PROCESSING

-
'Been a while', as the song lyric goes.  Writing sketches and capturing moments in time, a trip along a dusty trail, literary reportage, it's fun, yeah, but nothing like diving into deep water with a couple of characters and an idea.
Started with an email to a friend who I scatter-shoot with ideas, stuff to get my fingers moving, and I started letting him know of the process, how I need to 'connect the dots' to hear stories brewing in the bottom of the barrel.  
It worked.
Scrolling through web bookmarks I landed on a site for a distributor of products that I like to survey, a distributor who sold me a hard duty bag I use to carry my essential stuff on the road, and there it was.  
An idea. 
This particular distributor is so close I could walk over there, and his product line so varied and his clients so world-wide, it hit me.

Drive in to an opening scene and let it go. . .character development will come. . .scenes and plot and direction will unfold.  
Come on Elmore Leonard, show me how to make it pop, let me hear it sing, play it up and down the keyboard with all the notes and the chords and the progressions, improvise on a theme and vamp up the back end.  No worries, clip the dialog to its finest, tightest phrases, snip the fat down to bare bones.  Turn up the heat, sizzle,and there...voila, we're underway.
Good rainy day to stay indoors and keep the fire burning.
The main guy, he ain't me, no way, no way, but he gets my touch and I work him like a dog, digging into him until he reveals secrets and fears and motivations that move him through whatever comes out of this writing.  Then I'll decide if he stays, if he goes, if he needs a brain transplant or a soul or more conscience or some chicken fried steak smothered with gravy and mashed potatoes.  He might need all of it before we're through.  
We go on this journey together, for a while, before either one of us tires, turns back, gets bored, distracted, a woman steals either one of us, letting us have our way in between the dusty diners and motels.  
Neon, baby, lots of neon and road houses.  Bourbon, ice, smooth as hot syrup poured from ancient crystal, crackling on the rocks.  
Let's go, man, let's move..

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

AMERICAN MOTORS RIDES AGAIN

-
Image
            A GUY NAMED VERN   says hello when I sit down at the counter at Corky’s Café and Bakery in Upland, over on Mountain Ave. Vern knows everybody there and wants me to know. Waitresses, the manager, he calls them all by name. He’s bored but he doesn’t know it, pretending he’s all up on who’s the oldest server, going to school with the manager who he says he used to peek at through the fence in junior high. She winces, moves on. Athletic Director at some high school, he takes his grandchildren to school and it’s all so wonderful he gets up every day in a great mood.             “It’s all in your mind,” Vern says. “You make up your mind every day to be happy, and it’s just that simple.”             LATER I'M DRIVING   over by the Montclair plaza and stop in for a small car show. It’s the American Motors confab, bunch of guys showing off their AMXs, the old Rambler motors turned into American Motors before being bought out by Chrysler, for the Jeep brand, Jay Baker
Read more

Musso and Frank Grill

-
Image
           Let’s call him Mario.  He’s the bartender at this classic on Hollywood Boulevard, between Highland and Las Palmas.  You’ve been there.  The Maitre ‘d, Manuel, had ushered me into the empty bar around 11:45 AM, and while outside the sun blazed with mid-spring spring heat, inside seemed frozen in time.       Mario was setting up the bar and had bottles of wine, some opened, some uncorked, cork trays full of highball glasses, wine glasses, Pilsner glasses, tumblers, large jars of green olives, stainless steel containers of white onions—the little kind used in gimlets or martinis if you like them that way—slices of lemon peel, lime, candied cherries, all across the bar, so much that the waiter who came by shoved clear a corner so I could sit.  Mario brought me a Heineken and a glass dripping with shaved ice.  Billie Holliday singing ‘It Had To Be You’, notes hanging around the wallpaper of hunting scenes, geese and duck blinds high above the bar, surrounding the room. Mario sa
Read more

HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD

-
Image
I walked Hollywood Boulevard taking photos of tourists and landmarks;  the classic Hollywood restaurant  Musso and Frank, the huge Ninja Turtle statues that draw in folks in front of the Hollywood Highland Center escalator where people can do a selfie with the turtles then whisk themselves up the escalator and do some shopping.      The sun was bright and warm, the tourists dressed in shorts, tank tops, and the more exotic dress of high class hookers strolling with patrons along the sidewalk of stars.     A young sales crew approaches me for a star tour bus ride, handing me a brochure and asking where I’m from. I engage them and ask some questions about the one sales rep that seemed most engaging.     “Business is slowing down from the summer,” he says. He’s got dark skin, bright white teeth, buzz cut hair. “We show you star homes. From a distance. The house where Michael Jackson died, Stephen Spielberg’s house.”     The buses run up and down Hollywood Boulevard
Read more