Self Hatred

October 28th, 2009Blog2 comments

I juggle several projects at once, so after I finish writing a first draft of one thing I immediately have to switch gears and begin doing rewrites on another. So often I have to go back to earlier projects and drafts in order to do rewrites and sharpen them up. This is especially true right now.

I get a real pain in my ass when I look at earlier drafts of mine. They seem so hokey and crappy. When I look at a draft that needs work, all the boring bits and errors and crap stick out like pins and needles. This especially goes for my earliest work as a writer. Sometimes it’s really hard to even look at the stuff — it’s so schlocky to me. But look at it and improve it I must.

Today I realized something after reading a post on John Gruber’s Daring Fireball about the iPhone as a platform. On the iPhone’s place in the “smartphone wars” and Apple’s push to continually improve it, Gruber writes:

“Right. You know who thinks the iPhone 3GS stinks? Steve Jobs. No one is working harder on an “iPhone 3GS killer” than Apple.”

This made me realize that I hate my earliest work and my early drafts for a reason: It’s because I’ve grown since I’ve written them. I’ve discovered my mistakes and learned from them. My burning hatred for the problems these drafts have is directly proportional to my desire to improve them and make them great.

In other words, I should embrace my hatred — it’s a sign of my desire to be better and do better. I might not know what the solutions are right now, but god dammit, I want to find out. And I will.

If I didn’t hate my earliest stuff — if I didn’t think that these drafts needed work and I was totally satisfied with them — then I’d know that there’s a serious problem going on. That is clue number one that you’re a marshmallowy, lackadaisical bum who expects good things to happen without needing to put in the work.

It’s like people who say, “Oh, my high school years were the best years of my life.” If that’s so, then I got a pro-tip for you my friend: Your life sucks.

E-Ink Part II: The Kindle DX Review for Script Readers

October 22nd, 2009Blog0 comments

Here it is: The Kindle DX. It’s clearly last year’s model compared to the Barnes and Noble Nook with its dual E-Ink/color displays and its touch screen; however, the DX’s 9.7 inch screen makes it the only real option for reading scripts. And it does this task surprisingly well.

I loaded about thirty scripts onto this thing — a mix of screenplays and stage plays — and took it for a spin. The huge screen capably displays each page and intelligently sizes it so you can see all the content. Now keep in mind that all the scripts were in .pdf format — Microsoft Word .doc files need to be converted — but the DX didn’t hiccup on any of them. Note that some .pdfs are composed of plain text and others are a bound collection of TIFFs (graphical images, usually scans of the original pages of the script). The DX handled both of them properly, although it chugs a little when you turn the pages of a .pdf made up of TIFFs. But that’s to be expected.

Readability is great. There’s far less glare than there is on Sony’s PRS 600. Letters come out crisp and neat, and I could easily see myself reading for hours with this thing. Page turns are fairly quick on text-based .pdfs. The device feels fairly solid and reasonably light enough to hold for long periods of time. The next/previous page buttons have a nice click to them. The anemic keyboard at the bottom is fairly terrible, but I don’t see myself using it very often. For me, this thing is intended to read scripts and to save trees.

There are also a few nifty hidden features. Since the E-Ink screen doesn’t require power to display an image, when you put the Kindle into Sleep Mode it drops a static picture of a dead writer on the screen. Harriet Beecher Stowe is on mine right now. You can hack your Kindle to change the screensaver images to living writers like my main man Stephen Colbert. Plus you can also play Minesweeper.

Still, a couple of strange attributes keep the DX from greatness. For some reason you can’t create sub-folders inside the DX for organizing your .pdfs. For instance, you might want to create a folder for screenplays, one for plays, one for things you’ve finished reading, one for things you’re supposed to read, etc.; you can create the folders but the DX will still display all your files together in one big list. This makes categorization impossible, and gets pretty unwieldy when you’ve got a few dozen items in there. Why have 3.3 gigs available for content if organizing and structuring that much content is impossible?

Another thing: The 5-way joystick sucks. You click in the cardinal directions to move and you click the stick in to select. Clicking left brings up a “DO YOU WANT TO DELETE THIS?” dialogue box on an item; it’s way too easy to accidentally click the center to wipe out your stuff. I’m not saying that a touch screen is the answer, but this device clearly feels like last year’s model and not the latest and greatest.

So is the DX a worthy buy? If you’re like me and you need to read a whole lot of stuff rapidly (and your heart bleeds for nature), then get it now. But if you can put it off and continue to murder trees, put it off. Something newer, better, and nicer will be coming down the pipe within six months.

But for now, this thing works. Plus I am now as cool as Victory Gardens’ literary manager.

ACTORS

October 21st, 2009Blog1 comment

Your Mike Golamco is thinking about getting into acting. Just a little bit. Just for kicks. Maybe do other peoples’ staged play readings. Just for fun.

I remember when I first got into acting. I was in elementary school. I was so nervous they had to tape my lines to the inside of my cape. I was playing a vampire, so this was a smooth move. Plus this was well before the current vampire trend so I was ahead of the curve.

That early episode had two effects on me. First, it made realize that I should always be prepared from then on. Secondly, it made me really dislike acting. Oh yes, I did some acting again in college, but I was never in love with the process or the craft. I always liked writing more.

But now I’m thinking about studying it a little bit. Taking a class, volunteering to do a few staged reads for people.

These days I love being up in front of people, either doing a pitch or giving a speech. I feel totally comfortable up there when I know I’ve got good stuff to say — stuff that they want to hear. When I’ve got the pitch/speech memorized and I know it’s a good piece of work, being up there is no problem.

So maybe I could get back into this acting thing. Maybe it’d be fun.

I have a lot of friends that are actors. I respect actors tremendously, but I feel that there are so many people that want to be actors that it makes it very difficult for the people who actually should be acting. It sucks up the time and energy of casting people, agents, managers, producers, directors.

Plus acting is an unforgiving, extremely difficult way of life. It forces you to drive all over town, face rejection constantly, read and act material that you may not believe in, and sorts you into a very specific label/”type”. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. And yet hundreds of thousands of people come here and give it a go.

Now, there are some people that I’ve met that have it: The Thing. You look in their eyes, you watch them do their work, you see it. That Thing that lets you immediately know that, yes, this person will make it as an actor. It’s an amalgamation of many different smaller Things: Sheer, doubtless tenacity that is clear in the person’s eyes. Clarity. Fierceness that makes everyone else look sorta dull by comparison. And as our good friend Dave says, a successful actor is the kind of person that a casting director can look at and say, “I know exactly what to do with this guy.” Clearly categorizable, usable and useful.

And beyond that there’s the willingness to do hard work — to study, to put in the time, to do the motherfuckin’ work. And also the willingness to drive all over town, face rejection, etc.. And you don’t have to be leading man/woman-good looking, but it helps.

I know several people that have The Thing. Most of them are my friends, and all of them are successful actors.

I don’t have The Thing. But fortunately I don’t want to be an actor, and I have a different Thing.

But there is something I do have that could make me quite a decent actor:

I don’t give a fuck.

Not giving a fuck is a very useful attribute to have in any particular situation, but particularly useful in acting. I’m not saying that I don’t care — I care very much about everything I do. What I’m saying is that I have other things going on, so whether I am successful or unsuccessful as an actor is inconsequential to me. Therefore, no matter what I do up there, my confidence is always going to be sound as a pound. And confidence — total believability and an ability to never be shaken by your nerves — is essential to acting. You’ve got to be able to sell it.

Let’s take Ken Jeong for example. He’s a hilarious guy who is blowing up all over the place, most notably on Community. So the guy’s a doctor. His wife’s a doctor. He doesn’t need the money, he’s got plenty of it. So I’m pretty sure that he acts and does comedy because he loves it. And since he’s freed from the financial burden of having to book gigs to earn money, he doesn’t have to give a fuck about that and can concentrate purely on the work. I would argue that this is an ideal situation.

So not giving a fuck could conceivably make me quite an actor. However, it will also guarantee that I will never be a great actor or even a very good actor — since I don’t give a fuck, I will not give a fuck enough to be great or even very good. At best I will be a middling actor that is fun to watch. And maybe I can make up for this by utilizing my skill as a writer to properly disseminate and understand the material. But I guarantee you that I will be fine up there no matter what.

And honestly, that’s all I want. To be up there, to have fun, and to kick a little bit of ass.

Besides, I got this writing thing going on.

Harlan Ellison is a Very Nice Man

October 19th, 2009Blog3 comments

I got the email a couple of days before the interview was supposed to take place. It was from Katie at Center Theatre Group:

Hey Michael,

I’ve been communicating with Harlan about the weekend and he asked me to pass along one ground rule. He despises the word “like” when it’s used inappropriately. He said that if anyone uses it when asking him a question they can either pay him a dollar or he’ll punch them in the face. He asked me to pass that along…

This is the deal: I have joined six other playwrights for Center Theatre Group’s 2009-2010 Writers Workshop; to this end, CTG invited experts in various fields for us to interview to gather information for new playwriting projects. As a result, the good people at CTG had secured Harlan Ellison as my expert in science fiction writing.

A few words about Harlan: He is said to be notoriously abrasive — perhaps a better phrase is “notoriously truthful without concern for the immediate repercussions of telling the truth”. He has a profound and deep-seated hatred for stupidity. He is a brilliant and prolific writer, having written over 2,000 short stories, essays, books, teleplays, and screenplays. This includes classic episodes of The Outer Limits and Star Trek. He loves writing and loves writers. He is a larger-than-life character, a living legend among writers and readers.

So I prepared well for Friday’s interview. I went to the library and picked up The Essential Ellison, a 35 year retrospective on his work, and started reading. Over the course of these readings I discovered one of my new favorite short stories of all time, a piece of his titled “Jeffty is Five”. I watched Dreams with Sharp Teeth, a documentary about Harlan featuring Robin Williams, Neil Gaiman, Ronald D. Moore and others talking about their pal Harlan. I went through my interview questions and threw out the stupid ones.

Friday afternoon Harlan and his wife Susan showed up. He definitely lived up to expectations. He was energetic, crass, and really fun. He called some of my fellow playwrights some rather mean, snarky names. But it was in jest. Or somewhat in jest. It’s difficult to tell with Harlan, which I think is why people find him so abrasive.

And there’s a reason why he’s so prolific: The guy is absolutely brimming with stories. In our ninety minutes together he told us a few dozen. He told us about how he was shooting a movie in the desert, passed out from the heat, and Steve McQueen carried him to safety. He told us about how he used to work as a painter, painting the underside of the Brooklyn Bridge. He told us about the cab wars in New York when he was a gypsy cab driver. He used the simile “as crazy as a caterpillar with socks on”, which was a moment that belongs in a credit card commercial under the category of “Priceless”.

As he talked he smacked the table. He used our little digital recording device as a prop. He spoke in funny voices. He swore and jumped up and sat down and never rambled — every story he told us was connected to the previous and then circled back around to a common point of origin. There were no dead ends — everything was a marvelous scenic route. And damn, these were really good stories. Fortunately for me and my dollars, I never accidentally used the word “like” in an inappropriate manner.

And when it was over I realized that I really like this guy. He is really freakin cool.

“Harlan, can I give you my card?” I asked. “I’d love to hear more of your stories.” I wrote my number on my card since Harlan doesn’t use email — only the phone, fax, and a typewriter to write.

“Sure,” he said, looking at it. “I’m even going to keep it and not throw it away.”

Saturday. The second day of the CTG salon, we’re back in the room interviewing more experts. My phone rings and I can’t pick it up so I let it go to voice mail. I check it during a break:

“Michael Golamco, it’s Harlan Ellison. I had a really great time yesterday, you did a great job. Here’s my number, call me back if you like.”

I call him back. “Hey Harlan,” I said, “Thanks so much for coming. We had a great time too. By the way, you forgot your glasses down here – “

“Well come by the house and drop them off for me,” he says, “We’ll have a cup of coffee.”

That made my day. Hearing more of Harlan’s stories will be absolutely terrific.

E-Ink Part I

October 14th, 2009Blog1 comment

I’ve been taking the PRS-600, Sony’s touch screen e-reader, for a test drive. So far the results are mixed.

At my request, my agents have been sending me scripts to study. Around a dozen arrived yesterday. A dozen more or so are set to arrive in the next couple of days.

Now, our good friend Aaron is a literary manager; he uses a Kindle DX to read the mountains of scripts that he has to deal with. This is great for the earth — he has already saved many a tree by doing so.

So now that I’ve also got a ton of scripts to read, this became my plan as well. So I picked up the PRS-600 at Best Buy with the intention of trying it out and seeing how it works. Am I ready for the E-Ink revolution?

Getting .pdfs onto the device was pretty easy. I connected the machine to my mac using a USB cable; it installed the necessary software directly from the e-reader itself, treating it like a hard drive. Sony’s client software for adding and organizing files on the e-reader is somewhat like iTunes: You can import .pdf and book files, create folders on the e-reader, drop them in. Fairly easy to use if not quite that intuitive — when you click on a file to view it in the client application, it isn’t clear how to go back to the list view of files. It’s fiddly, but the thing works as advertised.

The e-reader’s screen is a different story. The contrast is muddled even compared to other Sony offerings. Also there is quite a bit of glare. But you know what has great contrast and absolutely no glare? PAPER.

And how do scripts look on this thing? Not bad. In the portrait orientation an 8.5×11 page of Courier is readable but fairly tiny; going to landscape solves the problem but splits each page into vertical halves.

Can I read a script on this thing? Yes, but it’s not as pleasant as reading it off a paper page. It is nice however to be able to carry around dozens of scripts in a small device.

The Kindle DX is probably where I want to go. It has native support and a bigger screen. But the price (490 spacebucks!!!) is a turn off. Also the Barnes and Noble offering is on view next week. So we’ll definitely have to see what’s up over there. But as far as e-ink reading goes, I think it works for me when it comes to scripts. Periodicals too. Books: No.

The reason is that I feel like books are a nexus of history, time, and place. To Kill a Mockingbird is a clear portal into a very specific time in America and to your own personal history as a reader when you first picked it up. The very nature of a novel demands that its very best form is a physical one: Bound paper that sits on your shelf. It occupies space in the world. You can see it, remember who you were when you read it, what it means to you. You can pull it down off the shelf and page through it, read it again. Very much like a trophy you won once — it’s a tangible piece of your history.

Reference books in electronic form: Fine. That works. That’s even better, because they are instantly updatable and searchable. But works of fiction are no-go for me. They’re too sacred.

Screenplays on the other hand are different. For me, I think reading them off a Kindle would totally work. This is because to me, a screenplay is an ephemeral thing — it is a story that is still on its way to its final form. Not to say that screenplays can’t be a serious form of literature. Darabont’s “The Shawshank Redemption” is proof of that. In fact, reading the script for Robert Siegel’s “The Wrestler” makes me classify it in this category as well. These things are well written. I’d probably keep those on my shelf.

But everything else — TV episodes, romantic comedies, zombie movies — I’m studying for structure and to see how things were written. No reason to sacrifice a tree.

Well, except for episodes of The Sopranos. Those are incredible to read.

This guy better win or he’s going to epically embarrass himself.

Either that or he’s a good samaritan and is there to boost the egos of everyone that passes him.

Hugging It Out

October 12th, 2009Blog1 comment

Hey, I’m sick! So it’s a great time to partake in the modern tradition of watching episodes of TV series back-to-back on DVD, like chain smoking television.

I’m finally tackling a couple of TV shows that I’d been putting off for a long time — both of them because they pushed me away with their premises: Entourage and The Wire.

Entourage: I already live in LA and I already have to deal with this stuff, so why would I want to watch a TV show about it? Plus I’m wary of TV shows and movies about making TV shows and movies. Once you’ve seen The Player you’re essentially done.

The Wire: I’m used to turning the critical thinking parts of my brain off when I watch TV. I only turn them back on when I’m studying a particular TV show (The Sopranos) or reading its script; for some reason The Wire felt inscrutable every time I tried to watch it. And when you’re already really busy, it’s difficult to make time for something new to chew on. So I kept bouncing off this show instead of getting into it.

Also: Baltimore? I can only take Baltimore when it’s presented with singing and dancing, like in Hairspray. But ugly, crime-riddled, crackhead Baltimore? I’d rather watch something on the Food Network.

But man: Now I can definitely say that when I was avoiding both of these shows, I was missing out.

I’d seen a few scattershot episodes of Entourage here and there — enough to know what was going on, but I never started at the beginning until now. And I’ve been saying that I’ve been having a lot of Entourage moments lately, and I wanted to understand exactly what it was that I was referencing.

Okay, so this show is a little hokey sometimes. It covers silly moments like Drama getting new headshots at the Apple Store — reminders that this is a teevee show about LA, like Mad Men shows kids running around in front of their mothers with plastic bags over their heads: They’re pretty on-the-nose reminders that the show is about the early 60s when people didn’t know any better. But when Entourage gets going it is very entertaining. Ralph Macchio and Bob Saget cameos, I’m looking at you!

It also has some lovable freakin characters. Jeremy Piven’s character should get his own show. I think this could be accomplished by an end-of-season cliffhanger where Ari Gold accidentally murders the four guys and then the next season starts up without them. Then you have a great The Shield-like situation where Ari constantly has to cover up for their deaths while putting deals together for Jack Black. I’m only half-joking about this, I think it could be a good move. Adrian Grenier could still be part of the show — maybe show up as a talking fish that haunts Ari’s dreams like Big Pussy Bonpensiero.

Anyway, I was surprised to find myself making it all the way through to the first disc of Season 2 and then immediately pushing up the rest of the Season 2 discs on my Netflix queue. That’s when I know I’m hooked.

This show is a bit of a cryptogram, and I knew that it would take serious thinking while watching it in order to get it. And I knew I would like it — I just needed the right time to start watching it in order to get into it.

And now I’m into it.

What I like about this show is that it presents a situation that is utterly hopeless, yet manages to find little moments of hope inside of it — of people just trying to make it through each day. And that is so antithetical to the much-lauded American Dream of making a home run, winning a million bucks and living happily ever after — this show is about real life, real people trying to survive in a shitty city on the decline (sorry, John Waters), spending their lives slogging through just trying to live. They put in their time, man. And there’s something more beautiful and more humane about that because it’s real.

The show also reminds me about that old idea about the banality of evil. Evil is always happening in small ways around us, often as a result of randomness — being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Morality is a pretty lofty concept, and it’s sometimes outside the realm of everyday living.

So I rarely say this, but these shows make me realize that I need to watch more TV.

Maintenance Update: There was some weirdness linking to last week’s radio interview on Vocalo, so here it is now:

Vocalo 89.5 Interview on Year Zero.

Back Up Everything All The Time Forever

October 11th, 2009Blog0 comments

T-Mobile Says All Your Sidekick Data Has Been Lost Forever: Plenty of very angry Sidekick users have just discovered that all their contact information, calendars, to-dos, pictures, and other data they were storing on Microsoft’s cloud servers has been destroyed, and there were no backups.

You must always keep backups of your own data no matter what. We can’t rely on corporations or other people to handle our backups for us. This also illustrates why making data 100% electronic is a fairly bad idea. Two thousand years after Julius Caesar died, we still know what he looked like because of marble statues — the medium used to transmit that information is nearly indestructible. But if we were to drop all of our books into a digital-only Kindle-like format, a good EMP blast could wipe out our history forever. Another reason why BOOKS RULE.

I keep three constantly synchronized data backups of all my writing. This includes off-site backups. I also have a paper record: I use 120-page lab notebooks to jot down notes, log calls, make diary entries, and do actual writing. Everything is indexed and eventually moved into the computer. I’m currently about to finish filling my 30th such notebook. A notebook is a lot harder to delete than a file, although it can be lost/stolen. But then again, so can a laptop. Plus notebooks don’t break down.

Bad Microsoft! Bad Danger/T-Mobile! By the way, this is what happens when you store your data in a cloud. Clouds are, like, made out of water vapor. Storing your data in them is a totally bad idea.

You have been warned.