Blogus Groundhogus

First, a brief note to everybody:  I’m baaaaaack.This may be in fits and starts, as my new life in Boston is excellent but demanding.  Also for the past month I have been writing little essays about Groundhog Day to accompany my publication of the original screenplay.  This has been fun, but it keeps sucking energy away from the blog.   Hopefully I’ll at least have that to show you one of these days.As usual it’s easy to get me talking by asking a question, and this one comes from Tim in Los Angeles:

Being that you chose a creative career that is extremely difficult to even have a modicum of success in, how did you persevere and stay motivated during those lean years? You know the days when top ramen filled your shelves, and you shared a place with 14 roommates and roaches?

Tim JulianoLos Angeles, CA

By the time I moved to L.A. I had already completed the roommates and roaches portion of the program - although I still like ramen.    I spent my lean years in Chicago, which is a better place to starve than L.A.  The housing was affordable, public transit was good, there were lots of cheap but excellent ethnic restaurants, and a person could go see the finest blues musicians in the world for a two dollar cover at a local bar.  

Every day, however, teetered on the ledge between hope and despair.  One moment there were good friends, positive feedback and big plans.  The next there were rejection letters, quiet telephones, and bitter cold.   It went on like this for years, and frankly it culminated in my getting ridiculously sick for a while.

How did I deal? 

1. Keep writing.  There is always hope in a new project. It’s like babies.  There’s no evidence that they’re going to turn out any better than anybody else, but somehow there is always hope in babies.  Besides, supposedly you are writing because you like to, not because it will make you rich.  Doing things you like is helpful. 

2. Be with other people.  Writers necessarily spend a great deal of time alone.  You need to counterbalance that.  Besides, other people even at their worst can give you good ideas to write about.  In general you need to have experiences in the world, so be sure to do that – otherwise you’re just writing what you know, which is about being alone and lonely and desperate and depressed.  Who’s going to buy that movie? 

3. I spent some time in the community of other writers.  They are the only ones who know exactly what you are going through.  Even in your alonest alone periods, you’re not alone in this. 

4. If you can, make money as a writer.  You may not be able to sell your screenplay just yet, but I always figured that any kind of writing would be better than flipping pizzas.  I wrote industrial videos and I typed resumes.  I worked for peanuts on a local TV show, wrote brochures, wrote sketch comedy for corporate shows – whatever I could wiggle my way into.

5. Watch movies.  Watch good movies and tell yourself that there are good movies being bought and shot.  Watch bad movies and tell yourself that you could write better than that, you do write better than that, and if that piece of crap can get made, yours can too!  

How did I cope?  My answer is really the same as everybody else’s: I just muddled through.   I muddled through until I got lucky.  But I was always preparing the soil for luck to land.  It didn’t come out of the blue, but arrived after years of trying and pushing and practicing and connecting.  

And the final hard truth is that there is no real arrival.  Every successful screenwriter I know has long periods of time without success.  The roaches and ramen may be gone, the roommates replaced by loving families, but the odds are always stacked against anybody in this business.  Dealing with the trough is a life-skill you will always need.  If you can figure out how to be happy and optimistic independently of your writing career – keeping all parts of your life in perspective – there is more chance you will stick it out long enough to get lucky, as I did.

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The last time we moved – 16 years ago – we had a lot less stuff.  Even so, I remember vowing never ever to do this again.   If a new move were to become necessary, I promised, we were going to forego boxes and vans and go straight to the one match technique.  How much stuff do you really need, anyway?  

Starting with the idea of getting rid of everything, a simple logic began creeping into the conversation: when we get to our new stuff-free home we’re going to need something to sleep on.  We could sleep on the floor until we find a new bed to purchase, or you know what, we already have a perfectly good bed – why not just bring it with us?  

And so it begins.  A bed, a frying pan, a chest for clothes, a favored painting, a bookshelf, duct tape…  The decision to bring nothing with us was easy.  But once we realized that we were better off bringing SOME of the stuff with us, everything became fair game.  Each item needed a review – do we need this?  Do we want this?  Is this us, now?  Who are we?  How do we live?  What is our irreducible essence?

Coincidentally, I am in a similar place with my current screenplay.  I have spent months and months accumulating ideas, scenes, characters, and dialogue, and dumping them into the infinite space that is a document file.   There is a story – in fact, a complete beginning middle end screenplay – but it’s not ready to submit because it’s still carrying closets and basements full of unnecessary stuff. 

I have snippets of terrific dialogue that only barely fit the characters now inhabiting the screenplay.   I have some really kick-ass scenes that disrupt the flow of the story and set our expectations in the wrong direction.  I even have two or three perfectly good titles, but of course I can only use one of them.   

So about half of my time is spent poring over files, books, office equipment, collectibles, furniture, music – deciding with each item Is this still part of my life?  Will I ever need this again?  Who am I?  The other half of my time is spent on the screenplay, picking at scenes and sequences, threads and payoffs, deciding with each item Is this still part of my story?  Will I ever need this again?  What is this movie really about?  What is its essence?

Complicating this sanity-challenging discussion with myself are two competing knowledges: 

1 – With all of the junk lying around our drawers and closets, I haven’t had to go to the hardware store for years.  No matter what the home project is, I have been able to solve it using available materials.   Save enough stuff for a rainy day and when the rainy day comes you’ve got the stuff to deal with it.  Similarly, I have plenty of well written scenes not currently in use, but ready to either plug in as they are or to cannibalize their parts should the script once again require them.

2 – I could use the one match technique on both my stuff and my screenplay, and in either case I will do just fine.  I have the resources I need, with me, all the time, to rebuild my home or my screenplay, this time without any old baggage, using only what I need based on what I know NOW, who I am NOW, what I need NOW.   If that solution seems inefficient in terms of time or money, so does sorting through an overstuffed life and an overstuffed story.  Furniture storage costs money.   Winnowing through a script that’s full of old ideas takes time.

In both the moving and the screenplay, good decisions are based on awareness and honesty and a great deal of toil.  But the goals are the same – to arrive at (or at least close in on) the basic essential life at the chewy center.  Moving is hell, but perhaps helpfully cathartic.  Screenwriting is the same.

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It was one of those parties where it is somehow decided that now we are all going to tell a personal story.  Like you, I try to avoid these kinds of parties.  Like you, I dread being manipulated and peer pressured into humiliating myself.  Like you, I tend to find these experiences – in retrospect – to have been more interesting and valuable than those parties where nothing in particular happens. 

In this evening’s parlor game we were all, one at a time, to admit our past acts of thievery: “Have you ever stolen anything?”

Actually, it wasn’t even, “Have you ever stolen anything,” but more like “What was the biggest thing you ever stole?”  There was an assumption of guilt!  There was an assumption that this specific character flaw was universal.  Even more despicable than that, there was a kind of gleeful braggadocio involved, the telling of thievery so bold and outrageous as to inspire awe.

It was fun in that way, but I still found it surprising.  Certainly somebody besides me actually has an ethical code of conduct and tries to follow it.  Don’t they?  They don’t?  How did I possibly become an adult and still believe this?  By the way, the only other person at the party who seemed taken aback by this den of thieves was my wife, Louise.  I guess chumps of a feather flock together.  But how strange: it was as if the host had brought out a platter of roast child and everyone else at the party had dug in with gusto.  

You think you know a person.

In writing it’s axiomatic that to create a character who feels real and alive it is necessary to create for them a flaw of some kind.  Well, what constitutes a flaw?  A week ago I might have given the example of “dishonesty”, but apparently this is not a flaw at all – for 13 out of 15 partygoers this is standard operating procedure. 

I exaggerate, of course.  These stories wouldn’t even be stories unless they were the remarkable exception to the rule, “Don’t steal.”  Still, there was an equally remarkable lack of guilt or remorse.  Pretty much everybody saw in their experiences not a lesson learned but a happy ending to their tales of larceny most foul: “…and that’s how I paid for three months in Europe!”  Etcetera. 

What I noticed in the discussion that followed the stories was a universal sense of  personal exceptionalism.  All of these fine people saw themselves as moral and ethical stalwarts.  Not just living upstanding lives, but living particularly upstanding lives.  And nobody saw their illegal and immoral transgressions as anything but fine stories to tell, and an exception to their otherwise upright living.  This unshakable believe didn’t even waver when the admitted criminals added new stories – “Oh, yeah, and then there was the time when…”  That too was an exception.  They were all exceptions.

As an audience we look for clues to the nature of a particular character.  First we listen to what they say.  Then we watch what they do.   We also watch for how the people around them react – including how animals treat them.  If the dog doesn’t like somebody, there’s a good chance the character is not as trustworthy as they seem.   By the way, there were no pets at this party so there was nobody to warn me.

When looking for clues to a person’s character, we know that believing what they say is the least reliable method.  They could be lying to us or they could be deceiving themselves, or perhaps they use language for a different purpose than for passing along reliable information. 

Getting character clues by watching how others react is also potentially deceptive.   You can, after all, fool a lot of the people a lot of the time.  We all recognize the ostracized bad guy who lives in a drippy basement and sharpens knives and walks with a limp.  But we also recognize the bad guy who is the most beloved, unassailable do-gooder in the room – heck, we usually pick him out of a cop drama in the first five minutes.

Watching what somebody DOES, that is a better insight into character.  If I see somebody steal, I don’t care what they have to say about the incident – I still know them to be capable of thievery.  If they constantly make excuses and explanations for themselves, I know them to be capable of self-deception.   Now, self-deception - that’s a good character flaw.

There is yet another thing to look at when developing a character, and that has to do with what the audience is bringing to the party. What is their cultural bias, or their own personal relationship with a moral code?  Will a society of one-time crooks even recognize criminal behavior as a character flaw?   I mean, I watched these people divide thievery into acceptable (I stole from a big corporation, but they’ll never miss it, plus they screw us all the time) and unacceptable (He stole coins from blind begger’s cup?  I’d never do that!)  Plus we tend to make exceptions and excuses for ourselves and for people we like, because love is blind.

Here’s another question before I reveal the true meat of this meal:  Can the behavior and attitude of the 13 Thieves best be characterized as the behavior of a child or the behavior of an adult?   I ask because we may disagree on this point, and because the answer is not in fact obvious.

Who is it, child or adult, who believes in following the rules except where they themselves are concerned?  Who, child or adult, is most likely to make an exception for himself rather than to take personal responsibility?  Is it a child or an adult’s attitude that everybody cheats and anybody who doesn’t cheat is a fool, and that the rules only apply to you when you decide that they do?

All of this folds into one of the great and interesting public debates that this country keeps almost having: should there be American Exceptionalism, or, as a screenwriter might put it, Does the character of our country need a re-write?

While watching the Santa Fe 13 rationalize their way into sainthood, I was wondering if American Exceptionalism is so strong a feeling in our country simply because the American people feel the same way about themselves – that they want to be in control of which laws they get to break, and to feel justified in breaking them.   I have no idea whether people in other countries are more honest to the core, or whether everybody makes exceptions for themselves.

Personally speaking, I think I rationalize like hell.  Maybe not about stealing because I really try not to do that, but certainly, in general, I know that I try to construct a universe around myself in which I get to be the most upstanding citizen.   Still, I don’t necessarily assume that my own character ought to be the national model.

Anyhow, I don’t think it’s such a worthless exercise to think of America as a character.   Maybe seeing it through the screenwriter’s lens we can be more clearheaded about how we know what our national character is, and what we can do to reveal our best self to the rest of the world.

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On any other blog a reader might assume from the time lapsed since the last entry that the blogger is busy writing or moving or preparing for a new job. On this blog a reader additionally wonders, “You don’t suppose Mr. Rubin is trapped in a repeating day?” I hope all is well.

Once again, Al, you have shamed me back into existence. Well done. And yes, you’ve pretty much pegged it. 1-Working on a screenplay 2-Moving 3-Preparing for the new job.

The screenplay is fun, frustrating, and very very close. Carving out a regular writing schedule has been impossible over the past two months or so. All of this reminds me once again that routine is helpful to my process. The exact routine changes from project to project, but knowing when I’m going to write, or where, or how (by computer or by hand, using this program or that one) helps me be productive. Until I figure out a regular time/place to blog, I’m afraid it’s going to be pretty sketchy for another couple of months. When I find time to write I have been favoring the screenplay. Hopefully that will be done soon, though, and I will certainly put my head back into blogland while transitioning to a new writing project.

The moving is huge. HUGE. I don’t have a font big enough to accurately represent to you the largeness of it. People do this all the time, but I’m not one of them. I’m not going to list all the rings of hell involved in moving as I have no interest in re-living it right now. Still, cathartically speaking, it’s all good. Having nine months of gestation is probably a better idea than having a Polaroid baby, and the process of dismantling, transitioning, and remantling a life is ultimately, I think, a pretty good idea.

The preparations for the new job are also fun and exciting. Teaching screenwriting is a terrific way to take stock of what I know (and don’t), how I learned it, and what might be useful to someone else. If the answers to these questions turn out to be “1-Not much, 2-I don’t remember, and 3-Less than they think,” then the challenge of filling up fourteen weeks of empty class-time will be very similar to filling the empty pages of a screenplay, which I already know how to do.

Anyhow, I’d like to thank everybody for checking in from time to time. I’ll make a point this week of going out and purchasing some Blog Bran in hopes of making my entries become more regular.

– Danny

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A: Actually, nobody’s asked me this before.  There was a time way back when that people were asking me whether I had “stolen” Groundhog Day from 12:01.  I had to explain that I had already written and sold my script before 12:01 even aired, so I couldn’t have seen it or known about it.

But here’s my answer to your question:

The critical difference between 12:01 and Groundhog Day is the time-span of the repetition. The span of time repeated in 12:01 is so short (I can’t remember…was it 1 hour? Twenty minutes?  Something like that) that I think any person in that situation would easily have been driven insane. Even watching it happen can make the viewer go insane.

It seems to me that the shorter the time span a person is forced to repeat, the more pressure there is on the person. (There isn’t enough time to get your bearings, figure out what’s happening, and actually do something about it). Because of this pressure, there is nowhere for the story to go except for the character to be figuring out an escape. Otherwise the story is simply about the character’s descent into madness – which quickly becomes internal to the character and not particularly fun to watch for the audience.

As with the character in 12:01, Phil Connors’ first dramatic inclination is also to escape (once he’s already been through denial and disorientation). But in his repeating day situation, Phil has time to satisfy himself that escape is impossible, and after having done so there is still three quarters of a movie left.

The short time span of 12:01 necessarily makes the story about escape: how do I get out of this mess?  The day-long time span of Groundhog Day lets most of the story be, “What is life about when you can’t escape from it?”  … Which is another way of saying, “What is life about?”

Also, we humans are used to a day-long unit in the actual living of our lives, and there is resonance in the idea that a day could “repeat” - many of us can relate to days “feeling” as if they are repeating.  The shorter time loop experienced in 12:01 would not suggest the same kind of resonance. Twenty minutes and one hour are both abstractions, related to clocks and watches, and don’t necessarily relate to anything concretely human.

As a final note, I refer to Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Timequake. In this story Vonnegut employs a single repetition of time, set not to minutes or hours, but to a span of several years. He calls it a “Time bounce”, the date of the bounce, by the way, being a certain February 13th - my birthday. That was very thoughtful of him.

After the people in Timequake have bounced back to an earlier time in their lives, they remain conscious of their past and current situations, but are unable to change anything – they can only observe. Because of this they get used to not controlling or changing anything, so when the time bounce is concluded and time progresses normally, people have forgotten how to make decisions and many prefer not making them at all.

By making the span of time for his repetition so large, the story created and the theme explored were nothing like those suggested by the shorter time-spans of GHD and 12:01. Vonnegut’s story became about consciousness and responsibility. I think it was brilliant social commentary – and completely organic to the long time-bounce idea, just as 12:01 really had to become about the plot, and Groundhog Day really had to become existential.

Size does matter.

A: Oh. I forgot about that movie – I was indeed remembering the short. So, everything I wrote – never mind. I’d have to see the film again, but yeah, I’m guessing that Groundhog Day is more enjoyable than 12:01 because it’s funnier and it’s about something. Like you said.

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Once again the question comes from Al, our friend the farmer/writer/philosopher from Wisconsin.  “Do you draw inspiration from books or films?” he asks.  This is a nice but not a burning question, and I suspect that Al is cleverly trying to reengage me in my blog.  Thank you, Al.  This is very kind of you. 

It has in fact been difficult these past few weeks for me to prioritize blog-time alongside my need to complete a screenplay, move to Boston, and prepare for new classes I will be teaching in the fall.  But I like writing these things and swapping ideas with fellow writers and thinkers, so I expect my blog entries will return to regularity in the same manner as the bumpy uncertain fits and starts of spring.  Anyhow, I’ll try.

Inspiration?  This is an interesting concept.   First you don’t know what to write about, then you do.  Or, perhaps, first you aren’t writing, then you are.  Is inspiration the thing that happens in between?

That second aspect of inspiration – not-writing and then writing - is motivation.  What motivates me to actually write a screenplay?

I can get motivated by financial panic (that’s a good one); by existential panic (I am a writer; if I’m not writing, I’m not anything); by a need for completion (“starting” a screenplay, sketching out ideas, bulleting out a story – these lead to the same dramatic need for completion in a writer as they would in the movie audience: we also want to know what happens next).  There is also deadline panic, which includes a desire to meet obligations, to be a professional, and on some level, to be loved. 

(more…)

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People seem to always be complaining that they are stuck in their lives.  I hear a lot about it because of Groundhog Day – one of the ways that people relate to the movie is because they are feeling stuck in repetitive patterns, stuck, unable to change anything. 

As I begin one of the monumental upheavals of my own life, leaving my home of sixteen years to move to a new city, new rhythms and opportunities, new sights and scents and sounds, I wonder whether I have just become unstuck.  If so, perhaps I could offer some insight into how change came about for me.

But no.  The answer is no.  I was not stuck.  Everything was fine.

One of my dad’s dad’s favorite expressions was, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”  And look what I just did.  It wasn’t broke, but I fixed it anyway.  What was I thinking?

I was thinking that a person can live many lives, and I’m not done yet. 

The only thing that was keeping me “stuck” in my present Santa Fe life was an enduring feeling of satisfaction.  I was basically in the “happily ever after” portion of things, and could easily have ridden this one into the sunset. 

And yet there is a restlessness in satisfaction.  There is an enduring part of me that is attracted to challenges, but more than that, I have this perspective of multiple lives, that many locations and ways of living and types of people are desirable and worth experiencing over large chunks of a lifetime.   I’m not trying to collect them.  I don’t have a little book of lists, setting out goals I’d like to check off before I die.  Instead, I’m going with the flow.  I open my eyes from time to time to see what opportunities are available.  I open the door to see who pokes his head in.  That’s how I got to Santa Fe in the first place.  That’s how I got to L.A. and the movie business in the first place.  That’s how I got to Chicago in the first place. 

Screenwriting for me is both a practicum in life studies and a reflection of my own way of living.  While writing a screenplay I’m constantly getting stuck and unstuck.  But I’ve never had what is commonly called “writer’s block”.  I’ve developed a fat toolbox of methods for getting unstuck, mostly because staying stuck is not an option.  If I’m not adding pages to the script, the script is not getting written.   When I feel stuck in my life, I find that simply paying attention and being a little creative – and willing to let go of things – I can usually get back in motion.  Just like in screenwriting.

And when one script is done, I start a new one.  It’s completely different from the last one, but usually just as interesting, exciting, and entertaining to me.  The scripts do have some traits in common, perhaps the irreducible aspects of my own values and personality, and these will apply to any life I wind up living as well, no matter where, no matter what.

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