Nobody Knows Anything

Welcome to Diane Patterson's eclectic blog about what strikes her fancy

Writers speak

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Last night Darin, Mary, Mike, and I went to hear a Conversation with William Goldman at the Egyptian Theater, down in Hollywood. It was entertaining, except for one deadly detail: the seats in the orchestra section of the Egyptian are tilted backward so you’re looking up at the stage. You end up leaning backward to get comfortable…and if you’re at all sleepy, you might just nod off. Both Mary and I were fighting it the whole way through the evening.

Goldman obviously knows how to spin a good story, even when he was telling stories I already knew (because they were almost verbatim from one of his books—Adventures in the Screen Trade and Which Lie Did I Tell?). The funniest one was in response to a question about getting “notes,” which are the comments development execs give everyone—including William Goldman—on scripts. He told a story about working on the script for Maverick, in which he got the note, “We’d like the script to be funnier and more exciting.” To which Goldman said, “Fuck you! I’d like it to be funnier and more exciting too. Tell me how.”

One maxim he repeated a few times was, “The second you think you know what you’re doing, you’re finished.” The funny-strange thing about Goldman (as opposed to funny-ha ha) is how amazingly insecure he says he is. He’s a writer, I guess writers are insecure, but…wouldn’t you think William Goldman might think he has a handle on what he’s doing by now? I mean, the guy’s synonymous with the word “screenwriter.”

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A week or so ago—time passage is not my strong suit these days—Michele and I went to a special panel put on by the Writers Guild of the writers nominated for WGA Awards and Academy Awards, in both the Original and Adapted Screenplay categories.

The lineup they had was great: Steve Zaillian (Gangs of New York), Chris Weitz and Paul Weitz (About A Boy), Nia Vardalos (My Big Fat Greek Wedding), Michael Moore (Bowling For Columbine), Charlie Kaufman (Adaptation), Todd Haynes (Far From Heaven), David Hare (The Hours), and Bill Condon (Chicago). And the moderator was Owen Wilson, who is of course a screenwriter when he’s not being a movie star.

The panel was far more entertaining than it was informative, but that’s why you go to these things, to hear the bon mots, not to learn anything.

On working habits:


            CHRIS WEITZ
      I spend a lot of time at Starbucks
      hoping that after this triple
      mocha I'll be ready.
            MICHAEL MOORE
      I spend most of my time trying
      not to get shot...My process is, 
      number one, stay alive, try not
      to get my ass kicked, and deal
      with lawsuits from Dick Clark.
            CHARLIE KAUFMAN
      Talking into a tape recorder is
      a little more cinematic than the
      real thing I do, which is nothing.

On Bowling For Columbine:


            DAVID HARE
      I was lucky enough to see Michael's
      film in Paris --
            OWEN WILSON
      -- I saw it in Hawaii --
   Audience LAUGHS.
            DAVID HARE
      Ah. Ideological laughter. I understand
      US-French relations are at a low
      and Michael's film did very 
      little to heal that.

On various aspects of writing:


            CHARLIE KAUFMAN
      I had a two hundred-and-sixty page 
      draft. But I didn't turn that in.
      I'm not that ballsy.
            DAVID HARE
      Directors are protective of their
      genius because, I think, they're 
      not quite convinced it's a real job.
            MICHAEL MOORE
      The best ideas come from someone 
      saying, "Let's get a Star Map."
            STEVE ZAILLIAN
      I enjoy the part before I've
      started and I imagine it's going
      to be great.
            BILL CONDON
      Be on to the next one as you're
      finishing the current one.

I also get inspired by panels like this or like the one with Goldman last night. Because, you know, these people have made a career of screenwriting, they’ve reached the high points of their profession (and, undoubtedly, the low points) and they’re still going.

And it’s been extremely inspirational to have Mary here too. She has two little kids, she lives in Seattle, and she’s a working screenwriter. She sold a pitch without ever having sold a script, and she’s got a juggernaut going during this visit as well. Seeing how she’s approached developing her pitches and ideas has taught me a lot, in ways that just hearing about it at USC never did. (One major complaint about USC: not enough practical information, like “how to pitch.”)

Still no grabbed housing

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So, we’re back. Darin and I flew up to San Jose Friday morning sans enfants, spent three full days looking at houses, and then flew back Sunday night.

We didn’t find a house. We did get a lot of information about areas to live up there. And what the housing market is like at the moment. And, evidently, what the employment market is like—the realtor kept saying, “Your job is secure? Your friends, they all have jobs?”

The housing market is still insane. Maybe not as insane as it was—several times our realtor looked at the house and looked at the price being asked and she said, “What? Are they dreaming?”

Let me tell you about dreaming: we didn’t find a house that didn’t need at least $250,000 of remodeling (as a start) until we looked at places over $1.2M.

I can’t even wrap my mind around those numbers. I always thought if you bought a house with that many digits, everything came gold-plated. But these days, a couple hundred thou here, a couple hundred thou there, and pretty soon you’re talking about a heavy-duty mortgage.

We didn’t get pre-approval on a mortgage before we went. Big mistake. We have to run the numbers, figure out a budget, figure out what kind of load we can carry.

Of the 30+ properties we looked at, we only saw one that both Darin and I responded to, and it didn’t fit our criteria in so many ways (including price, but we were pretty discouraged at this point and wanted to see anything). But it was unique and had personality and was really attractive in an off-beat way. The house was shaped like a U, with a kitchen/Great Room combination on one end, the bedrooms down the bend, and a gigantic living room—700 feet?—at the far end. The deck overlooking Cupertino and Los Altos was the middle of the U, and the pool on the deck ran into the living room, so you could begin your laps inside the house.

“So our kids can drown in the comfort of their own living room,” we said.

And since the house was on the hill, there really wasn’t room for the kids to run around. But the house was so funky and unusual that we kept talking about it the rest of the day. A house with a little personality really puts the vast majority of the cookie-cutter ones in the shade.

Unfortunately, we’re probably going to have to find a run-downish one and spend El Dinero Grande to add some personality to it.

(The title of this entry, by the way, is a play on a complaint Darin’s heard a lot over the past few months. Some kind of prize to the first person who posts the actual complaint. I know! I’ll send you a postcard.)

Visualization update

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Everyone visualize Darin and Diane finding the perfect house at a price somewhere in the range they can afford.

Thank you.