Cole, I was born in Hollywood on Sunset blvd at Cedars of Lebanon (now the Church of Scientology) - forty years before you arrived. I didn’t dream of Hollywood, it was just where I lived, where I grew up. I left Hollywood, left LA for college and tech in San Francisco, Seattle. Now I’m just back from a seminal trip down there to clear out my dad’s storage locker and it’s sticking with me. Maybe my last trip to LA? Probably not.
I know last week’s visit is heavy with the emotion of closing out my parent’s lives, but I got hit with a wave of nostalgia and it did make me think of you - the Hollywood exile (and if I’m reading your stuff right - critic).
Our house was a block off sunset; a block off Hollywood. Michael Jackson went to my Elementary School. My friends sold maps-to-stars-homes on the corner. My sister went to Hollywood High. I went to Fairfax growing up on Melrose. She worked at the Paramount (now Disney’s El Capitan); I worked across the street at the Chinese. We ran into movie stars in restaurants, no biggie. I worked in a coffee shop on sunset filled with actors and wannabe actors from the soap studios off fountain. I saw Star Wars in 6th grade at the Chinese; later Raiders; ET at the Cinerama Dome; the first Alien omfg. I went to Universal Studios every chance I got. The Jaws ride, Earthquake, Water World.
I got so many feels going to LA. I don’t want to live there but the grungy vibe of the big city from the storage locker dwellers to the movie billboards everywhere to the palm trees and the romanticism of the Academy Museum - it just makes me want to go to the movies. I took some pictures and I’ll post them and tag you.
I know it’s complicated if you’re in the industry and enshittification bleeds over everywhere but Hollywood still feels a bit magical to me.
It’ll be 2 years in March for my dad. Three months later — the day before his birthday — my mom died. They both lived long and pretty happy lives making it to 97 and 98. I found boxes of stuff from my grandparents in the storage locker - still packed up from when they fled the Nazis. It’s all a bit weird, but getting that storage locker cleared out was definitely a bit of closure.
I've never cared for the "well, they lived a long life" condolences, but wow, they truly did. That said, my experience is, being orphaned, regardless of your age, is something we never really get over. I'm sorry, my friend.
I'm with you on this one, Cole, and it's the same with books. When my wife wrote her first novel, she was interested in exploring the interiority and ambiguity of the story, but her premise could easily have been an action thriller and her agent kept pressuring her to rewrite it that way. In fact, mea culpa, *I* told her she should rewrite it that way, using exactly Leonard's argument. She dug her heels in because she said that if she wrote an action thriller that's all that publishers would ever want from her. A decade on, I can see she was right.
Cole, it's an equation everyone has to figure out for themselves. Personally, I learned my writing craft because I wanted to be able to create the kinds of novels I loved. Those happened to be slightly odd stories full of nuance and strangeness that took unexpected paths. By 'unexpected', I usually meant non-genre - because I often find I'm disappointed with the conventional notes a genre story will aim for. So I annoyed the publishers who wanted genre stories and I also annoyed the people who thought literary fiction should be plotless and slow. It's just the way I am.
But if you can please the conventional box-tickers and it satisfies you, good luck to you. That's not selling out if you're happy with it. We're all different.
I like big commercial movies. It was part of my very varied movie diet growing up. So nothing against them.
Now big commercial movies are just based on IPs exploited to the marrow, not to the bone.
But there was a time... Spielberg and Cameron come to mind.
It looks like a lost art in Hollywood, but if that's finally what is bein' looked for... well, Cole, my man. Write a good one. Fuck, write MANY GREAT ONES. I'll be in line at the theatre for each of them.
"The audience is not your enemy. The audience is the point."
Caveats: failed writer, no one has ever paid me for any fiction, my writing, in the words of one beta reader, shames all Americans, etc.
I do not believe that you will ever get the freedom to write little intimate dramas if you make your mark as a commercial writer. This is not to say that you cannot write things, as you point out, that do not move people or comment on the world (James Gunn and Superman come to mind as recent examples) merely that you will be constrained to make your points within in the confines of the commercial movie expectations. Not necessarily bad, but certainly not as open as other forms.
I suspect, but cannot prove, that at least some of the self-publishing success is a form of this. Otherwise talented writers writing things that are not commercial per the large publishers. Self publishing obviously runs on tropes, but they appear to me to be different tropes than commercial publishing.
And, as discussed before, there is value in commercial scripts. Simple pleasures help people handle the world. Things are fucked and bullshit, as we all know, and having something to enjoy that lets folks recharge in these times is not, in my opinion, a bad thing.
But the business is clearly being run by spreadsheets, and once your input into that spreadsheet is a commercial script, that is what you will be expected and allowed to produce. It's a living, or might be, but it has its pleasures and drawbacks.
I agree with the quote from :A: and what Roz ends on -- the audience is the point, not the enemy and good on you if you can make a wide audience happy and yourself happy in the process.
I'd say, as an indie, DIY scrappy creator, I'd gladly "sell out" with commercial scripts and allow myself to be pigeonholded by the execs... for a good and increasing price (ha!). Because, like you have done with your time away, I'll never stop creating what I truly want to see in the world even if I have to take the risk of funding it myself. That's the whole point of this...for me anyway.
Cole, I was born in Hollywood on Sunset blvd at Cedars of Lebanon (now the Church of Scientology) - forty years before you arrived. I didn’t dream of Hollywood, it was just where I lived, where I grew up. I left Hollywood, left LA for college and tech in San Francisco, Seattle. Now I’m just back from a seminal trip down there to clear out my dad’s storage locker and it’s sticking with me. Maybe my last trip to LA? Probably not.
I know last week’s visit is heavy with the emotion of closing out my parent’s lives, but I got hit with a wave of nostalgia and it did make me think of you - the Hollywood exile (and if I’m reading your stuff right - critic).
Our house was a block off sunset; a block off Hollywood. Michael Jackson went to my Elementary School. My friends sold maps-to-stars-homes on the corner. My sister went to Hollywood High. I went to Fairfax growing up on Melrose. She worked at the Paramount (now Disney’s El Capitan); I worked across the street at the Chinese. We ran into movie stars in restaurants, no biggie. I worked in a coffee shop on sunset filled with actors and wannabe actors from the soap studios off fountain. I saw Star Wars in 6th grade at the Chinese; later Raiders; ET at the Cinerama Dome; the first Alien omfg. I went to Universal Studios every chance I got. The Jaws ride, Earthquake, Water World.
I got so many feels going to LA. I don’t want to live there but the grungy vibe of the big city from the storage locker dwellers to the movie billboards everywhere to the palm trees and the romanticism of the Academy Museum - it just makes me want to go to the movies. I took some pictures and I’ll post them and tag you.
I know it’s complicated if you’re in the industry and enshittification bleeds over everywhere but Hollywood still feels a bit magical to me.
Andrew, I'm sorry I didn't reply right away to this. Your father recently died or is this just a final chapter after he left us sometime in the past?
It’ll be 2 years in March for my dad. Three months later — the day before his birthday — my mom died. They both lived long and pretty happy lives making it to 97 and 98. I found boxes of stuff from my grandparents in the storage locker - still packed up from when they fled the Nazis. It’s all a bit weird, but getting that storage locker cleared out was definitely a bit of closure.
I've never cared for the "well, they lived a long life" condolences, but wow, they truly did. That said, my experience is, being orphaned, regardless of your age, is something we never really get over. I'm sorry, my friend.
I'm with you on this one, Cole, and it's the same with books. When my wife wrote her first novel, she was interested in exploring the interiority and ambiguity of the story, but her premise could easily have been an action thriller and her agent kept pressuring her to rewrite it that way. In fact, mea culpa, *I* told her she should rewrite it that way, using exactly Leonard's argument. She dug her heels in because she said that if she wrote an action thriller that's all that publishers would ever want from her. A decade on, I can see she was right.
I am that wife!
Cole, it's an equation everyone has to figure out for themselves. Personally, I learned my writing craft because I wanted to be able to create the kinds of novels I loved. Those happened to be slightly odd stories full of nuance and strangeness that took unexpected paths. By 'unexpected', I usually meant non-genre - because I often find I'm disappointed with the conventional notes a genre story will aim for. So I annoyed the publishers who wanted genre stories and I also annoyed the people who thought literary fiction should be plotless and slow. It's just the way I am.
But if you can please the conventional box-tickers and it satisfies you, good luck to you. That's not selling out if you're happy with it. We're all different.
I like big commercial movies. It was part of my very varied movie diet growing up. So nothing against them.
Now big commercial movies are just based on IPs exploited to the marrow, not to the bone.
But there was a time... Spielberg and Cameron come to mind.
It looks like a lost art in Hollywood, but if that's finally what is bein' looked for... well, Cole, my man. Write a good one. Fuck, write MANY GREAT ONES. I'll be in line at the theatre for each of them.
"The audience is not your enemy. The audience is the point."
Caveats: failed writer, no one has ever paid me for any fiction, my writing, in the words of one beta reader, shames all Americans, etc.
I do not believe that you will ever get the freedom to write little intimate dramas if you make your mark as a commercial writer. This is not to say that you cannot write things, as you point out, that do not move people or comment on the world (James Gunn and Superman come to mind as recent examples) merely that you will be constrained to make your points within in the confines of the commercial movie expectations. Not necessarily bad, but certainly not as open as other forms.
I suspect, but cannot prove, that at least some of the self-publishing success is a form of this. Otherwise talented writers writing things that are not commercial per the large publishers. Self publishing obviously runs on tropes, but they appear to me to be different tropes than commercial publishing.
And, as discussed before, there is value in commercial scripts. Simple pleasures help people handle the world. Things are fucked and bullshit, as we all know, and having something to enjoy that lets folks recharge in these times is not, in my opinion, a bad thing.
But the business is clearly being run by spreadsheets, and once your input into that spreadsheet is a commercial script, that is what you will be expected and allowed to produce. It's a living, or might be, but it has its pleasures and drawbacks.
I agree with the quote from :A: and what Roz ends on -- the audience is the point, not the enemy and good on you if you can make a wide audience happy and yourself happy in the process.
I'd say, as an indie, DIY scrappy creator, I'd gladly "sell out" with commercial scripts and allow myself to be pigeonholded by the execs... for a good and increasing price (ha!). Because, like you have done with your time away, I'll never stop creating what I truly want to see in the world even if I have to take the risk of funding it myself. That's the whole point of this...for me anyway.
Sincerely,
An (perhaps naive) eternal optimist and dreamer