Hot and Humid

After a rainy June and a delightful July, we're into a disgusting August. We've had many, many days of heat and humidity. I know New York has had worse summers--I've lived through them--but every time the real heat kicks in, it's just gross. I live in an old apartment building. It was built in 1905, give or take a year, and central AC was just not part of any building plan more than 100 years ago. (Happily, space was, which makes my spacious and cheap apartment a real rarity.) So we have window units that dehumidify rooms and make it comfortable. It's a blessing to have the window units, and we have them in all our bedrooms and the living room, so things could be worse. However, we do not have one in our kitchen and the setup of the place doesn't allow the kitchen to get cooled by any of the units we do have, so the kitchen is always sweltering. Bake something and it's a thousand times worse. So don't bake, you say. I know, but last Sunday I bought a few delicious peaches from the farmer's market and I desperately needed to make a peach crumble. So I didn't preheat the oven until the thing was almost ready to pop in, kept the kitchen doors closed (there are two), and once I stuck it in the oven I left and just let it combust in there. Last Sunday was a great writing day, too; I'd be working on my computer in my room, air conditioning going full blast. Walk down the hall, which is also cool due to the living room unit. Walk through the kitchen door to check on the crumble and melt. Oy, vey. Spoon a portion of peach crumble onto the plate, take it back into the cool bedroom and eat. Repeat.

They've been promising us rain for a few days to cool everything off. And we did have one impressive rainstorm two nights ago; I haven't seen rain that intense ever, and I lived for 18 months in Costa Rica. The thunder and lightning began when I was in the shower. I heard rumbling, but it was so sustained I thought there must be fireworks in Central Park. They'll do that on random occasions in the summer, and I didn't think much of it. But then I got out of the shower, and with the water no longer running I could tell what it was. And then lightning began. Rather than turn on the Yankees in my room (because while my room has windows, they look over an air shaft and you can't see much, and the configuration of the TV and air conditioner and bureau and bookshelf prohibit me from opening them) I went to the living room to write on the laptop and listen to the rain.

I have to say, since Costa Rica, rain evokes rather intense feelings for me. Countless days we were out in it, trudging through a downpour on our way to visit somebody, only to get stood up and be left wondering what to do with our newfound extra hour. We could knock on doors, but that was inefficient. We could visit somebody, but they usually lived quite a distance away. So we would do one or the other anyway, under umbrellas four feet in diameter (not exaggerating) and stil get drenched from mid-thigh down. We wore skirts and sandals, Tevas, so it didn't ruin our shoes, but so many times I just wanted dry feet. Countless days I longed to go home and change into sweats and slippers and read. And now, more than twelve years later, when it rains I experience that yearning to go home and change into sweats and slippers and read. And when it's at all possible, I do and I just revel in it. When I'm home to begin with, as I was the other night, I just sink into a couch or bed or chair and appreciate being dry.

I know it's strange. But remaining soggy for 9 months at a time will do that to a person. Even twelve years later.

But that rainstorm did not knock out the humidity. The humidity remains in a giant wet blanket enveloping the city. It was supposed to rain yesterday, and it didn't, and it's still as humid as ever. They're promising more storms today (more? how about "some"?) and tomorrow and a dry weekend and week ahead. Please, let it rain! (when I can go inside and change into sweats.)

So...in writing-related news...the new book continues apace. I've gotten some great feedback on it and I'm actually excited to keep going forward. I figure, if I keep what I've written (always a question), I'm about half done with the first draft. Yay! Of course, I've written out everything that I knew was going to happen. I now know the ending, but what lies in between...I don't know. I'm standing at the edge of a gaping black morass, wondering what on earth to write. Exciting stuff. I just arrived at that point two days ago. We'll see where I go from here.

Marie Curie continues apace. My screenwriters' group is reading it and we'll get together next week to discuss. Anil and I are going to talk this Friday and have a long phone conversation where we discuss my draft and his, and who is right and who wins. (this is not exactly what we discuss, and this is not what it feels like, but sometimes it's fun to make little 'notches' each time I win one and he wins one. All in good fun.) We figure that Hollywood is on vacation, and we're aiming for a new round of submissions in September. And September is when the movies in theatres turn serious, so hopefully some dramas will perform well and shake loose this "I will only produce a comedy, because comedy is the only thing in the world that sells! Drama is a dirty word!" attitude. Please, people, someone needs to break from the herd. And if that person broke with Marie (our version of Marie, not someone else's), that would be fantastic.

Also in writing-related news, I am developing carpal tunnel syndrome in my left hand/wrist. Exciting stuff! I went to an orthopedist a week ago for a sharp pain in my wrist, and he said it was tendinitis and to let it rest and leave it alone. Well, a few days later, I began developing a tingling sensation in my fingertips...which hasn't gone away. Classic carpal tunnel symptom. I don't have the tingling in my right hand, knock wood. So I've ordered a wrist brace from Doc Ortho (a real brand!) and have started doing carpal tunnel exercises and stretches. We'll see. All of my injuries come from sitting. Hmm.

Enjoy the last weeks of summer! I will, as soon as it rains again.

I Need an iPhone

I'm running around a lot these days, for some strange reason. Things to do after work, things to do on the weekend...I take a magazine or book with me to while away the time, because I can't exactly write on my projects on the subway, but it feels a bit like wasting my time. If I had an iPhone, I could be blogging! best of all worlds! Or--hey--Tweeting. I actually did open a twitter account. Right now it's stupid. But if I got an iPhone...I could make witty, trenchant 140-character observations in the moment they happen. Like this morning. I was rounding a corner and I bumped into an older man. He looked at me, confused, and I smiled and apologized. He smiled back and we went on our ways. Twitter post: "People can be nice." Deep!

Or the moment I walked out the door. I have a pair of white sandals that I love but they HURT. I've had them a few years and I've thought numerous times that at some point, really, they'll get broken in. So I put them on and walked out the door and about halfway between the apartment building and the subway, I thought, "Still not broken in." Twitter post: "My shoes hurt! Cute but not practical." Give people a little light into my life.

And I had some odd dreams last night. I don't remember what they were, other than that I was trying to do the Charleston with someone. But we were adding in an extra beat and I kept saying, "No, it's in four." This not-remembering-my-dreams thing is happening a lot. If I had an iPhone, I could jump out of bed and Twitter about my dream: "Charleston in four, not five counts." See, that's practically a public service announcement, it's so helpful.

Oh, I know, I'm not the first person to ridicule Twitter. Lots and lots of pundits hate it, think it's stupid, write about how stupid it is. But get this: most of them have Twitter accounts! It's bizarre to read an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times by a respected journalist and have the article end saying, "Be my friend on Facebook! Follow me on Twitter!" Sigh.

I don't want to Twitter at every moment of the day, so I probably don't need the capacity to do so. The chief effect not having an iPhone has on my life is that I can't look up an address while I'm en route. That's all I've noticed, anyway.

But I still want one.

Still kicking

Hi all,
just to let you know I'm still alive. Hi! You can all breathe a collective sigh of relief.

I have been busy, you see. I know, I've said that before, but I have. I'm leading what a friend called a "crazy double life," which sounds so much more exciting than it actually is. But I have a job that I work during the day and a second job that I work at night. It's just that I don't get paid for my night job. Yet! Yet, yet, yet.

Marie Curie is thisclose to being done. The lack of a space is not a typo; it is for additional emphasis, on top of the italics. We can see it, feel it, taste it. (Not literally, you understand. Literally, right now I can only taste the candy I'm eating. Peppermint patties. Must tide myself over until lunch, which I ordered from Chipotle but which, I was informed, wouldn't be ready for another half hour! What's that about?) We've sent it out to some rather reputable companies and people, and gotten really good responses. But they all have the same complaints: they're fascinated, but they're not MOVED. Anil and I are sure that MOVING the audience involves only a few tweaks, so I did a pass, adding some things, and he did a pass, adding some more, and when he sent it back to me I really got a sense of what they mean when they say "you can't see the forest for the trees." We're so set on individual scenes and tweaks etc, we're not sure how the entire script is coming together. So we decided to give it a month's rest and come back to it fresh. Another couple of weeks for that.

Book 2 is finally-actually-finally getting written. (I love talking about writing in the passive third person. "Getting written" makes it sound like it's just spontaneously happening and requires no work from me. Believe me, I wish that were the case.) I'm taking a class from the novelist Alison Pace and it's been very helpful, full of insightful critiques and insights into how to make this thing work. I'm reading others' pages and sharpening my own critiquing skills (always a good thing, because then you can turn your knives on your own work) and it's motivating me to work more on the book. The goal is 1000 words a day, which is sometimes easy and sometimes like trying to pull out my entire head of hair, one strand at a time. Painful, and not very efficient. A couple of weekends ago I was really tearing through pages, doing very well, and then tendinitis in my right arm came roaring back. Ah well.

On the drama side, Anil and I are thinking of new projects to get into. I have one script that is finished that perhaps we could try to sell. (It may be a little too small-scale, though. Not really commercial.) I have two other dramas that are in various draft stages, and I could bring one of those out. To sate the current appetite for all things comedy, I may get out an old comedy I wrote at NYU. We'll see.

Meanwhile, the sun is shining and New York is having a remarkably cool July. Time to go to Chipotle and take my Bol out to the park and enjoy!

All Tribeca'd Out

Hello again.
I am officially Tribeca’d out. This is a good place to be, really, but it took almost a week to recover fully. I’m not even sure if I recovered fully. But here I am. Writing again!

Tribeca itself was very cool. Then again, I had the swine flu for the first week. I’m serious. Well, I don’t know for sure that it was swine flu, and it did happen the week BEFORE Mayor Bloomberg got on TV and said, “If you are feverish and coughing, STAY HOME” and therefore didn’t do me any good; due to a precarious situation at work, I came in five of the seven days I shouldn’t have. But it was the flu. And then I went to Tribeca events at night, again when I shouldn’t have. It was ridiculous for a couple of those days, because I literally couldn’t speak. And these events are not exactly conducive to speaking. Blaring music, tons of people screaming over the blaring music, and then having to scream even louder because of the combination of the blaring music and screaming people, and it just gets harder and harder. I’m not a good screamer in the best of times, and afflicted with swine flu, I am much worse. So the first night I tried—oh, how I tried—and ended up leaving early. It was funny. “What are you here for?” (The Tribeca equivalent of “What do you do?”—the standard good-to-meet-you New York question) “I wrote—cough cough—a script—cough cough—about Marie Curie and got a fellow—cough cough—fellowship.” Cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough ad nauseum. I threw in the towel after 45 minutes. The next night, Anil had come into town and so I just smiled and mouthed, “I’m sick. I can’t talk.” And he talked. He’s a good talker, so it worked fine. I tried to interject from time to time, so I didn’t look like Hillary Clinton circa 1991 (anyone remember her nod-and-smile routine?), but was so relieved he was there and I didn’t have to speak. Wednesday night I stayed home and watched Wedding Crashers (really very funny) and slept. Nice. Thursday night there was a party at the Apple store in SoHo, which still had the loud music and crowds, but we got there early and avoided the worst of it. Friday night was the awards ceremony, the one for which I purchased The Dress. The event was nice enough (Robert DeNiro was there!), though after a while I just had to sit down and got hit on by a drunk guy from Long Island. Anil came by and gave me the “Do you want me to leave you alone?” look. I leaned forward and said, “I need you to get me out of this.” So we started talking, and by the time I turned around again, Drunk Long Island Guy had disappeared. Nice to have a guy around for that. Saturday we went to a brunch (very tasty food) that was nice but not really anything special; then we went and hung out in the Filmmakers’ Lounge and met one of the Tribeca funders, and had an interesting conversation with him and his buddy. They invited us to a happy hour at an expensive restaurant, and we went there and then walked around SoHo/Tribeca for a while* and got gelato. The next day, Sunday, there was a reading of scenes from some of the fellowship recipient screenplays. They were great. We didn’t get read, because we didn’t finish the screenplay in time, but given that we’d done a full reading in LA a few weeks prior, it was fine. And Jodie Foster was there! She seems nice. She’s directing the production of one of the screenplays. Exciting stuff.

The next week we had a lot more parties, more of the same. Thursday morning was very cool, though: a "Women in Film" brunch. It was at City Hall Restaurant, again in SoHo, and there were all kinds of lovely women who chatted and commiserated and congratulated each other. The parting gift: a jar of Chanel anti-aging cream. Very appropriate for women in film. I cracked up. (it's worth $375! I looked itup!) And then I asked my dermatologist sister if I should use it. Her verdict: sell it on eBay and use Renova instead, "something that actually works."

Friday night was the best, since it was a dinner for the Sloan recipients. It was more intimate, much quieter, and I sat by great people (though a lot of them rotated) and had great conversations about Marie Curie, the screenplay, my books (Did I Expect Angels? and the other one that I’m writing—or, more accurately, trying to write). You know how sometimes you have a night where you just don’t want to go home because you’re having such a great time? That was Friday. Anil had gone back to California already, so he missed it, and he shouldn’t have because it was by far the best event.

Anyway. In DIEA news—well, there’s not much. My website, My Unexpected Angel.com, is finished, so check it out and leave a story of someone who has helped you out. It’s all good.
********

*for non-New Yorkers, SoHo refers to “South of Houston,” meaning Houston Street, a stop on the 1 subway line. It’s a particular area, small, just on the border of TriBeCa, which means “Triangle Below Canal,” which is the next stop on the 1 line. And Houston is not pronounced like Houston, Texas; it’s HOW-ston.

Hello again

I thought I'd shock anyone still out there and post again. A second post in ten days! How can that be?

Well, see, the script is just about finished. I can't believe it. We had a reading in Los Angeles and tweaked, sent it out to friends to have them read and tweaked some more. Today we sent it to our rep at the Tribeca Film Fest, and that's about it. We can still tweak, of course, but now our business turns to trying to sell the thing.

Oh, the humanity.

Selling a screenplay is a tricky business. There's the "option," which is essentially getting paid to sit on the script and not send it to anyone else, as the optioner considers what s/he would like to do with it. Often an option comes with an extension clause, where you have to sit on it for six months, and then the optioner decides whether or not s/he wants it for another six months. So you can spend a year just wondering if your optioner wants the script or not. Granted, it's not bad to get paid to do nothing, but you're not getting paid a lot. Certainly not enough to quit a day job or anything like that. Not enough to establish a career as a writer. And it's not as prestigious as actually selling a script, so you can't go around bragging to potential industry partners, "I optioned a script." They'll say, yeah, so what? My dog can option a script. (This is not true, by the way. Just thought I'd make that clear.)

The next step up is selling the script. This is good. If you sell it to a Writer's Guild signatory, you become a member of the Writer's Guild, which is also good. WGA membership means you get the WGA minimum for the script (a lot of money, a heck of a lot more than an option -- not retire-on-this money by any stretch, but a lot to me) and you now qualify for WGA-sponsored health insurance and you have a say in union negotiations (albeit a tiny one), a vote, etc. You also have the WGA behind you in your negotiations, and can call on them for help if need be. This is valuable.

And the step after that is actually getting the movie made. This does not automatically follow a sale, sadly. You have to find the right cast, the right director, additional producers. They will sometimes demand rewrites. One of my writing teachers at NYU said, "There's nothing so depressing as going into a meeting with your sixteenth draft--you've given your life to this thing, labored on it--and having the producer say, 'Well, the script is just a first draft.'" I can imagine this quite vivivdly, having worked on this for a while. And all kinds of things can go wrong. A friend of mine had a script optioned and a director and actress attached. They were set to begin filming in a few months. But the actress demanded a new ending. Not just any new ending, but one she dictated. The director said he'd walk if they rewrote to that ending. The actress said she'd walk if they didn't. Time went by, the director's window of availability closed, and the director quit. Then the actress quit. Then the option expired. The script remains in limbo.

That's only one of the many, many things that can go wrong. I won't go into all of them here, not wanting to jinx myself.

Now on to good news about my book. Yes, my book! Remember that? The thing I started this blog for?

I qualify for the Star program, in which they can place my book in bookstores, "regionally and perhaps nationally." It won't happen any time soon -- it takes at least six months, possibly a year -- and meanwhile I have to fill out some extensive forms talking about what kind of publicity plans I have. It's odd and difficult to shift focus back to Jennifer and Henry, my old friends. I may have to do some rewriting of the book, too. Interesting.

Meanwhile, a short story I wrote, "Secret Combinations and the 7-Eleven," got accepted for publication in a literary journal: Weber, the Contemporary West. Better than that, they are submitting it as their entry for a best-of compilation, called Best of the West. An acceptance for that would be incredibly cool. Don't count your chickens, I know. But it still would be cool.

Oh, the shame

It's been almost six months since my last post. What have I been doing for six months, dear reader? Why, writing a screenplay. In my last post I had just won a screenplay development grant from the Sloan Foudnation, through the Tribeca Film Institute. Well, they wanted a rewrite (it's a screenplay development grant, after all) and so I wrote one. And another. And another. But FINALLY I can say...well, not that we're done, but we're literally a couple of weeks away from being done. Which is a good thing, since the Tribeca Film Festival is at the end of this month and they're having an awards ceremony and everything.

(I have the dress...I bought it even before I knew I'd gotten the award. I saw it in June at Lord and Taylor as I was shopping for a dress for my brother's wedding. It was beautiful...and way too expensive. So I watched it. It wasn't going anywhere; it was a dry summer for sales. I waited. I stalked the dress. I visited it weekly. Sometimes they changed location to try to sell more of the dresses and I would panic, thinking it was gone, and run through the floors to find it again. Always there, and never on sale. Until October, when it was about half off. I opened a Lord & Taylor account to get an additional 15% off (I know, such bad financial sense!) and got another 15% off because I told the saleslady my summerlong stalking story. So it was affordable. And two weeks later I got the news. It was as if the universe had said, "If you buy it, you will get the fellowship!" And now I need to lose 10 pounds. I've been telling myself this since February. Hmm. Maybe this will just be an opportunity to purchase Spanx.)

Anyway. Marie Curie has occupied me since then, just about exclusively. Every so often I get ideas for future stories--both screenplays and books--and say, okay, jot that down for later. When is "later"? After Marie Curie sells! Optimistically speaking, of course; one never knows what will happen. I remain optimistic, just because it's a darn good script (if I do say so myself) and we've gotten such great feedback from so many people.

I actually just got back from a trip to LA, where we had a reading. We got 8 professional theater actors to donate their time (we paid them in sandwiches, literally) and we had one rehearsal and one performance. A "reading" is different from a real performance, fyi: actors sit in chairs and don't actually walk around or do anything they're supposed to do; they just read the lines from the script (no memorization) and put the proper vocal inflection in. But if someone slaps Marie (as does happen...juicy science stories!), the actor doesn't actually get slapped; the narrator literally says, "Jeanne slaps Marie." So there's some imagination involved for the audience, but it's so great for the writers to hear their words aloud. See, it always works in the writer's head; the eternal question is, does it work for anyone else?

So. I apologize if anyone has checked this blog in the last six months and not gotten anything. I've been busy -- you know, writing.

Just read and highly recommend: THE STORY OF EDGAR SAWTELLE

long time ago...

Okay, it's been long enough ago that I last posted that my address bar didn't recognize my blog address. Sad.

But you see, I've had to prevent myself from blogging. Actively. Because I had a bit of a secret, and I didn't know how to blog without telling the secret. But the secret is out now, so I can make it public.

I won something.

Not by myself. I'm working with a producer in LA, Anil Baral, to develop a screenplay on Marie Curie, called A Noble Affair. This is the "scientific story" I've alluded to many times over the past few months. He and I have been working on this project for a year now, and we submitted it to the TriBeCa Film Institute for consideration for a Sloan grant. (The Sloan Foundation encourages the depiction of science and scientists in film.) 130 entries, 5 prizes. And we got one.

Yow!

So I'm excited. I found out a couple of weeks ago but they said it shouldn't be made public until they made their announcement. Can you say, "Sitting on your hands"? I so wanted to tell everyone I saw. I did tell a lot of people, more than I should have, but I felt guilty. But they did announce it yesterday. So it's official now, and I can tell everyone. I can even tell people what the screenplay is about, since they're also publishing our logline. Well, they're only telling half the story (we do show her pursuit of the isolation of the element radium, but we also show her personal life), but that's okay.

I will provide some links below. Not cleverly embedded in sentences, just bald.

http://nyindieseen.blogspot.com/2008/10/tribeca-film-institute-announces-first.html

http://www.dvnetwork.net/blog/2008/10/29/call-for-entries-for-2009-tfi-sloan-filmmaker-fund/

http://www.ioncinema.com/news.php?nid=3225

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117994835.html?categoryid=13&cs=1

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3ic75447be81df667c95e47db997a6b89e

I'm pretty darn excited to have my name in both Variety and the Hollywood Reporter. I did an internship at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival and manned the Hollywood Reporter booth at the Palais des Festivals and the (SOMETHING) Hotel--why can't I remember its name? Starts with an M--and have wanted to subscribe since then, though I was put off by its price tag.

The articles basically say the same thing, but I thought I'd include them all. And I'll keep you updated on the progress as it comes.