One-Man Media Empire

So I met Troy Duffy today; he wrote and directed Boondock Saints, a film I love. He came and spoke to my Writing the Hourlong Drama class. Actually, before I get into that, when I first arrived my teacher introduced us to Fritz Monahan, a producer at ABC, and he was INSANE. He went on a crazy tirade every few moments.

One was about how he once sold a television pilot for a shitload of money and then spent two years in Costa Rica drinking pina coladas and living with four monkeys. Another was about how he pitched a show called Middlefingerlina, which is like Thumbelina's horrible spoiled sister and the producers had him thrown out of the building. A third was about how he's working at Disney to produce an animated feature about Frances Farmer.

This guy was nuts, and he kept yelling at members of the class, telling them how they should be taking notes and that moving to Hollywood, yes, that's the best way to make it if you want to get stabbed in the back by your friends. Then he told a story about how he took way too much acid by accident and got pulled over and the cop let him go. Turns out he was a comedian named Bob Rubin that has a role in Boondock Saints 2 and he was just pulling our legs. Hilarious, but also a bit nerve-wracking.

Then our teacher introduced Troy Duffy and he mostly just answered questions, since he said he was better at that. He was really quite clever and well-spoken, and he told us that his father made him read the classics when he was a kid and just wanted to play outside until Catcher in the Rye. He said to his father, "This book is much better than the last one, but I don't know why." His father pointed out all the symbolism to him, and that kind of changed his life.

He recommended Salinger and an author by the name of Tristan Egolf, I believe, and then he asked what authors we liked. The girl who I think is a terribly clever writer had brought her husband to class, and he was wearing a Boondock Saints t-shirt... Anyway, she raised her hand and said David Morell, and Troy Duffy said, "What is that? Like teeny-bopper type stuff?" It was kind of mean, but he's a bit of an elitist, I guess. I'm a book snob too, so I can relate.

I didn't raise my hand, but I should have. All I could think to ask him was if he was shooting on film still or if he'd converted to digital. I was nervous and everyone else was kissing his ass so hard. He clearly didn't want that though, and he had a lot of really good advice on writing and persevering in general. Apparently BS cost six million to make and made over 100 million, but he was fighting a financially debilitating lawsuit with the production company and didn't see a penny of it for five years. He got really depressed and was having second thoughts about wanting to be a writer/filmmaker. Man, I can understand those. It didn't at the time, but now it occurs to me that if Troy Duffy can do it, I can do it. I've got what it takes.

He also said that it doesn't take much to get someone to watch your film, just contact them and ask them if they'll watch it. I got to thinking that maybe I'd contact Manohla Dargis at the NY Times once The Passengers is done because she loves New American Realism. We'll see. Eventually he was done talking and more people kissed his ass, and then he signed posters for everyone. I wasn't going to get one, but I decided I might as well since I was there, and when I told him my name, he drew an arrow on mine to one of the characters. Then he told me how one of the characters in the flashbacks to the 1950s is named Noah.

I like Troy Duffy. He's a cool guy. I wished him luck with the film and then rushed off to my Creative Writing class wishing I had said more, wishing I could have said something to make him think, "Hey, this guy here's got a sharp mind." Oh well.

We had Creative Writing outdoors today, and I had a minor meltdown. We were asked to write for ten minutes about what we'd miss when we die, and it really fucked with my head. I was already feeling the familiar oppressive suffocation I get whenever I think of the long road to success in any of my desired careers, and now I was thinking about the things I love being gone. It was nearly disastrous and I almost wept openly. Here's what I wrote, verbatim and completely intact:

When I die, I'll miss shade and breezes, shaving too, because although I hate it, it provides a change. I'll miss the opportunities I've passed to lead a meaningful life. I'll miss the colors I've never been able to see fully, the beaches that I've always wanted to love as much as others seem to. I'll miss the chance to be like someone else, someone I find more useful and productive than myself. I'll miss the chance to die a glorious death whose echoes cast reflections throughout time and cause people, seeing them, to say, "Hey, there went a man who didn't seem like much, but was deep, and thoughtful, and kind, and had so much to give to a world that he seemed to have found unworthy of any meaningful contribution, but perhaps he was just afraid to be average." I'll miss the chance to be ordinary and helpful and essential, and I'll miss the people who would be proud even to know someone ordinary and essential.

Then I drew a puddle into which the above paragraph was dripping. Afterwards we had to share some of what we wrote or something that we'd miss. I just read the line about colors and beaches, since it was safe and I probably wouldn't cry reading it. Then everyone else talked about their boyfriends and puppies and mothers, and I felt even more useless and fatalistic. Anyway, after another exercise more along the lines of word association, I found my mind was occupied and my melancholy much improved, but a racing of my heart persisted.

She gave us back our poems and I got an A on Placeholder, the personal ad poem. I felt so damned relieved. I even stuck around to talk to her about it, and clarified some of the lines, and we worked out exactly how it could be perfect with only a few wording changes. She got everything about it, how it starts out with a super cliche romanticized idea of love at first sight and evolves into him eventually loving his "in the meantime girl" so much that he's ready to disappear into the desert with her and stop waiting for "the one" to come into his life out of the rain. I was so happy that my subtlety was coming across so well. Goddamn, it feels so good to be great at something and connect with people in a meaningful way with my foremost talent, even if it's poetry, a subgenre of that talent I'm not entirely enthusiastic about.

I almost blogged from my phone on my way through the parking lot I was so happy. I'm gonna revise it right now. I wrote ten excellent pages of The Passengers yesterday, I'm gonna finish Sandcastles and Red House, and I'm gonna finish another short story and try to sell it. Maybe I'll submit Placeholder to the poetry contest at school. Shit, then I have to record this song and get a band together. Maybe it's possible after all for me to succeed and be a one-man media empire.