In the Strangest Places...

This quote is credited to Gary Busey, the actor everyone dismisses as crazy:

“When you get lost in your imaginatory vagueness your foresight will become a nimble vagrant.”

Does anyone else see the brilliance of this statement?

Sleeping on the Beach

That simple phrase conjures so many romantic notions, doesn’t it? Ah, the beach; the open space, the salty air and the crash of the waves, sand castles and ice creams. There are seashells and pretty girls in bikinis.

What could be more relaxing than a nap on the cool evening sand? Especially after a bonfire and a little wine and a snogging snuggle next to someone. Yes indeed, the stuff of great modern literature.

*cough*

I hate the beach. I hate the hot sand under my feet. I hate it when sand gets in your shorts and tries to grind your package down by sandblasting it with every step you take. I hate stepping on sharp clam shells when you try to cool your dogs off in the water. I hate everything about it. But every once in a while it beats sitting on a bench in a park in a filthy city.

There too, is the lure of a relaxing nap snoring to the sound of the crashing surf. Ah, the crashing surf.

TIP: Romantic notions are for idiots. Bonfires and wine and soft curvy girls falling asleep naked next to you in the sand happen only in the movies and cheesy pulp novels. Reality is much more like a cheese grater to the nards. Falling asleep on the beach in the mid afternoon sun leads to nothing but blisters, pain, young children pointing at you shrieking as their parents cover their eyes in horror, that sizzling sound reminiscent of grilling meats and the smell of burning flesh. Stick to your freaking park bench and don’t listen to your old lady’s suggestions.

Don’t ask me how I know.

Screenplay Progress Week 3

When I was a boy I made a tape of all the songs that made me see something in my mind. They weren't favorite songs or sentimental ones but pieces of music that conjured images, emotions or vivid ideas. I thought if I could string them all together I'd have a soundtrack for a film I'd one day make myself. This was before even the Walkman so I could only play the tape in my room through headphones. I'd sit with a notebook and joyously jot down what I saw passing before my mind’s eye. A few years later I got a brand new Sony Walkman as a gift and that opened an entirely new door in my mind. I could take my music to the actual locations I was writing about and even better, go to new places and have the music paint a new story for me. I made dozens of tapes like this and I took them everywhere I went. These were my work tapes. I had so many ideas that came so fast that I stopped writing them down. They kept coming nonetheless.
After that awful inevitability of growing up took place and robbed me of any sense of youthful exuberance, the Walkman and the tapes and the mental tapestries all disappeared and in their place came the trappings of adulthood; bills, debt, jobs, worrying about the future etc. I forgot what it was like to dream with the transmission in neutral.

I was toiling over the script these past few weeks trying to translate the images in my mind to the page. It was almost painful the block in front of me. The TV was distracting me, the noise outside was distracting me, hell, everything was distracting me. I put my iPod on just to drown everything else out and I nearly fell over. The song was The Big Money by Rush which has an evocative intro and outro. From those two passages images started flowing quite freely and I was soon furiously writing. Suddenly it all came back to me and I dug deep into the closets for some clue to the past. I knew the tapes were long gone save one or two and I certainly didn’t have a tape player of any kind on hand. I did find an old notebook with a few scribbled notes. They were song titles all listed out like a menu to my old films. I immediately compiled a list of songs that seemed to fit my mood, loaded them into the Pod and I was off and running.

I have beginnings, several endings and lots of random passages in the middle that have yet to tie themselves together. I wake up at night with a tune in my head and suddenly, there’s an image passing before me. Out comes the notebook. My work tapes, I guess you’d now call them playlists, are loaded and ready to assist. Let’s see what comes up today…

Lesson Pending...

Johnny Style called on me to help him move or more importantly, lift a very heavy wall unit for his new apartment. Apparently, his wife wasn’t man enough to help despite looking otherwise. We met the guy from Craigslist and humped the multi-shelved monster from his apartment into Johnny’s truck. Luckily, unlike other Johnny Style Moving Adventures, I did not leave my testicles bouncing at the scene. We used straps and wheels to painlessly get it from apartment building to street to truck. I thought the unit looked a little too big to get through the doors of his new place and into his living room but he insisted it wasn’t a problem. I still had my doubts.

We sat in his truck in front of his place for about a half hour pondering why the unit looked a lot smaller in the picture and if he could remove the doors and frames without making noise. We decided to hump it around the back past trees and over a thick lawn, so no more straps and wheels, and through the ground floor utility room which has access to his apartment. We were very careful not to drop it because he didn’t want to gouge deep trenches in his new landlord’s new lawn. We did however knock over an expensive looking lawn statue. Six of those little tubes of crazy glue later and the damage was barely noticeable. Unless of course, you were within five feet or so.

Johnny made a quick assessment of the door in the back and the pass through the utility room which was littered with exposed plumbing and duct work. He decided the bulky solid unit would slide rather nicely past all the obstacles right in to his new place and come to rest peacefully opposite the couch.

TIP: When moving furniture it is wise to take into account that even though your unit may just get though various doors and past the ancient hot water system, it will undoubtedly not bend around tight hairpin curves and if, by some chance you do get it around the corner and into the door frame, the saddle may take up just enough space to firmly wedge the unit between the ceiling and the floor making it a permanent testament to the folly of man.

We got the unit around the tight corner without violating any laws of physics, into the doorway and promptly got it good and stuck in the frame. Johnny, undeterred said he get on the inside and see if he could jostle it a bit. Now he could have gone around the house, up the stairs, into his place, down the stairs and into the utility room but that was simply too much work. I was about to suggest just going round when he decided to stuff himself through the tiny opening in the corner of the door frame and hop over the rickety banister that was precariously in the way on the other side. Before I could say “swollen testes” he had already disappeared behind the behemoth. I heard him proclaim victoriously, “I’m in!” followed by a kind of “allyoop” sound as he made fast to hurdle the banister. It was then that I heard the sound of dry wood splintering, plaster board shattering like breaking glass, a body rolling onto then off of the stairs and into a wall full of tools which all jingle jangled in chorus. Then I actually saw the banister coming up and arcing over the wall unit and getting stuck between the door frame and the ceiling. The dragon had been slain, St. George oblivious and rubbing his posterior was facing the new challenge of standing upright somewhere in the dragon’s lair.

“Would this be a good time to remind you that it would be easier to go round the front of the house?” I asked gently. After several hours of manipulating very heavy wood and inevitably leaving my testicles somewhere in his yard, we got the thing into his living room. As I sat there with an ice pack on my ice cubes Johnny came in with the banister remnants and tucked them neatly into his closet. He responded to my quizzical look with “I’ll get to it eventually”. “But won’t your new landlord wonder what happened to his basement railing?” I offered. “I’ll just tell him my wife did it while doing the laundry. She won’t mind.”

And that is how Johnny Style missed the following simple lessons:

1. Just because it fit in your place in the picture doesn’t mean it will in reality,

2. Don’t break your new apartment before writing first rent check,

3. Crazy Glue isn’t as strong as you think it is and,

4. Don’t blame your lack of finesse on your wife who has pent up rage issues.

Class dismissed.

The Day I Discovered Fire

Last week the Uncle brought over a spiffy new cast iron griddle for my stove.  It goes over a front and a rear jet giving you either a smooth cooking surface for eggs and pancakes or a ribbed (for her pleasure) side for meats and veggies (also for her pleasure).  This was because we didn't have a barbecue for the usual Memorial Day tradition of grilling anything that stood still long enough; chicken, shrimp, that old tire out back.   

NUGGET:  Urban apartment dwellers are verboten to have grills of any kind on balconies or roof tops.  Something about a fire hazard which baffles me since my balcony is all stone and no wood.  Go figure.  

I decided to take it slow as the extremely heavy piece of metal came with instructions.  There would be no pig roast this afternoon. There were notes on how to prep the surface, how to clean it and how to store it so it won't rust and simply become a piece of exercise equipment or a weapon.  I fired up the stove and made a bunch of scrambled eggs  just like the guys in the metal carts on the corners in Manhattan; two eggs, cheese, potatoes on a roll and coffee.  Yum.  They came out great so I decided next to try chicken. And fish.  And vegetables.  At the same time. 

This is where my memory gets a little foggy because of the fire suppression devices.

I prepped the griddle and the food and pulled the battery out of the smoke detector.  As soon as the fish and the chicken hit the gill they made that appetizing sizzle sound just as my uncle Know-It-All asked me if I used any kind of no-stick cooking spray. 

Non-stick cooking spray?  Why, no.  

The meat and the fish sizzled and smoked and fizzled and spattered.  The Uncle and the Brain were oohing and ahhing at my culinary prowess. MY brow was sweaty and my muscles were rippling as I deftly handled the spatula. Meanwhile, the veggies just kind of sat there limply jealous of the action occurring on either side of them.  That was until I had the bright idea to splash oil all over them.   

OBSERVATION: The range over my stove has no outside ventilation.  As a result, the little fan and little filter that make that weak strained whine are about as useful as a dash-mounted play station in your SUV (yes, they have them).   

The food on the grill began to smoke beyond the capability of the range to absorb the plume.  Soon, a cloud of white smoke was billowing from under the range hood. I was furiously flipping the meat over and turning the veggies but bits and pieces were sticking to the non no-stick grill surface.  Soon there was actual fire on the surface as the food began to char into the iron surface. It was a carnal extravaganza set alight.  I pulled the food off the grill but the stuck pieces continued to cook then burn then smoke.  I frantically shut the flames off the stove as the metal continued to superheat in hopes that would quell the blaze. 

TIP: Even though there is no flame under it, a superheated cast iron slab retains heat to an almost nuclear level vaporizing anything on the surface.   In fact, I'd go so far to say it still grew hotter. 

 
 

I stood there with my plate full of perfectly grilled foods while the remainder on the stove smoked and burned. The apartment was so thick with smoke that I couldn't see anybody in front of me. The smoke detector, had it been plugged in would have made direct contact with the fire department by now. I put the plate down, donned a pair of oven mitts and made for the griddle. The heat coming off the metal was so strong that I needed to hose myself down to prevent myself from igniting. I grabbed the iron, kicked open the balcony door and threw it on the terrace. It hit the concrete floor with a resonant THOING and proceeded to set the plants on fire. I ran inside knocking over my aging uncle and got a pot of water.

 

TIP: I was later told that to stop an iron plate from summoning forth Armageddon it is best to douse it in either salt or baking soda, not water. Who knew?

 

I ran back outside knocking my uncle over once again and splattered the griddle, the deck and the plants with water. The cloud of steam and the loud SIZZLE sound were enough apparently to attract the attention of the neighbors, the super, every tenant on the floors above mine and quite possibly the Coast Guard and/or Google Earth.

 

When it was over I was standing there with my clothes perfectly wrinkle free, my hair matted to my head and my balcony looking like the inside of an oven. The grill had lost its metal sheen and was now an ashy black with little bits of once living matter forever fused to its surface. It would take weeks to clean it all off. Maybe I should just stick to making salads.

 

First Snag

I've been working on the screenplay quite a bit this week. I'm trying to get the images from my mind to the page. Screenplays are written in a specific format, which means that's another skill I have to learn. No prob. For example, if I were to tell you what was happening in my living room right now in screenplay format it would go like this…

INT. DAY

TOM is sitting in front of his computer while several beautiful women are undressing in his living room. ESMERELDA enters from the bathroom in nothing but a towel.

WOMAN #1

Do you have any chocolate pudding mix to add to the bath water?

WOMAN #2

Or perhaps can you bring in a sandwich when you care to join us?

TOM looks up from his computer long enough to realize the woman are now all naked and smearing MARSHMALLOW FLUFF on each other.

Well, you get the idea.

So my question is…how do you write a screenplay for a film that has no dialogue?

Lots of bolded abbreviations I suppose. Natch.

Here and Now...?

It is said that if an actor's phone isn't ringing then that actor isn't working. To offset that problem the actor has to figure out how to keep working until the phone does ring. They should start a production company or put on a play or even shoot a film of their own. That last choice has been a favorite undone thing on my to do list for some time. But there needs to be a story to tell and not just a Johnny Style story. I had bits and pieces on scraps of paper but nothing coherent. Then, rather suddenly, it all fell into place...

I had this story come to me I'm dying to tell, compelled to tell actually. The events are real, true and accurate. At least in my imagination they are. The emotions connected are 100% on the money. I sat and watched each piece of the story slip along side the other as it unfolded in my mind. But then I thought perhaps it was all a little too good. I started to sour on the subject because the negative side of it emerged from the shadows and dampened my new found passion. Then something happened to me in the street that made me realize the story does need to come out, that I need to tell it and I need someone to hear it and even identify with it. It presents as a complete story on film.

It has no dialogue. It has no fancy locations or expensive sets. It is sparse because I didn't want you to see it as much as feel it. There are only two actors, a garage, a car and a man's memory. I have the man, the memory and the garage. I lack the car, the money, the equipment, the experience, the skill and the crew. All solvable as I also have the passion that is so very necessary to tell any story effectively. I could learn the skills I need, raise money, rent equipment, assemble a crew and find a car.

All this to get something off my chest, to prove a point, to begin a career and jump start a dream, to get ahead, to get noticed and to reconcile in my mind, my father in death whereas I couldn't do it in life. In short, I need this. I need to make this real, to tell a story that's been knocking around my life since before I was born. I need to tell it and I need you to know it because maybe you feel it too, maybe for your father or mother. All my dreams ride on doing this one thing.

It will be at least 8 months before a single frame of film is shot. I have no idea what I'm doing or how I'll do it but its out there now and it will only be mine for
short time before it fades away.

Why don't you sit on the stoop with me, I'll put up some coffee and I'll tell you about it...