What I'm Watching: Lives, Smoking, and Courage

I've had a chance to watch a few movies lately, and for one of them I actually watched at the movie theatre, which has become rare for me lately.

On Saturday night, I went down to the Coolidge Corner Theatre, which is a terrific local movie house, which does goofy things like host a Buffy The Vampire Slayer Sing-Along midnight show (it had a prom night theme this year, so on my way after watching my movie, there were scores of folks clad in suits and evening gowns waiting in line). As for me, I finally got to watch The Lives of Others, written and directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. I figured that since it has been out for a while, I'd be by myself, but the small theatre was completely sold out (as was the earlier showing).

The movie completely deserved to be sold out. It's a spare, tense film, about a playwright and actress in East German under surveillance from a taciturn (and arts loving) Stasi agent. It's a movie that shows how you can offer an illuminating view of an expansive, oppressive regime and time, by focusing closely, intensely on the lives of just a few people. The actors were completely convincing, breathtaking really. For me, it was one of those rare films, where I was completely caught up for the entire time, and afterwards wasn't even tempted to try to look for parts that didn't work. It all meshed together for me. I'd actually love to watch it again, just so that I could look more closely at how he put it all together.

Thank You for Smoking, written and directed by Jason Reitman from Christopher's Buckley's novel, was on a Netflix DVD that lurked around our house for weeks. It was a movie that ended up on the list somehow, I guess it sounded good, but then once it was here, it never really caught our interest. We finally watched it and wondered why we'd waited so long.

Aaron Eckhart turns on the charm full blast as a spokesman for Big Tobacco. Thank you For Smoking is a rare case of a satire that manages to walk along the knife edge between preachiness and silliness, and come out intact. Though it's about spin in the world of business, the movie feels especially relevant today to our current political situation, living in a country whose political leadership is constantly trying to paint a happy face onto a war without popular support, and scandal after scandal in the executive branch. The character of Nick Naylor makes a point of teaching his young son how to direct an argument away from factual truth, and shows him how to make it all about winning and losing (and how to make sure you always win).

If this was a typical Hollywood movie, you'd expect Naylor to eventually get his comeuppance, and there's some of that, but it doesn't quite work the way you'd expect. The tricky thing is that we're rooting for this grand deceiver, in the same way that you end up sympathizing with the gangsters in the Godfather, or the crooks in a jewel heist movie. Naylor loves what he does and he's good at it, and Eckhart's clear love of his character is infectious.

Last night our Netflix copy of Munich wouldn't play, so we were onto Courage Under Fire, starring Denzel Washington (and nominally Meg Ryan). (Directed by Edward Zwick and written by Patrick Sheane Duncan.) Released in 1996, this is a film about the first Iraq war and the aftermath of a friendly fire incident. It's a bit of a character piece about Col. Serling (played by Washington), who, while trying to deal with a deadly error in Iraq, also has to investigate the details of the first woman up for the Medal of Honor.

Ah, the first Gulf War. I fear that we'll look back on it fondly someday (or do we already). I can guarantee you that the war movies made about the current Iraq war will look nothing at all like this. The combat, what little there is, is out in the empty desert, with a few anonymous Iraqis getting shot by the Americans. But the war was over so quickly, the films have to deal with American v. American violence and conflict. And there's no political comment by anyone over whether it was a good idea to be there or not.

The movie is a bit of a mess. The big incident that haunts Serling isn't given the weight it needs to explain Denzel's struggles, and the puzzle that he tries to unravel around Meg Ryan's character, feels awkward and forced. I guess, ultimately, this movie is trying to deal with the notion of "the truth shall set you free" but you'd be better off watching something else for that, or even to get a sense of war (for a good Gulf War movie, I think you head to Three Kings.

Mostly Courage Under Fire made me very curious about what sorts of movies we'll see about our current war, five years from now. I think they'll be much more powerful, emotionally and politically.

Clarification on Yesterday's Numbers, With Thanks to Wendyll Berry

I finished re-reading Wendyll Berry's The Hidden Wound last night, which really got me thinking. Toward the end of the book, he wrote:

"I realized that the culture I needed was not be found visiting museums and libraries and auditoriums. It occurred to me that there was another measure for my life than the amount or even the quality of the writing that I did; a man, I thought, must be judged by how willingly and meaningfully he can be present where he is, by how fully he can make himself at home in his part of the world."

Which made my list from yesterday seem not quite as important (though I'm still a numbers fiend, and I'm afraid I just can't shake it). Mr. Berry reminded me of all the things I left out about what I did in my 30s. The numbers might useful to a student of writing, I suppose, to see that it's possible, over the course of ten years to write a substantial number of pages, mail them out countless times, and get scripts mounted on stage and novels published. These are good things to know.

What I left out, oddly, was how grateful I am for the chance to write each of my plays, novels, and screenplays. Mostly this was possible because my wife had jobs that provided us enough income to live, while I stayed home and took care of the kids. I wrote about the things that I most needed to write about, and that's lucky, too. I wrote about faith, friendship, race, moving, love. Nothing I wrote was perfect, but it all helped me improve as a writer. (Note to students: improving as a writer does not mean that it suddenly becomes easier. It only means that I now have tools to tackle projects that weren't possible before, and barely seem possible now.)

I also left out the fact that I did a lot of things, other than writing, that informed my writing and who I am. I worked with my hands a lot--fixing up houses, laying pathways, digging gardens. I raised children and cooked dinners and dumped other people's garbage.

Wendyll Berry has me thinking a lot about community these days. I'm new to my town, so I'm still finding my way. I'm not sure how writing fits into everything, but I know these thoughts will be a part of what I write in the future.


P.S. Shame on Brookline Booksmith and the Brookline Barnes & Noble for not having The Hidden Wound in stock last night. It really is a must-read.

Numbers Guy: What I Did In My 30s

My 40th birthday is just a few weeks away. A milestone like this calls up a fair amount of self-assessment and navel-gazing. Working for myself means that I don't have a boss or supervisor to whom I offer reports of my progress or accomplishments. So in my case, I make lists to give myself an idea of how I'm doing.

So, how productive was I in my 30s? I didn't start any theatre companies (I started two in my 20s, along with a marketing newsletter for playwrights, and ran a nonprofit playwrights organization). In my 20s, I wrote a lot of screenplays and full-length plays, but in my 30s, my writing was more diverse.

Here's what I did in my 30s:

I wrote:
One novel (Tornado Siren, published)
Two drafts of a new novel (hope to finish it this year)

Three non-fiction book proposals. (none bought. Yet.)

Lots of rewrites of various scripts.

2 ½ full-length plays: Pieces of Whitey (produced), Constant State of Panic (incomplete), God’s Voice (workshopped but not produced),

1 one-act play: The Sky is Falling (produced and published)

16 ten-minute plays: (15 of them are published and/or produced)

1.5 screenplays (The Three Great Loves of Christopher J. Tomaski, 1/2 of another)
4 outlines/treatments for screenplays

a Dramatists Guild magazine article

Also I started:
the Rhombus playwrights group in Boston
the online playwright submission binge.
(tried to help start the Kansas City Playwrights Cooperative, but I think it didn’t make it.)

Published a bunch of issues of Market InSight for Playwrights (and then sold it).

I submitted:
854 play scripts
515 queries for plays
171 queries for screenplays
28 screenplay script submissions
75 queries for book manuscripts or book proposals
a handful of book manuscripts.

All these submissions resulted in:
145 productions and readings of my plays
27,058 people attended these shows (approx.) Another 4,000 or so heard my radio shows
8,675 high school students bought my published scripts (resulting in $6,396 for me) and used them in competitions
1 screenplay optioned, and it came very close to getting made.

All the book, play, and screenplay productions and sales earned me about $14,057


I read 463 books
I watched 199 plays and readings (this # is low, because I lived away from big cities for a while)
I watched 615 movies

Moved 5 times. (bought 5 houses, sold 7)
Adopted our son.


That's about it. I'm not quite sure what to make of it all. In terms of writing output, I generated 7 full-length works, which seems close to what I'd like. Moving as many times as we did makes it hard to be as productive as I'd like. And having babies in the house can also cut down on time.

Though I didn't earn much money, when I look at the number of people who saw my plays, I feel pretty content.

The truth is, I can always find people who are more prolific or more talented than I am. In the end, the trick for a writer is be simultaneously content that he's done as much as he could, and be determined to do more and better work in the future.

Now, I'm looking forward to some time to think about what might come in the next decade.

Mailbox Ups and Downs

The mailmain brought bad and good news today. I got a rejection that I'd been expecting from the Boston Theatre Marathon. Artistic Director Kate Snodgrass was kind enough to include a very nice personal note. I don't know how she does it. I've had plays in four previous Marathons, and it's been a very valuable experience. The Marathon is one of my very favorite theatrical events, with 50 ten-minute plays, by 50 New England writers, produced by 50 different theatre companies. The event has a tremendous positive energy, and it's a great way to check out work by so many actors and companies operating in my area. Hopefully I'll get a show in next year. (I also got a query rejection from Trinity Rep, but they said they'd look at more of my plays, so that's not so bad.)

On the plus side, I got a modest check (about $70) for a signing I did of Tornado Siren at Barnes & Noble in Worcester last August. (Talk about slow.) When you're a very small fish like me, sometimes you have to do signings on consignment (not ideal at all), and I managed to sell some books. Incoming funds are always good news. It mostly reminds me that I need to get off my butt and try hustling the book a little more again.

Book Stores Make Me Think About Dying

It's true. We have this fantastic independent bookstore nearby, Brookline Booksmith, and I've gone in a fair bit lately, and I love to browse. But when I'm standing there looking at the fiction section, I can't help but think, "Man, I'll never be able to read all the books that interest me." Which depresses me a little.

I'm almost 40. So maybe I have a good 40 years of reading left. At 25 books a year (I'm slow, I know), that's 1,000 books. Which seems like a lot. But they keep publishing new good books every year. And there's plenty of classics I want to read but haven't. Last time I was there, I picked up Bleak House and then Maugham's The Painted Veil, and thought I want to read these. And then The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Banks caught my eye yet again, but she's got a new one out that looks good, too. I bought Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian for my step-father last year and now I want a copy of my own.

And that's just fiction. I keep meaning to read Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods. And I need to round out my Michael Pollan collection with Botany of Desire, and actually buy a copy of Omnivore's Dilemma, because my wife loved it, too. And I'm reading Wendyll Berry's The Hidden Wound right now, and feel like I should probably just read all of his work.

Sometimes I fantasize about being locked in a bookstore overnight. (It's fun to spend all night in a theatre, too--I did that for South City's May Day Play Day a few years back, and ended up writing a play, The Sky is Falling, that I still like.)

When I'm in a library, I don't have the sense that I want to take it all in. Maybe because the collections are too large. But something about a bookstore makes me lust for the books, lust to read them backwards and forward. I guess I'd better get going. The clock is ticking.

good news: Fade In advancement

This is only the tinest bit of good news, but I found out (by visiting their web site and hunting), that my screenplay, The Carrier, has advanced to the semi-finals of the Fade In Screenwriting Awards. This means it's in the top 90 scripts (there wer 574 quarter-finalists). I'm not quite sure when they'll announce the winners, but I've got my fingers crossed. A top 3 finish would bring in a little cash and some attention for the script.

I really need to do a screenplay submission binge. I've got four feature-length screenplays that are finished and in desperate need of being bought and filmed. I need to get my resources together and start sending out at least a query every day. (Maybe next week...)

Thoughts on theatre and money (started by Adam S.)

Check out this thoughtful post by Adam Szymkowicz on class and theatre (and follow the links).

I have many of the same concerns about trying to make a living from theatre, and also about who, ultimately is my audience. Do I relate to the wealthy, white, upper-middle class patrons who pay big bucks to see the more commercial productions in LORT and Off Broadway theatres? Will they be interested in what I write?

Hard to say. This is something of a concern, if I want to make more than a tiny bit of money from theatre. Much of my work is more suited to smaller venues. But smaller venues mean smaller audiences, which means smaller paychecks. Not that I expect to make a full-time living from writing plays, but more than a pittance would be nice.

I worry about theatre sometimes. Even at the bigger levels (above where I currently operate), there doesn't seem to be enough concern about making sure that playwrights can earn a living wage by writing plays. There has been an incredible building boom around America, in the construction of new spaces over the past ten years or so. Sadly, it's easier for a big theatre like the Huntington to raise a few million dollars for a new theatre space, than it is for them to, say, fund an endowed position for a resident playwright or two.

The Huntington's made a big deal about its Calderwood Fellowships, which are great. They offer four writers $4,000 and development time, over two years. $2,000 a year? That's not going to get a writer very far. Now, if they offered $40,000 over two years, that would be something.

If theatre doesn't find a way to pay playwrights better and to financially support developing writers, they're going to have a lot of very nice theatre spaces, and fewer and fewer great new plays written for them. How many full-time administrators work at a big LORT like the Huntington? What theatre needs is a more organized farm system, really, to allow people to write plays and earn enough to support themselves and their families. That's right, families. What happens to playwrights when they start having kids? Good luck. Go write for TV, if you live in NYC or LA.

The economic issues of theatre extend to the most basic level. Ticket prices continue to rise out of reach of many. Hell, I can't afford to pay $35 or $45 to go see a play. I have to shoot for free tickets. (Thank you StageSource!) Compare this to film--I can get all the movies I can watch for a month from Netflix for $20. I can read all the books I can carry, for free, thanks to the public library. Any writer needs lots of exposure to new and exciting work in their form. For playwrights to improve as writers, they need to see lots of plays and get lots of productions of their work, simple as that.

Wouldn't that be a cool program--if all the major U.S. theatres started a "playwrights passport" program, where legitimate playwrights (say, Dramatists Guild members who have been produced) could attend any show for free? It's not offering huge fellowships, but it would make sure that they keep writers coming in the doors. Just a fantasy, I suppose.