Synecdoche, New York

The play's the thing...

Charlie Kaufman has done it again. He wrote (and directed) a movie all about what it's like to live inside my head. The first time he did it was with the movie Adaptation, which tells the story of a screenwriter named "Charlie Kaufman" who is trying to adapt a book about orchids into a Hollywood movie. When I saw Adaptation, I felt like Charlie had been listening to my private thoughts and transcribing them onto the page. It was eerie how much the struggles of the character "Charlie Kaufman" mirrored my own. I wondered if anyone else would appreciate a movie that seemed to be directed at me personally.

I've written myself into my screenplay.

Now, Charlie (the actual person) has come out with another movie reflecting the inner workings of my not-so-spotless mind. It is called Synecdoche, New York and it is about a playwright and director named Caden, played by the brilliant Phillip Seymour Hoffman, who creates a play about his own life. But not just any play. The play that Caden creates is an actual, full-scale, real-time depiction of the everyday events of his own life. The play is staged in a massive warehouse which replicates in minute detail the streets, buildings, shops, houses and apartments of Caden's world. Naturally, this replica includes a replica of the warehouse which in turn also replicates Caden's world. And that replica contains another warehouse. And so on.

We're actors. We're the opposite of people.

Of course, the replicas are populated with actors who play the parts of the people in Caden's life, including his wife and daughter and himself. As the play goes on for years and years, these relationships change and grow, both outside and inside the play. Eventually it becomes quite confusing as to who is playing whom. The line between reality and theater becomes blurred to the point of non-existence. Eventually, Caden enters into the world of the play, taking up the part of a minor character. Though, as he puts it: "None of those people is an extra. They're all the leads of their own stories."

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

In the play Hamlet, the main character, Hamlet, decides to put on a play to ferret out the murderer of his father. Hamlet tells the actors that the purpose of the play is "to hold as 'twere the mirror up to nature." For a long time, this was the Holy Grail of not just theater, but art in general. Painting, sculpture, literature, photography, theater, cinema, etc., have all sought to reproduce as faithfully as possible the realities of our world and in so doing reveal life's truth. But reality isn't always the truth.

Truth is for suckers, Johnny Boy.

Plenty of artists have taken a very different route from the 'mirror up to nature' one. Picasso wasn't exactly going for photorealism in Guernica. Waiting for Godot doesn't even attempt to portray the world as we know it. Slaughterhouse Five bounces around from one time period to another and even transports two of its characters to a distant planet. But each of these works manages to convey some essential truths.

Let us not waste our time in idle discourse!

Perhaps the 'mirror' is the key. I have a mirror in my bathroom that is normal on one side and magnified on the other. When you hold the magnified mirror up to nature, are you seeing more of the truth or less of it? And what about those mirrors in your car that say 'objects may be closer than they appear'? Sometimes the mirror is lying.

Half of what he said meant something else, and the other half didn't mean anything at all.

In one of my favorite plays, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, two minor characters from Hamlet become the leads in a kind of mirror image version of the original play. Instead of focusing on Hamlet and all his tribulations, this play focuses on the two college buddies who have been invited to Elsinore to cheer Hamlet up after his father's death. Although, once they arrive, they realize they have really been called in to spy on Hamlet to find out why he's acting so crazy. Right from the start, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern begin to notice that the world has stopped making sense. The laws of physics and probability have gone out the window. Logic and reason fail them. They don't know where they are, why they are there, or even which one of them is which. The only person who seems to know what's going on is a character known as The Player, who has been brought in by Hamlet to stage the play-within-the-play that will help Hamlet catch his father's killer. The Player alone seems to realize that they are all caught up in something beyond their understanding, headed for a final act which always ends the same way.

Audiences know what they expect, and that is all they are prepared to believe in.

Synecdoche, New York reflects a world where reality becomes theater and theater becomes reality. A playwright mounts a production dramatizing every moment of his life, spanning nearly two decades, consisting of dozens of sets and hundreds of actors and including a play within a play within a play within a play, and on and on, like a never-ending house of mirrors. And in the end, the main character becomes a bit player and the bit player becomes the lead. Because we are all leads in our own stories. Just like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players...

So, therefore, I am living in Synecdoche, New York. As are we all. We are all mounting productions of our lives and playing our parts on the world stage. And each of these productions is like a mirror that reflects what we think is the truth. Whether we are from Synecdoche or Ilium or Grover's Corner's or Mayberry.

The Color Purple

"I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it."


For most of my life, politics has essentially been a spectator sport. And like most other spectator sports, I only become interested in it when the stakes are high, like the World Series, the Super Bowl, or the Olympics. I am currently going through a phase of fairly intense interest in politics, although I still treat it as a spectator sport. I watch it on TV, read about it on the internet, talk about it with my friends. Although last week, on election day, I did get a chance to participate. And I was surprised at how fun and exciting it was.

I first became interested in politics during the 1972 presidential race. Most of my eighth-grade classmates were for Nixon, and therefore, so was I. Not that I actually knew anything about Nixon or what he stood for. I just wanted to be like everyone else. I had one friend, however, who was a staunch McGovern supporter. His name was Cliff and his dad was the minister at our church. As far as my classmates were concerned, McGovern was a Communist. And that was the worst thing that anyone could be. But one day, Cliff sat me down told me about McGovern and the things he stood for. And it turned out that I agreed with McGovern. And then Cliff told me about Nixon and the things he stood for. And I totally disagreed with Nixon.

Cliff took me downtown to McGovern campaign headquarters to learn more. I read their literature and immediately got on board. Soon, I was handing out buttons, silk-screening posters, and putting up flyers like a true believer. I got caught up in the excitement of the campaign and as November drew nearer I had high hopes for our candidate. I remember very clearly that it was raining that election day and Cliff and I thought that maybe the rain would deter some of the more complacent Nixon voters.

It didn't.

In high school, my political activities were focused on environmental issues. As a Boy Scout, I had gained a deep love and respect for nature and felt compelled to do my part to protect the earth from the ravages of pollution and overdevelopment. I joined the Ecology Club at school and signed up to take part in a protest march to help save the Red River Gorge.

The Red River Gorge is a beautiful and unspoiled area in the foothills of the Appalachians where the winding Red River has carved its way through layers of sandstone to create a spectacular series of canyons, arches, cliffs and waterfalls. It was one of my favorite places to go camping and hiking. But the Gorge was being threatened by a proposed dam, and the Sierra Club and various other radical tree-hugging organizations were fighting the Corps of Engineers to try and preserve the Gorge's unique ecosystem.

It was my first protest march and it was a doozy. We loaded into a bus for the trip to Frankfort, singing songs and swapping stories on the way down. I got to know some of the other Eco club members, mostly hippie types and other outcasts. The march was huge. It proceeded down a main thoroughfare in front of the state capitol, where we stopped to chant slogans and hear speeches and generally do protesty things. It was loads of fun. And it worked. The plans for the dam were shelved for further study. In 1993, the Gorge was declared a federally protected area, preventing any further threat.

The summer after my junior year, I got an inside look at politics when I attended Bluegrass Boys State. Boys State is a program sponsored by the American Legion that provides kids the opportunity to learn about state government by setting up and operating a mock government, all in the space of one week. We had a mock legislature, where I learned about parliamentary procedure, Robert's Rules of Order and bureaucratic paralysis. We had a mock election, where I learned about cronyism and deal-making. And we had a mock trial, where I learned how much I enjoyed showing off.

The mock legislature was revealing for two reasons: first, those who knew the rules were able to get a lot done, and second, very few people knew the rules. During the mock campaign, my friend Gary allied himself with one of the more popular guys and when his candidate was elected mock Governor, Gary got appointed mock Attorney General. And when Gary got appointed mock Attorney General, I got appointed mock Deputy Attorney General. That meant that at the mock trial, kind of a finale to the week's events designed to teach about the legal system in action, I got to get up on stage and prosecute the case for the state.

And I was awesome.

With our appetites for politics sufficiently whetted, Gary and I decided to run for class officer our senior year. Actually, Gary decided to run for Class President and convinced me to run for Sergeant at Arms. I had no idea what a Sergeant at Arms was, but I figured no one else would either. Unfortunately Gary was defeated. I, however, was elected to office and proceeded to serve with dignity and valor. My main function was to produce the senior class play (we did "Oklahoma") which turned out to be one of the hardest things I ever did. Also the most enjoyable.

In college, my radical side resurfaced and I joined a group of hardcore leftists to protest the building of a gymnasium on the sight of the student killings at Kent State University. But, whereas the trip to Frankfort with the Eco Club was all camaraderie and folk songs, the long bus ride from Wesleyan to Kent State was more about conspiracies and paranoia.

When we arrived at Kent State, the mood was ominous. Heavy clouds darkened the sky and tensions were high. The rumor was that the long rally and march was to end at the site of the proposed gymnasium where we would storm the chain link fence and occupy the sacred terrain. Supposedly, the FBI was there to keep an eye on us, as the gymnasium site was protected by Federal Order. These were not the glassy eyed-hippies of the environmental movement, but rather the wild-eyed remnants of the anti-war crusade.

At the rally, we heard from several speakers, but the one who really stood out was Mark Rudd, founding member of the SDS and basis for the Doonesbury character Megaphone Mark. Rudd had been underground for years due to his association with the Weathermen, but he still spoke with the raspy conviction of those turbulent times. He got us all riled up, chanting the slogan, "Long Live the Spirit of Kent and Jackson State!" It was one of the more eye-opening aspects of this trip to learn that ten days after the killing of four white students at Kent State, two black students were killed in a similar protest at Jackson State College in Mississippi. For all the news and uproar surrounding the Kent State killings, I had never heard a peep about Jackson State.

The Neil Young song "Ohio" was played over the PA system as the rally evolved into a march. As rumored, we wound our way through campus and ended up at the gymnasium construction site. There were thousands of people gathered there, chanting slogans, fists raised. Rudd and the other leaders wore bandannas over their faces. I noticed several men on nearby rooftops pointing telephoto lenses in our direction. The word was passed around, "you don't have to cross the fence line if you don't want to." But when the fence came down, we poured in by the hundreds. There were police standing by, but they didn't move to stop us. We massed in the center of the site, where bulldozers and dump trucks were already waiting to erase the past. We heard more rhetoric, chanted more slogans, and eventually, peacefully, left the area.

That trip was quite a dose of radicalism and it left me stirred for more action. A few months later, I found myself back with the leftists, occupying the office of the president of the university. We were there to protest university investments in South Africa. Most of the other students I knew didn't really care too much about the issue, they were more concerned with grades. But the issue seemed important to me, especially when I learned that many students didn't believe that we had the right to protest at all. Of course we have the right to protest!

Unfortunately our protest didn't get much attention. Repeated attempts to attract the interest of local TV stations were answered with the disheartening comment, "call us if someone gets hurt." The sit-in devolved into a series of frustrating meetings reminiscent of the paralytic bureaucracy and stifling parlimentarianism of Boys State. We did, however manage to encourage the university to review its South African investments and begin the long slow process of divestment. As it turns out, one of the students who was with me in the president's office during the sit-in is now there on a daily basis as the current president of Wesleyan.

By senior year of college, my political activism had just about run its course. I voted in my first election only to see Jimmy Carter get clobbered by Ronald Reagan almost as bad as Nixon beat McGovern. I wasn't buying in to the Reagan mythology. His whole idea of "what's good for business is what's good for America" has been around literally since the pyramids. And it always ends up the same, the rich get richer and the poor get screwed. As a college graduate, I bounced from one meaningless job to another waiting for the crumbs to start trickling down my way. Meanwhile, stockbrokers and lawyers were getting fat and happy.

I finally took the advice of a friend and went straight to the source, taking a job in a law firm in Washington D.C. There were crumbs aplenty for sellouts like me in Reagan's America, but I couldn't help noticing the throngs of homeless people camped out across from the White House in Lafayette Park, victims of the Reagan budget cuts. No crumbs for them.

Living in D.C. during the Reagan-Bush years completely soured me on politics. It was all sound bites and voodoo. Eventually I stopped participating altogether.

I did get a little jolt when Bill Clinton was elected, although as an unregistered malcontent, I hadn't actually voted for him. But Bill managed to tarnish his image (as well as a certain blue dress) and once again I felt that politicians were a bunch of weasels. That feeling was exacerbated when the King of All Weasels, George W. Bush, was elected. Well, the first time he wasn't so much elected as appointed by the Supreme Court. But to see the same clown get elected again was really discouraging. Didn't like him in 2000, didn't like him in 2004, don't like him now.

But this new guy I really like. I'm even reading his book. He's smart as hell. And he's cool. Will he live up to expectations? That may be impossible. But I'll say one thing for him, he's got my interest. And after all this time, that's no small achievement.

Mile Swim

It's hard not to be distracted these days by all of the hype and hoopla surrounding the election. It's a historic event. It's an important decision. And it's interesting as hell. But, meanwhile, life goes on.

One of the best ways I have found to clear my head of external distractions is to go swimming. Spending forty-five minutes with my face submerged in water is a great way to block out the world. My main focus when swimming is on my breathing. That and counting. It's pretty basic. When you pare down your conscious processes to just breathing and counting, you are pretty close to a state of pure being. Plus it's great exercise.

I have always loved the water. When I was a kid my family lived in a neighborhood with a swimming pool just down the road. We could easily walk there and on summer days we practically lived there. Back then, swimming consisted mainly of 'horseplay'. Jumping, diving, splashing, inventing games, anything to spend more time in the water. But the real fun was jumping off the diving board. And in order to do that I had to pass a test. One of the first real tests of my childhood: to swim the length of the pool.

Swimming The Length was a major rite of passage in my neighborhood. I still remember the day I did it. It was during one of the fifteen minute breaks each hour when the adults were permitted to swim and the kids had to cool their jets. It was a major event, because during 'break' all the other kids were sidelined with nothing else to do but watch you.

Gordy, the redheaded lifeguard, walked slowly along the edge of the pool as I made my way out of familiar shallow territory and into the exciting and dangerous realm of the Deep End. My Mom walked just behind Gordy, offering words of encouragement and a confident smile. I can still see the tiled wall at the far end drawing slowly closer. Below me, nine feet of water. There was no turning back. I was determined not to fail. Finally, I made it. I had swum The Length. Friends and neighbors applauded. Gordy congratulated me. Mom hugged me with a warm towel.

The next summer, I was persuaded to try out for our neighborhood swim team. I'll never forget that day either. My older sister Cindy was on the team. She was a great swimmer. My Dad had been on the swim team at Wesleyan. I felt like I had a legacy to uphold. Only I didn't want to be on the swim team. I liked swimming for fun, not for competition. I was a pretty scrawny kid and lacked the upper body strength for real swimming. I just liked goofing around in the water.

The first day of practice we swam a twenty lap warm up. It was a huge struggle for me. I barely finished. I felt like I was going to puke. I tried to get excused from the rest of the practise, but was pressured to continue. Things got a little better when we started racing. I was actually pretty fast in the short sprints. I even did O.K. in a couple of meets. But I never forgot the shame of that first practice. I just wasn't cut out to be on the swim team.

I never stopped loving the water, though. I spent as much time in the pool as possible during the summer. And on our family trips to Florida, I enjoyed swimming in the ocean just as much. At summer camp as a Boy Scout I even learned some lifesaving techniques. But there was one thing I was always afraid to try, even though I secretly wanted to. And that was the Mile Swim.

The Mile Swim is a merit badge awarded by the Boy Scouts, or "Scouts" as they now like to be called, for (you guessed it) swimming a mile. There are a few other requirements as well, but it's pretty much the swimming the mile part that gets you the badge. I remember passing by the pool at Camp Covered Bridge one day when they were holding the qualifying swim for the Mile Swim merit badge. I stood and watched as about a dozen boys swam lap after lap, still haunted my own humiliating performance at that first swim team warm up. I thought about how cool it would be to earn that merit badge with the little red seahorse on it. That would be some real vindication.

I never did try to swim the mile, though. It seemed impossible. A mile! Who could swim that far? I couldn't even swim twenty laps.

But all that was a long time ago and it's all water under the bridge, so to speak.

Several years ago, after injuring my Achilles tendon, I started swimming laps at a local pool as an alternative to running. I started off easy, swimming for about twenty minutes at a stretch, which was enough to leave me dizzy and gasping for breath. Over time I have gradually increased my workouts to the point where, earlier this summer, I was doing 1500 yards three times a week. It occurred to me that I was only 260 yards shy of the coveted Mile Swim. So, I decided to go for it.

It being summer, I was swimming on the early morning schedule Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. So one Sunday morning, I got up at seven a.m. to arrive at the pool by seven-thirty. The pool was nearly deserted, which is just the way I like it. I swam my usual 1500 yard workout and was feeling pretty good. I decide to keep going. Technically, I needed four more laps, plus another sixty yards, so call it six. Surprisingly, the additional six laps went by pretty quickly. It was over before I knew it. I had done it. I had completed the Mile Swim. This time there was no applause. No congratulations from Gordy the lifeguard. No warm hug from Mom. But there was a deep feeling of satisfaction. One of those little shadows from the past that had been lurking about for all these years had been turned into a halo. It felt good.

I decide to reward myself for my achievement, so I went on eBay and bought a vintage 1970's BSA Mile Swim merit badge. The one with the little red seahorse on it. The one I've always wanted.

Now that I have conquered the mile, what next? For a while I rested on my laurels, thinking a mile was plenty long enough for a workout. But after a couple of weeks, I decided to bump it up a little more. Now I'm up to two thousand yards. I still make a mental note when I pass the mile mark. It is no longer the unattainable goal of my childhood, rather simply another 'milestone' along my path. But it will always be a special one. It took me a long time to get there. And each time I pass it by, I will remember the journey.

Echoes of the Mekong

There's been a lot of talk about heroes lately. I recently lost one of mine. He wasn't famous or anything. But he was someone I really admired. He was a writer and a historian and a Captain in the U.S. Navy. His name was Peter Huchthausen.

I first met Peter during a visit to my parent's house on Frye Island in Maine. Peter had a house there too. He had just written a book called Echoes of the Mekong. My parents had read it and they both loved it. They sent me a copy because they thought it would make a great movie. I was living in New York at the time and had recently begun to concentrate on writing screenplays. I read the book and I loved it too. I decided to meet Peter and ask him if I could adapt it into a screenplay.

I'll never forget our first encounter. Peter arrived in a small motorboat, which he moored at a small dock at the end of the road near my parent's house. He wore a black fishing cap and a windbreaker and had the ruddy face of a seafaring man. I greeted him and we walked up the road to my parent's house. By the time we got to the driveway we had already reached an agreement about the screenplay. We shook hands and that was that. In all the years I knew him we never needed a more formal agreement than that handshake. I knew right away that this was a man I could always rely on.

I went back to New York and banged out a first draft of the script. It was an amazing story of courage and hope in the face of the horrors of war. Peter had served as captain of a river patrol boat on the Mekong River during the Vietnam War. One afternoon, he and his crew rescued a badly wounded young girl named Lung. She had lost her leg in a 'friendly fire' incident -- meaning she'd been shot by an American gunship. Peter brought her back to his base where he and some of the other sailors arranged for her treatment and rehabilitation. When she was well enough, they sent her to school. During the Tet offensive, however, the school was bombed and Lung was forced to flee for safety. Peter tried to find her, but she was lost in a sea of refugees. Peter left Vietnam without knowing her fate.

Lung's life after the war was filled with hardship and danger. Due to her association with the Americans, she was considered a traitor by the Communists who were in power. She had to live as a fugitive to avoid being sent to a concentration camp for "re-education." She fell in love with another fugitive and became pregnant, but he disappeared before their daughter was born. Lung vowed that her daughter would have a better life and hoped for a way to make it possible. One of the few possessions she had kept with her since childhood was a photograph of her and Peter. She managed to get a copy of the photo into the hands of an American journalist, who got it published in Stars and Stripes, the armed forces newspaper. When Peter saw the picture and accompanying story, he was overjoyed. He contacted the journalist and the two of them arranged for Lung and her daughter to come to the United States.

I wanted the screenplay to remain as true to the book as possible, because I felt that the plain facts carried tremendous impact. There were numerous instances where both Peter and Lung showed great strength and faith and I wanted to honor their story. I had never done an adaptation before, and certainly not one where the story was true and the author was someone I knew. I sent Peter the script and made arrangements to meet with him back up on Frye Island.

When I met with Peter for our first 'script conference' I was prepared to be told that I had gotten everything wrong and completely screwed up the story. What did I know about being in the middle of a firefight in the Mekong River? Or having my leg shot off? Or watching a comrade die right before my eyes? Or fleeing from my town as artillery shells exploded all around me?

To my surprise, Peter was very pleased with the script and had very few criticisms. I remember one in particular, when I had referred to the sound of the "waves" lapping against the side of Peter's river patrol boat. He corrected me, "there aren't waves in a river, there's current." He made a couple other such corrections, mostly technical things, then he started showing me some of the photographs from his time in Vietnam. Including the one of him and Lung that served as Lung's passport to freedom.

Many of the photos were of Peter and his buddies, some of the naval base and some were just pictures of the extremely beautiful country where so many terrible things had taken place. Every once in a while, Peter would look at a picture and point to one of the people in it. His voice would grow hoarse and his eyes glassy as he told me how and where that particular man had given his life. As I watched him describe the battles he had fought, I realized that a part of him will never return from that place. And even though he survived the war, he lost something very precious that people like me tend to take for granted. He lost a part of his soul.

Maybe that was why it was so important for him to try and help at least one young girl get through the war without being destroyed by it.

Peter left Vietnam after questioning the ethics of a covert operation his crew was involved in. Captured North Vietnamese soldiers were being rearmed and sent back into the field as paid assassins in the service of the CIA. They received a certain amount of money for each human ear they turned in, indicating the number of 'kills' they'd scored. The trouble was, you couldn't really tell one ear from another, and sometimes the assassins would just kill whoever they found, including civilians and South Vietnamese soldiers. When Peter reported this information to his superiors, he was told to 'walk away' -- the project was an overall success, so don't rock the boat. Soon after that, he was transferred.

For a time, Peter served on an aircraft carrier patrolling the South China Sea. Periodically, the ship would encounter boats filled with refugees trying to escape the war. One of Peter's duties was to investigate the boats and offer them what little assistance he was allowed. He scanned the faces of the refugees, wondering if he would ever find Lung among them. He never stopped thinking about her, despite the gulf of time and distance between them. In just a few months, they had forged a bond that crossed the boundaries of age and language and culture. They had made a real human connection in a time and place where humanity was in very short supply. That connection also kept Lung going during her years as a fugitive.

When they were reunited, one of the first places they went was the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington D.C. Lung wanted to say thank you to the people who had given their lives for her freedom.

I met Lung and her beautiful daughter Trang at Peter's house on Frye Island. Knowing what she had been through to get there, it was almost unbelievable to see her in person. When I saw Trang, who was born on the dirt floor of a thatched hut while mortar shells exploded a few hundred yards away, it was like witnessing a miracle. The two of them looked at Peter with adoration. He was their saviour. But in a way, they were his saviours, too. Because despite all of the brutality and violence and terror he had witnessed, knowing that he was able to help give Lung and Trang a better life gave Peter something truly meaningful to hang in the balance.

When he said goodbye to his men before leaving Vietnam, Peter told them, "Don't lose sight of your humanity, because that's the only thing that's going to get you through this." I think that's what makes Peter a hero to me. It's not just bravery in the face of fear that counts, but also bravery in the face of doubt. Sometimes we are asked to put aside our basic values in order to serve a 'greater good'. We are told that the end justifies the means. That our enemies do not deserve our understanding or compassion, or humanity. It is at those times, more than ever, that we need to hold on to our values. Because it is at those times that our values will serve us best.

That is what a hero should do. That's what Peter did. And I miss him.

The Alley

It's so easy to slip ,
It's so easy to fall ,
And let your memory drift ,
And do nothin' at all .
All the love that you missed ,
All the people that you can't recall ,
Do they really exist at all ?

I got a call the other day from my good friend Jim Beus. Some of you may recall that Jim was the lead singer of The Buzzards. I say 'was' because for all intents and purposes, The Buzzards are no longer a going concern. Or should that be 'The Buzzards is no longer...'? I always get that mixed up. Anyway, about a year ago I found out that Jim had re-formed The Buzzards with a new lineup which didn't include me. He was under the impression that I had left the band. I was under the impression that the band was taking a break. But, Jim wanted me to play a solo opening set at the new band's first gig. And that actually sounded like a pretty cool idea to me, so I agreed.

And that's how I left the band.

The "new" Buzzards didn't really have much momentum, though, and currently the whole project has been tabled. Or as I like to put it, The Buzzards have transcended into legendary status.

But that's not why Jim called me. See, Jim's new job is in commercial real estate, which means he spends most days driving around looking at empty lots, eating fast food, and talking on his iPhone. He was calling (on said iPhone) to tell me about a rumor he'd heard that The Buzzards old rehearsal studio, The Alley, is being sold. This came as somewhat disturbing news, because The Alley is more than just a rehearsal space, it's an important part of music history.

My introduction to The Alley came by way of another important part of music history, founding member of The Buzzards and celebrated guitar-wizard Will Ray. When we first started putting the band together, we were meeting at one of those run-of-the-mill warehouse-style rehearsal studios in North Hollywood where the hyperactive squawking of the mariachi band on one side and the sickening drone of the death metal band on the other would bleed through the cheap drywall to form a horrifying melange I liked to call "Satan's Pinata Party." Will decided we needed a more harmonious atmosphere in which to craft our sound. So he decided to book us a session at The Alley.

From the moment we first wheeled our equipment into the studio, we knew we had found a home. The place was like a time capsule from the 70's, with overstuffed couches, a driftwood coffee table, hanging plants, patchwork-quilt sound buffers and rough-hewn beams. We had booked the smaller of two studios which is known as 'The Basement' even though it is on the ground floor. Two of the walls of The Basement are covered with graffiti. But not just random graffiti, the names of nearly every band who has ever played there are written on the dull yellow brick walls. Bands you've heard of, bands no one has ever heard of, famous bands, legendary bands, long forgotten bands -- thousands of bands.

The list of artists who have played at the Alley is far too long for anyone to ever remember, but it includes people like Jackson Brown, Bonnie Raitt, Linda Ronstadt, Dwight Yoakum, Ozzy Ozbourne, The Smashing Pumpkins, Red Hot Chili Peppers and my personal least favorite, System of a Down. One of Dwight's gold records hangs on the wall by the mixing board in The Basement. I often used to gaze at it when we were playing. Kind of my own version of Jay Gatsby's green light.

Playing in that environment gave us the sense that we were part of a great musical tradition. Surrounded by it. Inspired by it. We did some fine jamming in that room. Probably some of our best performances ever. Hell, we even managed to impress the Red Hot Chili Peppers one night. And of course when I say "we", I mean "Will Ray."

The Chili Peppers used to play across the hall in the larger of the two studios, which known as 'The Loft' because it has a loft at one end where groupies and other special guests can hang out during rehearsal. Once, when we were poking around the studio, our drummer Tom and I climbed up into the loft to get a first-hand look. Nothing amazing, just a few couches, coffee tables and plenty of ash trays. Tom took a look around and quipped, "imagine the DNA in this place."

Tom and I were in the habit of arriving early to rehearsal and having a quick bite to eat at the picnic table just outside the entrance. The Alley is literally located in an alley off Lankershim Blvd. It shares a parking lot with a burrito place that blocks the view of the entrance from the street. To the uninitiated, it can be quite a challenge to find the place.

One evening, as I was munching my free-range turkey sandwich, I noticed some particularly amazing sounds coming from inside The Loft. Really funky bass and drums. Tom soon joined me and also remarked on the quality of the music. Whoever they were, they were damn good. Just a few minutes later, the music stopped and three guys came out of the studio. The first guy was instantly recognizable due to his short-cropped haircut and bare chest covered in tattoos. It was Flea, the Chili Peppers inimitable bassist. He sat down across from me and started digging into a huge organic salad from Whole Foods. He was joined by drummer Chad Smith and guitarist John Fruscianti. We chatted for a while about band stuff like guitars and amps. Then Fruscianti asked us if we were the same band who was there the week before.

We nodded.

"You guys were really sounding good, especially that guy on pedal steel."

I grinned. "That's Will," I explained, "only he doesn't play pedal steel, it's slide guitar."

Fruscianti looked doubtful. "No, I'm pretty sure I heard a pedal steel."

"It's the way he plays -- he wears a slide on his right hand as well as his left to get that sound. It's his own invention. He calls it a 'stealth slide.'"

At this point Fruscianti was looking at me like I was full of shit. But then Flea looked up from his salad and chimed in, "it sounded good."

Anthony Kiedis, also shirtless, stepped out of the studio and looked around. He remained in the doorway for a few minutes, looking like he desperately needed attention, but trying hard not to show it.

Tom and I finished up our dinners and started hauling our equipment into The Basement. I told Fruscianti to come by and check out Will's setup, but he never did. We saw them a few more times at the picnic table. It felt pretty cool to be treated as peers by a band as cool as the Chili Peppers. Except for Kiedis, that is. He never said a word to us and avoided eye contact as much as possible. But Flea was always there, shirt off, wolfing down his organic salad. At The Alley we were all the same, just a bunch of musicians hanging around the picnic table.

After Will left L.A. for greener pastures, I took over the task of booking rehearsals and began learning more about the history and charm of The Alley. This was mainly due to the fact that I was dealing with Shiloh, who along with her husband Bill, owns and runs The Alley. Climbing the spiral staircase to Shiloh and Bill's apartment above the studio became a ritual for me at the end of each rehearsal. While the rest of the band loaded their equipment, I stood in the enclosed front porch that served as the business office and looked at the literally hundreds of photos, posters, framed articles, artifacts and memorabilia that cluttered the room. Here a poster from a Don Henley show, there a picture of Linda Ronstadt, underneath it, a teetering pile of old Rolling Stone magazines next to a dusty old guitar case. Shiloh would drag out the big appointment book and page through to the next week to book our next rehearsal. Then she'd hand me a handwritten receipt for the current week. I never saw a computer or even an adding machine.

I would sometimes question Shiloh about various bands that had been at The Alley at one time or another. After my trip to Joshua Tree, I was warming up in the studio with a Gram Parsons song and Shiloh started talking about when Gram was still around. She said they still had one of his old pianos in storage. When they filmed the movie Grand Theft Parsons, Bill let them use one of his many vintage bikes, a three-wheeler, for Johnny Knoxville to ride. Shiloh tended to get a little wistful when talking about Gram. I think he had that effect on people. Especially women.


The band I wanted to know the most about, though, was Little Feat. One evening, we were supposed to be booked into The Basement, but due to a mix-up we ended up in The Loft. It was the first time we'd played in there, and it felt like going from the minors to the majors. On the wall behind the low stage was a giant banner depicting a woman with a tomato for a head lounging in a hammock. I recognized it right off as the banner that had hung behind Little Feat during their Waiting For Columbus tour. I had seen them on that tour, playing at the Wesleyan hockey rink, and have never seen a hotter live band. Unfortunately, lead singer and songwriter Lowell George only lived a few more years after that. He was one of the true greats of all time.

Little Feat continues perform and record, but without Lowell it's just not the same band. I saw the reconstituted version of the band once in New York, and even though they were very good, there was still something missing. They had added three guys to take Lowell's place -- one to write, one to sing and one to play guitar -- but it still didn't come close.

Shiloh told me the band wants her to give them back the banner, but she won't do it. These days it covers the ceiling above the stage in The Loft. When I heard that The Alley was for sale, I decided I really needed to get back there at least one more time to see that banner, and to read the names of some of the bands on the brick wall, and to ask Shiloh more questions about Gram Parsons and Lowell George.

I called her up to find out if the rumor was true -- was The Alley really being sold? She said that it wasn't "being sold" but it is "for sale." She and Bill are in no hurry to let go of it. What they really want to do is find someone who will take it over and keep running it just like it always has been. I hope they do. It would be a shame to see such an amazing chunk of history disappear.

On the other hand, I once had a friend who said that music wasn't meant to be preserved, it was meant to be played and enjoyed and released into the wild. Music is a live event that exists in the moment. Instead of bottling it up and listening to it over and over again, we should be playing some new music. Even an old song played again can be new. Why keep living in the past?

I guess I agree with some of that notion. But I sure think we'd be missing out on something great without those original 29 Robert Johnson recordings. Or Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald. Or Vladimir Horowitz. Or Coltrane. Woody Guthrie. Ray Charles!

So I think it's good to try and hang onto a little bit of history. And it's cool to think that in my own insignificant way, I am part of that history. And if I had a couple million dollars, I just might buy The Alley for myself.

Class Clown

"Shitpissfuckcuntcocksuckermotherfuckertits!"

When I was a kid I loved to listen to comedy albums. These days I get most of my comedy from cable TV. But back in olden times I spent hours memorizing comedy routines on vinyl LPs. My favorite comedy albums were by Bill Cosby (cringe) and Flip Wilson. Does anybody remember Flip Wilson? "The Devil made me do it!" Sometime around junior high I heard some albums by Cheech and Chong and Firesign Theater. Those were pretty cool. But the coolest comedy album I ever heard was definitely "Class Clown" by George Carlin.

Probably the first time I saw George Carlin was when he did his 'Hippy-Dippy Weatherman' routine on the Tonight Show. That was back when Johnny Carson was the host, by the way. George was probably the first counterculture comic to really break through to the big time. And TV friendly bits like 'Hippy-Dippy Weatherman' made him a Carson regular. "The forecast for this evening: dark!" But those late night TV appearances did not prepare me for the education I would receive when I first heard one of George's albums.

Of course the main reason that Class Clown was so cool was because it featured the infamous "Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television." Hearing George recite that list of taboo words was one of the most mindblowingly hilarious events of my adolescence. I had never even heard some of those words before. They were dirty. And George just blurted them out right in front of God and everybody. I'll never forget them...

"Shitpissfuckcuntcocksuckermotherfuckertits!"

Of course George wasn't saying them just to shock us or to blow our minds. He had a point. "They're just words, man." He was trying to reveal the hypocrisy of a society that seemed to be more concerned about what a person says than what they do. Go ahead and bomb Cambodia, lie to America, cheat, steal, kill and plunder to your hearts content. But Goddammit, watch what you say!

George had a way of making you laugh and think at the same time, which is kind of like walking and chewing gum for some people. He made comedy hip and smart, but also childish and goofy. He looked like a hippie, talked like a college professor and acted like a fool.

George's coolness factor skyrocketed, however, one seemingly normal day when I went over to my friend's house to listen to Class Clown for the hundredth time. When my friend pulled the album from its protective sleeve we noticed that the last cut on the second side had been totally scratched out with what must have been a ten penny nail. I mean these were some deep gouges. The scratches had been made by his mom in a fit of righteous indignation and long-suppressed hostility. Apparently she disapproved of the Seven Words.

My friend's mom was way too late, however, the damage had already been done. You can't unhear something. And we had more than heard that routine. We had committed it to memory. In fact, rather than erasing the evil words from our minds, she had made them indelible. And she elevated George to the status of a martyr. He was our hero. He was Saint George The Fool.

"Shitpissfuckcuntcocksuckermotherfuckertits!"

A couple of years later, George became even more hip when he appeared as the host of the premier of a new TV show called "NBC's Saturday Night." Although the show as being broadcast live, George did not take the opportunity to unleash the "Seven Words" upon the unsuspecting American airways. In fact, he didn't really do anything outrageous or mindblowing that night. It was just a treat to see him there on my TV set, live from New York, hosting the coolest show ever.

I did get to see George live and in person when he came to Louisville one year. The show was great. It was the first time I'd ever seen a comic onstage. Watching him work was amazing. He seemed so relaxed and comfortable, ambling around the stage using the microphone like a musical instrument. He performed for over an hour and did all the classic bits I knew from his records. Including the "Seven Words."

"Shitpissfuckcuntcocksuckermotherfuckertits!"

I didn't hear much from George in the Eighties. Steve Martin took over as the perennial host of SNL and became the new king of comedy. George moved over to HBO where he didn't have to worry so much about censorship. I never had cable TV in those days so I missed most of George's specials.

Late one night, sometime around the end of the Eighties, my friend Beck and I were passing a bar on the upper west side of Manhattan. They had a sign out front advertising the "Funniest Unemployed Comic" contest. As I happened to be unemployed at the time, Beck dared me to enter. It seemed harmless enough. Three minutes onstage telling jokes. I'd been onstage tons of times back with my old band the Charismatics and even more during my solo-folkie period. And how hard could it be to write a few jokes? I'm a funny guy. Piece of cake.

Not so fast, Monkey Boy! First of all, being onstage with a band is one thing. Going solo is a whole other deal. I had conveniently forgotten how difficult it was when I made the transition from rhythm guitarist in a rock band to singer-songwriter in a coffee house. No drummer to keep time. No bass. No lead singer. Just little old me. Those first few gigs were terrifying. But I got used to the drill and eventually I was an old hand. Why should comedy be any different?

Here's why: Because when you play a song, the most you expect is some polite applause at the end. And the fact is, getting an audience to applaud is pretty easy. They want to applaud anyway, so all you have to do is make sure they know when to do it. If you end your song in a very clear and obvious way, I guarantee half the audience will clap -- if only out of pure Pavlovian reflex.

When you tell a joke, on the other hand, there is a whole different expectation. You want them to laugh. And that means you need to be funny. And as any comic will tell you, "Dying is easy, comedy is hard."

The good thing about comedy is that the audience wants to laugh. They came there to laugh. All you have to do is provide the opportunity. And that's why my number one rule of comedy is: "Always put the punchline at the end of the joke." That way the audience will know exactly when they should laugh. Sounds simple, right? Yet you'd be surprised how many people tell jokes where the punchline gets buried somewhere in the middle and then they keep going. Meanwhile the audience is confused and suddenly the joke is over and nobody knows what to do.

The other thing about comedy is that it's really just talking. And talking is something I've been doing most of my life. I definitely know how to talk. I may not know how to sing or play the guitar, but I've got this talking thing down pat. So all I gotta do is write some funny jokes, get up there on stage and talk. Oh, except for one other thing. I have to remember the jokes. That shouldn't be so hard, since I am used to remembering the lyrics to hundreds of songs. But here's the thing: songs rhyme. That's a little trick invented several thousand years ago when nobody knew how to write. Make stuff rhyme and it's easier to remember. But my jokes didn't rhyme.

Also, I was terrified.

See, we happened to be in an election year and unemployment was a big issue. (Not like now.) So when the media found out there was going to be a contest for the Funniest Unemployed Comic, they pounced on it like a Congressman on an intern. The New York Times was there. The three major networks were there. CNN was there. The Goddamn BBC was there! There was a bank of TV cameras lined up against the wall and two or three tables full of journalists right down front. How's that for a little pressure your first time doing stand-up?

The house was packed. And some of the other comics were actually pretty damn good. A few of them were obviously pros. I may have been the only stand-up virgin in the bunch. I felt dizzy and sick and I was sweating like Nixon on acid. I couldn't remember my own name, much less my three-minute set. When we did a run-through I took the mike off the stand and prowled the stage Carlin-style. Not because I was trying to emulate my hero, but because my legs were shaking so much from unbridled fear that I literally could not stand still. But when it came time for the actual show, we were told we needed to stand directly in front of the mike so the TV cameras could keep us in frame. I was vibrating like a jackhammer. I could barely recall the words to my first joke. I somehow managed to croak it out.

And then a miracle happened. Everybody LAUGHED! It was a big, room-sized laugh too, not some polite ha-ha shit. I was transformed. I felt powerful and brilliant. I was still shaking uncontrollably, sweating buckets, reeling with nausea and straining to remember every single word. But I was loving it. What a rush. I scored with joke after joke. I killed. The TV cameras rolled. The journalists scribbled. Jaded cocktail waitresses smiled involuntarily. It was heaven.

I even got one of my jokes broadcast on CNN. It was about how hard it was to look for work and how I had finally given up trying to find a real job and decided to become a candidate for President. Trust me, at the time, with something like 19 Democrats in the race, the joke was replete with biting political satire. And it got me national exposure as a stand up comic. I even heard Jay Leno do a ripoff of the same joke a few nights later. I figured I was at the beginning of a new career. And it was so easy, you know, except for the queasiness, convulsions, dehydration and partial stroke.

I never did become a famous stand-up comic. Back in the nineties, apparently, every other misfit wannabe Seinfeld with approval issues decided to become stand-up too. The field became glutted. Jerry Seinfeld eventually became the new King of Comedy and soon every comic wanted his own sitcom. They even gave George Carlin a sitcom. But he wasn't suited to the format. Too confining.

At some point a bunch of morons started circulating emails featuring racist and right-wing type comments and attributing them to George. It pissed me off to think that most people who read them wouldn't know the difference. They didn't understand that George's humor had more to it than just making fun of annoying things or stupid people. George was out to enlighten us. Humor can be one of the most powerful mind-expanding tools around, when used by a master. And it doesn't have to be highbrow or "thinky" to do it.

"Shitpissfuckcuntcocksuckermotherfuckertits!"

There aren't many folks around who know how to use humor the way George did. He was like the John Lennon of comedy. I will always carry with me the lessons I learned while laughing at the things George said. I think comedy is one of the best things in life. And George made comedy even better.So, from one class clown to another: Thanks George. See you in detention.

Wesleyland

A couple of weeks ago one of the most important political figures in American history gave a speech in my backyard. Of course when I say my backyard, I don't mean that literally, since my current backyard is an alley in West Hollywood frequented by gay hustlers, vagrants and aluminum can collectors. What I am referring to is a place where I will always feel at home no matter how long I stay away, a place I feel connected to in many different ways, a place where I have a special history and which holds strong memories. It is a magical place, a mythical place, a place like no other. It is a place I call Wesleyland.

Officially, of course the name of this mythical land is Wesleyan University. It was founded in 1831 as a Methodist school for young men, but has since become known as one of the most prestigious and progressive universities in the world. It is physically located in Middletown, Connecticut which is the main reason I have such a strong connection to the place. My great-grandfather, Emmanuel "Manny" Eastman is buried in Pine Grove Cemetery in Middletown. My grandparents, Oscar and Agnes, met in Middletown. Oscar worked at the Wilcox-Crittenden factory in Middletown making marine hardware. My father, Warren and uncle Bob attended Middletown High School and both graduated from Wesleyan. I went to Wesleyan and so did my sister Susan. My nephew Chris was born in Middletown at the same hospital where my Dad was born. Susan has lived in Middletown for almost twenty years. My nephew John grew up there.

Even when I was a kid, back in Louisville, Wesleyan held a special place in my imagination. On Thanksgiving, we ate our turkey on a set of Wesleyan china, each plate featuring a different landmark from the Wesleyan campus, like Olin Library, Memorial Chapel or South College. In the summer we visited my Dad's relatives in Middletown. I still remember walking around campus in the early 70's when revolution was in the air. I knew the names of the buildings from our Thanksgiving plates. We toured the old science buildings where my Dad studied chemistry. We saw the pool where he swam on the swim team. The Wesleyan campus was an exciting mixture of old and new, familiar and strange, fantasy and reality.

But my favorite part of campus was the large open grassy field bounded by the administration buildings on the east, Fayerweather Gymnasium on the north, Olin library on the south and Foss Hill to the west. Known as Andrus Field, to me it will always be my "backyard" and the center of Wesleyland.

Back in the day, Andrus Field held an old cinder running track, a baseball diamond, and a football field with removable wooden bleachers. Students could sit on the terraced lawn behind Olin Library and watch an intramural softball game, play Frisbee on the football field, jog a few laps on the cinder track, or maybe just sit under the shade of one of the hundred year old maple trees on Foss Hill and enjoy the scenery. Nowadays the track and baseball diamond are gone, but the field still gets plenty of use. Like hosting the commencement ceremonies

When Barack Obama stood on the marble podium that rises from center of the terraced lawn, there were over 20,000 people gathered on Andrus field and Foss Hill to hear him speak. Including my parents and my sister. The biggest crowd ever recorded prior to that was 8,000 people for Wesleyan's 175th anniversary two years ago. Although I've heard that when the Grateful Dead played a free concert on Andrus Field in 1970, the place was pretty packed.

My first two years at Wesleyan, I lived in a dorm called West College which was nestled among a grove of trees on the north slope of Foss Hill. I crossed Andrus Field hundreds of times going to and from classes or over to Fayerweather Gymnasium. I ran numerous laps on the cinder track and did many a hill sprint up Foss Hill. Our cross country races began and ended at the foot of Foss Hill. Andrus Field was the scene of many official gatherings, such as Spring Fling and of course Commencement. But it was also the site of a lot of unofficial activities, like the legendary Communal Moan. In the winter we "borrowed" trays from the dining hall and used them as makeshift snowboards to slide down Foss Hill. This was years before any of us ever saw an actual snowboard.

It was during those carefree days of curiosity and experimentation that I first came up with the concept of "Wesleyland". The atmosphere at Wesleyan was so conducive to learning, growth, experimentation, and discovery that I began to see the campus less as an institution of higher learning and more like a kind of intellectual theme park. There were so many amazing things to learn, do, and experience. And as students, we were free to pick and choose whatever struck our interest. And the thing I noticed about so many of my fellow students was that they all had so many different interests and abilities. You might meet someone who was a pre-med and think of them as a "squid", a term applied to boring nerds who spent all their time studying. But the next time you saw the squid he might be playing mridungam in an avant-garde jazz ensemble. And then later the same squid might be covered with mud and tearing up the rugby field. You soon learned not to take anyone, or anything at face value.

It was not long before I realized that, although my classes were excellent and the professors of the highest caliber, I was learning as much from my fellow students as I was from my courses. There were specific examples, like my sophomore roommate Terry who introduced me to jazz, showed me how to play guitar and taught me calculus. But there were also the non-specific lessons, like my friend Andy who showed me how to take a negative situation and convert it into a positive one. Or Kevin, who taught me how to think like a writer. My friend Sindi taught me how to always be myself. Mitch taught me how to live in the moment. Nancy taught me about love.

Even after I left Wesleyan, I continued to learn from the people I met there. After graduation, during my year in Pacific Beach with Bob, I learned a lot about self-confidence. Dan has always been an example of professionalism and hard work. Dave has given me hope. Mark showed me about resilience and character. Joel was my healer and guru. Jon taught me how to feel.

When we all met each other at Wesleyan, we were students. But we were also something else. We were teachers, too. I think we will always be students, just as we will always be teachers. It's the primary function in life, to learn and to teach. I think that's what I found out at Wesleyland. And that's one of the reasons I found it so fitting to see Barack Obama speaking in my backyard two weeks ago. Obama is a great student of the human condition and he inspires people to learn more about themselves and each other. And he teaches by example that we can all continue to improve ourselves and the world around us through knowledge and understanding and passion for learning. A great leader is one who serves. And to serve is to learn.

I still have so much to learn. And the whole world is my Wesleyland.

The Marathon

Probably one of the most defining events of my life is the marathon that I ran my senior year of high school. In those days running was a pretty big part of my identity. I began running not long after my ten-speed bike was stolen right out of our front yard. That was a pretty earth-shattering experience -- to think that the criminal element had penetrated our sheltered suburban bubble on the outskirts of Louisville. But in a way, having my bike stolen opened up a whole new world to me. I became a runner.

I still remember the first time I tried to run a mile. My lungs felt scorched, my muscles ached, my feet were on fire. Apparently running was not quite as easy as pedaling. My friend Mark Bush had challenged me to go out for the cross country team with him. The team held practices over the summer in preparation for the fall season. I was trying to get in shape so I could keep up with the team. I had a long way to go.

That summer Mark moved to Lexington, so when I reported to the first practice I didn't think I would know anyone. But as it turns out, one of my classmates, Lou Armstrong, was a longtime cross-country runner. He introduced me to some of the other guys. Gary Steier was another familiar face, I had met him through Mark. Another kid, named Tommy Pfau, became something of a running yoda to the rest of us. He was immersing himself in the art of distance running and would be one of the main advocates of training for the marathon the following year.

And then there was Ray. A transfer student from across town, Ray was kind of an enigma. During the early days of summer practice, Ray often seemed to be struggling at the back of the pack, clutching his glasses in one hand and complaining of "lactic acid" build-up in his massive thighs. Eventually, Ray would become one of my closest friends as well as a world-class athlete.

That year our team won the state championship, due to a stellar lineup of seniors who had been training together for years. Lou was also among the top runners. Ray, too, had made amazing 'strides' to break into the varsity squad his first season out. In cross country, a team of seven runners competes, but only the top five finishers actually score. Their place determines their individual score: first place scores one point, second place two, and so on. The top five scores are added together and the lowest team score wins.

Senior year, due to the loss of most of our best runners, I moved onto the varsity squad. Fortunately I had kept up my training and was fairly competitive by the beginning of the season. Much of that had to do with the influence of Tommy Pfau and his doctrine of distance.

Basically, according to Tommy, the best way to improve your running was to run, and to run a lot. Ten miles a day was our average, with several thirteen milers per week. Whereas during the season, we would be focusing on shorter, faster workouts, all summer long we went for distance, distance, distance. The culmination of our summer of distance was a twenty mile run that remains one of my most cherished memories, in part because it was so much fun. We were already gearing up for the marathon that was scheduled a few weeks after the end of cross-country season. But first we had a championship to defend.

The day of the state meet the weather was cold and rainy. About fifty yards from the starting line there was a huge puddle about a foot deep that covered the entire width of the course for a good 20-30 yards. It was quite a rude shock to have to splash through all that frigid water at the start of a race. Not the best way to stay loose and warmed-up.

We were favored to win the meet since we had defeated every team on our schedule that year, including our arch rivals Trinity and St. Xavier. Trinity and "X" were the two all-male Catholic schools in our area and had always been our toughest competition. But we had our share of talent, including returning champs Lou Armstrong and Dale Sirrine, the indefatigable Ray Sharp, distance guru Tom Pfau and newcomer Jim Brill. Jim was the younger brother of one of our departed seniors who in a very short time had become one of our top scorers. I had managed to carve out a place for myself in the top seven, which entitled me to compete in the state meet.

Talent, however, will only get you so far. After that you need experience. And experience was something we were lacking. The harsh conditions of the race took their toll on our young team. Unfamiliar terrain, slippery wet grass, driving rain and bitter wind threw us off our game. We struggled to do our best, but the boys from Trinity and "X" were made of sterner stuff.

As I came up the final hill to round the bend for the long sprint back through the giant puddle to the finish line, I found myself closing in on Jim Brill. I was confused. Jim was usually one of our top three scorers. There was no way I should be anywhere near him. But here he was, face twisted in a painful grimace, hand clutching his side, urging me to pass him. But I couldn't. He was way better than I was. It didn't make sense.

Our team finished third that year, not a terrible showing, but we really should have won. I don't know how much difference it would have made if I had been able to break out of my self-imposed paralysis and pass Jim at the end. I might have lowered our score. Maybe we could have taken second. Maybe not.

The disappointment of our poor performance in the state meet only lasted a couple of weeks, though, because we now had another goal ahead of us: the marathon.

In a way, the entire cross country season was only a prelude to the marathon. This was to be the first marathon held in Louisville and we were psyched. We had all competed in the annual Derby-week mini marathon, but this was the real deal. However, the cross country season had also served as a diversion from training for the marathon. At least it had for me. The team had been focusing on increasingly shorter workouts at faster paces as we neared the end of the season in order for us to "peak" at the state meet. And in fact, I had "peaked" at the state meet, running one of my fastest races ever, despite the bad conditions. I had no doubt that I could run the marathon, but I hadn't been doing the kind of training that would allow me to run my best race. Still, I'd put in a couple of weeks of long runs between the state meet and the marathon and I felt ready.

The day of the big race was cool and overcast, which was actually just what we wanted. It's easy to overheat when you run 26 miles. A nice cool day is ideal. I ran with Tommy. We had done a lot of miles together and our running styles were very compatible. Plus I knew that Tommy had a race plan and I figured I would just tag along and follow his lead. In a long race you have to have plan and the discipline to stick to it. The first half of the race, when you are feeling good, you will tend to run faster than you should. You need to hold back a little to save your strength for the second half. Likewise, in the second half, you will feel tired and will tend to slow down, so you have to make sure you run a little faster than you want to. I knew Tommy would keep me on pace.

What I didn't know was that, unlike the rest of us, Tommy had been training for the marathon right through cross country season. He had been going out on his own after our team practices and putting in additional distance work. On the day of the marathon he was in peak condition for the long race. And we were just flying along.

I didn't realize just how fast we were going until the halfway mark, when I heard the the times being read out loud as we went by the checkpoint. We had covered the first thirteen miles in about an hour and twenty minutes. That's faster than I had run the same distance in the mini-marathon the previous spring.

"Whoa," I said to Tommy, "aren't we going a little fast?"

He shook his head. "Nope, right on pace."

That's when I realized that Tommy had a plan all right. He was planning on setting the national record for his age-group. He was a year younger than I was and the record was somewhere around 2:45. And at this pace he was going to break it.

I had no intention of setting any records. All I wanted to do was finish the race and try and break the three hour barrier that separates the men from the boys in marathon racing. But I felt great so I kept going alongside Tommy for another four or five miles.

Then I hit the wall.

You hear a lot about "hitting the wall" in marathon racing. It's when you reach the point where you have completely used up every bit of energy you body has stored and you literally have nothing left to go on. But hearing about it and experiencing it are two very different things. First of all when you hit the wall, you immediately understand why they call it hitting the wall. It's as if you slammed into an invisible plane, on one side of which you are a normal healthy individual engaged in a fairly stressful, but tolerable activity. On the other side, however, there is only misery, pain, exhaustion, weakness, and insanity.

I hit the wall around mile eighteen, which is a fairly common point to do so. Apparently human bodies can handle just about anything for eighteen miles. But go one step further and WHAM! Pain City. It's like someone took a ball peen hammer and reduced every bit of your muscle fiber to useless shreds of meat. Then they inserted a spinal tap and drained you of all essential fluids and electrolytes. Without electrolytes, your brain is like a computer with zero RAM memory. You simply cannot function. Your joints have been surgically removed and replaced with jello. You lungs have been stuffed with sawdust. All you want to do is collapse and weep like a fool. But of course you cannot weep because you are completely dehydrated.

And you still have eight miles to go.

Quitting was just not an option. I had worked too hard to fulfill this dream. And what I lack in foresight, I make up for with sheer bull-headedness. I just kept running.

This was quite a lonely stretch of the race. People had gotten pretty spaced out by now and I was in a daze, running an endless loop. Occasionally I had to stop and walk, but not for too long. There were a few aid stations along the way where I gulped down water and Gatorade. But I knew all too well that these attempts at replenishment were futile. It was far too late for them to do me any good. You need to take aid at the beginning of the race for it to have any effect. Whatever I was drinking at this point would only sit in my stomach unprocessed until the race was over. But it still felt good to stop and drink something.

Meanwhile, in order to keep myself going, I had a secret weapon. Her name was Mary.

I'd had a crush on Mary since I saw her walk into English class the first day of sophomore year. But Mary was way out of my league. She was captain of the cheerleaders and dated the captain of the basketball team. I was just a nerdy cross country runner. But besides being beautiful and smart, Mary was also very cool. We eventually became buddies. I even took her to a dance once. It was one of the greatest nights of my life. She never made me feel awkward or stupid. She was the perfect woman.

As it turned out, Mary's father worked for a company that was sponsoring the marathon. Mary had said she would be working one of the aid stations along the race route. I hadn't seen her yet, so I knew she must still be up ahead. I couldn't let Mary see me hobbling along in agony and defeat, so anytime I rounded a bend I picked up my pace a little just in case she was there. Mary kept me going mile after mile. Call it pride or delusion or teenage lust, but Mary was my beacon. And I never stopped.

Nor did I ever see Mary. She never made it to the race. Something else had come up. Probably just as well, the thought of basking in the glow of her lovely smile as she handed me a cup of orange Gatorade is what kept me moving forward. Seeing her might have broken the spell.

I never did find out my official time in the marathon. My number got lost in the shuffle. My Dad was watching the clock, though, when I came across the finish and he said my time was 3:11. That's a pretty respectable time for a first marathon, but I didn't break the magic three hour barrier. If I had run a smarter race, I would have broken it easily. But it didn't matter. I had done it, I had finished. And I had overcome much greater difficulties than I could have possibly imagined. I knew a lot more about myself now. I knew that no matter how tough things get, I will never give up.

Tommy set the national record for his age group, beating the previous record by several minutes. He was on fire that day. We both ended up going to Wesleyan and running on the cross country team together. I never did run another marathon. At least not yet.

But the lesson of the marathon has always stayed with me. It has to do with believing in yourself no matter what happens. And persevering when you have a goal, despite the obstacles.

I haven't seen Mary for years. Ray and I visited her once when she was at UNC. She was as wonderful as ever. I spoke to her on the phone last year when I called my friend Gary at our high school reunion. She sounded great. That Louisville accent just melts me. I never did tell her what a big part she played in what has become one of my most important accomplishments. Maybe someday I will.

Pretty soon I will reach the ten year anniversary of my arrival in Hollywood. At times my dream of becoming a screenwriter seems a lot like running a marathon. Only with no end in sight. But I know I can keep going. And I know that I will reach my goal. Even if I hit the wall.

Being Here

"I like to watch."

My first job in the movie business was as an usher at the Alpha 3 Cinema in Louisville, Kentucky. I was a senior in high school and Alpha 3 was the local "arthouse" theater. Or at least it tried to be. The summer after I graduated, Alpha 3 underwent a procedure we euphemistically referred to as "twinning". That meant that what had once been a fairly cool theater with a full-sized screen that showed intelligent films for a small but discerning audience was butchered by the forces of capitalism and ignorance into two smaller theaters, one of which continued (for a while) to show decent movies and another that showed commercial crap.

I didn't know it at the time, but it was the beginning of the end of a golden era. Someone once said, you never know you're in a golden era until it's too late. I had grown up during a renaissance of Hollywood filmmaking. Movies like Bonnie and Clyde, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Patton, The French Connection, The Godfather and Jaws had turned the old studio system on its head and breathed fresh life into worn-out genres. And in 1977, a movie called Star Wars completely rewrote the book. These same movies that had ushered in the era of maverick directors had also ushered in the era of huge weekend grosses, cookie-cutter sequels and massive marketing campaigns. Hollywood knows a good thing when it sees it.

But for a time, we lived in a world where passionate young directors threw convention out the window, breaking every rule in Hollywood to put their personal visions onto the screen. And the result was some of the best movies ever made.

Some of these movies wound up at the Alpha 3 and provided my early education as a filmmaker. Even before I started working at 'Alpha' I was frequent patron. My older sister Cindy worked there for a while and so did my younger sister Susan. I saw a lot of great movies there before and after the "twinning". I remember seeing a midnight showing of Fantasia on the big screen. That was also the night I learned that there were quite a lot of potheads in Louisville.

It was at Alpha that I saw Robert Altman's brilliant Nashville and the dreamlike 3 Women. I saw Bob Rafelson's Stay Hungry with the then unknown Arnold Schwarzenegger. I saw Annie Hall at Alpha with my girlfriend Christy who worked the box office. I saw films by Francois Truffaut, Clint Eastwood, Milos Forman and Martin Scorcese and many others. But there was one movie I saw at Alpha that really knocked me out, and made me think a lot about someday making my own movies. That movie was called Harold and Maude and it was made by a guy named Hal Ashby.

Recently I read a very interesting book called Easy Riders, Raging Bulls that tells the story of how a group of young directors infiltrated Hollywood in the early 70's and radically changed the landscape of movie making. Guys like Altman, Coppola, Bogdanovich, Scorcese, Spielberg, Hopper, Friedkin, Rafelson, Lucas and DePalma. And Hal Ashby. I never realized how much Ashby influenced me until I read this book and looked at the list of movies he made. Between 1971 and 1979 Ashby made six of the coolest movies ever to come out of Hollywood. And each of them made a strong impression on me.

Harold and Maude (1971) was Ashby's second movie as a director. He had worked as an editor for several years and earned an Oscar for his work on In the Heat of the Night. What really got me about this movie, besides the hilariously dark tone and the bizarre relationship between a young man and a sweetly crazy elderly woman, was the way Ashby used music and imagery to create moods and evoke the inner life of the characters. He used the songs of Cat Stevens for the all of the music in the movie. This was back when Cat Stevens was huge.

The Last Detail (1973) was one of Ashby's movies I didn't see until I was in college and had the benefit of the Wesleyan Film Series. With a gritty script by Robert Towne (that drew fire from the studio for its liberal use of the "F" word) and a signature performance by Jack Nicholson, the movie is classic early 70's: anti-genre, anti-heroic, anti-Hollywood.

Shampoo (1975) teamed Ashby and Towne with the poster boy for "new" Hollywood, Warren Beatty. The story, set on the eve of Richard Nixon's first election as president, captures the shifting values and vague morality of a new generation as the old generation tightens its grip on the political power structure. The movie could just as easily be about the new generation of filmmakers trying to break away from the old studio system. But Ashby provides no easy answers or uncompromised characters. All are flawed yet still sympathetic.

Bound For Glory (1976) played at Alpha 3 and I must have watched it half a dozen times. It was my introduction to the Woody Guthrie legend and the imagery of the film is as indelible as the imagery in Woody's songs. But even in this mythic portrayal, Ashby gives us a complex and difficult hero. Not all of Woody's choices are easy to accept. In the end it is a bittersweet tribute to an American icon.

Coming Home (1978) is one of those rare movies that can transcend mere entertainment and serve as a catalyst for social change, and in this case even healing. The story focuses on two Vietnam vets, played by John Voight and Bruce Dern, and their struggle to cope with returning to "the world." Jane Fonda plays a woman who is married to Dern's character, a gung-ho career officer, but falls in love with Voight's character, a paraplegic. Once again Ashby manages to show both sides of a complex issue with humanity and balance. In the climactic sequence, Voight delivers a heartfelt speech to a group of high-schoolers, imploring them to consider that they have a choice to go to war or not. Meanwhile, Dern's character tragically loses his battle with his post-war demons and ends his life.

Being There (1979) is Ashby's last great movie. Peter Sellers plays 'Chance', a dimwitted gardener whose simplistic observations and accidental friendship with a rich and powerful man set him on the path to becoming the next president, without having a clue as to what is happening. The idea that a complete simpleton could be elected president seemed far-fetched at the time, but of course that was before Reagan and "W". Sellers' low-key performance combines masterful comic timing with honesty, sweetness and innocence. Shirley MacLaine is hilarious as the wife of Chance's wealthy pal. I also loved Ashby's use of music in this movie, including the song "Basketball Jones" by Cheech and Chong and Eumir Deodato's jazzed-up version of Also Sprach Zarathustra (also known as the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey.)

Unfortunately, Hal Ashby didn't fare too well in the 80's. The golden age had ended and the era of the studio executives and producers had begun. Movies were being made based on marketable formulas featuring likable, one-dimensional heros. Steven Spielberg and George Lucas recycled Han Solo into Indiana Jones and spun off two sequels. Scorcese and Coppola both struggled to find audiences. Bogdanovich crashed and burned. Hopper went underground.

But Ashby's fate was the cruelest. His legendary drug-use and paranoia drove him further and further from the mainstream while his obsessive editing style managed to piss-off the last few studio execs willing to work with him. Realizing he needed to turn his life around, Ashby quit doing drugs and tried to adopt a more business-friendly persona. But nobody was buying it. Ashby was treated as an outcast in Hollywood. Adding injury to insult, Ashby developed pancreatic cancer and died in 1988.

It almost seems like the change in Hollywood's business climate killed Ashby as much as the cancer. Ashby flourished in a time when even studio execs were willing to take risks, bend rules and push the envelope. But when the big corporations gobbled up the studios, there was little breathing room for creative spirits like Ashby. What's ironic is that without the creative spirit and the risks, there would be no Hollywood in the first place. Oh sure, you can always make a dozen sequels to Pirates of the Caribbean or rip off another comic book or put Will Ferrell, Vince Vaughn, Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller in a locked room and watch them endlessly improvise "clever" lines. But if you really want to make great movies then you have to take bold risks. You have to give the Ashbys of the world a chance.

Fortunately, there are still a few creative spirits left in Hollywood. The rise of the independent film movement has provided a home for some of them. Of course, many of the so-called independent companies are actually owned by the studios and are still being governed by bottom-liners as opposed to visionaries. But it's better than nothing.

I wonder what kinds of movies Ashby might be making if he were still around today. Those are the kinds of movies I'd like to make.