A Matty Wells Xmas

A Warehouse in Schenectady

“So what’s your system?” Skin Girl asked me the other day. “Do you type, do you write and then type—what do you do?”

Here’s what I do.

I try to write for two hours a weekday, and then 4 to 5 hours on Saturday and Sunday. The goal is to treat it like a 20-hour-per-week part-time job. If I put in more than 20? I get mental health benefits.

I carry around half a dozen pens, a notebook, a project folder, and a notepad. The pens are Pentel Energens. The notebook varies; currently it’s a blue 5 x 7 that you can’t find anywhere anymore, but which Staples had a bunch of two years ago, so I bought up about ten of them. This notebook gets the raw material: initial thoughts, notes, early drafts, free associations, et the random cetera.

Every couple of days, I go through what I’ve written and transcribe those notes onto a lined legal-ruled pad of paper (I prefer the canary yellow Docket Gold, which is thick enough so that the Pentel ink doesn’t bleed through when I write on both sides). I organize these notes by project. Each note is treated like a scene which I transcribe and usually expand or free associate around while I’m transcribing it. Sometimes I end up with three yellow sheets full of notes based on just an initial line or two.

These pages go into 6-pocket plastic Avery Project Folders, or into a catch-all folder for ideas that don’t have folders yet. And as the notes pile up, each project builds like a good pour of Guinness.

The project folder in my shoulderbag contains all the notes and scenes for whatever I’m currently writing. I go into this once a day just to rearrange and edit outlines, remind myself of things I’ve forgotten, and spark my imagination. When I’m working on a specific project, the work cycle becomes obsessive and repetitive. I write dialogue and description on the legal pad, type it up and edit it as I type, print it out, edit the printout, and then add things to the printed version and type those up. Then print and repeat, print and repeat, print and repeat till it’s final. How do I know when it’s final? (A) When I’m tired of it and (B) when it tells me it’s done (I can’t explain it any other way).

It’s always amazing to me when I look back after I’ve finished something and realize it started with a few scribbled notes on an otherwise empoty piece of paper, and now here’s a complete play; here’s a hundred pages of a novel. Where did that come from? It’s the question all writers get asked: where do your ideas come from, where do all those words come from? (My favorite answer to that question is the title of this post.)

All I know is, when you put pen to paper, you’re opening a door. (The same thing happens when you type, but it’s a different kind of door, at least for me.) The more you write, the easier it is for that door to open. And when that door stays open, something will always walk through it, through you, and through the ink of your pen onto the blank page. And it will always surprise you.

Random thoughts

This guy? Act????


Ha! That'd be like Rudy Giuliani telling the truth about his record.

And speaking of His Rudeness: Jim Dwyer reminds everyone that when Giuliani answers a question about how open the White House would be if he were President by saying "My government in New York City was so transparent that they knew every single thing I did almost every time I did it,” he is--I'm sorry--what's the current politically correct euphemism for "lying through his teeth?"

And, bringing new depths to tasteless, the New York Post reports the death of Ike Turner.

I Am Legend

I Am Kind of Enjoyable. I went to this movie prepared not to like it, and was pleasantly surprised to find myself enjoying most of it. There aren't that many Fresh Prince moments, which is a big plus; but then I think that all movies starring Will Smith should obey the Keanu Rule and give him as little dialogue as possible, because when he opens his mouth that's when the trouble starts. The shots of empty Manhattan are riveting. A lot of the fun of seeing the movie is recognizing streets, corners, buildings (look--there's the doughnut place on Seventh Avenue). But as much as I enjoyed myself, I can't say that I actually liked the film, for a couple of reasons.

I Am Schizophrenic. This is so obviously two movies that it’s laughable. Every interesting moment that’s set up in the first two-thirds is totally ignored in the last 30 minutes. The idea that the vampires have human feelings and human intelligence? Set up and never knocked down. The idea that Robert Neville is as more of a monster to them than they are to him? Set up and never knocked down. You have to wonder: does nobody see this on the production end? It’s like a mystery novel where all the clues are ignored in the last chapter. A book like that would never get published; but movies like I Am Legend get made all the frakking time.

I Am Formulaic. Remember the three-part flashback of how Will Smith lost his arm in I, Robot? Same thing here: a three-part backstory flashback about yet another loss. Is this required in all Hollywood scripts or just Will Smith vehicles? Are there writers even now dreaming up new three-part backstory flashbacks while they picket Paramount?

I Am Picky. According to the theatre and movie posters in post-plague Times Square, The Producers is still playing two years from now (ha!), along with Wicked (yup) and Hairspray (maybe) but on the plus side, we can expect a Batman/Superman movie in summer ‘09. Robert Neville is immune to the airborne virus and vampire bites and he's also an accomplished scientist looking for a cure, which is one coincidence too many for me--I mean why not have him be the cause of the vampire plague as well? And post-plague Manhattan is overrun with deer and lions, but the only rats we ever see are in Neville's laboratory. As if.

I Am All About The Ending. There must be a lot of people out there who don't know that this movie isn't even a re-make--it's a re-make of a re-make, having been filmed twice before as The Last Man On Earth with Vincent Price and The Omega Man with Charlton Heston. And if you've seen either of these movies, then you know how the story ends. Which is pretty much the same way the book ends. So when, before the movie opened, Will Smith in a Tokyo press conference revealed details about the end of the movie, producer and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman shouted "Don't ruin the ending! Don't ruin it for people!" This says so many things about Hollywood. When they remake Casablanca, and the actor playing Rick reveals that Ilsa goes off with Laszlo, I can so totally see the producer yelling "Don't ruin it for people!" Like the ending is all that matters. (Which would explain why the last 30 minute chunk of this movie feels like a different film--it sets up the ending Goldsman wanted, as opposed to the ending the story demanded.)

I Am Blockbuster. And it'll make a ton of money, despite the fact that it's pieced together and formulaic, which means we can expect even more pieced-together formulaic action-adventure flicks; and yes, by seeing it, I have helped to cause their creation. So blame me when Will Smith stars in Soylent Green, and Akiva Goldsman chews him out for telling the press that SG is people. I just hope that Batman-Superman movie is as good as the trailer was for The Dark Knight. Holy crap, does that look good.

ice storm

Why isn't this movie playing anywhere?

Hell, I'd see it on Christmas Day. And Boxing Day. And New Year's Day. And Valentine's Day. And . . .

The Original WTF Play

The Homecoming, Cort Theatre. That sound you hear on 48th Street at 10:30 every night is a lot of people scratching their heads over the second act of this play,which still, after over 40 years, feels like a deliberate kick in the face by the playwright. Great acting, but I'm not ashamed to say I still don't know what the foo is going on in this play.

The acting is fantastic, the performances are never less than riveting, and the family stuff is dark and hilarious and makes perfect sense until the sexual/power struggle stuff kicks in, at which point every expectation you have goes out the window, along with the logic of character and action. And it still works, on its own definitely unique terms, so what do I know?

Well, I don't know what's going on in that second act, I'll tell you that. Yes, it's about Ruth's homecoming, not Teddy's, but all the implications that its the three sons' dead mother come back to life (Ruth has three boys herself) seems like a desperate attempt to give thematic unity to an out-of-control script, and the "What do you say to a little prostitution, Ruth?/I say I need to see it in writing and here's my list of things to buy" turn to the plot, which could actually use some thematic development (woman as sex object), comes out of nowhere and then takes the play back with it.

My attempts to make sense of all this as we stood outside in the cold and watched Michael McKean sign autographs: "It's like nobody mentions the elephant in the room; and then the elephant disappears. You hear it; you see its shadow; but it never shows up." "I would have loved to have been in on the rehearsals, because all the actors know what's going on, even if we don't."

From Penelope Gilliat's review of the 1965 Royal Shakespeare production:

The drama in The Homecoming is not the plot. In Pinter it never is. It consists in the swaying of violent people as they gain minute advantages. A man who does the washing-up has the advantage over a man sitting in an armchair who thinks he can hear resentment in every swilling tea-leaf. The member of a married couple who stays up late has the advantage over the one who goes to bed first. A father has the advantage over his children as long as he can make them think of their birth and not let them remind him of his own death: the sons are condemned to ruminate interminably about what happened the night they were made in the image of those two people, at it.

Makes as much sense as anything else, I guess. I wonder if she came up with that while she was scratching her head and watching Ian Holm sign autographs.

Personally, I can't wait for the reviews when this opens so I can read Ben Brantley's "I refuse to admit I didn't understand this play" SAT essay on all things Pinter.

Call Security!

Thanks to the firewall at my day job, I am no longer able to post during working hours. Or comment on anyone else's blog. Or even see comments. Because, y'know, doing that instead of reading the Wall Street Journal online might do more damage to them than the sub-prime mortgage loan crisis.

I'm not surprised. This is, after all, a company which blocks me from reading The Nation online. (No joke.)

So what does this mean? More posts in the evening and the weekends. And tons o' fodder for a play or a novel.

Childrens Books for the Z Generation

Weekend Update

I Don't Like Mondays. Weekend? What weekend? It's mornings like this which totally reinforce my low self-esteem.

Sad realization #1: isn't that what a crappy day job is supposed to do?