The hollywood year

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1

It was about 1987 on the clock of my life and I was watching my favorite TV show. Right then I decided that, no I realized that I should write my own script for the show, which was Moonlighting.

Moonlighting was about two private eyes who worked at 'The Blue Moon Detective Agency' and was romantic,suspenseful and funny . It was also different in that they used lots of TV tricks, like 'split screen' and bits like have the character speaking right to the camera. I loved this. I hadn't seen it used since watching reruns from the early days of TV.

It starred Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepard. That's the same Bruce who starred in Die Hard and a couple of other pictures; if you don't remember Moonlighting.

So when Bruce made cracks right to you, he broke through the glass on your TV and, broke the theatrical third wall. Well, I wrote a script that broke 5 or 6 more theatrical walls. II was very jazzed with my script and simultaneously painted every wall of my big Brooklyn apartment while dreaming up scenes.

2
At that time, I was a copywriter in publishing, writing blurbs about books, some that I hadn't even read. But that was that writing business. So in nine months of nights, I finished what would not look like a first script. It actually wasn't the first by the time I had one ready. Then I took twenty copies with me, out to Los Angeles.

Arrogant? Well, hey, I had a good friend out there, a big time agent with William Morris! She was one my best friends back in Junior High. And she hadn't forgotten how hilarious we thought we were. She couldn't have.


Enter right - Me, and 20 copies of same - into Los Angeles have script did travel. So in love with this idea of being a TV writer, and so sure did I feel that I'd found my special niche at last that I made the trip itself a romantic journey.

I took a train out there. Even splurged for a night in a sleeper car. And to show Los Angeles some New York style, I wore my fabulous black hat with a veil. That was very in that year. I watched America go by my train window, writing pitches and other show ideas all the while.

During all this fun and prophecy fulfilling , I sort of forgot about the black bordered notices I'd been getting back home from the Writers Guild Wanna-Be's Monthly. Not ony did they anticipate a strike, they harshly warned us all that crossing this picket line would brand you for life.

The way the Writers Guild works is, you can't be in it until you sell something to be produced for the movie or TV screen. When you sell something, you're automatically in it.

This didn't stop me though, no sir. I was one these WGA geniuses, or soon to be. And I completely agreed with the cause. Writers still don't get enough credit for their work in film and TV.

Though this set up an interesting situation. Producers were desparate for written product, and no doubt, warnings or no, some writers did gt their start because of the strike. Writers know how desparate they were befor that magic script that they sold. eventually, they probably forgave truly talented writers. Talented or not, I was not seeing it this way.

3
I got into the wondrful old Los Angeles train station on the actual first day of the longest Writer's Guild Strike to date!

I'd reserved a 'Hollywood hotel room' from Brooklyn, figuring that all of Los Angeles was fabulous and posh. I had an old library "Guide to Los Angeles. I'm sure I was the first person ever to make a reservation at this hole, er, hotel on Santa Monica Boulevard; a ways east from anything fabulous. I lived their with professional girls, or hookers mostly and drug addicts. I was pretty safe I think because not one of them could figure me out. In my room every night either singing along with special tapes I'd made or writing.

Now, there was this class, at the AFI (American Film Institute) and I had to take it. A teleplay writing class being taught by none other than the head writer for 'Moonlighting' Carl Sauter.

Guess what? I didn't have enough money! But I did have my big old Guild guitar,
left to me by a very, very good friend who'd taken his own life. Well, mush as I love to play, that big case seemed like a coffin I was dragging around, and I thought maybe I'd sell it to take this class.

I went up to Griffen Park, my zone of peace in L.A., and 'spoke to Jeffrey'. Apparently it felt like he said, "Sell it already. Take that course! But make something out of it!" I sold it for so much less than its worth, but I did sign up for that course.

Well, the teacher, Carl S., was the former head writer of Moonlighting, as it turned out. Something I might've known if I'd been in L.A. longer than a week. He also seemed bitter for some reason.

And I could not seem to shut up in this class. By that I mean all the good sorts of communication and response supposedly encouraged in classes of this sort. But now I see that reticence was some kind of virtue in this particular crowd. I think now that required was the same form of awed respect which I currently find it necessary to show south Florida cops while driving.

4
But I'd thought these in-the-biz people would be sick to death of nervous and toady-like non-pros. Surely they would not be noticed. Of course, I had no choice. Commander and chief of my own public behavior I am not. Also, I was taking diet pills every day as though they were a fabulous new health discovery. The health of my confidence I suppose.

Back in this personally expensive class, for these reasons among who knows what else, I believe this man came to dislike me. I am a wreck when it comes to 'working' any sort of room (the big one known as life?), and shied from even trying to ask Mr. Sauter to help me submit my work to the ABC staff. What I did get to do was submit, near the end of class, as we'd all been asked to, 4 or 5 pages of a TV script. Anonymously. The last class was devoted to these submissions.

It was very rewarding to have this former head writer of my show Moonlighting, Carl Sauter, come to my work. Thankfully it was anonymous, so he didn't know it was mine.

Before reading it He said, "This is one special person, the writer of this script. It takes a real set of balls (they're pretty crude in 'the business') to submit a script segment written for Moonlighting to me.' I think he mumbled something like, '... the show I wrote for'. This was his first reference to the fact of his recent but former employment , though every student knew it like a magical mantra.

Maybe he figured we all knew the circumstances of his leaving the show, from that issue of Daily Variety issue I'd missed.

He then went on to say how delighted he was to get it, all properly formatted, imaginative, yet catching the character's speech patterns, the feeling of the show, yada yada, yada . I was drinking it up! Then he read it out loud.

After I bathed in all sorts of superlatives during the class comments, Teacher asked that the author of the assignment reveal himself. (He said 'himself', not him or herself.)

5
Because big class talker me, had kept quiet during all of this (This golden moment having had to last me many years, I'm so glad I did.) I believe Mr. Sauter started twitching nervously in my direction. Most of these class complements seemed automatically programmed by our gurus blessing of the piece anyway.

Anyway, maybe memory has stretched this pregnant pause for a good half hour, but I finally waved my fingers limply and said I'd written it. I truly saw the color leave his face.

Now, I'm not someone who thinks that everyone dislikes them. More the opposite. But in two cases, this adventure being one of them, I recall being a bit too full of myself, which could've gotten on any professional's nerves. Especially when suffering through a strike. But he really didn't seem to believe that I could've written the piece. Ridiculous, but it gave me some satisfaction. Now I think, time to talk to him at the break.

I didn't ever talk to him, guess I was overwhelmed by him. And the strike stretched on. I made my living 'temping' at movie studios and other local businesses. All were actually feeling the pinch of this strike! Restaurants, clothing stores, and of course, those in 'the biz'. And it was summer.

Ever resourceful, I even auditioned for some game shows and got on one called 'Sweethearts'. It was hosted by the lovely Charles Nelson Reilly, with contestants Alan Luden's wife and the pudgy guy from Deliverance. (i'll think of names) 'Course you never heard of it. Me and my groping 'partner' (playing my husband) actually won. And the winnings shrunk as I waited to receive them. That's why you've never heard of it; it was soon cancelled.

I never could've guessed the impact of a writer's strike on Los Angeles. Neither could producers apparently. Of course, I did not, nor do I know any producers. It was the daily paper called 'Variety' that gave away the fact that even the Big Money People in Hollywood found themselves in a bind during this writer's strike. Desperation drenched this rag or at least I, Miss Wannabe Screenwriter 1989, wrung some hope out this belief.

6
But there were, I truly recall, ads virtually begging anyone who had written anything more narrative than a shopping list to submit it to such and such a PO box number. I don't recall that anonymity was ever promised, though it may have been for all I know, I was having none of it. Except for some (truth be told) unearned satisfaction at these secret studios' plight. (terror, nervousness)

This was a big and successful time for 'Concept' movies and TV shows. The numbers seemed to prove that audiences were happy to believe that the stars wrote their own lines and were the characters they played. Arnold Schwarzenegger was Top Box Office.

I too, was happy to believe this while I watched a show. I just couldn't seem to keep on believing it after the credits rolled. I wanted to know who wrote those words that came from The Star's mouth.

Not a common reaction as it turns out. It's just part of being a writer, successful or otherwise. And that's a minority so insignificant, financially speaking (the mother tongue of any-business-circa-now) as to be invisible.

So it was just lovely when the Guild put this spotlight on the cables that let Peter Pan fly. Or even a lone flashlight on the wrinkled or coiffed skull of a writer, who'd enjoy pretending to show you the totally inscrutable subway map of synapses that actually do create such characters as Conan the Barbarian or say even a Willy Lohman.

The strike, and even more so, this proof of angst in The Biz, was deeply gratifying to me. I completely believed in this strike; writers being treated like expendable children most of the time.

How this would affect my personal fate just didn't occur , I'm slightly embarrassed and amazed to tell you. That I would not be able to move my life around to Los Angeles, Moscow, Bombay or back to Manhattan to roll with the circumstances never entered my mind. Was I on drugs? Sort of. But not the kind controlled by hand to mouth. More like neuron to neuron.

7
I was and am a bit of a basket case emotionally speaking. A tidy little wreckage woven about a rather problematic childhood. Just like so many writers that wouldn't have it any other way.

It even turned out that my family had been the biggest blockage in getting my junior high school, William Morris agent friend to help me. It seems she was mad because my older sister somehow got her phone number and sent her an 'amateurish script' long before I ever got to Los Angeles. My sister didn't even know this friend, being much older than me.

And so, I was never,not so far, to get back to LA. Or even to write another script. No, but yet, that's how I came to do stand up comedy! Saying those written bon mots for instant reaction, good or bad. In New York City. (one strange reaction were these young guys in the audience not listening to me at all, but chanting "Sleep with me. Sleep with me." Well, I finally went to sleep on the stage with or without them.

True blue promise, I did - for 3 years, while working a 'regular job'. and even made some extra doughraymee at too. But that's for another time
m' dearies, another time and another place.

THE END

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