When I was a kid in elementary school, we had music class every day where we would sing songs from a book called Making Music Your Own, which I constantly misread as Making Your Own Music. There were a lot of classic American folk songs in the book, like Erie Canal, Big Rock Candy Mountain, John Henry, and Go Tell It On The Mountain. It was the early seventies and we were still caught up in the big folk music revival that had begun in the sixties. Plus none of the songs were copyrighted and so the textbook publishers didn't have to pay any royalties.
My favorite song in the book, in fact everyone's favorite song in the book -- in fact just about everyone's favorite folk song of all time, was of course, This Land Is Your Land by Woody Guthrie. In that song, Woody shared with us all his anarchic/neo-socialist ideal vision of America as a land that truly belongs to everyone. I always thought it was funny that they would put such a subversive song in a public school text book. Of course they did manage to leave out a couple of verses:
As I was walkin' - I saw a sign there And that sign said - no tresspassin' But on the other side .... it didn't say nothin! Now that side was made for you and me
In the squares of the city - In the shadow of the steeple Near the relief office - I see my people And some are grumblin' and some are wonderin' If this land's still made for you and me.
I guess they weren't ready to start filling our impressionable little minds with thoughts of civil disobedience or disillusionment. Who knows where that would lead?
I recently saw a documentary called Butterfly about a young woman named Julia Butterfly Hill, who spent two years living in a 180 foot tall redwood tree named Luna. Julia, and her team of supporters from a group called Earth First, were trying to prevent a big lumber company from cutting down the 600 year old tree. Julia lived in a 4 by 6 foot platform and withstood high winds, hailstorms, hostile loggers and bad press during her vigil. Some thought she was crazy, others thought she was a saint. In the end, the tree was saved.
Apparently, Julia and her friends at Earth First got hold of an unabridged version of Woody's famous anthem. Either that or they were just a bunch of troublemakers from the get-go.
I was truly inspired by this wacky chick who decided to forgo all logic and propriety, not to mention personal comfort and safety, because she had found something that she deeply believed in. I felt a little like the cynical shrink in the play Equus who envies his patient, a crazy kid who worships horses as gods, because at least the kid something to believe in, while the shrink has nothing. Maybe Julia is just a tree-huggin nutjob. But boy does she have passion and commitment.
I guess I used to be that passionate and committed. I've lived my whole life with the idea of becoming a great writer. Everything I did was part of my journey as an artist. There have been moments when I felt like I was completely on track. But there have been other moments when I felt like I am just going around in circles. Sometimes it seems like the circles are getting smaller and smaller.
How do you know if you are headed toward your goal, or if it is just an illusion? What if you are just some crazy kid riding naked on horses in the moonlight? Or a kooky old man tilting at windmills?
I saw another documentary recently (I seem to be watching more documentaries these days) this one was about Eugene O'Neill. Like me, O'Neill started out in Connecticut, spent some time wandering around, underwent a transformative realization while living in New York City, and eventually came to California.
Unlike me, O'Neill enjoyed a fairly successful career as a writer and was awarded a Pulitzer and a Nobel Prize. But despite his success, for most of his career O'Neill felt that he had failed to live up to his potential. He felt that he had greatness in him and wasn't sure if he would ever achieve it. By the time he came to California, his health was failing and he knew that his days as a writer were numbered. And yet he still had not produced the kind of work he had always hoped to create.
O'Neill and his wife moved into a house in northern California, called Tao House in a secluded setting surrounded by woods and views of the mountains. For a man who grew up on the Connecticut shoreline and spent most of his life near water, this new residence was as landlocked as he had ever been. He withdrew into a library on the second floor and began work on a massive cycle comprising 11 plays chronicling the history of an Irish American family over 100 years. But after completing only two of them, he must have realized that he would never be able to finish the entire cycle.
O'Neill abandoned the cycle and started anew. Over the next five years, he wrote five new plays, three of which, The Iceman Cometh, A Long Days Journey Into Night and A Moon for the Misbegotten, are considered among the best American plays ever written. Long Days Journey Into Night stands among the best works of literature of all time.
He knew he had it in him and he finally let it out. And it nearly killed him. For the final ten years of his life, he was physically unable to write at all. But he achieved greatness.
Sometimes I wish I had a room like O'Neill's library, secluded, surrounded by trees, with a view of the mountains, where I could achieve the greatness I feel is within me. Or even a platform way up in a redwood tree, clinging for dear life to the branches while the wind rips my tarps to shreds -- but at least I know I am doing something worthwhile.
Instead I have this tiny sweatbox in the middle of a city filled with people just like me, who think they are destined for something special, but maybe they aren't.
I guess it doesn't really matter where I am. As long as I am somewhere. As long as I am doing something. As long as I have my illusions, or delusions, or dreams, or whatever they are.
Woody Guthrie never gave up. He wrote a song nearly every day until he couldn't write no more. Julia Butterfly Hill never gave up. Even when the sky pelted her with hailstones for ten days in a row. Eugene O'Neill never gave up. Even when his hands were shaking so bad that he could barely hold the pen.
So maybe this room is my redwood tree, my library, my America. And I'm gonna stay right here. I'm not giving up.
I missed my high school reunion again this year. So far, I've missed them all. For the first one, which was after five years, I was in New York City at the White Horse Tavern with my good friend and high school classmate Dave Todd. After a few pints of Guinness, we got on the pay-phone and called the restaurant in Louisville where our class was holding its reunion. Surprisingly, we got through and ended up talking to several old friends. I remember talking to the woman who was my first true love, and the first girl to break my heart. She was now happily married, but not to the guy she left me for. It was good to hear her voice. I wished I could be there in person.
This year, thanks to cell phone technology, I was able to call my old buddy Gary while he was attending a big reunion party. Gary was one of my closest pals in high school and it was great to talk with him again. We had been exchanging emails in the weeks before reunion and had been able to catch up a little. When I called him at the party, he passed his cell phone around so I could catch up with some of the other folks there, including the girl who broke my heart. It was such a treat to hear that honeysuckle-and-magnolia Louisville accent once again. There are no women quite as sweet as Louisville women.
My 'Ex' passed the phone to another Louisville lovely named Jane Halliday who I've seen a few times since high school. Dave Todd and I used to take road trips to visit Jane at Smith when we were both at Wesleyan. And a couple of times, when passing through Louisville on road trips with Bob Sweeney and Dan Haar, we made it a point to stop and see Jane. The last time I saw her was at Dave Todd's wedding in Apalachicola, Florida. Jane is a very talented violinist who makes her living as a musician and still calls Louisville her home.
Ray Sharp was one of the people I really wanted to see. I hadn't seen him since I watched him set the world record in the one mile race-walk at Madison Square Gardens. But thanks to the flurry of pre-reunion emails that were burning up the internet last month, Ray and I got in touch again. He was coming west to visit his parents in Tucson and I decide to drive over and see them. I had driven to Phoenix last fall and it wasn't so bad. Of course driving to Phoenix in the fall is not quite the same as driving to Tucson in the summer. Turns out it gets quite hot in the desert in the summer. Even at night.
But the long hot drive was well worth it. It was really good seeing Ray again. We seemed to take up right were we left off. Ray and I shared many adventures in those early days. Perhaps the biggest one was when we both decided to leave college and drive from Louisville to San Francisco in the middle of one of the biggest ice storms in history. We were going out to try and track down our friend Mark Bush who had mysteriously disappeared a few months earlier. We weren't sure where to look for him, we just knew he was in San Francisco. By some odd combination of miracles and dumb luck, we actually found him out there. I stayed around for a couple of months living with Ray in a small apartment in Oakland. Eventually I went back to school. Ray stayed in California to devote his life to race-walking.
While in Tucson, Ray and I visited my old college buddy Mitch at the Santa Cruz River Park 'disc' golf course. (That's Frisbee golf to you and me.) Apparently 'disc' golf involves drinking a lot of beer (perhaps to combat the stifling heat) and sitting around listening to bootleg Grateful Dead tapes on the car stereo. At least that's what we did.
I stayed at Mitch's bungalow that night amidst his collection of neo-modernist furniture, all of which are rare originals. In fact every time you sit down in Mitch's house he whips out a catalogue from an auction house and shows you a picture of a chair just like the one you're sitting in and shows you how much it's worth. Makes you think twice about spilling your beer.
The next day I left Tucson at about 4 p.m., when the temperature inside my car had reached about 300 degrees, and drove nonstop back to Los Angeles where it was a merciful 85 degrees at 2 a.m.
It's been kind of strange reconnecting with all these ghosts from the past. When I got off the phone after talking to the people at the reunion, I was a little overwhelmed. I had wanted to go back and see them all, but after talking for just a few minutes I felt like I'd had enough nostalgia for a while. Or maybe it was just harder because they were so far away and we couldn't really hang-out together.
The next week it was sweltering here. (But not nearly as hot as Tucson.) I was busy trying to make some things happen in my screenwriting career but I wasn't getting much action. I had been sending out emails and making calls trying to attract some attention, but hadn't gotten any bites. I was sure that something was wrong with my email. I wasn't even getting any spam!
About the only person who did call me was my friend Ellen. We ran into each other at a party a few years back that was thrown in honor of Lauren Lazin's Oscar nomination. I walked into the kitchen and saw this girl from my high school standing there. But it couldn't be. Ellen? It was. Turns out Ellen is in the movie business and was friends with Lauren. Ellen came to L.A. right out of college and has been here ever since. I hadn't seen her since we graduated from high school, and she hasn't changed a bit. I know everyone says that, but it's true. O.K., she's changed a little, she owns a really nice house and is a senior VP at major movie studio, but other than that she's just like I remember her.
Ellen and I had talked about going back to the reunion together, but Ellen's job tends to take her all over the world and she wasn't sure of her schedule. I, on the other hand, have virtually no schedule at all. I did however have several important meetings with a bunch of producers the week of reunion. (One of them finally did call back, by the way.)
Anyway, after Ellen called, I realized that I'd already had my high school reunion when I ran into her at Lauren's party. But instead of seeing a bunch of people you barely remember for five minutes at a cocktail party, I got to reconnect with one person and get to know her all over again. And it's been great. We have a lot in common since we literally grew up together. But we also seem to share a similar perspective that we have dubbed 'being from Louisville.' It has to do with honesty and sincerity and courtesy and integrity, and generally being nice. We never realized how rare such qualities were until we started comparing notes. Sometimes it's a relief just to have someone else to talk to who was raised properly.
I'm lucky to have friends from high school that I still consider friends today. There's something about knowing someone from that time period that gives you a real perspective on who they are. Only your parents and siblings can know you better. In fact, considering how long it's been and how far we've all come, it's amazing how many of us are still in touch and still remain friends. My friend Mark Bush moved out here a few of years ago and I got the chance to visit him and his family several times before they moved back east. It just felt good to see him. We went through a lot of ups and downs together and after all that wears away, what's left is just the good stuff.
I guess I prefer to have my reunions on a one-on-one basis. It's a little more time-consuming, but way more satisfying.
My good friend Dan Haar was in town a couple of weeks ago. Dan Haar is the business editor of America's oldest newspaper and was here to attend a convention of business editors at the Disneyland Hotel. Dan Haar has been a prominent and successful journalist for over twenty years, but for some reason, Dan Haar still gets a kick out of seeing his name ("Dan Haar") in my blog.
Dan Haar and I spent the first morning of his visit at the legendary Getty Center where we enjoyed the sculpted gardens and viewed a couple of photography exhibits. I particularly appreciated the exhibition featuring modern portraits of Los Angeles by Richard Humble while Dan Haar preferred English turn-of-the-century photographer P. H. Emerson. It was actually my first visit to the Getty Center, which just goes to prove that you never really appreciate your own city until someone comes to visit.
After the Getty we headed down Sunset to one of my favorite spots in Los Angeles, the Lake Shrine. We made a fairly quick circuit, just to give Dan Haar an overview of the place. Dan Haar was quite impressed with the memorial containing a portion of the ashes of the Mahatma Gandhi.
From the Lake Shrine we continued down to the beach where we watched several dolphins frolicking in the surf and then feasted on a couple of fish dinners at Gladstone's.
After a quick stop at my apartment, we proceeded to Disneyland.
Resourceful and clever man that he is, Dan Haar had managed to procure us a couple of passes to Disneyland from a friend who works there. We arrived at 9:30 pm, just as the fireworks were going off. It was pretty packed for being so late, I guess a lot of people go to Disneyland on Friday night. We were swept along with the human tide down Main Street until we found an eddy near the entrance to Tomorrowland.
Dan Haar decided we should check out the Star Wars ride, so we got in line. It wasn't too long a wait, but for some reason Dan Haar failed to read the many signs along the way warning those who are susceptible to motion sickness. It was not until we were actually boarding the ride itself that Dan Haar thought to ask, "does this ride move around a lot?" Then the doors closed.
As it turns out the ride is a recreation of a rather wild and bumpy space flight, and while technically we didn't actually go anywhere, it sure does feel and look like you are flying through space at very high speeds. Fortunately the ride was short enough so that just about the time Dan Haar started feeling nauseous, it was over.
One of the reasons that Main Street had been so crowded was because they were preparing for the next day's World Premier of the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. For the same reason, many of the attractions were closed and there was limited access to certain areas of the park. One ride that was open, however, and surprisingly uncrowded was the Pirates of the Caribbean ride itself. Dan Haar had never been on it before and so we jumped aboard.
There had been a few changes to the ride since my last voyage. Captain Jack Sparrow makes several appearances now as does Captain Barbossa. I didn't see an animatronic Keira Knightley, but I wouldn't mind having one of those of my own.
Dan Haar enjoyed the ride thoroughly as it was much less frantic that the Star Wars ride and thus did not induce dizziness or vomiting. I explained to Dan Haar how the writers of the movie used a lot of the imagery from the ride in crafting the story of the movie. Dan Haar wondered how it was that I could know so much about a movie that hadn't come out yet. Apparently Dan Haar was unaware that there had been two previous Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Some journalist.
The next day, Dan Haar was busy with his business editor's conference and so I was on my own. I went back to Disneyland again. Unfortunately, due to the premier, there were even more closed attractions and even less access to certain areas of the park. One of my favorite spots in Disneyland is the Tom Sawyer Island, which was closed as it is currently being updated to include Captain Jack Sparrow's Pirates Cove.
I ended up having breakfast across the street from the giant outdoor movie theater where the big premier would be held. Breakfast at Disneyland was excellent, just what I needed.
I spent the rest of the day at the California Adventure Park riding the California Screamin' roller coaster, the Grizzly River Run whitewater rapids and the Soarin' Over California "flight" ride.
That night we met Dan Haar's friend Dave at the bar at the Grand Californian Hotel. Dave is one of those brilliant, talented, good-natured types that seem to have been built in a laboratory especially for Disneyland. But the fact is, he used to work with Dan Haar at The Hartford Courant (America's oldest newspaper) and is now in charge of the Disneyland website.
On the way out of the bar we ran into three Oscar winners: Jon Voight, Cuba Gooding Jr., and Captain Barbossa himself, Geoffrey Rush. Quite the Hollywood hat trick. Even Dan Haar was impressed.
I went home the next day while Dan Haar attended a couple more days of the conference. On his way back out of town, Dan Haar and I had dinner with another old schoolmate, Fred Bodner, who is working on a movie about my former Wesleyan cross-country teammate Gordon Cooney. Cooney is a lawyer who won a long-fought death row case at the eleventh hour. Word has it Matt Damon will play him in the movie.
About a week later, I went to see Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. I was well primed for it due to my weekend at Disneyland. Plus, they had left a lot of loose ends at the end of the second movie and I was very curious to see how they all got tied up.
But they pulled a fast one. Yeah, they tied up some loose ends, but for every one they tied, they left two more hanging. Until, by the end of the movie, we were left with a whole new set of loose ends. I guess they weren't really trying to tie up the story so much as drag it out for another sequel. And that kind of pissed me off.
Sure Star Wars left us hanging at the end of Empire Strikes Back, but they totally wrapped things up in Return of the Jedi. Then they waited twenty years before giving us three more. Lord of the Rings gave us three movies, with cliffhangers at the ends of the first and second, but the third installment had enough endings in it for five movies. Indiana Jones didn't leave us hanging at the end of every movie. They told one story, finished it and then started a new one. And what about James Bond? The longest running and most successful movie franchise in history. Did they leave Bond stranded on a desert island at the end of Dr. No, wondering how he will ever get back to civilization? Hells no -- they left him drifting in a boat with Ursula Andress. Now that's an ending.
All I'm saying is, a story has three basic components: 1) beginning, 2) middle, and 3) end. Not 1) beginning, 2) middle, and 3) more beginning. It just doesn't make any sense that way.
But that's what we are getting from Hollywood these days. Not stories. Just franchises. Not characters, but potential action figures. Not plot, but a concept for a video game. Not dramatic action, but amazing spectacles and lavish sequences whose only purpose is to "top" the amazing spectacles and lavish sequences we saw last summer. Geez, there are more special effects in the trailer for Die Hard 4 than there were in all of Ben Hur.
Don't get me wrong. I love Captain Jack Sparrow. But, yes, I can get enough of him. And I think I just did. You can have too much of a good thing. A good storyteller knows that. And that's why two of the most important words in storytelling are:
