and helping each other along becomes two rivals making public niceties while bitterly envying their others successes in their fight to hold on to the ultimately meaningless position of Box Office Top Dog. Because you HAVE to be bitter and envious if someone does better than you, even if you've done better than everyone else. Because you can't possibly want someone else to succeed. Especially a good friend. Not that. Never that.

If your idea of success is to always be gunning for the other guy while watching your back for the guy gunning for you, to be stung by friends' accomplishments rather than to enjoy them for what they are, and to trample those friendships in the dust in your race for a prize that doesn't exist, well, Tom, have a fun and rewarding career.

Who Are You?

Well, you wouldn't know it to look at the rest of this site, but I'm a writer. A screenwriter, to be exact.

It's been gnawing at me lately that this site, while I'm certainly happy with it, does little or nothing to reflect what is currently one of the defining characteristics of my life. I'm a screenwriter. It's why my (unbelievably patient and supportive) wife and I moved out here. I can say with all certainty that it's what I'm best at; it's my calling. It's what I want to do, and it's what I spend a large part of my time doing. I'm not making a living off of it, but what I do make a living off of isn't me. My day job is my day job, and while I work hard at it and do it to the best of my abilities, it's still my day job, it's what pays my bills.

Writing, screenwriting, is what I do; it's what defines me. And yet this site, which defines me to the online world, most of whom will probably never meet me face to face, doesn't really reflect that. Part of that's because I don't talk about my writing, and part of THAT is because I've had a hard time calling myself a screenwriter when I don't make a living off of it, and I don't want to be one of the legion of "schmucks with Powerbooks" who call themselves screenwriters just because they've managed to put some words on a page. But some recent advances have given me a little more comfort in the title, so what the hell, I'll take it.

So, in the coming weeks, or months, as time permits, I'm going to be making some shifts to this site, to reflect this passion that has so far gone unreflected. That includes samples of recent writing in particular, and a shift in focus in general. That said, I don't want this to become "The Life and Times of the Unfulfilled Screenwriter," examples of which can be found by the truckloads on the ol 'Net, and it won't. This won't be, "Writing sucks, I hate my job, no one reads my stuff, I gotta get an agent, etc., etc." That crap's boring and self-absorbed and just pathetic, and I won't have anything to do with it. I'll continue to do here what I've been doing, which is writing about stuff that interests or annoys me(been a bit more of the latter lately, I know, but I'm working on that). But I'll be writing more about writing, too, and the challenge there will be to make that as interesting to the reader as it is to me. 'Cause, you know, I've pretty much dedicated my adult life to it, so I might as well try to explain why.

I Love L.A.

The missus and I were in Chicago this past weekend for a wedding, where we got to see a number of friends we hadn't in far too long. And invariably, the question would come up, in various forms: "How do you like L.A.?" (Other forms: "How's L.A.?" "Are you liking L.A.?" "L.A.? Thumbs up or down?" etc. You get the picture.)

The "adult" friends (the ones I didn't know that well, who haven't seen me in my boxers at three in the morning) got what has gradually, through much practice, become the nonthreatening answer: "It's...good." (That ellipse, that moment of hesitation before the "good," is crucially important to maintain self-respect and honesty). Then, the twist of the knife: "Can't beat the weather."

Here, in fact, is the threatening and hostilely direct answer: I hate L.A. And yes, you CAN beat the weather, with a big fat stick. But more on that later.

Having travelled literally around the world, and spent a fair amount of time in over a dozen countries and four continents, I can honestly say I've never encountered more annoying locals in my life. And yes, I've been to France. Angelinos (as they like to call themselves, which pretty much sums it up, as far as I'm concerned) are not only mind-shatteringly annoying, but they PRIDE themselves on being mind-shatteringly annoying. They love it. They get off on it. They, in fact, look for ways to be MORE annoying. Some of the gems they've discovered to date:

• Talking on their cell phones as loudly as possible in public. Not because they're deaf, but because they want to be heard. By YOU.

• Talking on their cell phones while driving. Yes, I know people do this everywhere. But as Angelinos are the worst drivers in the motorized world, ANYTHING they do while driving becomes automatically more annoying, because it increases the risk of death of everyone else in a hundred-foot radius by a factor of ten. And death is annoying.

• Talking on their cell phones while driving in an erratic approximation of a sin curve at 57 miles per hour in the fast lane. I encounter at least two of these a DAY. I wish hot death on these people.

• Everything else. There's too much to list. The easiest thing to do would be to digitally record an Angelino for an hour and post it here. But I don't have a video camera and would chew off one of my testicles before willingly spending an hour with an Angelino, so you'll have to take it on faith that these people are literally the most annoying people on Earth.

A story: the missus and I went to U2's opening show in Los Angeles the other month, and after a couple numbers, Bono launched into the obligatory "Hello, Milwaukee!!!" part of the show, where the performer warmly praises the locale in which the venue is situated to rousing cheers from the locale's inhabitants. Bono's halfhearted attempt: "The thing I like most about Los Angeles..." (note the telltale ellipse) "...is that...people here live on their imaginations." I thought he was going to say, "The hot dogs at Pink's," but he surprised me. Then he launched into "Sunday Bloody Sunday" before someone could ask him to elaborate.

The next night, Bono was accosted in mid-performance by an aspiring stripper with breast implants who literally chased him halfway around the stage before she was snatched by security, and who presumably DOESN'T live on her imagination, but on the manufactured twins that were doing their best to break free of her sequined belly shirt. The Angelino, after being ejected from the show, told onlookers that it was the best moment of her life. I'm not making this up.

On his next Los Angeles leg of the tour, Bono's "Hello, Milwaukee!!!" moment will most likely consist of Bono giving praise to the city's proliferance of large but sprightly bouncers.

When I discussed the Attack of the Three-Headed Stripper with Angelinos, they would invariably smile, shake their heads, and say with a chuckle something along the lines of, "Only in L.A." In much the manner the mother sitting at the table next to yours in the restuarant would chuckle and say, "Kids," after her bratty six-year-old just dumped his water glass on your head and ran off to play in the restuarant's pizza oven.

Los Angeles is that monstrous, semi-retarded child. Angelinos are the clueless mother who publicly thinks her child's abhorrent behavior is "precious" and secretly, in her heart of hearts, hopes the chef doesn't notice there's something else in the oven when he throws in a pizza and slams the door.

Okay, that's a bit dark. But I just don't like L.A.

I wanted to. I actually thought I would. The only previous encounter with L.A. that sticks out in my mind is a layover in LAX, on my way to Sydney, in which I walked out to the edge of the terminal and stood by the side of the road circling around the airport and stared, fascinated and filled with awe, at the lights of the sprawling city. It was beautiful, and I knew I'd be back sooner or later.

Now, later, I still like looking at the lights, but I've learned that that first impression of L.A. was, for me, it's only appeal: it's great to look at from a distance, but living among those lights is something else entirely.

Don't get me wrong: there are advantages. I work three blocks from the beach. I live in a beautiful house that I love. I work at a special effects company, something I've dreamed of doing since I saw STAR WARS. There are perks.

You'll notice I'm not mentioning the weather. That's because everything you think you know about Los Angeles weather is wrong. It's a lie: it's NOT seventy-five-and-sunny year-round. It DOES rain. Hell, it rained for three months straight this year. It DOES get humid in the summer. It's been grey and overcast for the last two weeks. And there's no snow, and there's no Fall, and without the markers of time that distinct seasonal changes provide, the months all just blend in together, and next thing you know a year's gone by. I spent thirty years marking time by those changes, and their absence throws me off.

Ah, well. I'm just being cranky. Writing's been a little tough as of late, and it's put me in a glass-half-empty mode. These things shall pass, probably the next time I'm riding my bike along Venice Beach in the morning, and I'll once again get hit by the thought, "Gee, this ain't so bad." And then I'll go home to my lovely wife at the end of the day, and all will be right with the world.