Film writing

January 21, 1994

January 21, 1994_edited-1

Steve & Linda
Steve & Linda

 As some of you recall, the Northridge earthquake struck on January 17, four days before this entry – but this 6.7 ten-second monster wasn’t over and gone like broken china.  The after-effects were massive and far-reaching. Steve and Linda (Angelique) were our two most affected friends – due to earthquake damage, their apartment was deemed uninhabitable, forcing them to move.  

Some of the group - Steve & Linda Stoliar, me, John, Jake Jacobson, Anne Kurrasch, Bobbi Goldin,Marva Fucci, Bill Atherton
Some of the group – Steve & Linda Stoliar, me, John, Jake Jacobson, Anne Kurrasch, Bobbi Goldin,Marva Fucci, Bill Atherton

 We were a close-knit group in ’94, we didn’t think twice about crossing town to lend a hand when one of our band suffered catastrophe (which didn’t happen all that often in the City of Angels). As of today, I’m still at least Facebook friends with everyone mentioned in the above entry – but I regret to report our paths have diverged. I’m not sure when or why it happened, but it did – much like other friendships that burned bright briefly and then faded for no reason, without ill feeling (at least, not on my side.)

Bill Atherton, John Rowell and Steve Stoliar
Bill Atherton, John Rowell and Steve Stoliar

I’d like to believe that nothing fundamental really changed – that we’d be there should a crisis arise – but the truth is I don’t even know where Steve lives these days. That said, it’s conceivable that should we find ourselves in the same location with a few hours of free time to talk, we’d discover that – time and distance notwithstanding – nothing fundamental actually did change. I hope so.

Me, Linda Field Stoliar, John Rowell, Steve Stoliar, Anne Kurrasch
Me, Linda Field Stoliar, John Rowell, Steve Stoliar, Anne Kurrasch

It’s probably a waste of time to quantify friendship and there’s no point looking back for longer than it takes to compose these diary blogs so I’ll focus on the present. I’m grateful to be FB pals with Steve –  reading his posts makes me remember good times and I feel like we’re close again.  I hope some of my diary postings affect people the same way.

January 16, 1981


january-16-1981

Third period physiology was taught in the same classroom where another hapless instructor tried to teach me chemistry. I recognized the Periodic Table of the Elements I failed to memorize as a genuine junior. This time around, my lab partner was Jennifer, a girl who projected calm intelligence – just the type I’d be best friends with if we existed in the same time frame. At the end of the period, as she scrubbed our beakers, I said, “Want to have lunch?”

“Sorry. I eat with my friends.”

Rejection! It doesn’t get much more unequivocal. It felt as crummy as it did the first time I did high school. What disqualified me as a friend of Jennifer?  The wrong shoes, my aging face, my lack of aptitude for physiology?

These questions will never be answered. Girls either like or dislike you “because.” That’s as specific as it gets. For what it’s worth, here’s my personal theory about how and why any hope of being BFF with Jennifer died in September, long before I returned to Wilcox.

I had more to worry about than if a girl half my age liked me or not.
I had more to worry about than if a girl half my age liked me or not.

Female cliques form hard and fast and – once established – they aren’t known for flexibility, diversity or the warm welcome extended to strangers – quite the contrary. The more exclusive and difficult a group is to access, the higher their status. I was four months too late to Jennifer’s party and nothing I did could change that.

Hair, hair and more hair!
Hair, hair and more hair!

In comparison, boys were a breeze.  Looking lost and stupid – something I excelled at – was basis enough for a relationship. A boy named Brian showed me the ropes, introduced me to his friends, fixed my car and got me a part-time job at the same place he worked.

Brian showed me the ropes.
Brian showed me the ropes.

The latter was problematical since I couldn’t offer my real social security number (and get paid) without the risk of revealing my true age.

To be continued….

 

January 14, 1981


january-14-1981
I was 29 years old – married and the mother of a 4-year-old – when I returned to Wilcox, the high school I graduated from, as a transfer student. Technically, I was there to research a script I’d been hired to write based on S.E. Hinton’s novel the Outsiders. The director and producers wanted to know if high school kids in 81 were much different from those in the early sixties.

At home in my real identity (albeit with weird hair) as a professional writer.
At home in my real identity (albeit with weird hair) as a professional writer.

On a deeper level, I was obsessed with high school and curious about how it would feel to do it again. Would the benefit of my vast college, professional and personal experiences make me more confident? Would I feel like I had all the answers?  In a word – NO.

A major component of my "disguise" was big frizzy 80s hair (to deflect attention from my face)
A major component of my “disguise” was big frizzy 80s hair (to deflect attention from my face)

If anything, it was more hair-raising than the first time around. In part, this was due to my realistic fear that someone would notice I looked closer to 30 then 17, assume I was a narc (because why else would a woman my age be posing as a student?) and knife me in the girl’s bathroom.  Making the situation even dicier, I was staying with one of my real Wilcox contemporaries – Debbie Callan – who, at that time, worked as a dispatcher/translator for the Santa Clara police department. How could I not be a narc?

 

Maybe i should've thought this through a little better.
Maybe i should’ve thought this through a little better.

There was never a moment I could relax. I didn’t have a fake driver’s license and I needed to carry the real one – which meant taking pains to make sure nobody saw it (especially the birthdate). I didn’t carry credit cards or checks because a 17-year-old wouldn’t. When making reference to music or books that weren’t contemporary, I had to calculate how old my fake self would’ve been as opposed to my real self.

Twenty-nine going on 17 (prolly not right photo but this was the caption)
Twenty-nine going on 17

Before I started, I devised an elaborate backstory to explain my mid-semester transfer – an alcoholic mother in rehab, I was staying with an aunt etc. – but it turned out to be totally unnecessary. Nobody I met showed the slightest interest in my backstory.

To be continued in upcoming blogs – because January ’81 was one of the more interesting Januarys in my life.

January 4, 1986

 

january-4-1986

I have no photos from the party, alas, so I'm using photos of the people mentioned in the blog taken (I think) in 1986. From l to r, John, Janet, myself, Joyce Salter
I have no photos from the party, alas, so I’m using photos of the people mentioned in the blog taken (I think) in 1986. From l to r, John, Janet, myself, Joyce Salter

I love Art Everett’s observation about how some humans maintain their cock-eyed optimism in the face of certain disappointment. There are plenty of people at the other end of the spectrum – perpetual pessimists – but I’m lucky enough to be surrounded by optimists. I flirted with cynical despair myself in my senior year of high school when I struggled with clinical depression but it’s not my natural inclination. (Senior Year Depression )  If it was, I’d work hard to change as empirical evidence suggests that most people’s happiness meter is set. Basically, we’re about as happy as we expect to be. A sudden windfall or financial disaster might make you go TILT for a moment but your internal happiness meter will reset at its normal level before long. Given this, why not put in a little effort to set that meter as high as possible?

Host and hostess extraordinaire Art and Karen Everett (at our messy Lowell Ave house, not their sleek chic Thousand Oaks pad). The party referenced in diary took place somewhere else entirely - no photos as far as I know. .
Host and hostess extraordinaire Art and Karen Everett (at our messy Lowell Ave house, not their sleek chic Thousand Oaks pad). The party referenced in diary took place somewhere else entirely – no photos as far as I know. .

What can I say about that mortifying pratfall? Admittedly thin-skinned and over-sensitive about looking stupid, it bothers me more than it should when people laugh at me.  Consequently, I rarely tell stories in which I’m a complete buffoon. This pratfall was hard to forget. Years later, whenever I ran into Tony, Laraine or Debbie, we’d laugh about the day I totaled their plant with my fat pregnant butt. On the bright side, I never backed up without an eye to the rear-view mirror again.

Terry McDonnell and John Salter at a mystery party around the same time
Terry McDonnell and John Salter at a mystery party around the same time

I am so embarrassed!
I am so embarrassed!

[1] As you may have surmised, when attending a reject gift party each couple brings a newly-wrapped hideous present someone else once gave to them. Hilarity ensues as guests swap one atrocious gift for another. It’s a really fun party and I highly recommend it.

 

December 2, 1985

december-2-1985I’d spoken to Griffin and Amy on the phone, but this was our first face-to-face. I was slightly awed by both of them. Long before I fell in love with Griffin’s performance in the sensational film After Hours, I enjoyed his father Dominick’s books starting with The Users.  As for Amy, I was a huge fan of Baby, It’s You, an indie film she produced. The fact it was based, in part, on her high school and college life made her that much more fascinating.  Not only were they a hot young producing duo, they were classy and smart with superlative taste in literature. They fell in love with the same obscure novel I did.  They intended to option the book and produce the movie. I would adapt it for the screen.

Griffin, Amy and myself with right hand in cast at my house.
Griffin, Amy and myself with right hand in cast at my house.

The Moonflower Vine, Jetta Carleton’s first and only novel, became an overnight sensation upon publication in 1962. I don’t recall how it wound up in my hands in high school.  It didn’t look like the kind of book I gravitated toward. To be blunt, it looked boring – like a plotless description-heavy  feel-good tale of a rural family.  It looked like hundreds of similar books I failed to finish after a quick perusal of the first and last chapter. (Yes, I read the end of most books as soon as I finish the beginning. I have my reasons.)

the-moonflower-vine-book-image

 

The Moonflower Vine wasn’t one of those books. I was so engrossed I read to the last page without peeking. It blew me away. Critics raved about the grace and beauty of her writing. While exquisite language is far from the first thing I seek in a novel, it doesn’t hurt. Equally if not more important than the prose, Carleton’s characters were full-bodied and three-dimensional, bursting with life and the weight of their secrets.

Despite four months on the New York’s Times best-seller list and its selection by major book clubs, the book fell out of print. The lack of a follow-up didn’t help. Aside from two paperback reissues in the 70s and 80s, it was all but forgotten.

A couple factors led to its recent renaissance. It was featured on the “Neglected Books” website which included an endorsement by Jane Smiley. Smiley cited The Moonflower Vine in her book 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel. Perhaps most important of all, voracious fans like myself read and re-read it, and recommended it to others.

I, for instance, persuaded my sisters they had to read it. They did and they fell in love too. Since the book tells the stories of a Missouri family with three living daughters, it’s not so surprising an Iowa family with three daughters related rather strongly. Jetta’s fictional family bore enough similarities to her real family that her two older sisters felt tainted and infuriated. Was that part of the reason she didn’t write another book? They forgave her before she died in 1999.

3 Knutsen Sisters (just like 3 Soames sisters in the novel!)
3 Knutsen Sisters (just like 3 Soames sisters in the novel!)

Carleton left a draft of another novel – Claire de Lune –  behind which was published posthumously. Meanwhile – in part because so many fans consider it unforgettable – The Moonflower Vine was republished to some fanfare in 2009 by HarperCollins.

I know, it looks a little dull, but it’s not. It ranks high on my personal list of “Books that Mattered” and I highly recommend it.

 

November 15, 1980

november-15-1980

This was an amazing day, full of promise, and it retains its magic quality in my memory even though almost nothing unfolded like expected. I got the assignment to adapt  S. E. Hinton’s classic novel, the Outsiders, for the screen. I did pose as a high school student and return to the high school I graduated from (more than a decade earlier) without getting busted.

Gio Coppola took this Polaroid of me with Fred Roos on this day.
Gio Coppola took this Polaroid of me with Fred Roos on this day.

Augie didn’t direct the movie, Francis did, which was the good news and the bad news. I’m awed by his talent; he directed some of the greatest movies of our time IMHO. How could this development possibly be bad? He’s an equally talented writer and took over the rewrite himself. When I saw the final shooting script, my name was nowhere to be seen.

Under the Writers Guild of America rules, this triggered an automatic arbitration because a production executive (director, producer etc.) sought screenplay credit. Three anonymous writers read all of our scripts and rendered a decision about screenplay credit. After a second and third arbitration and a Policy Review Board, I prevailed. It was a tense time.

After winning the arbitration - before the storm.
After winning the arbitration – before the storm.

This experience piqued my interest in the arbitration process and I volunteered to serve as an arbiter. Eventually I got to serve on the Policy Review Board, which I continue to do to this day.

Reading multiple drafts of the same script to decide who deserves screen credit provides a spectacular education in screen writing or, more accurately, rewriting. It was a front row seat to see exactly how scripts assume their final shape. I also learned a lot about human nature.

W/my sisters, wearing my Writer's Guild Strikes! tee-shirt. The WGA struck for the right to determine their own credits - and it was worth it.
W/my sisters, wearing my Writer’s Guild Strikes! tee-shirt. The WGA struck for the right to determine their own credits – and it was worth it.

There are significant financial rewards for getting your name on a script, even if the movie’s a bomb. That might have motivated a few writers to battle but I think most of them fought because they believed they deserved to win. It reminds me of the joke about the actor playing the gravedigger in Hamlet, who’s convinced the play is about the gravedigger. Time after time, writers clearly saw – and frequently exaggerated – their own contribution and missed or minimized the contribution of writers before or after them. I doubt I’m immune to this self-serving blind spot; no doubt I do the same thing, despite being aware of this trap.

I suspect this tendency isn’t restricted to actors and writers – that many, if not most, human beings focus on their own contributions to the exclusion of others regardless of their line of work.

 

October 4, 1972

october-4-1972

I don’t know where, when or even if Jack Nicholson made that comment but plenty of people relate. Consider all of the rock and pop songs about the anguish of running into your ex – Walk on By, I Go to Pieces, I Go Crazy and When We Were Young to name a few. The gut-crunching misery of realizing the heel who broke your heart is living la vida loca without you is timeless and universal.

On campus to turn in a script
On campus to turn in a script

When I find out an ex is getting married, my higher self wishes them well. My lower narcissistic self prefers they pine for me forever[1]. If that sounds heartless, consider this. How happy does the dude who shattered you deserve to be?

IMHO, the vengeful narcissist inside all of us roots for the bastard who dumped us to crash and burn in an epic fail. Anybody who acts overjoyed when their ex’s success far eclipses their own is a liar.

I wish you nothing but the best - as long as you don't do better than me.
I wish you nothing but the best – as long as you don’t do better than me.

My own encounters with exes occurred in or around Melnitz Hall at UCLA where our film major brought us together.  Since leaving college, I rarely run into anyone I know, not even casual acquaintances.  That’s life in the big city.

However, a motivated ex can beat those odds with an assist from Google and FB. The downside is the risk of being labeled a stalker and served with a restraining order.

I'm not stalking you! I just happen to be here.
I’m not stalking you! I just happen to be here.

I’m a crying fool for movies (Splendor in the Grass, The Way We Were, Wild Horses) in which ex-lovers encounter each other long after their breakup. It kills me how they make awkward chit chat to hide the depth of their true feelings. Does it work this way in real life? Sometimes, probably.

What gets to me is the message that even though it’s over – their great passion is gone and it’s never coming back – the remnants of love remain in a new shape. It might manifest as love from a distance or devotion to a memory. It could come in the form of compassion, affection, concern or the deep camaraderie of people who know each other to the core. It might not be the love we’re looking for or the love we want but a little love is better than nothing.

I'll always love the way we were.
I’ll always love the way we were.

Something about that always makes me cry.

[1] In the interest of full disclosure, even when I was the heartbreaker, I wanted them to pine for me forever.

August 24, 1979

To put this in context – I’d just learned that my spec script, which had been optioned by Steve Friedman’s Kings Road Productions to be a feature film, was going to be re-written by another writer. Bill Froug was my screenwriting professor and mentor at UCLA.

THE LATE GREAT BILL FROUG
THE LATE GREAT BILL FROUG

 

August 24, 1979_edited-1

DRINKING IS A SHORT-TERM SOLUTION
DRINKING IS A SHORT-TERM SOLUTION

My agent and my mentor were correct. Having your work rewritten by someone else is part of a writer’s life in the film business (less so in television but it still happens).  I ended up rewriting many more scripts by other people than having my own scripts rewritten which ought to make me feel better but it doesn’t. The fact is, it always sucks to be told you’re off the project – especially when it’s your own original spec script.

I suspect other professionals would react the same way if this was routine practice in their business. Imagine a surgeon being told that a new surgeon in town had been hired to  remove the heart he’s just transplanted in order to insert a better one – or an interior decorator who gives her best only to learn all of her work is off to Goodwill and a new interior decorator will start from scratch. It hurts to be replaced. And it never got easier, although I did get better at hiding my emotions. (Hint: It is considered bad form to cry like a baby when – not if – this happens to you.)

AS YOU DRINK,, BROOD ABOUT REVENGE
AS YOU DRINK,, BROOD ABOUT REVENGE

I understand why it sometimes has to be done. Sometimes it even works out for the best. It’s easy for a writer to get tunnel vision and see only one way to solve a problem. New eyes spot new solutions. Given the fortunes and executive jobs attached to the success or failure of a film, no wonder so many execs play it safe and bet on the flavor of the month instead of a newbie. If the “hot” writer tanks, at least they had a reasonable basis to believe he’d succeed.

If and when it happens to you, remember it’s not personal. It’s only business. And then cry your eyes out in solitude.

Cry your eyes out

 

 

June 22, 1969

 

June 22, 1969Less than ten days prior, I endured graduation from Wilcox High – so how did I wind up here?

Reading my acceptance letter to UCLA
Reading my acceptance letter to UCLA.

On a rainy Sunday afternoon, months after my acceptance as a fall English major at UCLA, I got bored and flipped through the UCLA Catalog of Courses. It changed the course of my life.

UCLA General Catalog - No Math - No Science - Sign me up!
UCLA General Catalog – No Math – No Science – Sign me up!

That afternoon, in a burst of clarity, I realized that simply by switching my major to Film (College of Fine Arts as opposed to Bachelor Arts), I could jettison every single math and science class – for the rest of my life! And that was just the beginning, once I viewed college like an academic Chutes and Ladders. I didn’t have to land on boring chutes like Shakespeare (I confess, not a fan) and Milton – I could climb crazy ladders instead. In addition to a smorgasbord of fantastic film courses all I needed to win a degree was a few English department creative writing courses and my choice of esoteric lit classes.

First thing Monday morning, I was on the phone with the UCLA registrar to change my major from English (already sounding dreary) to Film Writing (until now, who knew that anybody actually wrote films? Not me, but it sounded more entertaining than Chaucer in the original Middle English.)

Disclaimer: Don’t bother making the same request today. For starters, you must be a junior to apply. Once a year, the Film Department admits 15 juniors from disciplines within UCLA and 15 juniors from outside institutions. To compete, you must submit a creative portfolio, envelopes stuffed with cash (that’s a JOKE) and pray. Sixty out of thousands of applicants are selected for an in-person on-campus interview. Thirty of them move on to become next year’s film majors.

STUDENT ID CARD FRESHMAN YEAR (going for the popular Serial Killer look)
STUDENT ID CARD FRESHMAN YEAR (going for the popular Serial Killer look)

To be sure, it was not exactly a cake walk in 1969. The registrar said, “Here’s the thing, Miss Knutsen. You can do it if you start this summer instead of in the fall.”

I relate to a sculpture in the wonderful Sculpture Gardens conveniently located in front of the Theater Arts and Art buildings.
I relate to a sculpture in the wonderful Sculpture Gardens conveniently located in front of the Theater Arts and Art buildings.

This might have given me pause had I not been paralyzed by self-diagnosed severe clinical depression. With no rainbows on my horizon, what could I lose by sacrificing a final Santa Clara summer for a new start in LA?

So I said YES and it changed my life. Plunging into college that summer opened the door to a perfect career (for me) in a field I literally did not know existed until I noticed the difference in basic course requirements between English and Film. Was it serendipity, fate, luck or the hand of God? It depends on your point of view, I guess. All I know for sure is I wasn’t searching for my purpose or a path – but it was waiting for me to say yes and leap.

May 28, 1971



This was one of the worst days of my life. To set it up a little, I was at UC Santa Barbara for one quarter of intercampus visitation and this was the day I showed the film I made for one of the classes  I took there.
May 28, 1971

Sad Kathy

First, I take full responsibility for this debacle. For some bizarre reason, I believed that if I made a complicated incomprehensible film that nobody could understand, the audience would be awed by my superior intellect and love me. If you doubt how pretentious and wrong-headed my film was, allow me to dazzle you with its full title – JOURNEY: A RITUAL IN FIVE PARTS.

Movie Clapboard

So why do I consider this disaster one of the luckiest breaks of my life? First, I made the film in Santa Barbara, where no one from the UCLA  Film Department would stumble upon it and it could die in peace. If I hadn’t launched this colossal misfire in Santa Barbara, I almost certainly would have made a similar film for my Project 1 at UCLA – which, at the time, was basically a thesis film worth 8 units of credit on which your entire  career in the film department depended. The humiliation in Santa Barbara saved me a far greater humiliation.

Second, and more important, I learned in a visceral punch-to-the-gut way that obscure  pretentious films are not the way to an audience’s heart. (Why didn’t I know this already? I must’ve been absent that day.) My value system changed, as is reflected in my subsequent writing career. I finally understood the most important aspects of any film, story or book are to be entertaining, clear and accessible.

And, when I made my Project 1 three months later at UCLA, it was one of four films that was awarded the Jim Morrison Memorial Grant.