Thursday, September 10, 2009

This Just In...

I said earlier here that I didn't know why Barack Obama doesn't fill the largest stadium available, as he easily could, and give a big speech for Health Care Reform before a packed, cheering crowd. Well, obviously he reads this blog and rushes to do everything I suggest. Bill Stiteler informs me that Obama's giving just such a speech this Saturday in Minneapolis.

• Posted at 1:05 PM · LINK

Tales from the Script

Screenwriter Supreme Josh Olson writes an article that a lot of professional writers would like to write. It's about how we all get assailed (yes, even lowly me) to read the hopeful spec scripts of amateurs and how it creates all sorts of problems for us.

If I'd written this piece — and I think I have, only I was probably more tactful and therefore less effective — I'd have added that the opinion of another writer really doesn't (or shouldn't) matter to you. What should matter is the reaction of someone who has the power to actually do something with your script, like buy it or get it produced. Secondly, I would have told the tale of a guy about two years ago who oughta be the poster boy for How Not To Have Your Script Read.

He interviewed me briefly about a mutual acquaintance of ours — a real and interesting person who was the subject of the screenplay he was writing...only I didn't know at the time he was writing a screenplay. He later called and said, "I've written something about him and I'd like you to take a look at it." Thinking he'd penned a factual-type article for something and was responsibly fact-checking, I told him to send it over. Three days later, I received a huge package.

It started with a statement I was asked to sign and send back to him along with the enclosed script and my comments. In the statement, I acknowledged that I'd read the screenplay and that if I ever wrote anything even vaguely similar, it would constitute admitted plagiarism and he could sue me for everything I owned. And as if that wasn't enough to make me scurry to read his work, the enclosed script was 325 pages.

So I called the guy and told him his script was winging its way back to him, unloved and unread. And trying to be helpful, I told him, "No one is going to read a screenplay that's over around 120 pages."

He replied, "I have a copy here of the script for Apocalypse Now and it's 325 pages." (I don't know that it is but that's what he said.)

I said, "Well, maybe but this story isn't Apocalypse Now and you aren't John Milius and/or Francis Ford Coppola." I also tried gently to explain to the guy that there's a difference between a script that you write so someone will read it and the Apocalypse Now script he had, which was probably a shooting draft that didn't have to "sell" anyone.

He said, "If their screenplay can be 325 pages, mine can be 325 pages."

So as not to trigger a deluge of 325-page spec screenplays, I almost wish I could end this anecdote by reporting that no one ever read the script. As it turns out, it's Gus Van Sant's next picture and it starts shooting in January of 2010 with a cast that includes Sean Penn, Cate Blanchett, Tilda Swinton and Frank Langella. And yes, I'm lying about that and no one has ever read the script. Or ever will.

Thanks to Shelly Goldstein for telling me about Josh's article. And please do not ask Josh to read your script because he's already twice had to postpone lunches we had scheduled.

• Posted at 12:09 PM · LINK

Thursday Morning

I thought Obama's speech last night was pretty good and I don't know why the guy doesn't give more of them. For that matter, I don't know why he doesn't fill the largest stadium available, as he easily could, and give a big speech for Health Care Reform before a packed, cheering crowd. It would go a long way to countering any impressions out there that the troglodytes who scream at town hall meetings are in any way speaking for the majority of the American public. Didn't Republicans misplay this hand before? I seem to recall them thinking they could play to the extreme right in their party, hate Bill Clinton right out of the White House and parlay his ouster into a permanent majority.

Joe Wilson, the yutz Congressguy who yelled at the president unwisely, was just on the news apologizing yet again and fumbling to explain how a bill which explicitly says —

Nothing in this subtitle shall allow Federal payments for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States.

— would actually cover folks who are in this country illegally. It's hard to believe he acted, as he now claims, out of emotion. Easier to believe is premeditated thought that such a heckle would make him a hero with the wingnut crowd and they'd shovel cash into his re-election campaign. What he didn't figure was that he was giving the elder statesmen of his party a chance to seem mature by scolding him, and that his opponent in the next election would instantly receive a flood of donations. So which one of the late night comics will have someone in their audience tonight yelling "You lie!" at their monologues?

• Posted at 9:55 AM · LINK

The Real Important Topic

Several folks have sent me a widely-circulated recipe for latkes that purports to be the Jennie Grossinger formula. It sounds about right to me...

2 eggs
3 cups of grated, drained potatoes
4 tablespoons of grated onion
1 teaspoon of salt
¼ teaspoon of pepper
2 tablespoons of cracker or matzo meal
½ cup fat or butter

Beat the eggs and add the potatoes, onion, salt, pepper and meal. Heat half the fat or butter in a frying pan and drop the potato mixture into it by the tablespoon. Fry until browned on both sides. Keep pancakes hot until all are fried and add more fat or butter as required. Serves 8.

My mother omitted the pepper, used a little more onion and instead of the fat or butter, she fried in about a half-inch of oil — corn oil, usually. She used, of course, matzo meal, not cracker meal and then, when the latkes came out of the frying pan, she'd lay them on paper towels to absorb some of the oil. They were quite wonderful...even cold, later in the evening.

• Posted at 2:18 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

Here's another one of those commercials that I saw eleven times a day for much of my childhood. I never played the game because it never looked like it would be the least bit fun...

• Posted at 2:11 AM · LINK