• $300MM Tron came and went as a soulless rehash (if Jeff Bridges and mad hot cyberbabez can’t save you, nobody can)
• Twilight finally, and thankfully, received the backlash is so rightfully deserved
• The jury is still out on Obama (here’s a hint Barack, #NukeWallStreet – wait, I live in NY…)
• Diablo Cody is still gainfully employed…

10. BILL AND TED’S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE (1989) > GARAGE BANDS

“We wanted to be the Wyld Stallyons” Billie Joe Armstrong, Green Day. I live in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Before they let you over the bridge, the Hipster Housing Committee (HHC) insists you be in a band and, if not, they hand you an instrument and assign you to one (be sure to come check out The Strawberry Shortcake Doppleganger. I’m the guy on ukelele). Though Bill & Ted’s first adventure was more time travel than band movie, their damn-the-talent, lets-rock spirit, combined with one of the best band names EVAH, predicted the mindset of every hopeful who ever booked his first gig before his first music lesson.

9. AMERICAN GIGOLO (1994) > METROSEXUALS

I know I’m not the first person to say this, but Richard Gere irks the sh*t out of me. Don’t get me wrong, I love Tibet, but we still have to hold him responsible for being the original metrosexual archetype. In American Gigolo he was a well-off, preening, narcissistic man who drowned the sorrows caused by an unsavoury career in a color-coded Armani wardrobe. AND, because it was the first US film to feature full-frontal male nudity, we even had to look at his little G-unit.

8. TRON (1982) – VIDEO GAMING

Video games not only pull in more bills than the movie industry, but you spend literally hundreds of hours within the experience. That definitely has to f*ck up influence young, squishy minds. The first movie to really bring it with computer graphics, Tron’s story actually took place in a video game creating a metaphor that even Master Control Program couldn’t make any clearer – end of line.

7. QUICKSILVER (1986) – FIXIES

I cycle to work in f**king Midtown every day and I still don’t get fixed gear bikes. They don’t have brakes, they suck on hills and, as hipster accessories, they’re way more dangerous than horizontal stripes. Case in point, every month there’s an ambulance crew on the Williamsburg bridge trying to stitch up the cracked melon of some pwned fixie rider (wearing a helmet messes up emo hair, apparently). However, affiliation is a strong motivator and I guess I can understand the desire to belong to a fraternity with access to girls on bikes (girls…my only weakness!). But long before this trend hit, Kevin Bacon (always ahead of the curve) was cranking thru the sloping streets of San Fran on his fixie, “Speeding towards the final and DEADLY showdown…” (this was the actual movie tagline btw)

6. AMERICAN BEAUTY (1999) > EMO

First off, Six Feet Under was some of Alan Ball’s best work IMO, while American Beauty was just Alan’s balls. However, what’s notable about the (painfully forced) film was the introspective, toque-wearing Ricky who brought us the ultimate emo moment – video-taping a bag blowing in the wind (awww). Emo is now so entrenched in pop culture that it even earned its own violent backlash (in Mexico anyway). I don’t know what happened to Ricky/Wes Bentley, but his overwrought, self-absorbed, faux-artistic legacy lives on. As do the 64 videos that show up on YouTube when you search: bag, blowing, wind (note-to-self, do not try this same search on YouPorn…again).

5. HACKERS (1995) > INTERWEB WUNDERKINDS

From Facebook to Google, annoyingly young web-savants have changed the way we think, act and find erotic photography. Back in ’95, pre-brown baby hoarding Angelina and her first husband Jonny Lee Miller (!?) starred in a somewhat under-rated film about, err, hacking. I don’t use the term under-rated to refer to the movie’s quality (cause it sure did byte) but because – from the characters meeting at Stuyvesant High to the (inaccurate) use of the Hacker’s Manifesto – the sub-cultural backdrop of the movie no-doubt inspired many of today’s wunderkinds. And that’s all giga-peachy, but just remember at the end of the day it’s Brad Pitt, not Sergey Brin banging Angie (and being forced to drink her blood, for real…& u know it).

4. THE TRUMAN SHOW (1998) > REALITY TV

So you question reality TV as a cultural movement? Consider the armies of fatsos, dulcet-throated virgins and prematurely-aged failed actors who eagerly sign up for The Biggest Loser, American Idol or Survivor, respectively. I think the impact of reality TV is actually understated. It’s a modern opiate for the masses, where people “just like you!” can turn 15 minutes into true fame and fortune (self-respect, mind you, remains evasive). The Truman Show came a full two years before Survivor, which is credited with/blamed for launching the reality assault. Noted for its religious, existential and technological themes, the movie was spot on in terms of how we would soon come to embrace such an invasive, crass and manipulative medium. (Sorry if this sounds mean-spirited, I’m still recovering from a nasty ANTM addiction and I still think Mercedes should have won in cycle 2, she had LUPUS).

3. THREESOME (1994) > UMM, THREESOMES

“One girl. Two Guys. Three possibilities.” I know what you’re thinking, but I’m not into the whole FMM thing, especially when Stephen Baldwin is involved. Plus, while I reckon college students are more sexually curious in the 2000s, I don’t know if threesomes constitute a full-blown cultural movement. However, if enough people blog about it, the Google ranking will move up and the trend will start itself. So please link to this article and focus all of your online writing around threesomes (especially ones involving screenwriters and Belorussian twins).

2. TRAINSPOTTING (1994) > HIPSTERS

I know I’m going out on a limb, but bear with me (and you’re an a**hole for doubting me btw). Yes, the term dates back to the 1940s and, sure, ‘hipster’ has gone from an objective description to a pejorative one, BUT Trainspotting really captures the zeitgeist of the sub-culture. As mentioned, I live in hipster Valhalla and I’ve seen firsthand the main traits of the species: rabid self-involvement, painfully deliberate yet supposedly unassuming fashion and not-giving-a-f**kedness. That, in a nutshell, was Trainspotting – characters driven to the margins by their rejection of society and heroin-fueled baby nightmares. Oh, and Renton wore really skinny jeans too.

1. NAPOLEON DYNAMITE (2004) > GEEK CHIC

Okay, I was previously slamming nerds, but they are definitely having their revenge. Half the indie bands rep geek styles, American Apparel sells fanny packs and when I was out recently for a Chromeo DJ set, there was a strong contingent of barely legals rocking oversize plastic glasses and high-waisted jeans. Napoleon was mad on point with not only the eye-wear, but moon boots, dweeb-fros and cross-bred animals (though Dynamite asserts the liger is “bred for its skills in magic” I was shocked to find out they actually exist). Now this one is tricky, because I think the movie brought geek chic to the forefront more than predicting its resurgence, but either way, you have to give those filmmakers props (well, except for that Nacho Libre bullsh*t).
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So where does all this leave me, a would-be screenwriter? Well, I’m sorely tempted to advocate my recently-developed belorussexuality by writing a movie about the free-loving twins of Minsk. But, as it turns out, our current project is literally about drinking the kool-aid.  Stay tuned.

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When I was in high school I was in the overlap zone of the social venn diagram. Our building was laid out like a Tetris piece and every set of lockers had a specific designation. The Heads were by the auto shop, the Art Kids camped by the stage (and even had a burner to make coffee – rad), the Jock-Populars had one side of the main hall, while the Party-Populars had the other. I was in a small set of transition lockers, kinda transecting all-of-the-above which made sense since I interacted with all-of-the-above. To make matters more undefined, I was “inventive” with my wardrobe, wearing my dad’s sport coats one day and my personally crafted “Jiffy Skate Bastard” line the next. One day, in the lunch room, a kid I barely knew came up to me in distress and asked, “What are you? I just can’t figure it out.”

Granted it was one of my proudest moments, but it also was a sign of things to come (In fact, as I write this I’m shocked at how much about you is already cemented when you’re a kid). Flash forward to today and I’m still a bit ‘different’ (no need to bore you with the details). Not in any major ‘walk on the opposite sidewalk to avoid me’ kind of way, but definitely distinct. I don’t really hold this as a badge of honor any more, just one of those truths you come to reluctantly absorb. But the one place it really comes out is…online dating.

As a (supposed) writer, you’d think I’d destroy at online dating. Nope. I get worked. My theory is that the whole process is an extension of our need for categorization coupled with the consumerist framework we’ve come to apply to everything we f**king can. Your personality, looks, likes, desires in a mate, etc. are all distilled into data. Algorithms line up the options and do your best to win one, like a flesh eBay. It removes much of the unpredictability and possibility of face-to-face initial encounters because you are filtering and pre-qualifying your choices before you even meet them. Online dating is probably because of the perception of controlling the results. This might be the case for those who see themselves and their potential partners as static and well-defined, but if you’re more fluid then the whole thing is definitely flawed a clusterf*ck.

So in my case, since I don’t fall into a clear category, I typically get contacted by woman so outside my scope of reasonable compatibility that I fear the universe will implode in a matter-antimatter catastrophe every time I log-in to check my matches…which I don’t do any more because the whole thing is gay…as I’m going to be at this rate.

This must be one of those times you’re definitely wondering what this has to do with screenwriting. Wellllll, to my mind characters personify category. Even the most unique persona on the screen embodies a combination of known types and it is through that medium that the writer makes their statement and builds their story.

The point is – other than to justify for my piss-poor digi-dating record – that we automatically put people (and everything else) into buckets. Understanding this reality can help you create better stories by creating authentic characters built on identifiable traits and then giving them opportunities to make decisions that support your underlying beliefs. Or in the words of someone who knows what they’re talking about:

A character is a work of art, a metaphor for human nature. We relate to characters as if they were real, but they’re superior to reality. Their aspects are designed to be clear and knowable; whereas our fellow humans are difficult to understand, if not enigmatic. We know characters better than we know our friends because a character is eternal and unchanging, while people shift – just when we thing we understand them, we don’t. In fact, I know Rick Blaine in CASABLANCA better then I know myself. Rick is always Rick. I’m a bit iffy.
- Robert McKee

The first person to write a hooker with a heart of gold story (probably Shakespeare) created something resonant, because they subverted expectations. So the next time you encountered a lady of the evening, you might have felt a closer human bond (and maybe even tipped extra). Therein lies one of the virtues of storytelling. If you are able to write your way out of the gutter and get something out there, you have the potential to ever-so-slightly expand the ways in which people look at the world. And as an added bonus, you probably won’t have to resort to Plenty of Fish.

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When (if) you read a book, you are in control. You can linger over a word or blaze through a chapter. You can re-read a sentence that just quite sense doesn’t make. You can re-read a sentence that doesn’t quite just sense make. You dictate the pace of the narrative experience within the construct of the author. But in a film, time is a controlled variable and running length remains static. This might seem self-evident when watching movies but, as I discovered, it’s a key concept to keep in mind when writing them.

It takes a long time to pen a goddamn life-sucking script. In our case make it a long time squared…cubed…whatevered. Assuming you’re lucky enough to get it produced and the giant cogs of the heartless Hollywood machine grind into motion, literally hundreds of people are employed to bring the movie to life. Every detail, from fluffing to that CG rasta alien sidekick, is attended to by an expert or ten. Then those thousands of man/woman/fluffer/robot hours and millions of dollars all get crammed into ninety minutes or so. The funny thing is, you can’t keep up and you’re not meant to.

Here’s my thesis, so stay sharp. In a movie, suspension of disbelief and immersion into a story occurs because your fixed processor (slow brain) is overloaded by the density of data (pretty moving pictures). That final speech is heart-wrenching because the writer spent a week figuring it out and that continuous battle shot blows your frickin’ mind because the director planned it for a month. So even a “not half as good as the one before but twice as good as the one after” movie like Revolutions can draw you in because the Wachowski Brothers poured their creative lifeblood into it (that and you ate “those” brownies).

For another example, the Sixth Sense is a great script, better than the movie I think. The famous inversion at the end (which seems to have doomed M. Night’s legacy) works because the story is reverse-engineered from that conclusion. Re-watch it and the clues are laid on thicker than a Frenchman’s pompous accent. However, the reality of the film is only absorbed subconsciously because your mind is moving at a far slower rate than Ghost Bruce and the creepy wide eyed kid.

Understanding the compression of perception that occurs in film is a key tool for screenwriters. The Herculean effort you put into story pays dividends because it transcends the medium when absorbed at warp speed. That’s a lame sentence, but think about it. This phenomena also justifies putting the time, care and effort into your work that you know you should fucker. The harder you work and the more layered your writing, the richer the experience when viewed at full speed. Even if the movie is Speed…whoa.

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It’s somewhat of a given (to me anyhow) that The Hero’s Journey has resonated so dominantly with most cultures since the dawn of communication because we all want to be “the one”. We really have no choice since we’re hard wired to be self-centered. So when we side with a protagonist, it’s because their struggle is a metaphor for what we face (or think we do). Don’t worry, I’m not going to get all Story on your ass. I’m just putting forth the idea that, regardless of the premise and character, a given movie wouldn’t work for shizz if the hero was un-relatable.

But the straight fact is we all can’t be protagonists…other than in our heads and come Dear Diary time. The big story is invariably about someone else. To support this notion I have a theory that the (unfortunate) rise of reality TV is for two reasons. One, an actual narrative, even if it’s contrived by way of lame contests and artificial time lines, still gets under our skin. Two, seeing folks just like us at the center of the story reinforces the idea that our lives are just as interesting as what we’re watching. Granted most likely they are not, but we feel like they are, in part, because of books, TV, movies and the like.

As you might have guessed, I call this The Protagonist Paradox. We all saunter about in our own tall tales that we are in no way central to. I know this is somewhat existential, but what gets interesting from a writer’s angle is being the one who creates the stories that perpetuate the audience’s feeling of narrative inclusion. This, in turn, gives the creative a role that could be interpreted as protagonistic. Weird huh?

I’ve finished the prosciutto sandwich I packed on board and just realized the drinks in Eurostar first class are free like on a plane. Of course I figured this out on my last train trip.

Anyhow, as my writing partner and I wrap up our “brilliant script that’s going to break us into the biz once and for all” I’m struck not only by the urgency of the whole process, but how that work has become central to our own identity. If we succeed, not only do we manifest our own destiny, but that narrative then might serve to create heroic association in audiences. If we don’t then we’re just another couple of punk asses aspiring protagonists who have yet to find their story.

Okay, I know this sounds fatalistic. But the fact that I’m creating something means I believe I can take on a more pivotal role in life. Whether or not it actualizes is up to me, but without effort there will be no shift, right? So to bust the shit out of my own Protagonist Paradox I need to create good, umm, protagonists. It’s mad circular, but it’s what keeps me going.

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I was somewhere and I was about to leave (you will understand my vagueness momentarily). But I heard someone on a call that sounded so deliberately on the up-and-up it had to be on the down-n-dirty. So I lingered. For a second I thought it was a bad idea. I wasn’t going to buy anything, what if he thought I was a narc? Then I remembered I was too stone-cold badass to be pegged as a cop (except maybe for the sex police). Before I had a chance to get all paranoid he arrived, didn’t give a shit that I was there and quickly produced a metal briefcase. Before he even cracked it open we all knew – it was on.

OUR DEALER SCRIPT
We wrote the treatment just as Weeds premiered (f*ckin’ parallel development), definitely way previous to Breaking Bad, but not before such shows as The Teletubbies, Robot Chicken and Murder, She Wrote which were obviously all-and-only about DRUGS. To cut to it, Our Dealer Script (ODS) was solid. I’m not even being cocky. Strong ideas were never a problem for us, execution was. But this one somehow held its own, which was strange since we’d never written a one-hour drama before. Then it got…mothballed. Probably because we had some feature script idea in the hopper and our thinking was that it would be next to impossible to sell a series pilot.

Anyhow a few months back I showed ODS to a few pro-writers I workshop with. Truth be told, I was using it as a diversion from the feature-script pages I had promised and not delivered. But *ding* they actually dug it, suggested I clean it up, maybe submit it to some contests and definitely show it to an agent. I was…what’s that feeling you basically never experience as a writer when you think something might have potential?…oh, optimistic.

For ODS I had personally tried something new – referencing my past. It seems SO GODDAMN OBVIOUS, but it was only semi-recently that I started to really base my writing on actual experiences. Anyhow, I was never a dealer (so I say) but I had known some, including one who was a ‘technical consultant’ on the script. But I had been exposed to drug culture more than I’d like to admit.

I sure hope you’re not judging at this point, because I don’t know how you could be semi-normal/social and not have been exposed to puff of pot, a little blow, a few bottles of cough syrup or a cloud of DMT unraveling the mysteries of the existence in under ten minutes. Granted I’m not saying ‘doing’, but being around… In fact, the point of ODS was to portray how the ‘normalized’ world of narcotics is definitely a thread of the fabric of life in America.

Beyond that was The Observation. (This is a secret, so don’t steal it, okay?) I had noted that most long-standing dramatic television shows utilized settings that transected society. Anyone can get sick (medical drama), run afoul of the law (police shows), end up in court (legal drama) or have a seemingly run-of-the-mill heart attack that was actually the result of a congenital birth defect set-off during illegal sex with a minor S&M dom as revealed by a whiz-bang, rapid-fire CGI fly-through of the recently deceased’s circulatory system via the anus (CSI: Miami). The potential richness of ODS lied in how we structured the framework to touch on all levels of society.

I was in revision mode, but I felt I needed some fresh insights, so when I overheard a dealer was arriving, I wasn’t going anywhere.

SPIN THE WHEEL, TAKE YOUR CHANCES
Okay, let’s recap. It’s me, some dudes, a delivery service dealer and a briefcase. Actually describing it as luggage doesn’t do it justice. It was a porta-pharmacy with pretty well every class of narcotic you could imagine. And it was organized – like the tackle box of one of those dads who realizes too late he hates kids and spends his quality time hours endlessly tying flies. One of the dudes asked to touch the briefcase. Bad idea. The dealer tersely explained that was against policy. But since customer service was apparently job one, he produced a menu listing all inventory, pricing, effect and duration. Snap.

This whole scene elicited a lot of inquiries. The dealer was quite articulate and answered every question thoroughly with a sideways sense of humor. I think those involved bought more than they planned because of the conversational manner of the transaction (good salespeople never let you know you’ve been up-sold). I also noticed that the dealer constantly referred to his boss, despite nobody asking. Apparently his employer was a bit of a taskmaster and seemingly not to be fucked with. Whether real or not, the Kaiser Soze effect worked like gangbusters to keep everyone in line about trying to negotiate (and why would you since there were volume discounts!).

I had learned more than I thought I would in the few minutes it took to all go down. As bonus I wasn’t stripped down at gunpoint to see if I was wearing a wire. Then came the kicker, one of those things you couldn’t put into a script because it would seem unbelievable. The dealer took out a novelty spinning wheel so that one of the buyers could play for an ‘in-store credit’. However, despite being given a few extra tries, no dice.

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They say never to make movies about writers (that’s right, f*ck you Barton Fink). It might be a leap in logic, but I’m thinking that the same things that make wordsmiths (I hate that term btw) un-screenworthy also kills their groupie potential. First off, writing is an internal process, which is hard to portray on screen. Next off, unlike actors (emotive) and directors (leaders), writers mainly do their thang in isolation, so there isn’t the performance aspect that seems to be a groupie prerequisite. Finally, writers have a rep of being nebbish and socially awkward which, although ‘cute’ in principle, are game killers.

Well, I’m here to change all that.

But before I do, let me address some nagging questions. I realize that some authors represent. But the question isn’t if a talented, rich & famous writer can nab a premium babe. The sad truth is a talented, rich & famous anyone can (case in point – pro sports). No, I’m curious if there are throngs of woman actively seeking that rookie scribe whose “the Sopranos, but in space” script was just optioned by New Line.

Which leads to the notion as to why there are groupies in the first place. My theory falls into the realm cultural anthropology. A friend of mine went to Africa to write about Donga stick fighters. They would travel great distances to battle it out with other warriors. Now this was less intricate martial arts swordplay than “Hulk smash!”, since the only rule was not to kill your opponent. So after one combatant was reduced to a bloody pulp, the other would be raised to a platform where the village’s hottest tail would clamor for his attention. He would pick the one he was hard 4 fancied the most, then they would head to the nearby jungle and have a stick fight of a different variety.

No new news here (dear god, I just inadvertently quoted John Cougar Mellencamp), alpha dogs attract foxes. While there are fringe benefits to being a groupie – back stage access, hush money, paternity settlements – the core behavior is likely a primal attraction to someone better than the rest. But for some reason I kinda doubt the average Hollywood writer would register in this capacity. After all, tapping some keys on a Macbook Pro ain’t f*cking up some dude with a branch.

So how do I plan on changing all this? I’m going to rebrand screenwriters. In fact, I’ve already started (you’re reading this blog, right?). I’m keeping the rest of the details close to my desperate manly chest, but the more I break the mold of the stereotypical script geek the more groupies will invariably fall out of the sky. Granted, this is the last thing I want, but consider this ‘paving the path’ for the rest of you wordnerds following my golden light to the heights of screenwriting stardom.

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Sure, I do more than work and write. But ironically, film making and photography eventually put me back in the same pixelated pickle (really, who’s actually been inside a pickle – that’s a whack metaphor). I generally keyboardize with headphones on and increasingly find myself in a strange brainspace where time is bent and I forget how to talk to people when they peak down my hole (no, that’s not what she said). It’s like being on a crazy low level hallucinogen (not that I’d know about that).

I’ve countered this phenomena by trying to concept with pen and paper when I can (remember those?). However, truth of the matter is the more I write and the more (glimmers of) success I have, the more I find myself in this altered state. Or is this just me being a whiny bitch dramatic? Let me know, because I’m curious about how y’all deal a mainly digital existence.

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Point being, when it comes to scripts, we tend to lovingly conceive and gestate them, but lose interest once we finally squeeze them out. It’s somewhat pathological. And you wonder why spend months working your (sweet, hot) ass off to create something you cruelly abandon once it sees the light of day. But I think, I’ve figured it out. You have to write out of passion.

This seems obvious, but there’s always temptation to try a new genre or second guess the market. Case in point was when we decided to write an action-adventure romantic comedy about NINJAS. In retrospect, there was nothing wrong with it and it was funny as life, but deep down it was entirely irrelevant to us. So we spent far too much time on a script we’d never fully give a f*ck about get behind, because it didn’t represent us or our creative vision. BUT the b*tch still rocks, so if you’re looking for a brilliant ninja rom-com with the best title ever, give me a dingle.

The first problem occurred when I wore the costume to a warehouse party in Bushwick. Now usually Daylight Savings Time happens in-and-around Halloween, but this year it wasn’t. So my friend pointed out that the costume would have been far more effective the following week. Whatever…I thought people would have no problem getting it. Of course, I was wrong. Granted I didn’t make it easy on them, because whenever someone came up and asked me what I was I made them guess and only gave non-verbal cues.

Okay, you’re probably thinking I’m a monumental a**hole…and I’ll give you that. However, much to my surprise only one person gave up outright. I’d like to think my success rate was due to my engaging nature and awesome physical performance skills, but more likely it was the fact that most people were too f**ked up tipsy to feel the inherent rage that mimes usually elicit. It became an interesting social experiment. The average time to guess the costume was about six minutes. Women got it faster, but men liked the play on words better. I was having an unexpected amount of fun, but then that night took a turn straight down into a deep, dark rabbit hole and the brilliance of my concept was sullied (no, I’m not telling u why).

But as I am a glutton for punishment (as are all screenwriters by definition) and the next weekend was actual Daylight Savings Time, I decided to unleash the mime on a huge Decompression party at the Queens museum. Surprisingly, the venue gave us full reign and there were special interactive pieces in many of the galleries, several DJ areas throughout the building and a full set of outdoor installations under the watchful eye of the World’s Fair Globe. The costume was a definite icebreaker and, again surprisingly, garnered the attention of several ladies including a Russian dressed as a dark angel…who had apparently left most of her clothes back on cloud 9.

To be honest, I don’t think she quite got the costume, even after the explanation, but she was friendly/half-naked enough, so we hung out the rest of the night. The party went off with Hare Krishna’s going nuts outside and manic dancers tearing apart the decorations within, but it came to an end since it was a museum after all. We decided to check out the after-party, but at that point another guy was poking around. Even though he was getting increasingly territorial, I was chill because it’s hard to be an aggro mime. Plus, he got lost at the second party so it was basically me taking pictures of the Russian (she insisted, which got a bit weird truth be told).

The sun was coming up, so we decided to leave. She was going to Coney Island and I was headed for Williamsburg, so we split a cab. That’s when the interloper re-appeared and asked if he could get a ride. She politely agreed (mistake), but once we started rolling it became apparent he had other ideas in mind. He quickly turned the conversation to sexy-time. He asked if she was bi-sexual (yes), then said he was adventurous and asked about my stance on guy-guy-girl (no, dude). It was my exit, but he was displaying full-on creep factor so I stayed in the car for another 40 minutes! It was a good call, cause he launched a full-frontal assault. I did my best to help the Russian deflect and, as expected, when we got to the destination she said goodnight and went home. (Note: I hung out with her under less sketchy circumstances later and she said she had no idea he had such an agenda).

So there we were. Since it was a week after Halloween, I was the only one in costume. An old lady started pointing at me and saying “clown, clown” in Russian. As we walked to the train the dude told me how he had been gunning for the threesome. I pointed out that would have involved me, but he said that was cool, cause she was hot. Christ! I put up with him on the ride back because the train was full of working class people going to the early shift on a Sunday morning and I was in a f**king mime costume. What made it worse was when dude found out I’m a writer/creative director, he started schmoozing me. I finally left him to transfer trains. I got off and had a fresh raisin cinnamon bagel on Bedford. Then a car pulled up, I thought it was some people ready to harass me, but it was a friend/neighbor just getting in from the airport. They were wondering what the hell I was doing, so I explained…in mime.

Onto the creative connection.

At one point during my adventures I said to a friend I’d immediately go steady with any girl who came up to me and said, “Daylight Savings Mime, right?” My roommate even said I should post a Craigslist ad and I offered the title, “Daylight Savings Mime seeks someone to Fall Back on.” However, although I loved the costume and people were amused after they learned the punchline, it wasn’t accessible enough. I had let cleverness lead the dog by the tail, which is alright for a costume, but not so good for a screenplay. I think certain types of writers (me) sometimes forget that the point is to reach people, which means that story and characters should be the foundation of their work, not style. So a lessoned was learned and nobody beat me senseless. What more could a mime ask for*?

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*Nothing, since he couldn’t speak.