Reunion

Don't Know Mind

So it was my high school reunion last weekend. It was really fun, and a little surreal. Surreal because, here's the thing, people change and don't change, both at the same time. And both of these things are good.

First, people change. So, I don't know if this is true for everyone, or is just more the case if you grow up in a small town, because, not only do you know people from high school, chances are, you've known them for a very long time, from elementary school, from when they cracked their head open on a desk and had to go to the office to get bactine put on it, from when they used to shoot spitballs at the ceiling, from when they broke their tailbone sledding down the hill at your house, through all the times they decided to change the spelling of their name for cultural and/or esthetic reasons. When you've known people for that long, they tend to get stuck in one period of time. And so, you go to a reunion thinking that, while you've grown and changed and been out in the world and hopefully learned some stuff, they're still the person you remember from high school, the person who teased you, or thought you were stuck up, or who maybe didn't even notice you (you thought).

I'm happy to report that this is not the case. Everyone has grown, and changed and learned some stuff. And most people I talked to had grown and changed and learned enough stuff that we could laugh at ourselves as much as we used to laugh at each other.

But, people also don't change. Why is this good? Continuity. We are people who remember each other. Some people remembered things about me I had forgotten about myself. We remember where we all came from, so we know each other in a different way (even if it's been cough cough number of years since we've seen each other) than people who only know us from work or even from college. We know that we were all dorky, or skinny, or short, or shy, or whatever. And so when we see each other as functioning, productive adults, it's both reassuring and revelatory at the same time.

What makes it surreal is when we try to integrate the person we see in front of us now with the stuck-in-time image we have of them from the past. But, actually, what this disconnect does is give us a glimpse into the true nature of existence. Both our own existence, and the way other people exist.

It feels surreal to have two images of one person in front of us, because we have the mistaken assumption that only one of them can be the right one, the real one. Our brain struggles to reconcile the two. But if we hang out in that space for a moment (what the Zen Buddhists call "don't know mind"), if we let ourselves feel that disconnect, we may discover something profound.

I'm sitting across from a classmate, and my mind is going, here's this interesting, intelligent, funny, grown up person who doesn't match with the skinny, short, yes still funny but in a different way image of this person in my head. Which one is the real one? The answer is both. Or neither. Both are the same in their level of reality. But neither are actually real. Our image of that person, or any person, is primarily a projection of our own mind. I say primarily because, it's not like they don't exist at all - your mind, for instance, can't turn Kelly into Shelli. But most of our experience of that person has to do with us and not them.

A high school reunion is a great venue for this kind of revelation. Even just on the level of: If I knew then what I know now. One example: Then: these boys are arrogant and cocky and won't talk to me because I'm not a cheerleader. Now: those boys were afraid of girls. Ergo: Those arrogant cocky boys were a projection of my own insecurities.

I know this is not a breakthrough, and logically, we all know this to be true, but when you sit down with someone who you knew then, and they tell you what they were really thinking and what was really going on, you get it on a whole new experiential level. And then, and then, you may realize that whatever story you told yourself about high school (and that's an important story, because those years are so formative), was just that...a story. And with new information, you can create a new story. If you want to.

And maybe that's the lesson here. You can always create a new story. About yourself, about anything that happened to you, about anyone you know. We're making it all up anyway, you might as well make up something good.

So that's what I learned at my high school reunion. Go Bears.

CSI - Feline Offense Unit

Okay, I wasn't going to be one of those people who blogs about how cute their cats are, but I figured I could have a dispensation in this case because I am not, in fact, going to write about how cute my cat is, I'm going to write about how my cat is like a felon. If he were human he might be in the worst of the worst category. But he would also be like Edward Norton's character in Primal Fear, because he would be all cute and adorable and you would never suspect that he was really up to no good.

Fuzzy Tummy of Doom

Yes, I understand that cats are predators and natural hunters. But some cats are more skilled than others, and some cats get a particularly wacko "kill kill kill" look in their eyes, while other cats are content to stick out a paw to pin down an almost dead house fly every few months. The former is my cat. His name is Frodo, but don't let the cute name fool you.

At my old house, he and his bad influence friend, Goldie, from across the street wiped out the feral bunny population in the neighborhood. Once, the neighbor kids found a dead bunny, and to comfort them, my former roommate held a funeral service. She asked if any of the kids would like to say anything about the passing of this cute, furry thing, and Suzie, the youngest girl expressed her feelings most accurately by simply saying, "I hate Goldie."

Frodo also once treed a raccoon at our old place. It's his distinct lack of fear that gives me the most fear.

So now we're at my new place. And for the first few months, I thought, alright, these Burbank birds are much smarter and wilier, because none of them have turned up dead on my front step.

But then, the lizards started to appear. Tail-less lizards. I believe tearing a body part off another creature counts as mayhem. So here: Count number one. Sometimes I would find the lizards still alive and rescue them to grow another tail another day. But sometimes not. At this point, though, still no birds.

That soon began to change. At first, there was still no obvious evidence. Just the circumstantial evidence that, every time I let Frodo outside, a bird would fly down to the eave of my roof and yell at him. So I figured, hm, he must have done something wrong. I know it's hearsay, and I know I'm like that guy who was with me on a jury panel once who had the sure fire, get out of jury duty free line, "I figure the guy must have done something wrong, or he wouldn't be here."

But then, evidence, just feathers at first and then cat with bird in mouth wanting to come into the house at 4am. Second count: murder.

And now for the third count. Frodo is a cat who likes to come in and go out many, many times between the hours of 4 and 7am. Of course, I attempted to sleep through his pleas to come back in once he has been chucked out, but he soon figured out that he could get the screen door to bang loudly against the door until I let him in. Then, clever me, I started propping the screen door open. No banging, and I could get back to sleep. But then, one night, I left the window open. Frodo got chucked out at around 4, but then was suddenly pouncing on my bed at 7. What the--? I got up, and sure enough, he had pried open a corner of the screen and climbed in through the window. Count three: breaking and entering.

Not much to do about the screen, except to look into getting a cat door. But then came the night, now known as the "the last straw." Frodo, as usual got chucked out at 4 am. I heard him crying to come in again around 4:30, and when I heard him go for the screen, I got up to let him in. Only to find, on the front step, actual guts, entrails, identifiable intestines, and part of a snout. Maybe a rat, I don't know. Ew! I know! But it's 4:30! So I let the cat in. Now it's 5 and he's messing around with stuff he shouldn't be messing with, so I chuck him out again. And close the window, so he won't be tempted to burglary.

Hours pass, and I get up at 7, and go to the door to let the cat in, and the front of my house looks like a crime scene. Blood and guts on the front step, and the screen torn completely off the window. So now it's clear, we named Frodo after the wrong ring bearer. Surely he should have been named after the one who likes his food "raw and wriggling."

But that was it, I went to work and promptly got online to order the "cat bib". This ingenious looking device that hooks onto a cat's collar and greatly inhibits their ability to kill. You know, in lieu of a concscience. I anticipate that the other cats will tease him mercilessly, but that's unfortunately his cross to bear for having a Buddhist for a guardian, because, yes, I'm concerned for his karma. There's not much I can do about it - and that's why Buddha said, It's easier for a human to attain enlightenment than for an animal to attain a human rebirth. (So what's taking you so long? And, again, by "you" I mean, "me.")

Also, the "Wheel of Life" which pretty much sums up all of Buddha's teachings and the nature of life and death in visual form, the entire wheel of life is held in the jaws of "Yama, the Lord of Death" because all living beings have to pass through the jaws of death. And Yama, if you ask me, looks like a cat. I don't think that's a coincidence. Many creatures have passed through Frodo's jaws.

That's his negative karma ripening as a creature who can't help but kill. He also has many good qualities: he's very friendly and outgoing, so he was probably a people person; he's cute and everyone (who isn't prey) loves him - so he must have been very patient; and he has very good living conditions: lots of food, bed to sleep on, warm dry house - so he was also very generous. I imagine he was something like an Italian grocer. Very kind and outgoing, and treated all of his customers like friends, and was always giving away food and donating money to local organzations and helping people out who had fallen on hard times. But who was maybe also a ladies man who cheated on his wife once or twice.

So, really, the least I can do is get him a cat bib, maybe help out his karma a little bit.

Crocodile Talk Show

I've been meaning to write about my new city of residence for some time now. So, perhaps this blog should have been titled "Beautiful Downtown Burbank." But it's not. And later, maybe you'll see why.

Yes, I now live in Burbank. And, yes, I do realize that it actually has "burb" in the title, and that Johnny Carson meant the "beautiful" part ironically. But as I came out of the post office on Magnolia yesterday, the post office where the workers greet you pleasantly, and, if you've been going there awhile actually call you by name, and walked past the record store (yes, record, as in vinyl), and various other small non-chain gift and furniture stores, I remembered that my first introduction to Burbank came in the form of a crocodile. A famous crocodile who knew my name.

It was one of those personalized books that my parents must have ordered for me. So my name showed up on just about every page of the book, in conjunction with my adventures with this famous crocodile. I can't remember why the crocodile was famous, but maybe it was because he could talk and maybe do a soft shoe. In the end, he became so famous that he got a talk show. And this talk show, as any talk show worth its salt did, taped in Burbank.

Which, come to think of it, is a little odd. I mean, if you're writing a children's book, and one of the characters becomes so famous that he gets his own television show, wouldn't you say that he went to Hollywood to be on TV? Instead, the writer of this book, having shot realism to the wind with a talking, dancing crocodile, decides that, no, accuracy is important here, The Tonight Show tapes in Burbank, so this Crocodile show is going to tape in Burbank.

And now that I live and work in Burbank, I have to say, I appreciate that. Because how much of what happens in "Hollywood" actually happens in Hollywood the city? There's actually only one major studio still located in Hollywood - Paramount. Guess where the other ones are? Burbank, even-more-maligned Glendale, and once-maligned-but-now-hip Culver City.

Actually, Hollywood, the idea of Hollywood is an excellent example of the Buddhist idea of emptiness, or ultimate truth. (Never thought you'd see "Hollywood" and "ultimate truth" in the same sentence, did you?). Often, emptiness gets misconstrued or misinterpreted as nothingness. But this is not its meaning. To illustrate: When I say "Hollywood" you probably get some idea or image in your head of what Hollywood is - movies, movie stars, swimming pools, fancy cars, red carpets - probably that ubiquitous shot of a studio backlot teaming with extras from westerns and apparently ongoing productions of Spartacus and Cleopatra. Your image of Hollywood is probably also populated with movie stars who are no longer living, and landmarks that may or may not still exist.

So now, Buddha might say, if that Hollywood actually exists, you would be able to find it. So you get in a plane or you get in your car and you start to look. Now, Hollywood Boulevard isn't as seedy as it used to be (much to the chagrin of some, I mean, you used to be able to find free street parking in Hollywood. No more!), but it probably still doesn't live up to the image in your head. Maybe you go to a studio, where precisely no one walks the lot in costume. (Okay, one exception, at Disney, you do occasionally get to see Mickey and Minnie and other costumed characters.) You drive down Sunset Blvd, maybe you buy a star map. But you can buy as many maps as you want, and you will never find the Hollywood you are looking for, the one that matches the image in your head (or maybe it's just a feeling).

This lack of a Hollywood "out there" that exists separately from your idea of it "in here" is the emptiness of Hollywood. That Hollywood only exists as a concept, idea or image in your own mind. This is the ultimate truth of Hollywood. Conventionally, of course, there is a physical place called Hollywood, there are studios, there is...Burbank.

But it's useful to remember, especially when I'm feeling that I haven't quite "gotten there" yet, that most of what I'm imagining "there" to be doesn't exist. That, in the end, most of it is just, pretty much, a crocodile talk show.

62 1/8

That's how many pages the pilot is now. And I'm not making up the 1/8 thing. When you break down a script for production, you measure the pages by eighths. So there. That's (nearly) 25 pages cut from the script, almost a third. (Can you tell I'm proud of myself?) I tried not to cut out the good parts, but I did have to kill some babies.

That's another show biz (tm) term. When you're trying to trim pages or minutes from your script or movie, there are those scenes that you just love, or maybe it's just a few lines of dialogue. They're fabulous, they show how witty and talented you are as a filmmaker, but they aren't absolutely necessary to the story. You love them, yes, hence, they are your babies. But in order for the script or the film to be a reasonable length, they must go, you must kill them. And it's painful, but... (see "Beauty Saloon"). If it was easy, it'd be called, oh, I don't know, management consulting?

On the other hand, we do tend to make more of a drama out of things like this than is merited by our relative impact on the well being of others.

It's easy, after all, not to be a writer. Most people aren't writers, and very little harm comes to them.
-Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot

Eau de La La Land

There's a particular smell, that when it occasionally wafts toward my nostrils, makes me think "That smells like LA." I know what you're thinking. "Jen, that's smog." But no! It's a much more complex, calming, yet energizing at the same time, nostalgic kind of aroma.

I'm pretty sure it hearkens back to my childhood visits to grandparents in LA, so, I will grant you, smog may be the base note of this particular perfume. It also contains sun-baked cement, swimming pool chlorine, and, I think, gardenia. And it evokes images of, yes, swimming pools, Disneyland, and a particular excitement I got just visiting the big city.

When my cousins and I used to visit our grandparents, we'd stay in a gigantic bedroom of their very large apartment, which was on a very busy thoroughfare. I remember lying in bed and hearing the traffic, and that just adding to the thrill of being here. "Wow! People are actually awake and doing stuff in the middle of the night!" Having grown up in the country, where the sounds at night were...absolutely nothing...yes, total silence...I don't even remember crickets or anything like that...the sounds of the city at night were totally invigorating to me.

This is a good memory to summon when life in the city gets too overwhelming or irritating. I bring it to mind and remember that I did once, find the whole thing exciting and inspiring, so now, when I don't, I can realize that it's not the traffic, which is the same, or the crowds of people, who are the same, but my mind, which is overwhelmed and irritated instead of excited and inspired.

It all depends on the mind, people. All, everything, the whole enchilada, alpha and omega. So I'll thank you (and by "you," I mean, "me") to kindly remember that from now on.

Beauty Saloon

That was the misspelled banner I saw on a newly constructed building last Sunday. I laughed a little. But then my mind was barraged by images of women with bee-hives wearing chaps and spurs. Swinging doors, and stylists with holstered hair dryers. Someone knocking over a manicure station and starting a fight by smashing a bottle of polish and wielding a file.

In the third grade I played the lead in "Clementella" a Western version of Cinderella. I imagine Clementella would have gone to a Beauty Saloon. I don't remember much about that production -- I can't even remember who Prince Charming was -- but I do remember that my veil for the wedding finale apparently came off a wedding cake, or something, and smelled kind of sickly sweet, like decaying sugar, like maybe what Miss Havisham's veil smelled like. I remember it gave me a headache, but I went on stage smiling anyway, because, you know, show business.

And that pretty much sums up what it's like to exist in this business we call "show." Sometimes it makes you smile, sometimes it gives you a headache, most of the time it's both, but we go on anyway, because, really, there's nothing else to do. Or, as I heard Steven Spielberg once say, "The only thing worse than making a movie, is not making a movie."

Which means we're always somewhere on the "the show must go on" spectrum from: "Everything about it is appealing! Everything the traffic will allow! No where could you have that happy feeling...!" to "...It will be the silence, where I am, I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on." (That's for you Beckett fans.)

It also means, we drive by misspelled banners and signs and imagine the show with that name. So even if we're only entertaining ourselves, well, you know...it's someone.

87 Pages

...this is the length of the rewrite I just completed on my pilot script. This number may not have a whole lot of meaning to those of you outside of the industry. And, in fact, if I were writing a feature comedy, this would be an excellent page count. I am, however, writing a one-hour drama. And, at 87 pages, well, I might as well be writing Roots. In other words, that's way too long. About 27 pages too long. That's almost half again as long as it should be.

Maybe, said a good friend who is also a writer, it wants to be a feature. It could be a feature, but here's the irony. Not enough happens for it to be a feature. So that's where I am. Too much is happening for a one hour pilot. Not enough's happening to be a feature.

There is the tantalizing idea of what is sometimes called a "backdoor pilot" - which is a TV Movie that becomes a TV series. However, I'm not sure it's something I should actually be aiming for.

So, what to do? One of the first screenwriting books I ever read, one that I actually used, and, actually, the only one I recommend (How to Write a Movie in 21 Days), recommends closing your eyes and watching the movie. You know what the movie (or, in this case, the show) looks like, at least subconsciously, so sometimes, if you let go of the need to describe everything in words, you can find what is missing. Also, if it's not there when you watch the movie in your head, then maybe you don't need it. This is what I'm hoping will happen.

So, here I go, closing eyes...and...roll film....