Martini Shot

A friend of mine who lives at the beach once woke up at dawn to discover that the house next door was surrounded by brightly colored yellow tape emblazoned with the words, "DANGER! HAZARDOUS MATERIALS! DO NOT CROSS!" Alarmed, he headed out to see what was going on...

One of the least meaningful words in the English language is the word "creative," because it implies that there's something else, something “non-creative” and that the two things need to be separated somehow.  As if creative people are just all walking around, thinking creative thoughts while the other half, are, I don't know, data entry drones...

It wasn’t too long ago that you could walk through a hotel or some other kind of breakfast spot, and everyone you saw was buried in a copy of Variety, or its scappier cousin, The Hollywood Reporter..

I was late to a meeting recently – really late, I mean, like 25 minutes late – and I'm aware, of course, that even five minutes late is late, and that part of the problem with doing business in this business is that a lot of people, like me, don't think of five minutes late as being really late – we think of it as a cushion, as a mulligan we take throughout the day.  I'm not saying we're right to do it, but we've all, occasionally, done it...

It's a storytelling axiom in Hollywood – and it's good business, too – to remember that whenever it's at all possible to deliver a happy ending, deliver one. If at all plausible – and even if it's a real stretch of the imagination and credulity and sometimes sheer forgetfulness of an audience – make sure the guy and the girl end up together. Make sure the house doesn't burn down. Make sure that earth is saved, the hero triumphs, the marriage comes off, the warring partners are reconciled, and the dog comes home, dirty but happy...

Once, when I was thinking about renting a small office to write in, I looked at a space being vacated by another writer. He had already moved out, and the place was bare and bright and perfect, except for an index card, taped solidly to the wall at about the height where the writer's desk was...

In olden times – or back in the day, as the kids say – as if they have any idea what that day was even like – but back in the olden day, if you were writing a television comedy, you'd gather the writing staff into a room, and they'd talk out --- sometimes yell out – the rewrite, with each word or joke pitch copied down in furious shorthand, mostly, or something called "fast notes" or even, as the people in the world who knew shorthand were gathered up by the Reaper himself, there appeared a bunch of enterprising young assistants who could type really fast, and so computers began to appear in the writer's room, which meant computer screens, which meant, eventually, large computer screens for everyone to in the room to look at, which to my mind anyway was not progress.  Was not an improvement...

Once, not too long ago, I ran into an old friend at a party.  She was with her new boyfriend, and when I asked the normal stuff – you know, how long had they been going out, how did they meet, that sort of thing – she kind of waved her hand in the air and said, to forestall any more discussion, He's just somebody for now...

A friend of mine was running an action adventure show not too long ago, and he heard what I think is the worst pitch ever from a writer who wanted a free-lance episode. Our heroes confront a shadowy nemesis. That was it. That was the whole pitch. Which is admirable, in a way.  I mean, yes, I guess that would be an interesting episode, in that it describes every episode. But if you're on the other end of it, you kind of want more...

Here's how it used to work, all over show business. You'd show up at a meeting at a studio or network, and you'd wait for a few minutes and drink water from a foreign looking bottle, and then someone would come and get you – and not just you: sometimes it would be you and a few other people, like maybe your agent or someone – and then you'd go into an office and tell your little story and then...