Screenwriter's Blues
Awards Ceremonies The annual Writers Guild Awards ballot packet arrived a couple of weeks ago here at my Writing Room deep within the bowels of a 1921 Tudor in the Hollywood foothills. It's like working inside a metaphor here in this narrow, gloomy space, which used to be the servants' quarters of a large estate. Where once servants were summoned by their masters on a primitive buzzer system, now here sit I, summoned by producers and directors and agents via 15-second phone calls that sound like one of those speeded-up radio ads for a discount mattresses warehouse: "Luc-baby-how's-it-goin'-just-checkin'-in-babe-don't-wanna-bother-ya- but-can-ya-take-a-conference-call-tomorrow-at-7-the-girls-are-in-New-York- and-need-a-quick-strokin'-ANDREW-I-TOLD-YOU-TO-HOLD-MY-CALLS- you-know-the-drill-Luc-baby-great-talk-to-ya-tomorrow."
"It's like The Wild Bunch meets Heartburn...these two buds who roomed together in a frat are on their way to the Super Bowl and they end up sidetracked in Akron rescuing an ex-girlfriend from her marriage to a hellish Cadillac-driving banker... Cameron plays the ex-girlfriend, Matt plays her ex-boyfriend and now that Tom has done a reverbo-double-reverse-scale-o-matic-star turn as an evil prick in Magnolia, he gets to play the banker... And they end up in Vegas in a strip club and..."
Wait a minute. One "executive" thinks that The Wild Bunch was a spinoff from The Brady Bunch, and the other "executive" informs the room that Nora Ephron has the rights locked up for the concept called "movie about divorcing an asshole." It's tap-dance time. You're doing the soft-shoe across some carpet the price of which per square yard would make your car payment...
How about this: We make it sorority sisters on the way to the Dinah Shore Classic! It's like Thelma & Louise meets Rain Man! Cameron has had a stroke brought on by liposuction to remove the fat in her temples. Tom gets to play the doctor struggling to teach her to walk, and Matt is her lovable-but-seriously-alcoholic husband, and it's perfect! Everybody knows Cameron's been like a wind-up-back-to-back-act-o-matic doll! The poor thing needs a rest! And dig it! Cameron gets to lay on her backside for a six-week shoot!
Bingo! Everybody's happy. One ecstatic "executive" starts humming and comes up with a "note": We can have them singing the Brady Bunch theme in the car! Brilliant! Yeah, and the other "executive" is all squirmy in her air-chair, getting damp and eye-rolling, mental-imaging Matt's hair?we can have him looking all messy and unshaven, 'cause he's like this alcoholic husband trying to deal with his quintuple-paraplegic wife! You're scribbling down your "notes," shouting INCREDIBLE! BRILLIANT! Suddenly they're on their feet and they're saying, we'll have our people in business affairs talk to your people and see what we can come up with.
That one will go into the hopper for the Writers Guild Awards, if the careers of the two studio executives survive their mid-20s and one of them actually gets to pull the trigger on the thing.
It's always a crap shoot, but you straggle into the Writing Room to struggle gamely with Matt's chin stubble... You want the density of the little Matt-whiskers described ju-u-u-ust right, so the execs can, like, see it in their dreams in full-on techno-glommo-closeup... You struggle with the total absence of Cameron's dialogue and what the heck are you supposed to do with the empty spaces when she's supposed to be talking and nobody knows what she's trying to say... And you struggle with Tom struggling to understand what can make Cameron a whole person again...
And suddenly, there in your mind's eye they are! Not on the screen, fool! On the Red Carpet! Gliding into the Academy Awards like trumpeter swans! And now the scum-suckers from Entertainment Tonight are tongue-slobbing Cameron about her stick-on dress, and she's jabbering about how great it is to be able to talk about a movie in which she doesn't say a word, and they're galloping in their Manolo Blahnik mules after Matt, who has traded his chin stubble for a goatee and announced he's joining Dog Star to play second bass behind bass player Keanu Reeves and the band is, like, going on tour for a year because this film, like, burned him out, man... And now they've cornered Tom, and his eyebrows have lowered themselves over his bedroom eyes like brushed velvet curtains, he's looking much older and wiser, and he's dropped his voice an octave, and he's gettin' all serious talkin' about how playing the doctor and understanding his responsibility for his patients has made him both more responsible and more patient as an actor...
Man, down here in the Writing Room, it's what you live for! It's an Animal House moment! You're Flounder and your face is lit up like the Red Carpet itself, and you're screaming: "This is...GREAT!"
Lucian K. Truscott IV is finishing up The Boys of St. Julien, which will be published this year by William Morrow.