SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR - Published 1948 from "AMERICA DAY BY DAY"
(I would've never guessed Simone spent time in Pasadena or Hollywood. Reading through, Beauvoir saw the dark side of Los Angeles life. She finds what we take in stride as not ordinary. In this excerpt, she is amazed by the way Angelenos buy things on credit and gives her opinion on American cities and neighborhoods that reveal class structure.)
Pages 337 - 338)
"A year ago N. married a GI (Ivan Moffatt), who is now a scriptwriter in Hollywood. When she came to join him, they hadn't a penny between them, and I. was earning very little money. N. was expecting a baby. Thanks to the credit system they practice here, they could rent a kind of barn and transform it into a livable house, and also buy a car, something absolutely necessary in this city of vast distances. Now I.s' situation has improved, but his salary is almost entirely consigned to paying off his debts. Besides, a law requires parents to take their children to the doctor once a week during their first year; this is very costly. It's hard to balance the budget every month. I know all that and also that I.'s car is red. So I am utterly astonished to see a little yellow car standing in front of the station. N. tells me, "It's ours. I. bought it last week just so we could drive around." "Nothing simpler," adds N.M., "since you buy without paying!" Obviously. But I'm stunned by such ease. Los Angeles also stuns me. This city is unlike any other. Below me, the downtown looks just like the downtowns of Rochester, Buffalo, and Cleveland, which themselves evoke New York's downtown and Chicago's Loop. It's the tall buildings housing banks, stores, and movie theaters, the monotonous checkerboard of streets and avenues. But then, all the neighborhoods we drive through are either disorganized outlying districts or huge developments where identical wooden houses multiply as far as the eye can see, each one surrounded by a little garden. The traffic is terrifying; the broad roadways are divided into six lanes, three in each direction, marked off by white lines, and you are allowed to pass to either the right or the left. You can turn to the right only from the right lane, to the left only from the left; this last maneuver is often prohibited, which complicates one's itinerary. At intersections the car that has arrived first has priority, a rule that provokes thousands of disputes..."
Page 339)
"Hollywood, as everyone knows, is where the studious are. The stars live in Beverly Hills,. To see their houses, you have to enter an artificial park humming with neither the muffled life of the countryside nor the feverish life of the city; the luxurious villas are surrounded by a false solitude. Avenues lined with garages and with flat-roofed boutiques, barely one-story high; a blue coastal road above the sea; vast camps of parked trailers, those caravans in which many homeless Americans live on the outskirts of towns; working -class sections filled with monotonous shacks..."
from
Writing Los Angeles
A Literary Anthology
Edited by David L. Ulin
Library of America publisher
Copyright 2002
Showing posts with label Screenwriters. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Screenwriters. Show all posts
1/23/13
THE DEAL : CHRISTINE TRZYNA FILM REVIEW
One of the things I enjoy is watching a DVD and THEN reading the synopsis on the back of the case, the marketing.
Do I even agree with what that paragraph or two (propaganda) has to say?
For instance on the back of this film's case in big letters it says "SIDE-SPLITTINGLY FUNNY" and "TWO PEOPLE HAVE NEVER BEEN SO WRONG FOR EACH OTHER."
OK, I was amused at parts but my sides never split and also I did not think this was a love story.
If I had written the synopsis, I would say that this is a humorous but not so exaggerated story about how a film is made, starting with the screenplay. I loved the character of Charlie Berns as acted by William H. Macy, who in real life had his hand in this screenplay by way of his real life nephew who wrote it.
If you've spent any time at all with your laptop in a coffee house among screen writers (even when you are not a screenwriter), if you have ever walked down restaurant row on Magnolia where the Screen Writers are getting together with the People, you know that this story could very well be TRUE!
Character Berns seems to have experienced or heard about every last reality of getting a screenplay to production, and so he quickly puts into their places anyone who has any altruistic ideas.
The closest to my side getting split was when the Diedra Hern character as acted by Meg Ryan to be a unshakable studio exec who has been put on the case to keep after the screenwriter so that he delivers, goes to visit Charlie Berns at his home, which is an apartment building with one of those San Fernando Valley decayed buildings that has not only cracks in the cement and a broken pool empty of water but a dead tree in it.
Sadly this is how too many screenwriters actually live in the San Fernando Valley, when they aren't in coffee houses on Ventura or restaurant row on Magnolia writing or pitching or explaining what it is they meant to do with the story to the People.
Don't ask me how I know!
C 2013 Christine Trzyna All Rights Reserved
Do I even agree with what that paragraph or two (propaganda) has to say?
For instance on the back of this film's case in big letters it says "SIDE-SPLITTINGLY FUNNY" and "TWO PEOPLE HAVE NEVER BEEN SO WRONG FOR EACH OTHER."
OK, I was amused at parts but my sides never split and also I did not think this was a love story.
If I had written the synopsis, I would say that this is a humorous but not so exaggerated story about how a film is made, starting with the screenplay. I loved the character of Charlie Berns as acted by William H. Macy, who in real life had his hand in this screenplay by way of his real life nephew who wrote it.
If you've spent any time at all with your laptop in a coffee house among screen writers (even when you are not a screenwriter), if you have ever walked down restaurant row on Magnolia where the Screen Writers are getting together with the People, you know that this story could very well be TRUE!
Character Berns seems to have experienced or heard about every last reality of getting a screenplay to production, and so he quickly puts into their places anyone who has any altruistic ideas.
The closest to my side getting split was when the Diedra Hern character as acted by Meg Ryan to be a unshakable studio exec who has been put on the case to keep after the screenwriter so that he delivers, goes to visit Charlie Berns at his home, which is an apartment building with one of those San Fernando Valley decayed buildings that has not only cracks in the cement and a broken pool empty of water but a dead tree in it.
Sadly this is how too many screenwriters actually live in the San Fernando Valley, when they aren't in coffee houses on Ventura or restaurant row on Magnolia writing or pitching or explaining what it is they meant to do with the story to the People.
Don't ask me how I know!
C 2013 Christine Trzyna All Rights Reserved
1/8/12
THE JANE AUSTIN BOOK CLUB :FILM : BOOK BY KAREN JOY FOWLER, SCREENPLAY by BY ROBIN SWINCORD
The JANE AUSTIN BOOK CLUB is posted as a romantic comedy. I didn't think it was funny or "hilarious" like it says on the back of the DVD, but I did find this story interesting. I'm no Jane Austin expert but I suspect Karen Joy Fowler is, and while I was watching this film, I was thinking about writing workshops, and creative fiction, and how she must have plotted this story out.
Fowler, and then screenwriter Robin Swicord, wove a fiction story about a cast of characters (none of whom overplayed their part), friends, who form a book club to discuss the masterpieces of novelist Jane Austin, and find her stories relate to their 21st century lives. Starting, stopping, or ending romances...
Fowler, and then screenwriter Robin Swicord, wove a fiction story about a cast of characters (none of whom overplayed their part), friends, who form a book club to discuss the masterpieces of novelist Jane Austin, and find her stories relate to their 21st century lives. Starting, stopping, or ending romances...
9/14/09
SCREENWRITER NOT
I've been plagued with naysayers at times in my life. One time in a coffee house where I worked writing on my laptop every afternoon, I was in a sea of screenwriters - all male. They were coming and going all day, moving from one coffee house to another to be out of their apartments, active, busy, but also in a clique. They rarely if ever talked to me.
One day one of them actually walked to my table. He didn't introduce himself or ask my name or make any small talk at all. All he wanted to know was "Are You A Member of the Screenwriters Union?" I guess all those hours of hearing me type away had gotten to them.
I wonder if the other guys put him up to adventuring on over to me. I'm not a screenwriter. But in Los Angeles it often feels like that's the only writing anyone understands or thinks is worth a writers time.
As they say, just about everyone has one screenplay in their drawer at their "real job." - And when the time comes I wouldn't be surprised I too adapt a fiction or nonfiction book I've worked on into a screenplay.
I can't say it actually infuriated me since, sadly I have grown accustomed to naysayers, but I overheard this same guy talking one of his pals and calling me "THE GIRL WHO TYPES!"
It was beyond these sexist men to imagine that I am NOT a GIRL, but a woman, that I am not just TYPING, but creating content or creating a world of imagination. Nasty comments like this are consciously or not, aimed at reducing a hard working, educated, talented, and skillful writer, into a secretary.
I AM WOMAN HEAR ME ROAR!
2/9/08
2/3/08
WRITER, AUTHOR, PUBLISHED AUTHOR
What's the difference between calling yourself a writer, or an author, or a published author? I have sometimes felt so defensive of someone's attitude and behavior and words towards me when I say "I'm a writer," that I wonder if I should say author or published author. One writer I know answers that she is "a novelist." She's British and no one seems to question this as an honorable activity for an upper class British woman.
Now I am not a member of the Screenwriter's Union and Screenwriters have not been particularily supportive of me. Yes, this is true, and it is also true that I am for them and their strike.
I think the term writer covers us all, and is the most general and least defensive term. It's the one I use.
What people seem to be asking me/us when they ask us what we do and we answer writer is "Are you published?" "Have you sold?" As if that will legitimitze our activity.
Trouble is a writer has to write even if one never does get published, or published for money, big money. I also think that writers have a more difficult time with all this because an artists' work is more a product. An artist can show a drawing or a painting and it says what it says to the viewer without words, while words can help a reader see in their mind characters and the world of the novel. My writing partner on his memoir, Wes Bryan, got me into calling musicians, singers, anyone in the arts an "artist" but to me it still means painter.
Now I am not a member of the Screenwriter's Union and Screenwriters have not been particularily supportive of me. Yes, this is true, and it is also true that I am for them and their strike.
I think the term writer covers us all, and is the most general and least defensive term. It's the one I use.
What people seem to be asking me/us when they ask us what we do and we answer writer is "Are you published?" "Have you sold?" As if that will legitimitze our activity.
Trouble is a writer has to write even if one never does get published, or published for money, big money. I also think that writers have a more difficult time with all this because an artists' work is more a product. An artist can show a drawing or a painting and it says what it says to the viewer without words, while words can help a reader see in their mind characters and the world of the novel. My writing partner on his memoir, Wes Bryan, got me into calling musicians, singers, anyone in the arts an "artist" but to me it still means painter.
What's on your business card?
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