A Midsummer Night's Dream

I am writing this newsletter from Frye Island Maine where it is a cool 72 degrees, overcast and slightly humid. Yesterday it rained all day. I loved it. I was getting so sick of the sunshine in LA a few weeks ago that I went to see The Perfect Storm just to watch the rain. Earlier today, I went swmming in the crystal clear waters of Lake Sebago. Later, we will go for a three-mile walk down to the new Frye Island Post Office and back. This is the life for me.

Last weekend I was feeling kind of lonely, so I called up my friend Ivana whose husband, Jon Sperry, has been in the Dominican Republic working on a movie. Ivana invited me over and when I got there I met her sister Laura (lah-oo--rah). Unquestionably the most beautiful woman I have ever met. And sweet as Tupelo honey. The two Italian beauties and I chatted for a while then went to dinner. I was feeling a lot less lonely by now.

After dinner, we went to a club in Studio City where a friend of Ivana's named Shannah was performing her semi-erotic confessional poetry/monologues accompanied by a rock band. Shannah is an extremely sexy blonde dynamo who is the former girlfriend of at least one famous hollywood star. Her most memorable poem is entitled: All I want to do is lay in bed all day (and masturbate). In addition to Shannah I also met another blonde beauty named Kai (or something like that) who is apparently the girlfriend of another famous hollywood star. Sitting there, surrounded by Ivana, Laura, Shannah and Kai, I was feeling anything but lonely.

We next went to a cigar club in Beverly Hills to see Kai's boyfriend and his jazz band perform. Kai's boyfriend turned out to be Jeff Goldblum and he invited Shannah up to the mike to perform one of her poems. Guess which one he wanted her to perform? Shannah brought down the house and gave the band quite a thrill as well. We hung around there for a while and I chatted with some crazy woman from Dreamworks who told me how she drove her BMW to Las Vegas on bald tires and see if she could make it there and back without a blowout. She didn't. After about fifteen minutes with her, I was feeling nostalgic for my loneliness.

The next day, Ivana took me to Paramount Studios for a couple of movie screenings and a reception. We were joined at the second screening by the very lovely Laura, sexy Shannah and another friend named Heather who is an actress. It was the first time I had ever been inside the gates of a movie studio and I was slightly giddy. Not to mention being surrounded again by beautiful women, which is nice.

Jon came home on Monday and on Tuesday he and Ivana and Laura and I went to the Santa Monica Pier and rode on the carousel they used in The Sting and then had a wonderful dinner. Did I mention how nice Laura is?

Thursday, Laura and I went to see the film The Big Blue. Laura is from Rome and is learning English, so she brought along her large Italian-English dictionary. I bought an Italian phrase book and tried to learn a few words to throw in here and there. Somehow we managed to communicate quite well. You know, I've always wanted to see Rome.

Friday, I paid one last visit to Jon and Ivana's to say good bye to Laura before I left for Maine. She is returning to Rome this week. They say its one of the places everyone should visit if they get the chance. Did I mention how adorable and charming Laura is?

Maine is like heaven with seafood. It is the greatest place on earth to be in August. I cant think of anywhere Id rather be than right here with my family on the shores of Lake Sebago.

Well, maybe one other place.

Hope everyone is well.

Love, HWD

Laura

Her eyes with blue dawn-light upon me shone,
And golden hair brought daybreak to the night,
That long had kept my heart from heaven's sight,
And left me blinded, wandering alone.

She stands as love's pure goddess newly born,
Delivered like an angel from the sea,
And reawakens hope in what could be,
Created fresh as on the earth's first morn.

Her sunrise ever lights my inner sky,
Her ocean drowns my thoughts and floods my mind,
Her beauty fills my landscape with its glow.

And when I see the stars so bright and high,
Or feel the sun, so gentle and so kind,
Her perfect gift is there for me to know.

Bastille Crazy...

Since my ankle still won't seem to cooperate, I have decide to take an extended break from running and give it a rest. In order to satisfy my craving for aerobic activity, I have taken up swimming. The park where I run also has a pool that opened on June 21st and I figured I should take advantage of the situation. The first night, I swam for about twenty minutes and then went home and cried for three hours. Not because I was particularly upset, but because I didn't have goggles on when I was in the water and my eyes felt like they were on fire. The next day, I bought some goggles. If I get out of work on time, I can swim for about a half hour before they close the pool and I sink to the bottom in a state of pure exhaustion. But the goggles help a lot.

To celebrate the July 4th Holiday weekend, I went to a Bob Dylan concert down in Del Mar, just north of San Diego. Originally, I was planning to go to the concert in Ventura (about an hour north of here) with tickets I won from the radio. But the tickets never showed up. Fortunately, the nice lady at the radio station offered to replace them with six tickets to the show the next day. Cool! I went with Brian and two other friends. However, when we got there we found out that the six tickets were actually three pairs of tickets: one for the fair and one for the concert. We didn't find that out until we had already bought fair admission tickets, though, and I had to buy an additional concert ticket as well. Bob was very good and did a really nice version of "Wheel on Fire."

Instead of driving all the way back after the show, I had made arrangements for a nice motel room just up the road. But when we got to the motel, we were told that my credit card had not 'authorized' and so they gave my room away. I had just used the card to buy the Dylan ticket earlier that day and made the guy recheck it himself. Of course, this time it 'authorized.' It didn't matter though, because there weren't any rooms left in that or any other motel in the area. So we drove home, arriving at 3:30 a.m. The next day I got a parking ticket.

Somehow, during the weekend, I also managed to lose a copy of my script: IN YOUR DREAMS. I had been working on another rewrite because a production company called Armada Pictures got in touch with me and asked to take a look at it. They liked what they saw and offered me an option. But first, they had some suggestions for a few changes. To my surprise, their ideas were excellent. They showed me where I could cut some extraneous material and helped reformulate the ending. They also had some great casting ideas. Since the movie is about a guy who dreams of being James Bond and then gets entangled in a real-life Bond-style adventure, they want to get Roger Moore or George Lazenby or Timothy Dalton (or any two, or all three) to play the villains. They keep sending me e-mails about how they are really eager to contact the "Ex-Bonds."

Before they do that, they have to have a signed option agreement from me, giving them permission. The original offer they made was about as low as you can go, although they offered me a "bonus point" for the rewrite I am doing. In other words they would give me an extra percentage point on the 'back-end' profits they receive. As any Hollywood writer will tell you, there ain't no back-end profits. Or to paraphrase a character in Mamet's 'Speed the Plow': "There are only two rules in Hollywood -- the first is there is no "net", and the second I don't remember..." Anyway, I looked up a few standard options on the Internet and counter-proposed an additional point on the 'front-end' i.e. percentage of the final budget once the film goes into production (or "real money"). I sent them my offer on Friday and worried all weekend. On Monday, I got a response from them giving me the extra point up front plus two extra points on the back-end, which was actually more than I had asked for. But, apparently they thought what I was asking for didn't include the "bonus point", so I ended up with what amounts to a standard Writer's Guild option agreement, even though I am not a member of the Guild. Pretty savvy, huh?

I still haven't received the agreement yet and I so I still have my fingers crossed, but it looks like as of next week we will be in business. There's no money in it for me at this point, because they are just starting out and they don't have any money. But, I am confident that the script will generate a great deal of interest and when we get the Ex-Bonds on board, the investors will be lined up around the block.

Tonight I am going to Cousin Blake's birthday party. Haven't seen those folks in a long time. I'm looking forward to telling them the news.

Hope everyone is doing well. Next month at this time I'll be in Maine.

Love HWD