Divine Comedy

The Sage who provokes laughter is more valuable than a well.

What is comedy? Essentially, comedy is what's "funny." So, what's funny? In the movie The Sunshine Boys, a retired vaudevillian named Willy, played by Walter Matthau, has this to say about what's funny:

Alka Seltzer is funny... Words with "k" in them are funny... Cupcake is funny. Tomato is not funny. Cookie is funny. Cucumber is funny. Car keys. Cleveland... Cleveland is funny. Maryland is not funny. Then, there's chicken. Chicken is funny.

Some things, however, can be funny to some people, but to others... not so much. For example, many people believe that Adam Sandler is funny.

But he isn't.

A friend of mine used to say that he could tell whether someone was smart if they laughed at his jokes. I myself have always used comedy as a way of unfairly judging people. I like making people laugh, and I like being around people who are funny. If someone can make me laugh, I usually like them. If they get my jokes, I love them.

I once dated a woman who wanted to be a stand-up comic. We met at a seminar for comedy writers and she seemed funny. By which I mean she laughed at my jokes. After we'd been dating for a few weeks, she invited me to come see her perform at a comedy club. I sat at the front table to provide moral support. She came out to do her set and...

Not funny!

Don't get me wrong, I laughed loud and hard. But I was totally faking it. (Yes, men can fake it, too.) Afterwards, I told her she was great, but deep down inside, I knew that our relationship was doomed. I tried to overlook it and focus on her other fine qualities (she worked at a bar and gave me free drinks) but it was no use. Seeing her onstage not being funny was too much to overcome. Perhaps it would have been different if she didn't think she was funny.

But she did. And she wasn't.

I figured I'd give stand-up comedy a try. It didn't look that hard. But the joke was on me -- turns out it was both awesomely terrifying and immensely satisfying. Mostly terrifying. The satisfying part is that you get to find out first hand if your jokes are funny. Fortunately for me, my jokes got laughs. The gut-wrenching, mind-numbing, paralyzing fear was bad enough. But to stand up there and have nobody laugh would have been sheer torture.

I decided I was better suited to writing. Less stressful. So, a friend and I co-wrote a play called Leading The Blind, about a couple who meet at their friends' wedding and end up getting married -- meanwhile their married friends are in the midst of a divorce and trying to talk them out of it. We held a staged reading of the play and I found that I much preferred anonymously sitting in the audience while trained professionals did all of the heavy lifting. Writing for actors was definitely the way to go.

Not long after that, I began writing screenplays. Only problem is, unless some miracle occurs and your screenplay gets made into a movie, you don't get to see how it plays in front of an audience. Closest I could get was some screenwriting software that "reads" your script out loud using an electronically programmed voice that sounds like Stephen Hawking on Quaaludes. It's funny, but not in a good way.

The first five screenplays I churned out were comedies. Basically, they are all about slightly geeky guys who get mixed up in dangerous situations and wind up meeting beautiful women who want to have sex with them. I thought I had invented my own genre, but it turns out that the genre already exists. It's called: Every Unsold Comedy Script Ever Written. I sent them around and got some good feedback here and there. But unless I could be in the room with the people who were reading my scripts and actually see if and when they were laughing, I couldn't really tell if my jokes were working. And the idea of me sitting there watching them read my script tended to turn most people off.

But now, after years of writing for an audience of one, I belong to a writing group that holds weekly script readings. There's no better indicator than the sound of a roomful of people laughing (or not laughing) to tell you if your script is funny. Or not. Just last week, I brought in one of my old comedy scripts for a reading. The actors did a fine job, as always, but after a somewhat subdued reading, several people asked me if it was, in fact, a comedy.

Awkward pause...

At least now I know where I stand. Time to go back and "punch it up," as we say in the biz. I got some good notes from my fellow writers to help guide me. Of course, you can't really tell someone how to be funny. I'll just have to go with my gut.

And put in a bunch of words with "k" in them.

In Your Dreams

We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.

I'm a dreamer. I do it all the time. Usually when I'm asleep, but not always. Sometimes I get so caught up in my dreams that I have trouble separating them from reality. Every now and then, I wake up with a dream still fresh in my mind that's so vivid, it feels more "real" than my actual life. Other times, I'll remember something so clearly that I can't tell if it really happened or if I dreamed it. Of course, there are those who say that what we think of as "reality" is actually just an illusion. And someday we may "wake up" and realize it was all just a dream.

Unless, of course, we are really "waking up" into another dream.

Oftentimes I'll be sound asleep and dream that I wake up and try to remember what I was dreaming about. I keep a notepad next to my bed to write down some of the brilliant ideas that come to me in my dreams. So, I get into this crazy loop where I have a really cool dream, then I dream that I "wake up" and write down what the first dream was about. And, even though somewhere in the back of my mind I know that I am actually asleep, I manage to convince myself that if I "write down" the dream within the dream, I will remember it when I really do wake up.

But that never works.

Still, I have come up with some good ideas in my dreams. A lot of my dreams are just like movies. I've always wished I had some way to record them so I could watch them later. I guess that's why I like to write screenplays. I keep hoping that one of these days I will get to see one of my "dreams" up on the big screen. I actually had a dream once that I went to the premier of one of my movies. That was pretty cool. It was like a dream come true.

Except that it was only a dream.

When I was researching my first screenplay, Merlin, I read a bunch of books on magic. I learned that magic is essentially the act of taking a thought and making it real. That's not all that different from writing, really. Or just about any other form of creation, for that matter. Later, when I was writing Merlin, I had several weird experiences where I felt like some of the things I was conjuring up in my head were manifesting themselves in my life. I wasn't sure if it was really happening or if it was just coincidence, but it was pretty intense.

I thought the story of someone whose dreams started coming true would be a good idea for a screenplay. I wrote an outline about a guy who keeps having dreams about a beautiful, dark-haired girl. Then, one day, he sees her out on the street. He can't believe it. He tries to follow her, but loses her in the crowd. That night he dreams that she is in danger, and becomes obsessed with finding her and rescuing her.

Over the course of several rewrites, the story changed a bit. Eventually it turned into the tale of a young lawyer who dreams about being James Bond, and ends up in the middle of a totally Bond-like adventure in his real life. The girl changed, too. She went from a dark-haired mystery girl to a kick-ass blonde. I kept the original title though. I called it, In Your Dreams.

I quite enjoyed doing the research for In Your Dreams, which basically involved re-reading every Bond novel, and re-watching every Bond movie. I zeroed in on The Spy Who Loved Me as a good template for my story. It is the only Bond novel which is not told from James Bond's perspective, but instead from that of a young woman whom James Bond ends up rescuing. I decided to do a gender-switch with the young lawyer in the role of the rescuee and the kick-ass blonde became, who else? Jane Bond. I finished the script and posted the synopsis on a couple of screenplay websites, hoping to attract a flurry of attention.

The flurry never did materialize, although I did get an email from England from a young music-video director named Raj, who really liked the idea. I sent him the script and he loved it. We traded some emails back and forth for a while, discussing various projects and ideas. When Raj came to Hollywood for a visit, I brought him over to legendary guitar wizard Will Ray's house for a very untraditional Thanksgiving dinner. Raj and I have continued to stay in touch. He has since moved to Los Angeles and is currently in the process of launching his career as a feature film director.

Meanwhile, a few years went by. I had nearly forgotten about posting In Your Dreams on those screenplay websites, when I got a random email from a producer in Texas who said he was very interested. He loved the James Bond angle and wanted to try casting all of the old ex-Bonds in key roles. I thought that was a brilliant idea. We spent several months exchanging emails about the story, during which time it went through further revisions. He contributed some really good ideas, and I pretty much used them all. But then, as so often happens, he decided not to pursue the project. He was pretty cool about it, letting me know that I was welcome to go ahead use his ideas. (I was going to do that anyway, but it was a nice gesture.)

After that, I put In Your Dreams back up on the shelf and went on to my next project.

Then, about a week ago, I went to see Inception. And it was awesome. Not only is Inception a very cool movie about the thin line between dreams and reality, but it also has some kick-ass Bond-like action sequences. Especially in the third act, which is practically a remake of the third act of On Her Majesty's Secret Service. (Starring George Lazenby, by the way, who would be perfect as the villain in In Your Dreams.)

Once again, In Your Dreams has moved to the forefront of my thoughts. It's been floating around my subconscious for years, developing a kind of mythical status. At this point it's like a half-remembered dream that I had years ago. It seemed so real at the time -- but did it really happen? Some of the images are so clear in my mind, it's as though I truly remember seeing them. And, in a way, I guess I did see them, up there on the big screen inside my head. Where all of my dreams come true. Only this time, I'm pretty sure I woke up and wrote it all down.

Or did I just dream that, too?

The Park

The Long Meadow

One of the many writing projects currently cluttering my mind, and my apartment, is the rewrite of my first novel, about my journey from Louisville to San Francisco and back again during a semester off from college. The other day I was looking at Chapter 4, in which I focus on Lake Merritt. I lived in a tiny apartment in Oakland, less than a block from Lake Merritt, and spent much of my free time there, roaming the shores, or simply staring at the water. It provided respite from the closed-in city, escape from worries and woes, a haven of peace in a world of chaos.

All my life I have taken refuge in parks -- from small city parks jammed between bustling boulevards to vast tracts of wilderness miles from civilization. Wherever I've lived, I have always sought out such places for inspiration and regeneration. I've come to rely on them, but in a way also to take them for granted. What would a world be like without parks? I couldn't imagine it.

When I was growing up, we had a neighborhood park at the end of our street that featured a rustic wooden bridge, tennis courts, a swimming pool and horse stables. For half the year, after school, my friends and I would disappear into the woods behind the park, having adventures and making discoveries. We wandered the bridle trails like exploring pioneers, clambered around Little Goose Creek searching for crawdads and newts, climbed trees and built forts. In the summer we spent hours and hours at the pool, splashing, racing, diving, jumping -- having a blast. It was always just "The Park" to us, but it was just about the best place on earth.

When I began running cross-country, however, I discovered another favorite park. Well, two parks actually, Seneca Park and Cherokee Park. We held our cross-country meets in Seneca Park, with its wide, flat, landscaped expanses of softball fields and tennis courts. But for workouts, we favored the more rugged and rolling bridle trails of the adjacent Cherokee Park. Running swiftly through the trees like ancient warriors on the trail of a mighty buck. Once I discovered trail running, I never wanted to run on streets again.

On a trip to Connecticut my junior year of high school, my Dad and I visited two college campuses. The first one was Yale, in the center of downtown New Haven. Although I had always fantasized about going to Yale, the gritty, urban campus really turned me off. Sure there were plenty of quads & courtyards offering shelter from the city streets, but the overall feel of the place left me cold. Then we went up to Middletown. Right in the middle of the Wesleyan campus is an open greenspace with a big grassy hill, a running track and playing fields: a park. I thought, 'yep, I could live here.' And that pretty much made the decision.

During my hiatus from Wesleyan, living in Oakland, I needed the proximity of Lake Merritt to feel at home in the big, scary city. And when I wasn't hanging out at the lake, I was running the trails of Strawberry Canyon winding through the hills above Berkeley. And then there was Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, a great place to just get lost for hours at time.

After college, I drove out to San Diego and found an apartment just a few blocks from the ocean, in Pacific Beach. There is almost no place like the beach for restoring one's soul. Walking along the water's edge, swimming in the surf or simply contemplating the immensity of the Pacific. No matter what was bugging you, the beach would always be there to remind you that the tide comes in and the tide goes out. Sometimes there are a lot of waves, sometimes there are none. Every night the sun goes down like a glorious god relinquishing his throne. And every day is new.

Back in Connecticut, I worked for a while at Hammonasset Beach State Park, building picnic tables, lifeguard stands and lengths of boardwalk, and occasionally shoring up the fenceline that ran along the dunes. When I wasn't working at the beach, I hung out at my parents' house, situated on the banks of a small tidal river directly across from the Guilford Salt Meadow Sanctuary -- so basically their backyard was an incredibly cool Audubon bird sanctuary.

Eventually, I drifted down to Washington DC where I lived in a row house right on the edge of beautiful Rock Creek Park. We actually lived just opposite the monkey house in the National Zoo, and in the early morning I could hear the macaques crooning and wailing to one another. Sometimes I would respond, blowing long sad notes on my harmonica. I think the macaques assumed I was just another monkey.

Rock Creek Park is a true national treasure, comprising some 2000 acres, including miles and miles of trails. I would sometimes cut through the zoo on my way to the subway in the morning or find any excuse to use Rock Creek Parkway if I needed to drive somewhere. But I spent most of my time on the trails. There are trails everywhere in Rock Creek Park. I would pride myself on being able to get way across town, from Cleveland Park to Georgetown, without once setting foot on pavement.

When I moved to Brooklyn, I felt like I was really in deep. Yeah, I'd lived in big cities before. Oakland is a big city, but we lived on the edge of a lake, and I spent most of my time working at a burger joint in Berkeley. As for DC, it's pretty tame as big cities go -- lots of trees and wide avenues and low buildings. Kind of like a super-sized college campus. Brooklyn, however, is almost unrelentingly urban. Block after block of nothing but concrete, asphalt and brownstone. Cars, buses and taxis moving nonstop. People everywhere. And the noise! Never a moment's peace. It was almost too much for a Louisville boy to bear.

Fortunately, I lived on the ground floor of a brownstone that had its own private backyard garden. Well, not so much a garden as a patch of ground filled with weeds and junk. I set about restoring my garden to a more pastoral state. I hacked down the weeds, planted grass, cultivated wildflowers. I put up a hammock and even had a kiddie-sized wading pool in the summer. It was pretty nice. A great place to get away from the intensity of the street. But it had its limitations. It was, after all surrounded by other buildings and other backyard gardens filled with many, many other people.

So, I discovered Prospect Park. Designed by Fredrick Law Olmsted who designed Central Park (as well as Cherokee and Seneca Parks), Prospect Park is perhaps the ultimate example of creating a pastoral environment in the midst of an urban one. The 90-acre Long Meadow is an oasis of grass in a concrete jungle, surrounded by berms and trees that serve to block out the sights and sounds of the city. Standing in the center of Long Meadow, you really can forget you are in the middle of one of the most densely populated places in the country.

I spent long days in Prospect Park exploring its nearly 600 acres, including a 60-acre lake, finding something new and interesting on almost every occasion. In the fall, Prospect Park's maple trees had some of the most vibrant orange, red and yellow leaves I'd ever seen. Who needs Vermont? In the winter, the park became a wonderland with skaters and sledders and cross-country skiers. One spring I sat every weekend under a favorite shade tree writing my second screenplay. And in the summer Long Meadow became a grassy beach filled with sun-bathers.

These days, I divide my time between three or four different parks, depending on the purpose. When I just need to sit under shady tree, I have Kings Road Park, just a few blocks away. For short hikes, I can go to the popular Runyon Canyon Park -- the 'in' place for Hollywood hikers. If I want more privacy, I head over to a rustic little gem called Franklin Canyon Park, nestled right in the heart of Beverly Hills. For swimming I have the West Hollywood Park, which is like my second home. As far as longer hikes, there are numerous places to choose from in LA County alone, including the amazing Topanga State Park, which at 11,000 acres is the largest state park within city limits.

I guess to me, parks represent the best intentions of a society -- the desire to preserve that which is truly valuable and the recognition that we all need to share this world somehow. It's nice to have your own little slice of heaven, shielded from the teeming masses and whatnot. I hope to have my own someday. But it's also good to know that there are still some places that everyone can enjoy. Places where kids can play and explore, where athletes can compete, where struggling writers can daydream. Who knows, maybe someday one of those kids will discover a new form of energy, or one of those athletes will inspire a whole generation, or that writer will write a book that changes the world?

And then he will have a park named after him.