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June 16, 2008

The Writing Sample Prompt

So here’s the thing: the LSAT writing sample isn’t graded, but it is sent to every law school you apply for, so you do want to give it your all. Even though I’d consider writing (and especially writing under pressure/deadlines) a major strength, my stupid prep guide scared me shitless.

So there are two types of essay prompts: “decision” and “argument,” as my Kaplan prep guide so helpfully calls them. “Argument” is simple — you get a short paragraph or two where somebody lays out an argument, and you have to judge whether or not the argument is sufficient. “Decision,” I feared, would be downright impossible. Here’s one of Kaplan’s samples, supposedly culled from a past LSAT:

The Daily Tribune, a metropolitan newspaper, is considering two candidates for promotion to business editor. Write an argument for one candidate over the other with the following considerations in mind:

1. The editor must train new writers and assign stories.
2. The editor must be able to edit and rewrite stories under daily deadline pressure.

Laura received a B.A. in English from a large university. She was managing editor of her college newspaper and served as a summer intern at her hometown daily paper. Laura started working at the Tribune right out of college and spent three years at the city desk covering the city economy. Eight years ago, the paper formed its business section, and Laura became part of the new department. After several years of covering state business, Laura began writing on the national economy. Three years ago, Laura was named senior business and finance editor on the national business staff; she is also responsible for supervising seven writers.

Palmer attended an elite private college where he received both a B.S. in business administration and an M.A. in journalism. After receiving his journalism degree, Palmer worked for three years on a monthly business magazine. He won a prestigious national award for a series of articles on the impact of monetary policy on multinational corporations. Palmer came to the Tribune three years ago to fill the newly created position of international business writer. He was the only member of the international staff for two years and wrote on almost a daily basis. He now supervises a staff of four writers. Last year, Palmer developed a bimonthly business supplement for the Tribune that has proved highly popular and has helped increase the paper’s circulation.

Now, maybe it’s because I don’t know as much about business or writing for newspapers as I pretend to when applying for jobs, but this question is tough. Both candidates have strengths and weaknesses, but they’re pretty evenly matched. You can basically flip a coin to choose, but mainly what you’re going to be doing is cutting down the other person, downplaying his or her accomplishments while illustrating why the others’ qualities make him or her perfect for the job.

I can do that well enough, but answering a question like this filled me with fear. And that’s the “easy” sample they give while teaching you about these different questions. The practice questions in the book and on the CD-ROM are even more difficult. I do think the practice tests, including the multiple-choice sections, were much more difficult than the test itself, which is a plus.

But nothing could have prepared me for the ridiculous, laugh-out-loud easiness of the essay prompt I received.

Right now, I am going to make up a question using different adjectives that is otherwise identical to what I received. I only do that because, honestly, I crammed so much information into my head that I can’t remember if the little agreement I signed said that I wouldn’t talk in detail about the test while the test was taking place, or if I can never, ever talk in detail about the test, like it’s Fight Club or something. So here it goes:

Kara needs to hire a director for a new movie her studio wants to put into production. Write an argument for one candidate over the other with the following considerations in mind:

1. At least one-third of the audience must consist of the coveted 18-to-34-year-old demographic.
2. Kara would like to continue her record of films she developed making back three times its pre-marketing budget.

Cliff Stern is a cutting-edge independent filmmaker who is gradually gaining a reputation as one of the most fearless, innovative directors working today, which has made him exceptionally popular among 18- to 34-year-olds. His last film handily earned three times its pre-marketing budget, but the film cost half as much as Kara’s production will. His next film, a remake with a built-in audience, will see release two months before Kara’s production is slated for release. If successful, the remake may make Stern a household name.

Judah Rosenthal has directed popular films for 20 years. He has a consistent track record of great opening weekends and his films frequently make back triple their pre-marketing budgets, including several films budgeted higher than Kara’s production. His most recent film saw a resurgence in popularity among 18- to 34-year-olds; market research indicates that this demographic made up 20% of the overall audience.

Seriously? Seriously?! This might be the most loaded “decision” question I’ve ever seen. In fact, it was so loaded that I read and reread the question 10 times to make sure there wasn’t some kind of trick hidden in there. Really, to me, the key to the decision lies in the last sentence of the first sentence. “If” and “may”? Come on, you have somebody who’s barely proven — he’s on the verge, but he could just as easily flop as have a hit — versus not just a veteran, but an extremely popular veteran who recently had a popular hit among the important demographic? There’s no contest.

I was tempted to challenge myself by defending the first one. I really did, too; I made an outline showing the strengths and weaknesses of each director, but I didn’t think I could make a compelling enough case for Cliff Stern.

It’s amazing, though. I really went into this thinking they’d be so evenly matched, I’d have an impossible time cutting one down in favor of the other; instead, the prompt answers itself.

Posted by Stan on June 16, 2008 10:49 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)

My Day in Evanston

Today, I took the LSAT. I had originally signed up for the February test, which would have allowed me to (barely) squeak in applications for Fall 2008, assuming I did well. Unfortunately, in January I suffered a debilitating wrist injury as a result of comical stupidity. A note for readers looking for free medical advice: no matter how strong and manly your forearms and hands are, do not lived a narrow, 40-pound box of kitchen tiles with one hand. When you feel that strain and think, This wasn’t my best idea, just drop the box, pick it up with two hands, and carry it. By no means should you keep going, grinning through the pain. It will require you to wear a splint for six weeks and, if it happens to coincide with your dominant hand, may prevent masturbation.

I had the February test scheduled at Wheaton College, a stone’s throw from my house and a drive that I knew would not be a pain in the ass, especially on a Saturday. It was perfect — but it’s pretty difficult to spend six hours doing a multiple-choice and essay test when your dominant hand is fubar’ed. I was pissed and annoyed, but I had to reschedule for June. The June test was unavailable at Wheaton (either because they weren’t hosting it or because it was full), so I got stuck with Northwestern. It may be a classy university with a prestigious law school, but getting there is a pain in the fucking balls. My general disdain for the North Shore area is well-known if not well-documented, so let me say, for the first time on this blog: fuck the North Shore. Difficult to get to, full of assholes, and worse street parking than anywhere in the city proper. It’s so bad, it might as well be Lake County (okay, some of it is).

Provincialism aside, I mostly just hate traffic. It might not have been so horrible on a Saturday, but check the calendars, folks: today’s Monday. I could lament the fact that they scheduled the test at 12:30, meaning if they didn’t hustle (spoiler alert: they didn’t) the hour drive would quickly turn into two or more, but what’s the point? If they’d scheduled it at 8:30 on a Monday, I’d have to suffer the same traffic at a different time of day. Ten o’clock would have been the sweet spot — I could roll out at nine, clipping the tail-end of rush hour, and probably get to Evanston with time to spare, then get out around three and (hopefully) avoid the slow rush-hour build.

But no, it had to be 12:30. I left at 11 for fear of getting stuck in some kind of crazy lunchtime jam, but I managed to breeze into Evanston (barely) before noon. Still, it was good that I came early because parking was a bitch and a half. I thought the term was over — why were there so many people?! So I drove around for awhile until I found a nice street lined with permit-required parallel slots. I parked illegally for six hours and did not receive a ticket, perhaps my biggest accomplishment of the day.

So I walked over to the test building, in the School of Engineering, and found myself stuck in a line that wrapped around the corner. I sighed and queued up.

I’m usually a big fan of nervous small-talk while waiting in long, motionless lines, but nobody around me seemed particularly interested in talking. I guess they handle nerves differently, or perhaps the Appetite for Destruction T-shirt and the general “just-rolled-out-of-bed” aesthetic I’d cultivated made them decide I was too lowbrow to engage. Who knows?

Eventually, the line started to move. I finally got to the lecture hall, where they took my thumbprint (no, really) and ushered me to a left-handed desk. In retrospect, since I spent my entire college career with righty desks, taking the test lefty may have put me at a disadvantage. I still feel like I did pretty well (the test was a lot easier than I thought), but in terms of time management, I wasted too much trying to figure out ways to adjust to the backwards desk. Alas…

But getting seated is where things started to get interesting. I don’t know if it was my refreshing lack of college-related sportswear or the fact that I’m just unimaginably studly, but every woman I encountered either flirted with me or gave me googly eyes, starting with the assistant proctor who was seating people. I’d say she was just trying to be friendly or something, but why? To what end? And at what point does general friendliness trump actually doing the job? She got so distracted by my incisive wit and throbbing johnson that the group of people waiting to be seated started to stack up, and I was the one who had to tell her to keep going.

A few minutes later, a girl in a different section made direct eye contact at me. At first, her eyes were petrified saucers. I made some goofy faces at her, and suddenly she softened and was all giggly and weird. This is a girl I did not say a single word to the entire time, and you know, I get the vibe she was laughing with me, not at me.

All told, I got three phone numbers simply from taking a standardized test. Three. Did I miss my calling? When I was a lad, my dad always told me, “Bag yourself a rich one.” Even if I do poorly on the LSAT, I may consider signing up for every conceivable test until they ban me just because it’s the place to meet women who will potentially be rich at some point — or, at least, it’s the place to meet women who will potentially be rich at some point and who will also talk to me and hook me up with digits.

The test itself, as I said, seemed fairly easy. I don’t know, maybe it was the prep work, but the hardest part was the endurance. I tried to simulate the conditions of test day a week in advance, but I didn’t get it right — I didn’t realize I’d be waiting around for an hour for everyone to trickle in and get registered and seated, that it would take 45 minutes for a 15-minute break because they collected and redistributed all the test booklets, that it would take another 30 minutes to collect all the multiple-choice booklets and distribute the essay prompts, that the proctor would keep us for another 30 minutes because a few bad apples didn’t properly fill out their Scantron forms. In my home, I could not possibly simulate what felt like 40-degree windy weather or the harsh fluorescents. I couldn’t simulate the uncomfortable seating or the awkward lecture-hall desks.

I don’t think much of this affected me adversely. I brought a flannel for the “weather,” which was fortunate, but nonetheless by the fifth section I got a little logy from the combination soul-crushing fluorescent light and spending the three previous hours doing intense mental gymnastics. I still don’t feel like I did too badly on that section, but maybe I just wasn’t thinking straight.

I stepped back into my car at 6:10, exactly six hours after I’d originally left it. As I said, no ticket. The rush-hour traffic was surprisingly smooth once I got out of Evanston, until I got to fucking Des Plaines (apparently every one of that shithole’s roads are under construction). By the time I was cruising through the industrial park, it was empty. It reminded me of my college days, cruising home from Rosemont, using all my little shortcuts and tricks. Good times.

When I got home, I just crashed for an hour. It’s amazing how sitting around doing nothing for several hours can tire you out as much as (or more than) strenuous physical exercise. But hey, I got through it, and I lived to blog about it.

Next up: writing sample prompt comedy!

Posted by Stan on June 16, 2008 8:27 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)

February 11, 2006

The Test

Fuckin’ Columbia. I’ve been trying to get them to send my diploma for months. The advising office called me about three weeks ago, apologizing for sitting on their asses for so long, and then said, “Oh, we have to clear your nonstandard curriculum with the film department.” What this means is, while the film department sets out certain guidelines in order to get a concentration in a certain area (e.g., cinematography, editing, screenwriting), as long as you complete the core and fulfill the number of credit hours needed to graduate, students can take whatever the hell classes they want. So I knew in advance, after this has been drilled into my head for years, that this would be fine.

“Oh,” my advisor — who, in five years, I’ve never met (and this was the first time I’d even spoken to her) — continued, “there’s one other thing: academic computing says you never took the Foundations of Computer Applications test.”

“Uh…” I said. Because here’s the thing: I paid for the test, I signed up for the test, I told everybody on the planet I took the test — but I didn’t. In the words of Marcia Brady, “something suddenly came up.” At this point, I can’t remember what. But I was scheduled to do it in April of 2003, so chances are it had something to do with the huge crush I had on my friend Gina.

I had intended to register to take it again, but really, it was about the lowest thing on my priority list, and it would alternate between slipping my mind completely and entering a mind that quickly dismissed it as something I’d do later.

And then I went off toward Los Angeles and the last set of classes I’d take before graduation, and I thought, “So long, suckers!” I sent out my graduation application…and heard nothing until January of this year. They’re on the ball over there at Columbia. By this time, I had come up with a cunning new strategy: lying through my teeth.

“I took the test,” I said. “I remember — I needed to take it to get into Production II for the summer.” That last part was actually true. One method for lying successfully is to drizzle a little bit of truth on top. That way, they have no idea what hit them. But that was the weird thing about it, and one of the reasons I never bothered to take the test — when I registered for Production II, the computer allowed me to do that even though I hadn’t taken the test. The class or test was a prerequisite, so when the computer let me slide, I let myself slide.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll talk to somebody in the department and try to find out what happened.”

That was…so…easy. Too easy, in fact. My advisor called the next day and told me she had spoken with somebody. “You really remember taking the test?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Definitely.”

“But you probably didn’t save anything saying what you got on it, huh?” she said, like this was already a foregone conclusion. So I went with it — lying’s easier when you don’t have to do anything but confirm or deny.

“I figured as much,” she said, “but you definitely remember taking it?”

“Of course,” I said. “I remember it was winter — probably February, right at the beginning of the semester, because they said it took four to six weeks for it to be graded, and I wanted it to be in the system for when I registered for the summer session.” Note to self: when lying, don’t tip your hand by spewing out all sorts of unnecessary information.

“Our records say you were signed up to take it April 14th,” she said.

Oops.

“Oh, right,” I said. “Yeah, I remember it being cold, though. Unusually cold.”

“Okay,” she sighed, “I’ll tell them you took it and hopefully this will all be resolved.”

I thanked her, hung up, and didn’t hear another word for three weeks. Just when I had reached a point where I thought the issue would work itself out and one day I’d arrive home to see a diploma wedged into my mailbox, I got another call.

“Hi, this is your advisor,” her VoiceMail said (I wasn’t home when she called), “I’m calling because our records show you didn’t take the FOCA test. Please give me a call back as soon as you can.”

It seemed like she didn’t remember talking to me at all. Maybe I could try starting the lie over, correcting my previous mistakes, and everything would be fine. I called her back immediately.

“Oh, Stan, thank you for calling,” she said. “Listen, our records say you were registered to take the FOCA test on April 14th, 2003, but you were listed as a no-show. You remember taking the test, though?”

“Absolutely,” I said. “Basic PC stuff, Word, Excel. It was really easy.”

“Uh-huh,” she muttered. “Well, listen, I’m gonna put you in touch with somebody from academic computing, and hopefully we can straighten all this out.”

Academic computing? Oh shit, the jig was up! I could lie to her until the cows come home, but my false testimony wouldn’t stand up under cross-examination by somebody who actually knew what they were talking about. I just knew they were going to ask me all sorts of really complicated questions, such as, “What was the answer to question three of section two?” and “Where was the test held?” Questions I couldn’t answer.

My advisor couldn’t find the number of the person in academic computing, so she said she’d find out and give me a call back. I received a call about ten minutes later, but to my surprise, it was the person from academic computing herself. Crap, I hadn’t properly Zenned myself for the upper-echelon of weaseling my way out of this. My whole balance was being tossed out of whack. She was talking, and I was responding, but I couldn’t concentrate on anything that was going on. My mind was swimming, trying to keep up and fabricate a story that has little detail but still seems plausible; then I had to wait for the right moment to launch into said story.

“Usually what I do in this case is just have you re-take the test,” I heard her say.

“Okay,” I said. “When should I come in?” I admit, I crumbled under the pressure.

“We have a test tonight at five” — this was Tuesday — “or this Saturday at 10 a.m.”

“Saturday,” I said without hesitation. There’s nothing I enjoy less than going into the city at rush hour.

So she signed me up, and this morning I woke up early to make the trek downtown. It’s hard to believe that I haven’t made this commute in over a year at this point. She told me the test would take about an hour and a half — I estimated it would take a third of that, but just to be safe, I decided to take the el down there, just like the good old days. I didn’t want to get caught in weekend-afternoon tourist traffic on my way out, even though on Saturday mornings it’s ridiculously easy to drive down and find street parking.

On top of all that, I missed the old commute that I did nearly every day for five years — driving 25 long, horrible minutes to the dreaded Rosemont park-‘n’-ride, passing familiar sights such as Adult World on my way; sitting on a crampt el train for 45 minutes, trying to avoid eye contact with all other humans by sticking my nose in a book; and, more often than not, getting off a few stops ahead of schedule for a long, brisk walk downtown. I dislike many aspects of city life, but for the most part I really enjoy walking around the Loop. I guess when you grow up with narrow, suburban sidewalks and a general inability to cross any street easily because suburban traffic never stops for pedestrians, walking along those wide city sidewalks is a little bit freeing. Also, I like the white noise from the traffic and trains, the obnoxious conversations I over hear, and the rampant pigeons getting in my way. It’s a weird experience.

This time around, though, things were a little different. Saturday mornings, the universe is pretty much dead. The drive didn’t take more than 15 minutes because there was no traffic, the train was virtually empty (but two bums sleeping on seats contributed to the delightful train odor I had missed so much), and when I went a-walking — well, let’s just say from the few pedestrians I saw on the street, I can see why we’re the fattest city. I can also see why I consider myself thin despite being 20 pounds overweight; on a relative scale, I’m downright scrawny.

Oh, also, I had my first cup of coffee in over a month. And shit, it wired me good. Remind me not to do that again. But goddamn, with a Dunkin’ Donuts on almost every corner — including a new one right across the street from Columbia — how could I resist? Also, with a Dunkin’ Donuts on any corner, I once again see why we’re the fattest city.

So I went up to take the test, and…I was the only one there. This really nice, just-past-middle-age fellow helped me get started, and I zipped through the entire test in less than 24 minutes (and I passed with hovering colors, too). What did I tell you? An hour and a half, indeed…

I took a walk down Congress toward the LaSalle Street subway station. It was a little trick I learned late in my college career: tons of people get on and off at the nearby Jackson Street station, so you always have to fight to get a seat. If you go one stop further, to LaSalle, very few people are getting on, and even if you don’t get a seat right away, half the train gets off at the next stop.

And as I walked down the steps at the LaSalle station, I saw a middle-aged man just standing on one of the steps. He was holding something that appeared to be drai —

Holy Jesus, that’s a penis he’s holding. Fuckin’ guy’s pissing all over the stairs.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” I shouted.

He looked up at me, like a deer in headlights, holding onto his johnson for dear life. He stopped urinating immediately (I need to learn that trick — once I start, I can’t stop) and withdrew his schlong into his pants. He shuffled up the steps as I cautiously descended, hoping I wouldn’t step in anything — or, worse, he’d whip it out and finish off all over me — and it was all good. Although, as soon as I passed the man and his puddle, I heard him stop, whip it out again, and finish (on the stairs, at least — if he had touched me, I would have beaten him to death with my Dickens-filled backpack).

Seriously, though, my God. I’ve had instances where I’ve had to piss like a racehorse, and I know a lot of urban places are cracking down on letting any random schmo use the bathroom, but there are some places (like, for example, the Subway/Taco Bell RIGHT ACROSS THE FUCKING STREET) that have no problem with it. There are some things that just…I mean, on the stairwell?! This city is filled with foul-smelling alleys. What, was he afraid of getting mugged while pissing in non-bathroom environs? Goddammit! Decency, people. Decency. “When you gotta go, you gotta go” don’t fly with me if I have to step into or around it.

The trip home was otherwise uneventful.

And with that, I am complete, 100% finished with college.

Posted by Stan on February 11, 2006 8:48 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)

December 19, 2004

Zeke and Me

Back when the Super-Hot Pothead and I were on speaking terms (i.e., any time before February), she suggested that we team up. Her longtime boyfriend (damn him!) was apparently quite the director, I was the writer, and she was, I dunno, hair and make-up or something. Actually, she would have been the producer; I’m just not sure what all she would have done in that capacity. Doesn’t matter since it never amounted to anything more than idle conversation.

I haven’t heard a word from her since February, and I didn’t think I would. I was concerned, so I called her a few times to make sure she was, you know, alive, but she never got back to me on that. I did see her once, walking up Wabash, and she totally snubbed me. I’m not sure if she didn’t see me, or if she saw me and pretended not to, but I only noticed her right before she walked by, and she totally ignored me. I thought of going back and saying, “Yo, bizatch, talk to me!” I decided against it, logically assuming that if she wanted to say something to me, she would’ve.

In June, her boyfriend, Zeke, called me out of the blue. This was a week or two after I’d gotten to Seattle. He was taking Directing II as a summer class, and he wondered if I’d be willing to write his final project, a four-minute script. He had the concept; he just wanted somebody to write it and make it work. I called him back and told him I was interested, and he called me a week or so later and pitched the entire idea on a VoiceMail.

He didn’t actually need somebody to write it or to make it work. He had every single beat of the story worked out; I would basically have been acting as a transcriber. I saw through his crafty ruse and realized that, perhaps, the Pothead was feeling guilty about her unnecessary ignoring of me. This was either his secret way of getting us talking again, or it was being instigated by her for the same reason.

Two days after he pitched the idea, I was honestly thinking about writing the idea, but I hadn’t called him back. I was called for an interview at the single greatest coffee chain in the history of the universe, and I got the job immediately following the interview, and I started training the following Monday (the interview was on Friday), so things kind of became a whirlwind and all of a sudden I was working full-time and trying to juggle that with writing a 60-page sample for a fellowship application, and I forgot about Zeke. I wasn’t taking it seriously to begin with, because I knew he didn’t need me, and then it dropped right out of my mind.

By the time I remember, he had already finished shooting. I thought, “Fuck, I should call him and let him know what happened,” and then I thought, “Dude, it’s not even worth the effort. It’s not like I’m ever going to see him again, especially the way Pothead’s avoiding me.”

One of the most important bits of practical advice we’re given in film school is: don’t burn bridges. This wasn’t technically a bridge burning. It was more like snubbing the protective troll as you cross because you figure you’re not going to have to come back to that bridge. It’s a problem easily solved with a brisk apology: “Oh, sorry, bridge troll, I didn’t notice you the first time you came there.” The problem was that I neglected to actually give said brisk apology to Zeke. I just let it hang, because I didn’t care too much.

This fall, I’ve been taking a class called screenwriting practicum, which is modeled as a microcosm of a real-world studio. A producer finds a story, gives it to an appropriate writer to adapt, the writer adapts it, and the producer tries to hustle it to anyone who will listen. It’s tied in with the producing, directing, and cinematography practica, all of which run in the spring semester. Right now, we’re working with Producing IV students who will go on to the producing practicum in the spring.

Three weeks ago (sorry I haven’t updated in awhile — I’ll be catching up this week), we had professional actors come in and do table readings of each script. As an added bonus, Directing III students came in to watch the readings and consider which scripts they may or may not want to direct in the coming semester. The reading of my script went rather poorly, in part because it was the first one of the morning (they were supposed to get the scripts in advance to rehearse but didn’t for a lot of stupid reasons I don’t feel it necessary to detail) but also because it’s very light on dialogue and therefore pretty dull for actors.

During the break, I had to piss like a racehorse (more on that in what will prove to be an extraordinarily disturbing entry), so I went to the second floor (nobody ever goes on the second floor, so you don’t have to fight to use the can), did my business, and when I came back up, I saw two of the directing students standing in the hall, talking. I walked toward them, and one of them stared at me. Fucking directors.

“Hey man, what’s up?” he said amiably.

Taken aback by his surprising niceness, I said, “How’s it going?” and moved past them back into the classroom. I immediately started thinking of the possibilities of why he would’ve greeted me. I knew he wasn’t just trying to be polite; there was an angle there, but what could it be? I don’t really know many directing students, so I didn’t just snub somebody that —

Wait. Directing III. Zeke was in Directing II over the summer, so it’s logical that he would’ve moved on to Directing III now in the fall. But he didn’t look anything like Zeke —

Except he did. Zeke, the two times I talked to him two summers ago, had long, hippie hair and was generally unshaven. In the fall of 2003, he chopped off his hair and started going clean-cut, but he has a natural white-man fro, so even though it was short, it looked pretty goofy. Now, the hair was slicked back (but it was still obviously naturally curly), and he was wearing stupid-looking emo glasses, but aside from those physical differences, he could be Zeke.

After the break, when we were all assembled in the room, I kept looking toward the back, where the directors were hiding, to see for sure whether or not it was Zeke. Whenever I’d look at him, he was looking back, so I’d avert my eyes and suddenly find my notebook extremely fascinating. But a few cursory glances, coupled by his seeming fascination with me, made it clear that this was, in fact, Zeke.

So I had two choices after class: (1) approach him, apologize, and hope for the best; or (2) run away. I don’t think it will come to a surprise to anyone, but I opted for the second choice. I turned my back to him and talked with some friends, pretending not to notice him, and then slid out the door as quickly as humanly possible.

And then I started feeling guilty. I should’ve at least apologized at that point, since I had long since lost his phone number. I debated briefly about calling the Pothead, even though I’d heard she and Zeke had since broke up (which, you’d think, would be even more reason to call her), explaining the situation and asking her to have Zeke called me back. I also thought about finding out when his Directing II class met and “accidentally” running into him so I could both apologize and say I didn’t even recognize him until later.

In the end, I did what I always do: nothing.

I still think I should have done something, and maybe I still should. This really has little, if anything, to do with rebuilding personal connections with people I didn’t know all that well to begin with. It’s mostly about the fact that, in the spring semester of the practicum, I want somebody to shoot my script. Now, it’s possible — even likely — that the practicum will make my script. My producer’s great, she loves the script and hustles it like a madwoman, and I’m sure she could at least lure a director to the project, which automatically ensures that it’ll get made.

But here’s the problem: what if she doesn’t? There are 12 screenwriting students, together writing a total of 24 different scripts to go into the practicum pool, which already has a dozen or so scripts from last year that never got made. In additon, there are 9 producers, and it’s not even a guarantee that all 9 of them will move on to the practicum. In addition, there are 7 directors, meaning 2 of the 9 producers won’t even have scripts shot.

So again, the odds for me, personally, are good because of my producer and the quality of the story (the original one — my adaptation doesn’t do much in the way of changing it), but couldn’t they be better? If I already have a director going into it with whom I have some sort of established business or personal friendship who will know he can come to me with revision possibilities and equally know that I’ll give him quality material?

With that said, I’ll probably still do nothing. But I may just give a shout-out to the Pothead under the guise of “happy holidays oh and by the way —” to see what happens. You never know.

Posted by Stan on December 19, 2004 2:50 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)

October 22, 2004

Owen Strikes Back

As I’ve stated, mostly in the form of thanks to THE LORD, I have no classes with Owen this semester. Both of my screenwriting classes this semester feature mostly the same people I was with last semester, except without Owen. The main difference: classes are now enjoyable. Except for the portfolio review class, but that’s a whole other thang…

Since school has started, I’ve taken to visiting a girl named Laurie. We had a class in the spring and kind of hit it off. She works in the screenwriting center, so I’ve taken it upon myself to wander in there before my class and flirt with her for awhile while also pandering to her boss so he’ll give me a job. This was rarely my initial intention — the idea was to have dinners with Maria before the portfolio review class, so we could bitch. She dropped the class but is still downtown on Thursdays, so we’d been planning on dinner for awhile, but we never actually did for one reason or another.

So I’ve been hanging out with Laurie, who digs on the Stanbeef. It disappoints me that I went the whole summer without calling her. Not that she was any different than anyone else, but I guess I undervalued the fact that she and I are attracted to one another. I’m kind of retarded, but more on this point later.

Last night, same ol’ shit. I was planning to hang with Maria; it was set, so I left a little early so I’d have 20 minutes or so to talk with Laurie before Maria got out of her class. About three minutes after getting there, a sheepish freshman wandered in, complaining that some copies of Ghost World (one of the scripts studied in script analysis, which apparently is now a mandatory freshman class; this is a good thing) are missing.

Laurie and I went to make the copies together. Because she’s in charge, she has to throw everyone out and lock the door when she leaves. So the sheepish freshman stood in the “homework lounge” (a small area directly outside the center with couches and tables — I’ve never, ever seen anyone do homework there) waiting for us. Over the summer, they installed little, swinging doors to block people out of the offices. They aren’t locked, and they’re so small that even if they were locked, somebody could just lift their legs and step over, but they actually keep the freshman out, which is the goal.

Upperclassmen have no respect for the swinging doors.

So Laurie and I went back to the copy room, made the copies, and as we turned back down the hall toward the center, Laurie saw Owen hunched next to the center’s door. It was closed, but not actually locked, because we were just going around the corner for five seconds.

“OWEN!” Laurie shouted. “What the hell are you doing?”

Owen froze, clutching the door handle, like a deer caught in headlights. Then, he looked sheepishly up at Laurie and me. He let go of the door, which was only open a tad, and it shut quietly.

“You know better than that,” Laurie admonished. Her motherly tone amused me. “When the door’s closed, you don’t go inside. How many times do I have to tell you?”

“Sorry,” Owen muttered.

Laurie gave the copies to the freshman, who thanked her and ran away quickly.

We all went inside the center, Owen and I exchanging greetings after not having seen each other all summer.

Owen presented me with a business card with his name, e-mail address, and website URL. “There’s nothing on the website yet,” he explained, “but drop me a line sometime.” Sadly, my schadenfreude instincts kicked in the first time he ever mentioned the site, shortly before the end of the spring semester. I’d memorized his site URL, his DeviantArt URL, and his LiveJournal URL. I checked them periodically over the summer, hoping to be amused by him. Unfortunately, Owen is true to his word: there’s almost no content on any of his sites.

“What do you want, Owen?” Laurie snapped. He was interrupting our flirt time.

Owen explained he needed to get a script for one of his classes. It could be any random script, so he forced me to choose it. I suggested Breaking Away, because I figured it’d be the type of script Owen would hate. I snickered when he agreed to go with it. Laurie demanded his student ID; he handed her a driver’s license.

“This isn’t your student ID,” she grunted.

“I left it at home. Can’t you just type in my ID number?” he asked.

“I have to scan the card in order to get into the system,” Laurie replied.

“Well,” Owen said, changing the subject rapidly, “I can’t find my ID, but check out my new license. It has an updated picture and everything.” He handed her the license, along with his state ID (a worthless card for anyone older than 16; it looks just like a license, except without the information pertaining to driving ability). Laurie stared at the pictures unadmiringly before handing it back to him.

“Wow,” she said unenthusiastically.

“I needed to get them so I can vote,” he said. I hoped to God he wasn’t going to launch into another Bush tirade. I’m not a Bush fan, but Owen has a habit of going waaaaaay overboard. Fortunately, he didn’t, because he stumbled on his student ID amid the other rubble in his pocket. Laurie scanned it quickly, shoved the script in his hands, and we hoped that’d be the end of it.

But no. He stayed.

Much like a tornado, when Owen hangs around, you mostly just want to huddle, shivering, with the nearest person and weep gently, praying it will all be over soon. Laurie and I exchanged that desperate, wishing-we-could-huddle-right-in-front-of-him look before turning our attention to ignoring him. Mildly aroused at that point thanks to our exchanged glance, I suddenly found my cup of tea fascinating. I stared at it blankly to avoid eye contact with Owen.

Laurie, meanwhile, became entranced with the Internet. We sat in silence, Owen staring at us without anything to say. Generally, Owen is not a conversation starter; his problem is that, when anybody says anything at any point in time ever, he will jump on it and twist it into a conversation about Emma Peel or something. Either that, or he’ll say completely in(s)ane things that make everyone silent once again.

We knew the only way to defeat him was to not give him any fuel whatsoever. He asked me a few questions about classes, about the summer, et cetera, which I either answered with monosyllabic statements or with jokes. Without leaving any wiggle room for follow up questions, most of his attempts at starting a long conversation died. Briefly, I felt sorry for him. I wondered if it was a chicken-egg thing; is he so tactless and obnoxious because his social skills remain undeveloped because nobody wants to talk to him, or does nobody want to talk him because he’s always been, and always will be, a social retard?

Laurie decided the silent treatment wasn’t quite effective, so she dropped the j-bomb: “Don’t get your hopes up,” she said to me, “but the boss was talking about possibly needing a fifth person. I’m gonna drop your name if he decides that’s what he needs, so be ready.”

She glanced at Owen briefly, and I realized that this, in addition to being potentially good news for me, was her way of saying to Owen, “Neener-neener, I actually like this guy, and you’re scum to me. Go away.”

Owen understood. “Hey, if Stan doesn’t work out, don’t hesitate to mention my name,” he said to her.

“Oh, I’ll be sure,” she said, rolling her eyes toward me.

I joked, “Hey, maybe I should print out a copy of my resume —”

“— which you won’t need —”

“— so he’ll be really impressed with my string of two-month-long jobs.”

“I have five copies of my resume with me,” Owen offered, apparently under the delusional impression that merely having his resume meant he’d get the job.

“You’ll need all five,” I told him. “I hear he makes lots of notes.”

Owen’s face fell. Honestly, I feel mean taking advantage of gullibility like that, but I simply cannot help it.

“He’s just joking,” Laurie explained, and suddenly we were saved. Two other employees showed up for active duty, which meant Laurie could leave the center. Almost immediately after explaining to the others what needed to be done over the course of the evening, she said, “Come on, let’s go to Jewel.”

I enjoy assertive women, and I have the scars to prove it.

“All right,” I said. We got up and ran for the door. To our dismay, Owen followed us.

Laurie and I exchanged “goddammit” glances as we headed toward the stairwell.

“What the fuck, Stan?!” I heard from down the hall. Bear in mind, this could be anyone, friend or foe, so I wasn’t sure who it’d be. It, of course, turned out to be Maria, and I suddenly thanked the heavens. She’d gotten out of class early.

Maria, so you know, is like the Owen antidote. We all can’t stand Owen, but we try to keep it to ourselves and put up with it, for the most part. Not a great strategy, but much easier to deal with. Maria, however, openly disdains Owen. She was assigned to be his first reader in the spring semester, when he was so unnecessarily hostile, and because of that hostility, she ripped his shit apart. It was fucking brilliant; I know this because I helped her write some of the feedback.

“I just tried calling you,” she said. “You didn’t answer.”

Yes, despite my new phone, I still can’t get a goddamn signal when I’m on the third floor of the film building. It drives me nuts.

“So are we doing pizza or what?” she asked.

Shit. I had the plans solidified, so I didn’t want to renege. Plus, I knew Maria had some sort of warding spell that would save us from Owen. At the same rate, though, I wanted my personal time with Laurie. I was planning to tell Laurie about my dinner plans, but Owen showed up and I didn’t want to get into it. Maybe I should’ve, since the mention of Maria would have made him run away, screaming.

All of a sudden, the whole evening was a fucking catastrophe.

And then Owen headed for the stairwell; thank God, one problem solved. But then there was me, Maria, and Laurie.

“I’m gonna go with Maria,” I said. “We already had plans to get pizza. Hey, you wanna come with us?”

Typically, I wouldn’t invite somebody else along, but Laurie’s special and destroys any mental rules of etiquette I may have.

“No, I was gonna go get a salad at Jewel,” she said. “I don’t want any greasy-ass pizza.”

Touché. I feel like a jackass now, but I forgot to mention the pizza place we go up to is really a pizza-salad joint. I guess they thought out the health-conscious people and decided to offer a little of both. It didn’t really enter my head, though, because Maria and I were planning to hang out and shoot the shit at the pizza place, and I knew Laurie wouldn’t be able to stay. At the same rate, we all could have gotten it to go and shot the shit in the center. It would eliminate the personal time aspect of it, but she’d still be there.

Essentially, I both over- and underthought the situation and ended up botching the whole thing. Status quo.

I thought I might be sabotaging myself, which is not an unusual occurrence with me, particularly after my hilarious string of disastrous relationships.

In the first book of Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, there’s an illustration of the gunslinger after the massacre of Tull, with a long trail of bodies leading up to him, standing there with his guns out. Whenever I think about the last four years in terms of my romantic relationships, that image flashes through my mind. I don’t think it’s coincidental.

I’ve had a (and excuse the gunslinger pun here; I should be shot — oh fuck, there’s another one — for this) habit of being a bit gunshy with women lately. My habit of choosing women who seem normal and then turn out to be holy shit crazy is the probable cause. Laurie, on the surface, seems like a really pleasant, normal person. That’s how it starts. I take her out to dinner, and suddenly she’s a fucking nutjob.

Now, this is not me saying all women are crazy; I’m not one of those retarded misogynists who has a couple of bad relationships and decides all women are crazy. It just happens that, in my particular position, I have actually dated mostly insane people. The Ex, of whom I often spoke Way Back When, did do some crazy shit toward the end, but I think it was more immaturity than insanity. Still, dinnerware exploding over one’s head tends to scar emotionally.

And those are just the women I’m willing to besmirch on this blog. If those are the ones I talk about, imagine the horror of the few I haven’t mentioned.

So yes, I’m afraid of going further. I want to, and I don’t. I think that she might be the one not-completely-insane person who digs on the Stanbeef. I just don’t want her to turn out to be a knife- (or plate-)wielding maniac, and it’s holding me back. Perhaps Owen was a harbinger of what’s to come; his arrival may be saying to me, “Dude, back off Laurie. She’s bad news. Run. RUN!”

But here’s the problem with me, generally: that type of thing intrigues me more than it scares me away.

Posted by Stan on October 22, 2004 2:12 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (3)

October 19, 2004

The Schadenfreude Guide to Authorial Competence, or: Somewhere Between Me and a Dream

While I enjoy writing, the main issue in reading my writing is that I just think it’s boring. Assuming it’s not an early draft (which I almost always hate), I rarely have any particular dislike of the characters, the story, or any of that shit; I mostly just find it drab and styleless, because it’s my style, and my style is just a slipshod homogeny of writing I enjoy and/or respect, so I’m constantly reading my work and thinking, “This isn’t terrible, but John Kennedy Toole would have made it funny.”

Last week, I submitted my writing to this portfolio review class. In case I haven’t mentioned it (and I’m way too lazy to go back and check right now), each week the entire class receives a different peer’s work. During the following week, we read their “canon” and discuss it in the following week’s class. Some students are assigned written coverage of the pieces.

So we all submitted our “canons,” and one student with whom “Doc” has a relationship volunteered to have his work already copied in time for this class, so “Doc” passed around each work at the end of class. Our task: assess it.

The student submitted four detailed treatments, a step outline of one of those treatments, two short screenplays, and one feature-length screenplay. (I felt slightly less masculine with my contribution of one feature and two short scripts.) I was assigned coverage of one of the treatments, but I decided to start with the feature, because it’s easier to get out of the way first.

Or so I thought.

Okay, here’s the thing: I’ll admit that I am hyper-critical. Not merely of myself, but of everyone else. That’s how come I hate so many fucking jackasses. I actually think it’s a good thing that I don’t hold myself to a higher or lower standard than anyone else; I also happen to think that I can be kind of an asshole when I don’t like something. Generally, that’s fine, until I have to look the author in the face and say, “This is the worst goddamn piece of shit I’ve ever read.”

I’m telling you, though, this writer made it easier and easier for me to say those words with each page. My rough assessment goes like this, as generally as possible:

1. The story doesn’t start until page 76. Everything — and I mean everything — up to that point is back-story that he could clearly, effectively, and interestingly establish in two or three scenes. How can I tell there’s a lot of back-story? Let me put it this way: within the first ten pages of the script, the characters are born. That’s all that happens. And this isn’t a movie about genius babies.
   
   As a consequence of this heavy back-story, when the story gets going nearly nearly two-thirds of the way through the script, he rushes through it to the end. And the only thing that stopped me from coming out and saying this is a terrible script is that everything that happens from page 76 to roughly page 105 (out of 127) is unbelievably good, but it’s so rushed that I want more of it. And that, folks, is how you know where your story starts and ends.


2. For somebody who takes his damn time with the back-story, he sure has some undeveloped characters. The central characters are thin; the secondary characters are cardboard.


3. The dialogue is stiff, forced, and generally on-the-nose. A few characters, in addition to being stereotypes, are over-the-top stereotypes. They’re borderline cartoony.


4. All I’ll say about this script’s content is that the main character is deformed, spent his entire life in a basement, and pretty much all he can do is read the Bible. For someone with these limitations, he’s remarkably street-smart when he finally gets out. I think the idea of this character being let outside could be fascinating — hell, he could have an entire story right there — but he seems to know exactly where to go, exactly how to get there, and exactly who he should avoid.
   
   I’m not saying the Bible isn’t a good prep-guide for the world; everyone in that book is a complete dick. However, aside from the human nature aspects, everything that happens in the Bible is really far removed from the modern world.
   
   I, personally, would find it hilarious if there were a John the Savage quality to him. Whereas John the Savage thought and spoke in imabic pentameter and Elizabethan language, because he learned everything about the world from Shakespeare, it would be hilarious if this character thought of the world in terms of a very literal interpretation of the Bible.
   
   Honestly, I would produce and direct this screenplay if there was a scene of the main character asking a teamster to place his hand under his thigh and pray.
   
   Those are my main points. There’s other stuff, but it’s either too minor or too specific to get into. The main thing that vindicated me is that during the discussion, everyone either brought up or agreed with the way I felt. Unfortunately, points two, three, and four were negated by the professor, who shot our asses full of this hot info: the entire script took place in, roughly, the 1920s.
   
   Suddenly, every plot hole, contrivance, over-the-top character, or logical fallacy made sense. There were still problems, sure, but that tiny bit of information made a whole lot of the script much more forgivable. It didn’t change the fact that the story starts way too late, and it actually brings me to point number 5:


5. There is absolutely no indication whatsoever that this script takes place in any time other than the present.
   
   Sometimes, time period and location don’t make a difference, especially if one is going for a “timeless” story. But in a story about a guy locked in a basement simply because he’s deformed and people think he’s a demon is much, much, much more believable in the early 20th century than it is in the early 21st century.
   
   All he had to do in the writing was give us a little bit of a 1920s feel. A very little bit. Like describing fashions or hairstyles. Or indicating period music. Something like, say, when the characters are born (sometime between 1900 and 1910), perhaps one of the characters is born in a farmhouse, rather than a hospital.
   
   The only indications of the time period come, as I’ve said, from logical fallacies (such as a writer expecting us to believe a group of modern nuns would believe a kid is a demon just because he’s deformed), plot holes (there’s a whole thing about one of the characters being pursued by, and then lost by, the police; by today’s standards, she didn’t technically commit an arrestable crime, and it’d be really easy for them to track her), and shit like that. We aren’t immersed in a 1920s world, so it’s hard to forgive the major problems because we all thought it takes place in 2004.

As I was perusing this student’s work, I came upon the relevatory passage:

“Heat lighting crashes down upon the world erasing all thought from memory.”

This is, I have to report, the worst sentence I’ve ever read in the English language. And I’m the guy who has not only read Hubert Selby Jr., but I’ve written the following sentence: “In recent weeks, it has been brought to my attention that I mostly sabotage my somewhat pitiful attempts at relationships by, for example, becoming really hostile, saying things I don’t mean, and then never, ever apologizing for the things I say and do while under the influence of my immense, soul-crushing ego and irritating superiority complex.”* I know what I’m talking about.

This guy’s terrible, incomprehensible sentence made me believe I was a good writer. No, not even a good writer, just not as bad a writer as I normally think I am. I, in effect, got over myself.

Will I go easier on myself? No. Basically, I just concluded that, while my writing is bad, it could be much, much worse.

With that ringing personal endorsement, I bet you all can’t wait until I offer up the samples I used to compile my “canon!”

*What’s telling about this is that I clicked a random month and scrolled down randomly and managed to find a horribly constructed sentence without any difficulty whatsoever.

Posted by Stan on October 19, 2004 6:53 PM  | Permalink

October 18, 2004

Senior Seminar (2)

Today, Qween showed up to class. Nobody was exactly rejoicing. She blamed last week’s snafu entirely on people who weren’t her, which just pissed me off.

During class, we broke into three groups, read a poem, and drew pictures or created “skits” about what we thought the poem meant.

Later on, Qween got (and took) a cell phone call in class. I imagine it was second grade calling, wanting its assignment back.

I hate this class.

Posted by Stan on October 18, 2004 7:09 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)

October 11, 2004

Senior Seminar

It took me four years, but I’m finally a senior. As such, I’m required by law to take the most worthless class in the history of education, senior seminar. This is a class where a disparate group of students, heading toward the end of their undergraduate educations, gather together to share their feelings about life, love, and future unemployment, and do art projects that even a third-grader would wrinkle his or her nose at because they’re so beyond fingerpainting.

Senior seminar is widely regarded as a waste of every student’s time. It’s such a waste, in fact, that the administration voted to eliminate it from the required curriculum, replacing it, instead, with a year-long freshman seminar program to help students adjust to big-city living after two half-assed days of orientation at the start of the semester. No word yet on whether this is only going to be required for out-of-staters, or if everyone — including folks born and raised in and around Chicago — will have to take it. There is word, however, that this change won’t go into effect until fall 2006 and that students won’t be grandfathered into the change — meaning seniors will have to take senior seminar until the class of 2009. Yay!

My particular senior seminar class is taught by a woman who insists on being addressed as “Qween.” Yes, that’s “Qween” with a “W,” which gives you an indication of how moronic she is. Qween is honestly of the opinion that her class has some sort of value, which drives everyone in the class nuts. Last week (I cut but was filled in by some other students), apparently she only kept the class for an hour or so, and they got big sheets of posterboard and a pack of Crayola markers to — I swear to God — draw a “family map”; that is, a map outlining familial relationships. Not a family tree; this drawing is filled with roads and comical variations on true-life street signs.

Good Lord, I’m glad I cut last week.

I felt I had to come today, because part of Qween taking the class seriously involves her taking the attendance policy seriously. Most of us griped about that today before class. We’re aware we have to do the work for the class, but do we really have to draw stick-figure pictures of our parents and siblings and then discuss them with the class? I barely even tell my friends about my humiliating family; why would I want to share this information with strangers?

So the school’s official attendance policy, followed by this professor, is as follows: you get three absences. If you take a fourth, you’re automatically dropped a letter grade. If you take a fifth, you fail. Two tardies (up to fifteen minutes late) equal one absence; showing up fifteen minutes late or more is an absence. (For those who think this policy is strict, bear in mind that 95% of our courses are three to four hours once or twice a week, rather than the more typical 45 minutes a day three times a week or whatever.)

Since the school is aware of its stringent attendance policy, the handbook is pretty fair when it comes to professors who are late: since 15 minutes late is an absence, we’re legally allowed to leave if a professor doesn’t show up in the first 15 minutes as long as nobody from the office or something comes in to announce he or she is running late.

In my four years and counting of school, we’ve never actually instituted the late-professor policy. Generally, the only times I’ve had consistently late professors were in classes that were actually important, and they were almost always late, rather than completely absent. Sure, we’ve had half-joking discussions about leaving when we’ve reached 15-minute mark, but nobody has ever dared leave, and the professor has generally shown up within 20 minutes.

Why is this the case? Funny thing about Columbia students, dumbasses that they are: they want to learn things when they deem the subject important. So, if a class is in their major, they’d never leave, although nobody would bat an eyelash about leaving, for example, senior seminar.

Which brings me to today. Qween was late. At the five-minute mark, people started to get antsy and chit-chatty. At the 10-minute mark, people started seriously talking about leaving by the 15-minute mark. We all bitched about how fucking pointless the class is, what a waste of time it’d be to stay even if she did show up, and we all decided that she couldn’t do anything if there was a mass exodus.

At the 15-minute mark, we all started writing our names on the board, so that she’d know we at least showed up. Unfortunately, after that point, very few people actually left. Some of them said they had other classes to go to, so they may as well wait. Others, like me, wanted to leave but didn’t want to be the only one.

I stood at one of the two doors to the large classroom and made eye contact with another girl standing at the other door. We looked back at the people doing anything but leaving, then back at each other.

“I’ll go if you go,” she finally said. “We can be partners in crime.”

Was she coming on to me?

Answer: no. We both left the classroom and immediately went in opposite directions.

I was still worried, since three people total (one guy left before the two of us) does not an exodus make. I didn’t care enough to go back and wait, though, so I headed toward the train.

As I went, I called Lucy, who had called me during my first class of the morning. She left a message: “Hey, dumbass, call me back.” Like I said, our relationship is healthy as a horse. (Careful readers will note that me calling back actually does, technically, make me a dumbass.)

So I talked to Lucy and blah-blah-blah, she brought up some random guy she met eight months ago while she was still dating abusive boyfriend #1, but she wouldn’t dump him in pursuit of a better guy, but now she ran into this better guy again, and blah-blah-blah…

Then, she said, “I’m probably moving back to Chicago next year.”

Good Lord, the news I’ve been waiting for. I’ve been trying to convince her all summer to move back home. Not for my sake, since it’d invariably ruin my life, but because she’s ruining her own life by staying in that hellhole. She was actually talking about going back to school and getting an apartment away from her parents, and so on, and I was thrilled — it was almost identical to the plan I’d outlined for her early in the summer, which she’d refused to do because it was too late to apply to get into a different school.

“Yeah,” she said, “so Dan and I were probably gonna get an apartment near UIC, and I’m going to go to Northeastern.”

Dan? Creepy motherfucking Dan? Here I am, working my ass off trying to hit her from every single angle with reasons why she’s throwing her life into the toilet and reasons why it’d be advantageous for her to come home, and she’s having secret talks with Creepy Dan and he’s really the one who got her to come home?

God. Fucking. Dammit.

Not that I’d really be able to do anything about it anyway. My plan was for her to come back, for us to get an apartment, so she could be away from her parents but be near good doctors and (reasonably) good schools. But this plan would only work right now, because I’m leaving for Los Angeles in February and won’t be back until June (if at all). So if she’s planning to start school in the spring, it’s not like I’d be here anyway. And she even brought that up when she reminded me that most leases in the area are for 12 months. I figured I could sublet.

Anyway…does this news please me? Frankly, no. But while Creepy Dan is fucking creepy as hell, he’s still arguably the healthiest person in her life (far beyond me and her parents and anybody she’s ever dated in her life). I’m not sure if this a compliment to her or a detriment to everyone else (including me), but I will accept that it’s true.

But it makes me feel down on myself because, among other things, it’s like she intentionally made plans to come back to this city as soon as I’m leaving. It makes me wonder if she’s finally realizing how pernicious our friendship is. This depresses me, because if she figures that out, rather than trying to work on fixing it like I am, she’d just let it go, citing the “bad influence” that she “doesn’t need” in her life. Not that we’ve never shoved one another out of our lives, but this time it’d be for good.

And it’d be because of Creepy Dan.

This means I’d have to fight for my honor. No, I won’t challenge him to a duel. Really, I’ll just keep working on her. “Why come back to Chicago? I thought your mysterious illness was brought on by seasonal changes…perhaps you should go to a place like Los Angeles, which in addition to having no culture, has no seasons.

“Besides, hasn’t Creepy Dan confessed his undying love for you on multiple occasions? You really think living with a guy like that would be good for you? It’d be much better to live with someone who can barely stand the sight of you, so you have somebody to fight with regularly.”

It’s so easy!

Posted by Stan on October 11, 2004 5:18 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (1)

May 16, 2004

Dissed

This is my favorite backfired “I am Spartacus” moment ever, I think.

I’ve talked about step-outlines before, but in case you forgot, here’s a slight refresher of the very obvious meat of the step-outline: it’s the story told through steps. Zing. Basically, you number (or bullet-point) the various “steps” you require to get the story from its start to its conclusion, with as few frills as possible. Note that a “step” is not necessarily a scene; two or three scenes may accomplish one step of the story, or one scene could accomplish two or three steps. It sounds weird, but it makes sense when somebody who isn’t retarded explains it.

I like step-outlining because it’s basically a map, for me. Every step has a story-related purpose. When I try to free-write, I have a tendency to meander, and while I used to like the whole idea of just writing and working the story out that way, then going back and focusing it, I decided less time is wasted by just step-outlining the beats of the story and getting right to it. Or, even if I have a vague notion of what the story will be, when I get down to writing it, I tend to forget things and leave them out. When I step-outline, I’m free to insert and remove things even as I write the script. It’s a lot easier to add or remove a step than to add or remove a scene or two. For me, anyway.

This is different from a treatment. I feel like treatments, like pitches, should be created after the screenplay is finished, because it’s basically a summary of the story. It’s not an outline; it tells you what you need to know about the story in the simplest terms possible, and it’s normally not used in aid of writing the story (although some people, for reasons I personally don’t understand, use it for that) but as a tool to sell the story.

So, for this conspiracy class I’m taking, we were assigned to write both a step-outline and a brief treatment of our stories. I guess the treatment I wrote worked quite well, which surprised me, because I thought it was pretty incoherent. The feedback I got was pretty positive, particularly from the professor, who insisted there was “a lot of good writing” in the treatment. Apparently I have a knack for summarizing complicated characters in less than a sentence, which I know is good in treatments.

Owen, however, was not overly fond of my treatment. He decided it was “too conversational and too literary, and therefore not a treatment.” I actually agree with the first clause of Owen’s assessment: I write treatments like a story, sans dialogue and overly flowery language. For example, I will write something like, “They hide out in a fleabag motel” rather than “A cracked and ancient sign over the filthy glass doors read ‘Duncan’s Motor Lodge.’ The door creaked slightly as Alfred opened it and entered a high-ceilinged lobby that smelled of stale cigarettes and a prostitution ring…” and so on, which would go on forever.

The first example tells you everything you need to know: They (Alfred and his lover, Bartleby) hide out (hide out) in a fleabag (unpleasant) motel (cheap). The second, in addition to being a terrible description, goes into waaaaaaay too much detail for something that’s all about brevity. Nobody who reads a treatment gives a shit about the look of the sign or the filthiness of the glass doors or the name of the motel or the creakiness of the doors or the smell of the lobby. Hell, you can’t even smell things in movies (although really good cinematographers and production designers can sometimes do a hell of a job making you think you’d know what the place would smell like, if you could).

Which brings me to my problem with Owen’s treatment, if you’ll allow me to digress even further away from the original point of this entry. And I am ready and willing to school his enormous, probably hairy ass as soon as we read his treatment aloud in class. Owen’s treatment is currently, according to his first readers, 17 pages long. The maximum page-count is supposed to be five.

I think he thinks his exorbitant page count is really impressive to the peons who could only come up with five measly pages. Except I am much more impressed by the people whose treatments started out at 17 pages, which they then chopped down to five. Again, brevity is the key for a treatment, so the fact that they initially believed the minimum page count to fully tell their story was 17, and then they managed to cut it all the way down to five and still tell a coherent (probably tighter and more interesting) story, that’s impressive. I had to chop my treatment from 12 pages down to five, and I still went a half-page over and felt like a jackass (until I found out that almost everybody else did, too).

I respect Mike (who plays a prominent role in my last entry) more and more every day. First, he gave me really kick-ass suggestions to improve two of the scripts I’ve pitched. But he’s also the only guy in class who has managed to cut his story down to the required page length and still have it be coherent and tight. His two-page treatment was spectacular, and his five-page one just filled in a few gaps. He’s an impressive writer.

Anyway, to the point of this digression: the problem with Owen’s treatment is that it’s overlong, but it’s not even remotely concise. The treatment I read, which was 11 pages long, spent way too much time being, you know, literary. (It was not at all conversational, because he has all the style and wit of a Joan of Arcadia erotic fan-fiction author.)

He writes paragraphs like these: “The Preacher walks up the dusty driveway, gravel crunching beneath his feet. An old gray Volvo is the lone car in the parking lot. The Preacher approaches the entrance to a store called JOE’S VIDEO DEPOT. Inside, many people talk, discussing the new movies that are on display in the video store. The Preacher speaks to no one. He walks past a door labeled “ADULT VIDEOS” and passes a bin filled with various genres of pornography: STRAIGHT, GAY, SHEMALE, LESBIAN, ASIAN, and so on. The Preacher goes through the bins and finds his selection: THE AMAZING ANAL CANAL PART 6, starring Kristy McNichol and Michael Clarke Duncan.”

Which is a little too much. I mean, sure, parts of it would probably be acceptable in the script itself (especially if the excessive details, like the Volvo and the stars of the porno, are important later, or if they hit on a joke of some kind — like, haha, the washed-up ’80s starlet will do anal with that huge guy from The Green Mile), but that is not a treatment. Here is a treatment: “The Preacher goes to a video store and rents a porno.”

It’s not the best writing in the world, but that’s how a treatment is written. It’s supposed to be a drab and styleless description of the story, but the trick is to engage the reader with your complete lack of style in describing the meat and potatoes of your plot. I can’t figure out this trick, which is why my treatments are always so “literary” and “conversational.” The “literary” is so the reader can see the film in their head — I put in enough visual information so that they can hit on their own image of it, so they understand what I’m going for. Everybody has an idea of what a fleabag motel looks like — it starts to get confusing when you go into details about what the lobby looks like, because what does that have to do with the story?

Every single sentence has to pertain to what happens in the story. You can write about a gray Volvo being the only car in the parking lot if it becomes important later, and if you do write about a gray Volvo and it doesn’t pay off later, the person reading it is gonna get pissed off, because if you wrote it in your treatment, it’s gotta be important to the story at some point.

Okay, sorry about getting so ranty, but this actually does pertain to the story I planned to tell (plus, I wanted to document what a hypocritical asshat Owen is). Owen went off on my treatment being too literary and conversational, and I got pissed and was about to defend my work when something completely amazing happened: everybody else, including the professor, defended it for me. Everybody liked my treatment. They thought, as I said before, that it was tight and conveyed everything I intended to convey without getting bogged down in details.

Owen maintained that my treatment was not “visual enough,” but he’s missing the point of the context of “visual” as it pertains to a treatment. A treatment is not merely visual, in the sense of overlong descriptions of stuff nobody cares about; a treatment is observable behavior. That’s what makes it visual. So while parts of my treatment got bogged down in dialogue-heavy scenes (which are mostly written like “She tells Alfred that he’s an asshole. Alfred tells her Bartleby never loved her.”), it’s there because without descriptions of the dialogue in those scenes, the story makes no sense. I’m not going to get all flowery-symbolic to explain dialogue in my treatment, because you know what it is in the screenplay? Dialogue. Not symbolic action. Not visual poetry. Just people standing around talking. Which is boring as hell in a treatment, but it can week exceedingly well in a screenplay, especially when you’re ripping off the scene in Marathon Man where Janeway explains to Babe every single thing that’s going on, and then double-crosses him.

So, with everybody defending my work and wanting to make out with my treatment, I felt slightly vindicated. But not vindicated enough, which is why what happened next totally kicked ass.

A little while later, Owen started bitching about step-outlines. I don’t remember what, if anything, prompted it, but basically he said something along the lines of, “Doing a step-outline was a complete waste of time. It doesn’t help at all.”

Our professor said, “A lot of students have told me they’ve been very helpful.”

Owen was wearing dark sunglasses, but I totally have the feeling he rolled his eyes at her. He looked to the students, his peeps, from behind those dark glasses and said, “Raise your hand if you found the step-outlines at all helpful.”

The professor started to defend herself, saying, “I don’t really think that’s —” but then yet another amazing thing happened: every single person in the class, except for Owen, raised his or her hand.

Owen stared at us, his jaw slowly dropping. He really, honestly believed we would all rally on his side. “I, uh, I…” he stammered. “I guess I’m in the minority here.”

“I guess so,” the professor said as the rest of us snickered in amusement.

Like I said, I find the step-outlines very useful. I know lots of others do, as well. I don’t think everybody in the class did, but I think those that didn’t raised their hands anyway, just because nobody wants to agree with anything Owen says at any point in time.

I was so glad for that, since we didn’t have time to read his treatment, Owen at least got some sort of comeuppance.

Posted by Stan on May 16, 2004 1:20 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (4)

May 14, 2004

The Threesome

This is strictly on the gossip-mill, but whatever. So was The Theory, but my rabid fan is clamoring for a new entry, since it’s been nearly three weeks since my last post. In lieu of anything credible or interesting, I’m willing to write up some gossipy libel since it’s the latest buzz in the screenwriting department.

But first, some backstory.

Almost immediately after posting about The Theory, I started to doubt my conclusion that Owen was a deeply closeted homosexual just waiting to leap out and pounce on any number of terrified men out there. I had a couple of reasons for doubting myself:

1. Immediately after re-reading the entry, I decided that, while the gossip is amusing, I came off like an obsessive homophobe myself. It seemed a tad hypocritcal. I figure that if I’m not gay (key word “if”) and I’m doing the same thing he is, it’s possible he’s not, either.
2. My insatiable quest for knowledge (for mocking him) led me to find a site he has on deviantART, which has a lot of his short stories and what barely passes as a blog. Everything there, posted in his natural habitat and designed for people he knows, negates The Theory.
3. It’s been getting warmer lately. The ladies, as they often do, have been dressing in next to nothing, which is awesome. However, Owen pays way too much attention to these women. One in particular, a friend of mine, he will stare at unabashedly, slack-jawed and unable to say anything. It would really be funny if I didn’t want to kick his teeth in all the time.

Of course, none of this is any more conclusive than my initial supposed conclusions, so take it all with a grain of salt. Fellow likes to say that someone as deeply closeted (and disturbed) as Owen wouldn’t really leave a trail of any kind leading us to any legitimate conclusions. We’re mostly just working on weird observations and Fellow’s finely tuned gaydar.

So, doubting The Theory as I was, I sort of gave up on Owen providing any interesting observations. Instead of reinvigorating the blog, he got sort of boring. I mean, same old shit every week. More pretentious sci-fi talk, more comic book obsessing, more awkward silences. I got tired of memorizing and cataloguing everything he says and does online. But this is just too good.

On Wednesday night, we had a rare absence from Owen. Nobody was disappointed, least of all a guy in my class named Mark. He told me the following story about an incident that occurred the week before:

Last week, we discussed our treatments. We got into a large circle of chairs (rather than our typical conference tables) to do a hippie rap session in which we either pitched or read our treatments and then gave each other feedback. Typically, Owen spent several decades listing each and every complaint he had about others’ stories. I really appreciate the fact that he can be so attentive while listening to people read (as interested as I may be, I often find myself zoning out), but he gives everything that smarmy, man-am-I-smarter-than-you way that makes me want to kick his teeth in more than usual.

Regarding Mark’s story, Owen commented that there were “plausibility” issues regarding the general plot, which involves a radio shock-jock who falls in love with his psychiatrist, who is hired to help him when the shock-jock has a breakdown on the air. No matter how we tried to explain it, Owen couldn’t wrap his head around the idea that a radio station would keep their highest rated personality on the air and pay for him to get therapy instead of just firing him.

Mark got pissed. Really pissed. (Which is why I think it’s possible this entire story is made up.)

During the break, Mark and a friend of his (her name is unimportant, but the fact that she’s a woman is, so keep that in mind) approached Owen to confront him about his bull-headedness. Before they could say anything relevant, Owen asked the following question:

“If I gave you both $50, would you participate in a threesome?”

Mark and his friend responded thusly:

“…”

As did I, upon hearing this story. “He must’ve been joking,” I said when I regained my ability to speak.

Mark looked me in the eyes and shook his head.

“We didn’t say anything,” he told me. “How do you even respond to something like that, from anyone, not just Owen?”

So then Owen suddenly started laughing. He has this creepy laugh that’s a mixture of Tom Hulce’s Mozart laugh and Robert Carradine’s nerd laugh. He said, “Come on, you guys, I was just kidding.” He said it very awkwardly, like a football player who thinks the only way to recover a fumble is to jump on top of the ball and weep like a woman while the other team piles on top of him.

It was clear to Mark that Owen was not in any way joking, despite his awkward “ha ha funny joke!” attempt to recover. The fact is, he seriously propositioned two classmates. And the thing that makes it creepiest to me is that the two he propositioned aren’t even going out. In fact, they’re not even flirtatious. They’re just…them. Friends. They don’t even make sexually charged jokes to one another in class.

Needless to say, this rumor exploded the following week, when Owen happened to not show up. In fact — and this just popped into my head — perhaps he didn’t show up because of the unusual proposition. It appeared that he hadn’t planned to show up at our Thursday class (Mark’s also in that — yay for screenwriting students!). Our professor made fun of him for sending an e-mail saying he wouldn’t be there when he ended up going.

And, in fact, he was wearing dark sunglasses the whole time. Perhaps because he was hungover, perhaps so he could avoid direct eye contact with anybody.

With a normal person, this type of behavior wouldn’t surprise me. With Owen, it sort of does. Owen has shown himself to have very little humility. He’s better than we are, so why should he be embarrassed by a horribly inappropriate sexual advance on two people at the same time? Once again, it’s possible that he’s shown himself to be an actual human being. Of course, he managed to crawl up from the unfortunate muck called “humanity” and regain control of his pedestal, high above us all, in time for our Thursday class. I gather that his desperation to prove how much smarter he is than the rest of us thwarted any embarrassment his conscience attempt to inflict upon him.

When I started writing this entry, I thought it was just a silly little rumor of an untruth, but now I sort of wonder. Owen is most certainly not the kind of guy who would cut class to go out a-drinkin’, especially if it would cause him to miss not one but two classes, so I really doubt the “hungover” theory applies. What other explanation is there for the dark, eye-contact-preventing sunglasses?

So there you have it. Maybe Owen’s not gay. At least he’s a sexual deviant (or an attempted sexual deviant). Perhaps next week he’ll show up to class in his crotchless Spike Spiegel costume, wondering who’s going to the anime convention at the Star Plaza in Merrillville this weekend.

For the sake of this blog, we can only hope.

Posted by Stan on May 14, 2004 9:47 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)

April 24, 2004

The Theory

Another week, another Owen story. If it weren’t for the fact that I’m already almost to the point of suicide, I’d try to get into some classes with him next semester just so I never run out of blog tales.

So last week, as we all know, the following things occurred:

• Owen intentionally butchered a reading of another student’s treatment, in particular highlighting a few spelling errors by mispronouncing the words to match the inaccurate spelling
• My friend Maria was assigned as his first reader
• Owen made an enemy for life (i.e., me)

And this week came The Theory. While reading this, bear in mind that we screenwriters are unbelievable gossips. Actually, “gossip” is too light a word. We’re shit-talkers; I’ll admit it. Long before any of us ever make a sale to legitimize our cynicism, we take on the role of “jaded asshole who thinks he is better than everybody else.” We’re just preparing ourselves for a career of being the lowest possible person on the totem pole (we’re lower than PAs, for the love of God!).

In addition to our shit-talking, we also have incredible, insane imaginations, because we’re hack writers. We understand the value of taking tiny snippets of disconnected information and turning it into cinematic gold! Or lead.

Essentially, in our off-time, we talk shit about everybody we know, and when we run out of shit to talk, we hone in on tiny details and use that to fuel fictional shit to talk. I make no apologies for this behavior. I know it’s wrong and that I, and all of my compatriots, are horrible monsters. Unfortunately, that’s not going to make me or anyone else not do it.

So during our class on Monday, Fellow, Maria, and I filled in another classmate on the events of Thursday. He was absent for whatever reason, so he didn’t know anything about Owen’s behavior. That’s when, after we spewed out all the details of the Thursday session, Fellow spewed out The Theory:

“I think he’s gay.”

Of all the people to pitch this concept, Fellow would be the one. He’s quite gay himself. Maybe he just understands the way homosexuals act more than we do, or maybe he has a more finely tuned “gaydar.” Whatever the reason, Fellow blurted it out and then explained that on Thursday, one of the hotter days of recent weeks, Fellow came to class wearing a muscle shirt. He’s pretty pumped, so it wouldn’t be like, for example, me coming to class wearing a muscle shirt, where, after the horrified recoil and vomiting of my classmates, they will settle on merely averting their eyes for the duration of the class session. Women stare at Fellow. This is not his desired goal, of course, but I haven’t noticed any men staring at Fellow.

Of course, Fellow has noticed men staring at him. One example he gave: Owen, who apparently could not take his eyes off of Fellow on Thursday. I didn’t notice this, myself, but then again, I don’t generally pay attention when people (least of all men) check Fellow out. I notice a lot when women check him out, when I’m with him, because I’m all, “Ladies, he’s playing for a different team. Why not give Stan a whirl?” That doesn’t really go over well, and I get jealous.

My neuroses aside, Fellow pitched this idea, and we were all sort of reluctant to agree with it, although we wouldn’t necessarily rule it out. It was just an odd, random declaration, backed up with no independent evidence. I mean, we’re all unabashed shit-talkers, and sometimes we dabble in the realm of fiction in our conversation, but we at least have inscrutable arguments to back up our claims.

But Fellow’s theory started to take shape on Wednesday. As I mentioned last week, I have a class with Owen and Grey on Wednesday nights, and Owen has apparently taken it upon himself to enter the group, much to the chagrin of myself, Grey, and the two ladies we hang with before class. Now, awhile back, I bought a shirt from Glark that reads, “Seventies sci-fi was all about hexagons.” I should’ve known better than to wear it at a time when I knew I’d see Owen. He instantly honed in on the shirt, read it to me aloud (because I am illiterate), and then said, “I thought seventies sci-fi was all about men in knee-length tunics.”

What the fuck was he talking about?

“What the fuck are you talking about?” I asked. I’m too nice to embarrass other people* by making a scene, which is why I didn’t rip Owen a new asshole the instant he approached us, but I am not feigning niceness anymore. Not by a long shot. More on that in a little.

“You know how they wear those tunics, and they only go down to the knees, so you see their shaved, hairless legs,” Owen said. “It’s disturbing. I don’t want to see that.”

I’m sure Owen wasn’t making this up out of the blue, but I’ll be damned if I can think of a single example of seventies sci-fi involving men with unshaved legs wearing tunics that look like women’s dresses. Plus, for somebody who doesn’t want to see that, he’s spent an awful lot of time considering it. I thought about The Theory, and it suddenly seemed like there might be something to it.

I wasn’t convinced, though. People say tangential, homophobic things all the time. It doesn’t mean anything. Or maybe it does.

On Thursday, our morning class was pretty much a blow-off. The prof was taking a trip to San Francisco, so she just spent half an hour teaching us how to use a budgeting program, then let us loose in the lab to do our budgeting. Instead of doing that, we all sat around shooting the shit. My friend Maria, Owen’s first reader, was trying to get her work done for our afternoon class. One of the assignments was to read his treatment and give feedback.

She let me read his treatment first, because she didn’t want to have anything to do with it initially. I have some minor nitpicks and some major nitpicks. The minor is that it’s not a treatment; it’s a short story. He’s all, “A long, black sedan drives down a desolate country highway, makes a right into the gravel-strewn parking lot of the store, and parks behind the building. Murton emerges from the vehicle, dusts off his pants, and slowly enters the store, which has a sign hanging above the door that reads JONAH’S HOUSE OF VIDEOS.” That’s not a treatment. A treatment is this: “Murton drives to the video store.” Visual, observable behavior, without any frills. Economy of phrasing is key, since most producers and executives will barely skim your shit anyway — it has to be tight, and it has to be short. I now know why his treatment was 10 pages when the rest of ours were three.

My other nitpick was that he wasn’t even finished writing the goddamn thing. A little more than halfway through, he has a little note saying, “Here’s where I changed the treatment, but I didn’t get to the end, so you’ll see some notable differences in subplots and secondary characters.” Which is fine, except for the fact that the story, which barely made sense to begin with, becomes completely illogical for the last four pages, because everything is completely different. It’s like Mulholland Drive, except unintentional.

But here’s the biggest problem I had with his treatment. After making such a big fucking juvenile stink about the spelling errors and lack of proofreading in that guy’s treatment last week — guess whose fucking treatment wasn’t proofread? Yes, he spell-checked it, but that’s only half the battle. He had more than one “problem” word on every page, beating the other guy’s one-per-page average by quite a bit. I got tripped up on the first fucking page, when he described a character as “a bard,” with “hair legs.” I assumed he meant “hairy” on the latter, but I was baffled by the “bard” thing. I figured it was some kind of British slang term or something, but later I found out he just misspelled “beard.”

And the grammar wasn’t much better. The last time I saw that many comma splices, I was reading one of my blog entries! And ordinarily I wouldn’t make a big deal out of it. Yes, it’s sad that both the screenwriting and fiction departments are filled with people who don’t know basic English grammar and think that a spell-checker will repair all their mistakes. They’re writers, for Christ’s sake. They should know it. But here’s the difference between all of them and Owen: they know they don’t know it. Every writer I know complains they don’t know grammar. They know how to spell, but they’re too lazy to proofread. Hell, most of them (myself included) are too lazy to even spell-check.

Plus, even if they do know proper grammar and spelling, everyone makes mistakes. Even in proofreading (especially proofreading your own work), you miss things that you know are wrong. Which, I think, is why we’re all (except for Owen) so lenient when it comes to errors in others’ work. In addition to the fact that it’s mean and humiliating, we know that everybody knows better, or at least they know they don’t know better.

So, when Owen started that shit up last week, he was a goddamn motherfucker, and because of it, he does not have a get-out-of-jail-free card. If he’s gonna be such an asslicker, he should have made sure his shit was immaculate. But it wasn’t. I pointed out the many errors to Maria and insisted she read it, write some constructive feedback, and be sure to own his ass on the fucking lack of proofreading. And she, as bloodthirsty for petty vengeance as I am, immediately agreed and ran off to read Owen’s treatment.

Later, as I was talking with some other friends, Maria approached me, claiming she had airtight, empirical evidence of Owen’s homosexuality. It was all in the treatment, she insisted, and while I agree she made a good case, I still was not necessarily convinced.

Owen’s story is an ensemble piece. It has five main characters who are gay, one of whom is a repressed and angry (and unwilling to admit his homosexuality until the end) reverend, another of whom is hiding in the closet. The other two main characters are straight, and one of them is a woman. With that in mind, here was Maria’s point: we screenwriters are lazy hacks. We take the old, elementary school mantra “Write what you know” to a whole new level of bland storytelling. And most of us, especially since we’re still in college and pretty inexperienced as writers, have a central protagonist who is basically a gussied-up version of ourselves.

For example, Maria tends to write about straight, single, white, suburban women in their 20s. Fellow tends to write about gay, single, black, urban men in their 20s. I tend to write about straight, single, white, suburban men in their 20s who jerk off a lot and live with their parents. It’s just a natural inclination, no matter how outlandish or unknown the subject matter is, to have a central character who is rooted exactly in something we know better than anyone else: ourselves. We’re hacks.**

Maria’s argument was that Owen, writing about not one but five gay characters, and the “central” character (yes, it’s an ensemble piece, but there’s still the one point-of-view character, through whose eyes we see most of the action) is the angry, repressed reverend who hides his sexual identity through random misogyny and homophobia that makes him feel like a “real” man. Sound familiar?

I immediately bought Maria’s argument, but after thinking about it awhile, I still wasn’t totally convinced. Writers do try to stretch their wings, especially if they’re really talented and experienced (or think they’re really talented and experienced). Owen’s the most arrogant person I’ve ever met, so it wouldn’t surprise me if he, perfectly straight and woman-loving, thought he could accomplish the task of writing five characters whose lives are completely unlike anything he’s ever experienced. It’s harder to do than it sounds, no matter how much research you think you can do on the subject. Even putting yourself into a different culture, sociologist-style, isn’t the same experience of living your entire life that way. There’s no way it can be, and no amount of interviewing, reading, or interacting will give you that experience. All we can do as writers is guesstimate based on what we’ve learned, and usually we’re pretty bad at it (see also: any female character in a David Mamet script).

During class, two things happened that pretty much forced me to believe The Theory:

1. The coolest fucking thing to happen in a long time is that there’s a free screening of Baadasssss! on Monday night. This film, originally titled How to Get the Man’s Foot Outta Your Ass (which, seriously, is a million times better), was directed and co-written by Mario Van Peebles, in which he also stars as his father, Melvin Van Peebles (the other co-writer), and it tells the story of the difficulties he had making Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song. And here’s the kicker: Mario and Melvin are both going to be there, and they’re going to do a Q&A afterward. Unbelievably awesome, and you better believe I’m gonna be there (and I’ll blog it!).

   Anyway, Fellow was the one who alerted the class to the screening. He found a flyer/ticket and passed it around and told us to pick up our own in the film office. After we basked in the joy and confusion of our memories of seeing Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song for the first time, Owen announced to the class, “You all know Mario Van Peebles is gay, right?” He didn’t say this in a homophobic way, necessarily; it was more a declaration of something we absolutely had to know if we didn’t already.

   After an awkward couple of silent seconds, Ted responded, “A gay man in the film industry? I don’t believe it.” He’s amusing, that Ted.

   But it made me think. Again, this isn’t the open-and-shut case Fellow and Maria think it is, but of all the people I know who are fascinated to the point of obsession about who’s gay and who isn’t, only two of them are straight. And I’d say I know about a dozen, so there’s a 17% chance that Owen’s straight.

2. We had to do evaluations for this class. Normally, we’d be doing them next week, but our prof scheduled individual conferences, so that fucked everything up. We were given permission to do them early, but we were not given a TA to proctor. My prof sought me out Wednesday night and asked me to get the evaluations and proctor them myself. Yay for the fun.

   It wasn’t something I wanted to do, and I wanted to get it done as quickly as possible, because I thought we would be dismissed to go home afterward. It turns out we were not, which made me even more irritated, since it was getting close to the end of the session, and guess who was holding us up? Fucking Owen, writing a dissertation on the quality of our particular profession. Fucking Owen.

   We were all done, sitting in silence, and people started grumbling. Most were bad-mouthing Owen, which, I discovered, can be heard very easily from the front of the room. Our prof, I’m coming to realize, hears all the comments we make about him from the back. As does Owen, who sits right next to her so he can annoy her at close proximity.

   Finally, Owen said to me, “I’m probably going to need a few more minutes. Is there somewhere I can drop this when I’m done?” It was surprisingly conscientious, but still fucking moronic. Why? I explained it to Owen, so I may as well explain it to you, too:

   “No, there’s not. You know why? Because these things need to be put into the envelope by me, sealed, and delivered by me to the assistant to the chair. If they aren’t delivered by me, and if they’re not in the envelope, you know what they do with them? They throw them the hell away. You know why? Because anybody could have written them, or told you what to write.*** So if you want to waste your time filling the fucking thing out to have them throw it away, by all means, be my guest. If not, hurry the hell up, because we all wanna get the fuck outta here.”

   I am aware, of course, that if I hadn’t grandstanded, he would’ve been able to finish the evaluation that much faster, but the dude just pisses me the hell off, and I needed to vent. And nobody seemed to mind, since they all agreed with me, and since I’m one of the very few who pointed out how fucking stupid he is despite his guise of tortured brilliance.

   Owen, who looked all stone-faced and stoic (though his eyes betrayed his shock and horror), said nothing and continued with the evaluation. A few minutes later, he quietly slid it across the conference table to me.

   “You wanna give me the fucking pencil, too?” I asked. We’re given little, cheap golf pencils because, for some reason, nobody uses number-two pencils at my school. Since they’re such cheap pieces of shit, and there are millions of them, I wouldn’t have cared if it was anybody else. It was Owen, though. I had to give him as hard a time as possible.

   Owen handed me the pencil and said, jokingly, “Maybe I should stick it up your arse.” He tried to fake a British accent and failed spectacularly. Then he giggled, very much like Robert Carradine in Revenge of the Nerds. “I bet that’s what you want, anyway.”

   At this point I had the door open to leave with the evluations, but I turned around and was going to make a comment when I saw the look in his eyes. The tone in his voice, and that look. It both disturbed me and convinced me, now and forever, of his homosexuality.

   Because, you see, it wasn’t what I wanted (and even if I did, Owen would be the last person I would ask to perform the chore) — it was what he wanted. That’s what that really fucking weird, suggestive tone in his voice told me. Although most of what convinced me was in his eyes, which were, quoth Eric Carmen, hungry eyes. With that one look, he cannot disguise that he feels the magic between he and I.

So what does this mean? I was last to leap aboard The Theory man-train, but now I’m convinced. But what’s the point of it all? He’s gay, he’s apparently repressed and masks his real feelings through a mixture of homophobia and misogyny. Added to his ordinary attention-whoring and misguided obsession with British culture, it makes him the worst human being I’ve ever personally met.

But, if The Theory is true, it almost makes him a real, human person. He’s not some walking, real-life stereotype of The Prisoner-loving, J.G. Ballard-reading, British spelling-using, opinion-screaming, it’s-time-to-slay-the-dragon-playing über-geek. He’s a guy with a problem and a secret and what he obviously considers a flaw, despite the fact that at an art school, being straight is considered more of a social taboo than being gay.

When I think about it that way, it makes me want to make fun of him less. But then, he says anything at any time, and not only do I want to mock him until the day he dies, but I also want to say horribly mean, abusive things to him and beat the shit out of him. Because, flawed human or not, he’s still the worst human being I’ve ever met, and I just. Don’t. Like. Him. At all.

*Not to mention myself. When I get angry and start yelling at people, I tend to get really incoherent. It’s a trait I inherited from my father, who has been known to spout more puzzling phrases than Darren McGavin.

**Which is not to say we only write through those characters. No, they’re just the main characters. Not every person in everything I write is somebody just like me, but there’s usually at least one thinly-veiled Stan trolling the story for some loose women or free coffee.

***This sounds like a logical fallacy, I’m sure, and it is. Usually students don’t proctor the evaluations; it’s either done by an impartial faculty member or an equally impartial TA, but here’s the thing about humanity: nobody’s impartial, so we’re pretty much on the honor system. I’m on my honor to seal that envelope, not look at what anybody wrote, not change what anybody wrote by filling out blank evaluation forms, or to say to the students, “Hey, everybody, let’s all write that she’s a bitch!”

I could do all those things, but they’re trusting me not to, and for the most part, proctors respect the rules. Most of the time they are impartial or simply apathetic, but if a faculty member is proctoring, they are sometimes competitive with others, and if a TA is doing it — well, they’re students, and they may not like this prof and try to influence us against her. I’ve never seen that happen, but that’s not to say it doesn’t.

Posted by Stan on April 24, 2004 4:01 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (1)

April 16, 2004

Owen Is the Biggest Fucking Asshole I’ve Ever Met in My Entire Life, and He Must Die

Probably the nicest person I’ve ever met in my entire life is a guy we call Grey (short for Greydon), who is nice, open, and accepting of everyone he meets. He’s even genuinely nice to Owen — he’s the guy who got frustrated last Thursday when we all laughed and made him seem like an asshole. I have a class with him on Wednesday nights and another on Thursday afternoons, the same two classes I share with Owen and a number of others. We screenwriters travel in packs.

On Wednesday afternoons, before my night class, I eat dinner with a couple of girls I had a class with last semester, which started as coincidence but turned into a planned ritual. While we shoot the shit, we usually run into Grey, who sits with us and talks until class time. Unfortunately, Owen passed through and noticed Grey. Since he’s probably the only person who’s nice to Owen, obviously Owen felt the need to stick by Grey. He invaded, monopolized, and eventually destroyed our conversation.

As I’ve already mentioned, Owen has an extremely loud, extremely shrill voice that cuts through all sound like a Ginsu knife. We tried to talk over him, and then to talk past him, but eventually we just gave up and sat in uncomfortable silence until the girls rushed off to class (30 minutes early). Put in an awkward position, Grey and I moved on to class, too. One of the things I find really interesting about Grey is that, while he actually is genuinely nice and genuinely cares about the shit Owen rambles on about, he doesn’t find the rambling any less irritating than we do. He’s just better at handling it than people who have no patience (i.e., me).

This, however, leads me to the first time I’ve ever been alone with Owen. I’ve wondered about that moment, because I knew it’d happen at some point. I kept thinking about how I’d handle it. I assumed I’d set him on fire or something, and considering that, I’d say I handled things quite well.

We walked to the classroom, and Grey went on past us to the bathroom (that traitor), so there Owen and I stood. Owen peered through the window to the door at another classmate, Dan, who was sitting at the classroom computer.

“Check it out,” Owen said, “he’s looking at porn.”

Dan was very clearly not looking at porn, but I chuckled sympathetically.

Owen looked me in the eyes, and I immediately stared down at the floor, fearing he would hypnotize me. “Your job is to get him out of the room so I can get his passwords.”

“What?” I was completely, utterly stunned. Of all the stupid fucking things I would have expected him to say, that was not one of them.

“Just go in there and convince him to leave,” Owen repeated. “Then I’ll run in and get his password.”

“Dude, just pay for your own porn,” I said, thinking about adding “Or check out Usenet,” but I figured that would betray the hoary depths of my Internet porn knowledge.

“Come on, it’ll be funny,” Owen said.

“Fuck you,” I said, pushing past him and going into the room. That was the end of our first — and hopefully only — conversation. Since this is the first time in a long time I’ve seriously (as in, not jokingly) said “Fuck you” to anybody, my mind started to race with the possible consequences. We’re always told not to burn any bridges, especially before we’ve crossed them (ugh, I hate metaphors), because it could come back and bite us in the ass. What if Owen was a studio head some day, and his was the only place in town even remotely interested in my script, but then he found out I was the writer and passed and murdered my children and blew up my car? That would suck.

All things considered about Owen, though, I think he has less of a future as a screenwriter than I do (and that’s saying something), so I figured it wouldn’t hurt in the long run. In fact, it made my life a little easier, because now he doesn’t even try to engage me in conversation or say hello to me or anything. It’s kinda nice.

Then, on Thursday, Owen did something unforgivable. And what makes it even more unforgivable is that he didn’t do it to me. In fact, it wasn’t about me at all. It’s about the fact that he’s the biggest fucking asshole on the planet, and even though I have no relation to the incident that occurred (other than being in the room), I feel it’s my personal responsiblity to destroy Owen before he tries to destroy us.

Here’s the setup: the assignment last week for my genres class was to write a two-page treatment of our entire idea. This treatment could not, under any circumstances, go over two pages, even though everybody did except one person. Most people were just writing the first act or maybe the first half. A few people — I was one of them — attempted to distill the entire script into two pages (even though they all ended up three or four and were pretty incoherent). My theory is that the term “treatment” was misleading — what she wanted, more or less, was an outline in paragraph form (which is not the same as a treatment).

Owen’s treatment, for the record, was ten pages. He didn’t even try to shorten it (or maybe he did, which is even more frightening). He’s had a history, in this class particularly, of flagrantly defying the actual assignments in favor of doing whatever the fuck he wants. That’d be cool with me if he wasn’t such a dick when everybody called him on his bullshit.

Anyway, our prof had us pair off and read one another’s treatments silently. Then, she left the room, so what did we do? Bitched. That’s what screenwriters do, in case you’re wondering. It’s all we can do in most cases. So we were bitch, bitch, bitching about what a pain in the ass it was to write such short treatments, apologizing to each other preemptively about how illogical they’ll sound when read aloud, et cetera, and then Owen stood up and started scrawling something on the board.

“What the fuck is he writing?” my friend Maria asked me. I shrugged; it looked vaguely Klingon-esque to me, and knowing Owen, that probably wouldn’t have been out of the question.

Finally, he left, and we could read what he wrote:

Be back later, needed to
find a quiet spot to read.
— Owen

“That fucking asshole,” another classmate said.

“Who’s gonna erase it?” Fellow, who’s also in this class, asked.

“Fuck him,” my friend Ted said. “Leave it up there — let him have us fun. But we should all be really silent when the professor comes back.”

This idea amused us all, and so we were completely silent. Of course, what was funnier to me was that she didn’t neither noticed the note on the board nor that Owen was gone. The prof was in the middle of talking when he showed back up, looking very smug and pleased with himself. He immediately looked disappointed when all she said was, “Take your seat,” and then continued talking.

For the most part, what we did in class on Thursday was read our partner’s treatment aloud. Then, we’d all give them feedback, which was pretty tough to do for the people with “full” treatments (i.e., not just first acts), since they made very little sense. We got through it, but Owen got us off to a rocky start.

Owen volunteered to read his partner’s treatment first. And off he went, reading it dryly and ploddingly, which instantly makes the listener think this is the most boring thing in the history of the spoken word. Then, the listener usually zones out. I tried really hard not to, just to spite Owen. Plus, I didn’t really know if he was doing it intentionally or not at first. Everything he says is extremely tedious and boring, but usually when he reads, there’s at least slight animation. I thought maybe the problem was that he was reading somebody else’s work.

Then, he was tripped up by the word “security,” which he pronounced “seh-CUE-teh-ree.” I found that extremely baffling, and I would’ve figured he just fucked up the word if not for the fact that he spoke so slowly and methodically, savoring every single word. I thought it was really fucked up, but then I recalled Owen’s lengthy discourse on the subject of British spellings and how much cooler it is than American English, so I thought (in my infinite cultural illiteracy) that maybe that was some weird British pronunciation of “secretary” or something.

I came to realize that that was illogical in the context of the treatment, which was all about a security guard. Plus, our professor realized shortly after “seh-CUE-teh-ree” that none of us have heard this particular student’s ideas. He was absent the day we read our character bios, so we were clueless as to what the story was supposed to be