Thursday, June 22, 2006
London, 1985 (Pt.1)
In the spring of 1985, I had an opportunity to work for a rather famous writer. She and I had met on the Sony Pictures lot in Culver City, California, back when it was called Lorimar-Telepictures. The studio had flown her into L.A. to write an outline for a mini-series, after which she was going to return to London to write the novel version of said story. I had recently graduated from film school, and to pay the bills I signed up for the studio temp pool. The powers that be recognized my writing background, and hooked me up with this lady. I was to be her assistant, typist, and generally her second brain on the project.
They stashed her at the fabulous Bel Air Hotel, a place I had not been to before our meeting of course. Why would I go there? I can't afford it. But if you can afford it, and you want to go to L.A. and not have anyone know you're there, you probably want the Bel Air. It's a lush, sprawling Mediterranean-style hotel, with lovely bougainvillea, a large swimming pool, and privacy up the wazoo. Orgies could be going full-tilt in the suite next door, but you'll never hear them. And we certainly made no peeps ourselves, other than the shuffling of papers. Lots and lots of papers. Between shufflings, we ordered lots of room service, who arrived with big pots of wonderful cafe au lait that we drank like water and ten dollar hamburgers, served covered on a silver tray.
I watch S try and eat her hamburger. Actually, she takes her knife and fork and cuts it in half first. I tease her about that. Before I'm done with you you are going to learn the proper way to eat a hamburger.
The writer's name was S, and she had rather antiquated methods of working. Even by 1985 standards, when computers were just coming along. She liked writing in long hand, then having the notes typed out. S explained to me why she would not want to buy a computer.
"My methods don't suit me on a computer," S said one day. She would literally cut out and scotch tape the strips of paper together. I understood immediately and felt the same. When I would come to write my own material later in the decade, I relied a lot on what I learned from S. Like her, I would start my ideas in notes in long hand. Then I would type them out on the simple computer I had back then.
S made a joke one day, about how the studio execs would go ballistic if they ever knew how she really worked there in those long days we spent working in her suite of rooms at the Bel Air. Didn't Jack Kerouac also end up with a huge roll of paper on a spool that was the first draft of "On The Road?" We literally had a roll we could push across the floor.
S told me one day something I have never forgotten, about writers and writing. And she knew all the big people. William Peter Blatty (whom she called Billy), Neil Simon. William Goldman. There were three or four other people, men and women, that S lumped in the group. Herself included. That group consisted of the top-flight writers that Hollywood would pay big bucks to come up with stuff. It's only a very small handful of people and they all seem to know each other.
S said to me, "You know, people think writers are always worried about people stealing their ideas. But we don't think about that. We have ideas up our wazoos. But they are very reluctant to share their methods with people." For S, the method was everything. I understand what she meant. Writers really never run out of ideas. Ideas are cheap. But the method by which one treats the idea. That's what counts.
The story was an interesting one. Basically, an early version of the TV show"Lost," only with women. A group of couples attend a business conference on a Papua New Guinea style island. While there, the island goes through a military coup. The husbands and wives get separated, the husbands are all lined up against the wall and shot. The wives run for their lives into the jungle, where they have to survive until they can be rescued. Robinson Crusoe with broads. Swell.
It was interesting to see how a best-selling writer puts together a book. S was from a background in journalism; she had been the first woman editor of The Observer. S was known for her impeccable research, and this is where I came in. Having spent time in the tropics, I had managed to acquire about a quarter of the diseases the women eventually came down with. Things like dengue fever and leishmaniasis, the latter being especially horrific. You start with infected sand fly bites, and quickly proceed from there with scratching, germs arriving and before long you have open, oozing sores, mostly on the lower legs. Lovely. Sepsis and death set in if you don't stop the infection in time.
The research was quite staggering in its array and variety. Lots of things I could describe to S already, like what the air is like in the tropics just before the monsoons hit. Suddenly, there is this calm, followed by a sudden hiss of rain coming down in sheets. She had travelled the world a lot too, so we could bounce off ideas about the places we had seen and how they actually were.
As an American, I was also useful to S about life in the States, when we go through our sporting seasons, what game is played when. Background research that I could help her flesh out.
And of course, being we have hot-blooded women cloistered together in a remote location, one has to ask, "So, where's the big lesbian scene?" Or scenes, if we want to be really hopeful.
Well, that was there too. Albeit with a number of misgivings.
TO BE CONTINUED
They stashed her at the fabulous Bel Air Hotel, a place I had not been to before our meeting of course. Why would I go there? I can't afford it. But if you can afford it, and you want to go to L.A. and not have anyone know you're there, you probably want the Bel Air. It's a lush, sprawling Mediterranean-style hotel, with lovely bougainvillea, a large swimming pool, and privacy up the wazoo. Orgies could be going full-tilt in the suite next door, but you'll never hear them. And we certainly made no peeps ourselves, other than the shuffling of papers. Lots and lots of papers. Between shufflings, we ordered lots of room service, who arrived with big pots of wonderful cafe au lait that we drank like water and ten dollar hamburgers, served covered on a silver tray.
I watch S try and eat her hamburger. Actually, she takes her knife and fork and cuts it in half first. I tease her about that. Before I'm done with you you are going to learn the proper way to eat a hamburger.
The writer's name was S, and she had rather antiquated methods of working. Even by 1985 standards, when computers were just coming along. She liked writing in long hand, then having the notes typed out. S explained to me why she would not want to buy a computer.
"My methods don't suit me on a computer," S said one day. She would literally cut out and scotch tape the strips of paper together. I understood immediately and felt the same. When I would come to write my own material later in the decade, I relied a lot on what I learned from S. Like her, I would start my ideas in notes in long hand. Then I would type them out on the simple computer I had back then.
S made a joke one day, about how the studio execs would go ballistic if they ever knew how she really worked there in those long days we spent working in her suite of rooms at the Bel Air. Didn't Jack Kerouac also end up with a huge roll of paper on a spool that was the first draft of "On The Road?" We literally had a roll we could push across the floor.
S told me one day something I have never forgotten, about writers and writing. And she knew all the big people. William Peter Blatty (whom she called Billy), Neil Simon. William Goldman. There were three or four other people, men and women, that S lumped in the group. Herself included. That group consisted of the top-flight writers that Hollywood would pay big bucks to come up with stuff. It's only a very small handful of people and they all seem to know each other.
S said to me, "You know, people think writers are always worried about people stealing their ideas. But we don't think about that. We have ideas up our wazoos. But they are very reluctant to share their methods with people." For S, the method was everything. I understand what she meant. Writers really never run out of ideas. Ideas are cheap. But the method by which one treats the idea. That's what counts.
The story was an interesting one. Basically, an early version of the TV show"Lost," only with women. A group of couples attend a business conference on a Papua New Guinea style island. While there, the island goes through a military coup. The husbands and wives get separated, the husbands are all lined up against the wall and shot. The wives run for their lives into the jungle, where they have to survive until they can be rescued. Robinson Crusoe with broads. Swell.
It was interesting to see how a best-selling writer puts together a book. S was from a background in journalism; she had been the first woman editor of The Observer. S was known for her impeccable research, and this is where I came in. Having spent time in the tropics, I had managed to acquire about a quarter of the diseases the women eventually came down with. Things like dengue fever and leishmaniasis, the latter being especially horrific. You start with infected sand fly bites, and quickly proceed from there with scratching, germs arriving and before long you have open, oozing sores, mostly on the lower legs. Lovely. Sepsis and death set in if you don't stop the infection in time.
The research was quite staggering in its array and variety. Lots of things I could describe to S already, like what the air is like in the tropics just before the monsoons hit. Suddenly, there is this calm, followed by a sudden hiss of rain coming down in sheets. She had travelled the world a lot too, so we could bounce off ideas about the places we had seen and how they actually were.
As an American, I was also useful to S about life in the States, when we go through our sporting seasons, what game is played when. Background research that I could help her flesh out.
And of course, being we have hot-blooded women cloistered together in a remote location, one has to ask, "So, where's the big lesbian scene?" Or scenes, if we want to be really hopeful.
Well, that was there too. Albeit with a number of misgivings.
TO BE CONTINUED
