I’m a Hollywood writer; so I put on a sports jacket and take off
my brain. – Ben Hecht

More Hollywood stuff, this regarding my first book, Cosmic Banditos, a goofball novel about The Meaning of Life wherein the protagonist is an unbalanced guy strongly based on me. 

There’s a movie deal for Cosmic Banditos too. The actor John Cusack has optioned that book. Here on this little Caribbean island I got an email from Cusack’s company, New Crime Productions, saying he wants me to adapt that book for the screen. I got that email within a few days of the one from the movie studio for which I’m writing the screenplay to In Search of Captain Zero.    

I’ve got movie deals up the wazoo.

If you’re one of those sad souls who is fascinated by movie stars and who has kept reading this book solely to find out which major movie star I physically threatened, why, and what happened when I did so, I have something to disclose: It was John Cusack I physically threatened. If you don’t remember that I physically threatened a movie star – it was mentioned a long time ago – good for you. In a sense I respect you for it.

    The Cosmic Banditos saga is a good one, with plenty of bizarre Hollywood
doings. The bizarre Hollywood doings are best summed up by the fact that
I physically threatened John Cusack and now he wants to hire me.  

    How did that work?

    I’ll soon get around to that, but first: My having fired my movie writing
agent means that Steven, my Hollywood attorney, will handle the Banditos
contract negotiations. At first I thought this would save me money since I
would not have to cough up the 10% commission agents get for making a
couple of phone calls. However, Steven informed me that since he will be
acting as my agent as well as my attorney, he will get the 10%. I came within
a hair’s breadth of firing him on the spot for this bullshit, but decided to
wait on that, since it would mean I’d have no one left to handle my affairs
in the States.  

    An important point is that I myself put the Cosmic Banditos deal together
in the first place, minus only the contract details. Putting the deal together
in the first place is 90% of an agent’s job. So, in theory, I should get to keep
90% of the 10% Steven wants. When I mentioned this to Steven, he said,
“That’s different,” then changed the subject.

   We’ll see how it goes with Steven, but I’ll tell you, my finger is quivering
on the firing-someone-else trigger.

   At the time of the original Cosmic Banditos option deal, which was back
in the spring of 2001, two other writers – a writing team, as the Hollywood
expression goes – were hired to write the screenplay. How did they do? I’ll
put it this way: If they were a football team instead of a writing team, the
goddamn New York Jets could have kicked their ass. They wrote The Worst
Screenplay in the History of the World. But more about that to come. I’ll
fucking loop back to it.

    Still more Hollywood stuff. In order to keep my fee down, Cusack’s
mpany is calling it “a rewrite.” A rewrite of The Worst Screenplay in the
History of the World. Since it’s The Worst Screenplay in the History of the
World I will not in any way be referring to it in my work. Cusack’s people
have agreed to this, i.e., that I should not refer to it in my work. (They have
more or less agreed that the first screenplay is The Worst Screenplay in the
History of the World.) So how could it then be a rewrite? When I queried
everyone involved on this matter they all said the same thing: “That’s
different.” Then they all changed the subject.  

    Anyway, all kinds of things will be up in the air when I leave this little
Caribbean Island and return to my home at the end of the road at the
bottom of Central America, aside from how it goes with Lisa.

    ’m supposed to be writing the screenplay to my first memoir, In Search
of Captain Zero, a book wherein there is no movie, and for which I’m being
paid a ton of money, and in the writing of which I intend to go into the
tank, i.e., purposefully come up with a bunch of utter crapola.  

    I’m also about to be hired to write the screenplay to my other book, which
was optioned by another major Hollywood star, one whom I physically
threatened. (Did I mention that I have doubts about whether there’s a
movie in that book?)  

    And yet I’m not writing either screenplay. I’m writing this book, for
which there is no guarantee that I’ll be paid anything, or even that it will
be published at all. Not only that but – in case you haven’t figured it out –
as soon as word about this book gets out, my writing career will likely be
over.

    Who is going to want to come near me after this?

    Unless, of course, this book becomes a howling success. If this book
becomes a howling success, I’ll basically be able to do what I want, including
answering thorny questions with the words, “That’s different.”

    I gotta say it again: On top of all the sweating and forehead bleeding and
firing mega-talent-agency pimps, plus queasy guts, this is some wild-ass
job, this writing job, no? 

READ ON FOR PART 4: THREATENING JOHN CUSACK

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PART 1
PART 2
AUTHOR’S NOTE
INTERVIEW

[From Chapter 12 of CYGAWA]

Context is all. And a relatively pure heart. Relatively pure –
for if you had a pure heart you wouldn’t be in the book-writing
business in the first place.  -Robert Penn Warren

Last week just before The Horror took place here on this little Caribbean island I got an email from the movie studio that wound up backing the In Search of Captain Zero movie deal. As things go in Hollywood, and as I more or less predicted back in 2001, the producer who optioned the book was able to find a studio to put up the money to make a movie out of my book, even though there is no movie in my book. One reason for this, I think, was that the studio head who decided to shell out the cash hadn’t read the book. If this sounds somehow both odd and familiar – and it would be odd (or flat nuts) in a similar situation in any other business – the familiar part is likely due to Sean Penn having co-optioned the book without reading it either.

    And the deal was up there in six figures. I’m rolling in loot. Mostly
because I insisted on writing the screenplay. Screenplays are where the
money is. You think I cared that there is no movie in my book when I
insisted on writing the screenplay to my book, given that screenplays are
where the money is?

    Ha!

    But to sum up: Two of the main people who wanted to make a movie out
of my book hadn’t read it, and, meanwhile, another important person, the
one writing the screenplay, me, knew there was no movie in my book.

    To knock off an old song title: Hooray for Hollywood!

    A digression to a related matter, a Meanwhile: Nonfiction writers, of
which I am one at this moment, routinely lie like slugs in their narratives.
Often they’ll lie like slugs about facts, which, as you already know, I
sometimes do. Sometimes lying about facts is okay, sometimes not. But
what’s never okay is to lie in subtext, purposely cause the reader to have a
rush of insight about the workings of the world which the writer knows to
be false. Lying in subtext is a sin. Writers who do this, of which there are a
bunch, will rot in Writer Hell. My theory is that this worse case lying-in-
writing scenario is invariably caused by the same condition that causes
bad behavior of any sort: a failure in self-reflection.*

    If you’re going to write a book (but not someday): The key to writing,
good writing, is self-reflection. In a sense, it’s a writer’s job, his only job.
Take that to the bank and put it in an interest-bearing account.** 

    I know a writer, mostly a Hollywood writer, who, when he looks in the
mirror, does not realize that there is little more than a lying, treacherous
shitball motherfucker staring back at him. So even when he’s looking in
the mirror there is no self-reflection. The guy is a pretty good writer, but
only in that he knows how to string words together. Other than that, he’s a
shitball writer. No self-reflection.

    But what does all this have to do with movie deals and making a movie
from a book wherein there is no movie?

    My going on about demented editors and people I’ve fired and am
pissed off at and shitball motherfuckers in general raises a question about
my character. I’ll phrase the question like this: What sort of potentially
cynical and greedy shitball motherfucker would let his book be optioned
and accept a ton of money, like 200 grand, to adapt it to the screen if he
knows there is no movie in the book? I use the qualifier potentially (which
is an adverb, possibly on the road to hell) here because the status of
this hypothetical person (based on me) as a cynical and greedy shitball
motherfucker is pending.

    So this is the question, and it’s a good one, no? I mean possibly humorous
catch-22s aside…

    No one who wants to make a movie out of my book is smart enough to get it
done.

   By way of answering the question, in essence defending myself against
a serious charge – and plus maybe against the most serious charge there is
regarding self-reflection, or lack thereof, which is hypocrisy – here’s how
the deal went down…

    But first for perspective I want you to imagine something. Imagine that
a bunch of lawyers and MBAs get together and buy a hospital. One day
they’re sitting around and an MBA or lawyer says, “You know, I’ve always
wanted to try my hand at brain surgery.” Another MBA or lawyer nods,
saying that when he was a freshman at college he was thinking of going to
medical school. “Hey…” he says, “we own the hospital. We can do what we
want. Let’s go down to the operating room and give it a shot!”

    This is Hollywood in a nutshell, when producers and studio executives,
MBAs and lawyers, insert themselves into the creative process, the
storytelling process. They just can’t help themselves. It makes them feel
like they’re actually doing something — aside from making phone calls and
getting coverage instead of reading anything. They also do it because they
can. Hey, they own the hospital.

    Enough perspective. Defending myself against these serious charges.
The deal. How it went down.

    By July of 2001, two months after Mom died, the producer, along with
Sean Penn as co-producer, had found a studio that was interested in the
Zero project — an executive at the studio plus his yes-man had actually read
the book. A meeting was set up to discuss a possible development deal.
Development deals are deals wherein the first money the studio coughs
up goes to the screenwriter, plus expenses and an up front fee for the
producers. Then, if the screenplay passes muster, the movie gets made –
assuming a few miracles transpire. If the miracles transpire and the movie
gets made, everyone gets a lot more money.

    The meeting was to be at breakfast at the Four Seasons Hotel in L.A.
In attendance were the producer, the director (‘attached’ to the deal), the
studio head, the executive who had read the book, his yes-man, plus Sean
Penn, plus me. I say the meeting was to be at breakfast because it pretty
much ended up being at lunch due to Sean Penn being a couple hours late.
This notwithstanding that he was staying at the Four Seasons, meaning he
didn’t have far to go to get to the meeting. Traffic was not a problem.

   “You know Sean,” the producer said to me as we waited and waited in
the lobby, along with the director. Although I had talked with Sean on the
phone about making a movie out of my book – the conversation wherein
he said he was “missing a little information here” – I didn’t actually know
him. But okay. The producer reiterated that I was going to enjoy working
with him, meaning in the writing of the screenplay, in the process of which
I had been assured that Sean gets involved early. 

   I’m looking forward to it, I said, as we waited.

   Eventually Sean steps out of the elevator and says Hi to the producer
and the director, whom he knows, then he and I shake and say Hi, then,
by way of apology for his tardiness, Sean says he had “a pharmaceutical
night.” We all laugh.

   We join the studio people in the dining room.

   Everyone says Hi to everyone else. Sean and the studio head are old
pals. Sean repeats his de facto apology about his pharmaceutical night and
we all laugh. Sean sits down and lights up a cigarette. By this time I could
use one myself, but I can’t bring myself to do it, what with the No Smoking
signs and people eating nearby.

   Allan smokes too, the producer says to Sean. You two are going to get
along great. We all laugh, although I’m wishing she hadn’t said that. I’m
embarrassed about smoking.

   There’s chit-chat about some party Sean went to the previous night,
who was there and so forth, then the meeting gets underway. You must
remember that no deal has yet been struck with the studio. The only money
I’d got was a couple grand for a year-and-a-half option on my book. So big
bucks were hanging in the air for yours truly that morning (maybe it was
afternoon by now) at the Four Seasons Hotel in West L.A. – in Hollywood,
actually, the state of mind Hollywood.

   Cutting through the politics and the personal relationships and the
compliments about how great my book is and other bullshit, what this
meeting is, is an audition, my audition, as screenwriter.

   So I’ve got the floor. I’m hoping I’ll be “good in a room” as the Hollywood
expression goes, and which I used to be back in my old Hollywood days. So
I start in on how to make a movie out of my book but my rhythm is broken
by a waiter who comes over and asks Sean not to smoke. An ashtray is
secured and Sean eventually puts out his cigarette. I try to inhale the last
wisp of the fucking thing.

   All right. Here we go.

   In a sense my pitch of how to make a movie out of my book is of the I
have good news and I have bad news sort. The bad news, I say, is that there is
no movie in my book.

   Hold on. I don’t exactly phrase it this way, as I will much later when the
deal turns into a full-blown fiasco. Here’s how I do phrase it: My book does
not provide an actual story, I say, due to a lack of real conflict between the
two main characters. I then point out that conflict is what a story is built
upon. In essence, conflict (plus the turning points it creates) is what a story
is. But we all know this, I say. I’m being disingenuous since – possibly apart
from Sean Penn (pharmaceutical night or no) – I know that no one here
knows this, although they all nod.

   The book works, I go on (trying to avoid sounding too didactic), because
of the narrative voice, which defines the book’s principal conflicts as internal
– internal conflicts are not directly translatable to the screen. Further, I say,
the book ending hinges on an internal turning point and is likewise not
translatable to the screen. In other words, we have no ending.

   I then point out something else I claim we all know, which is that in
storytelling, especially screen storytelling, endings are very important.
In fact (and here I quote screenwriter William Goldman), endings are
everything. No ending, no story.

   What the book provides, I say, is a premise, a good one, and I’m not
being disingenuous here. I really feel that way. The premise: A middle-aged
surfer gives up his straight life to search for an old friend and ex-partner in crime
from their younger days, who is missing in Central America.

    That’s pretty much all the book provides, I reiterate. So: They’re
contemplating coughing up a couple hundred grand plus a producer’s fee
(plus overhead and interest) for one sentence. To distract them all from this
implication I quickly ramble on, saying that the narrative will have to be
reinvented. That’s the word I use. Reinvented. I also work in the fact that my
book is nonfiction, meaning some sort of portrayal of real life, and real life,
almost by definition, is not dramatic. Real life is a pain in the ass that way,
making a movie out of it.  

    Everyone agrees to all this, including Sean Penn, via a nod, although,
aside from his pharmaceutical night, he’s missing a little information here.
But okay. That everyone agrees is a relief. It’s a relief because not only do
I want the money, I want to write this screenplay. I want to reinvent my
book. 

    See if you concur: With everyone’s agreement that the book lacks an
actual story and that the narrative will have to be reinvented and that
they’re coughing up a couple hundred grand for one sentence, they are
in effect also agreeing with my catch-22, notwithstanding that they don’t
realize it.

    More defensiveness on my part: Was it my responsibility to outright
define my catch-22? I didn’t – and still don’t – think so. I’m trying to let
myself off the cynical and greedy shitball motherfucker hook here. I admit
that.  

    Back to the meeting. I then go on to outline the conflicts I concocted that
will provide the turning points necessary to build an actual story around
my premise. Now, I say, regarding the ending, which the book does not
provide, what I want to do is create a mythical kind of The Endless Summer
meets Apocalypse Now finish. I know better than to use Heart of Darkness,
the novel upon which Apocalypse Now is based, in my Hollywood short-
handing, figuring that no one else in the room has read, or even knows
about, Joseph Conrad’s book.  

    Not only does everyone like my concocted turning points that will
provide the necessary conflicts, plus the idea of The Endless Summer meeting
Apocalypse Now, but the studio head, (who, again, hasn’t read the book) says
this, and I remember his words exactly because I will repeat them minutes
later when the producer and I are alone, and then again on the phone to
my then-agent, whose response to my later firing her is the title to this
book. He says, “I want to stop you right here, Allan.” He pauses. He has
everyone’s undivided attention. “I just want to say that you have this deal
right now, if you want it.”  

    Not only has the studio head not noticed my implied catch-22, but he
apparently is sufficiently impressed by not noticing it, if you get my drift,
to offer me the deal then and there, no further ado or blabbing or being
good in a room on my part necessary. So it’s agreed: Everyone’s people will
be in touch with everyone else’s people to work out the legal details.

    Sean adjourns to the patio and lights up. The producer, the director and
I join him. I light up. We chit-chat for a bit and the producer reiterates how
Sean and I are going to enjoy working together.

   I’m looking forward to it, I say.

—

   So this was in July of 2001 and now it’s March of 2003. I’m on a little
Caribbean island with Lisa, the woman with whom I’ve fallen in love at
age 55. The Horror will soon take place and, meanwhile, I’ve received an
email from the studio from the above meeting, the outfit that’s paying me
to adapt my book for the screen. The email includes the studio’s “notes” on
how I should rewrite my last submitted draft of the screenplay.

   As a result of this email I’ve decided to go into the tank.

   Go into the tank is a boxing expression. It means a boxer is going to throw
a fight. Lose on purpose. In this case, go into the tank means I’m planning
on writing a piece of shit screenplay. Write a bunch of utter crapola and do
it on purpose.

   Why would I do this?

   Hang in and I’ll get around to that, but first some other stuff, including
stuff with Lisa that makes The Horror look like a day at the beach.***

— 

*My view is that lying about facts is sometimes “okay” when the writer’s sole motive is to keep
the story moving, or to foster unity (symmetry), or to ease the narrative onto another subject (a
segue), with no deceitful implications about how the world works.

**Aside from self-reflecting in his work, a writer has to keep the reader wanting to know What
Happens Next. So, regarding only jobs, writers actually have two.

***Since I’m hinting at future narrative events, this chapter ending is an example of looping,
which I’m doing all over the place. I love looping! Hey, I’m becoming an “I loop, therefore I am”
sort of writer. To put it another way: To my demented editor, assuming she is reading this right
now: Take your looping and shove it up your ass.

— 

READ ON FOR PART 3: JOHN CUSACK, COSMIC BANDITO

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[From CYGAWA]

Author’s Note

First, there’s something I have to get off my chest in this writer’s memoir. 

If you’ve ever said or even thought the words “I’m going to write a book,” you may eventually do so, write a book. But if you tacked on at the end the word someday, as in “I’m going to write a book someday,” you never will. Trust me on this. I’ve done the research. 

Along the same lines: If you’ve ever said or even thought the words “I could write a book” – with or without the emphasis on “I” – you never will do so, write a book. This is just the way it is. It’s annoying when people who’ve never written anything make these statements to people who actually do write. And it happens all the time, at least to me. One time this guy, in finding out I’d written a book he read, said, “I could write three books.” I wanted to pop him then and there.

    That writing is difficult is best exemplified by the Gene Fowler quote I
use as the opening epigraph: Writing is easy. You just stare at the blank page
until your forehead bleeds.

    Someone could write a whole book, a good book, let’s assume, about
how difficult writing is and it would not come close to saying as much as
Mr. Fowler does in that second sentence, and I very much hope you agree.
If not, it may not work out between us.

    But what’s my point? 

    If you’re one of those non-writers who has said, or has thought of saying,
or is capable of saying, “I’m going to write a book someday,” or “I could
write a book,” maybe now, knowing my attitude about these sentiments
and with the imparted image of your forehead bleeding while you stare at
the blank page, you’ll shut the fuck up.

    But I doubt it. You’ll say it anyway. You and I happen to meet somewhere,
you’ll probably even say it to me.

    In one ear and out the other is the expression that comes to mind.

Another Author’s Note 

Aside from the actual writing of a book, titles are tough too. In fact, I
sweated over the title of this book. 

    Publishers consider a title to be no more than a marketing tool – point
of sale and all that – so they don’t much care what a customer thinks of the
title once he’s finished reading the book, since by then he’s already bought
it. A writer, on the other hand, wants the title of his book to make sense, be
satisfying, after the book has been read, especially then.

    It’s nice when a title has a couple meanings and they both make sense.
A great example of this is Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air, which is about a
doomed ascent of Mount Everest. What a great title. You know, “into
thin air” being an expression meaning where something goes when it
disappears completely, which happens in the story to some climbers. Also,
the air is thin up on Mount Everest, where the climbers disappear.

   I bet when Krakauer thought of that title he more or less said to himself,
“Whoopee!”*

    It’s also good if a title asks a question that is ultimately answered by
the book itself, as is the case with this book, I hope. Can’t You Get Along
With Anyone? sounds like a good title, has a familiar yet abstract ring to
it, plus there’s subtext about conflict, plus the You subtly challenges the
reader, meaning you, the personal you (not the abstract, impersonal you),
asks you the question and so forth, but what if after reading the book you
wonder what was the point of the title since the question was not answered
satisfactorily? So you might hold off judgment as to whether you like the
title until you’re done, assuming you hang in. 

    “Can’t you get along with anyone?” is the body of the email I received
from my Hollywood movie-writing agent (as opposed to my book agent)
in response to the email I sent her firing her. While I was sweating over the
title of this book I stumbled across the email, which I had forgotten about,
via a ridiculous chain of coincidences. So don’t give me too much credit for
the title, assuming you hang in and end up liking it. I’m only peripherally
involved. 

    But the point being: As soon as I saw the email I more or less said to
myself, “Whoopee!”

    There’s another reason for my liking the title, which has to do with my
former movie-writing agent. Imagine that this book becomes a howling
success, as already I do, not often but occasionally, mainly when my bad
chemicals are particularly active and I need to feel better about myself, or
at least my writing.**  Imagine my former movie-writing agent going to a
bookstore and seeing her words – the body of the email she sent me, which
I believe is laden with negative subtext – all over the place, in displays in
the front window, stacked up in towering pyramids on the floor, covering
tables; dozens of people holding the book (with the title facing out) while
waiting in the cashier line. Everywhere she looks there they are, her words:
Can’t You Get Along With Anyone? 

    Hold on. A good question: What’s someone in the movie business doing
in a bookstore?

    Here’s what would happen in real life Hollywood as opposed to my
fantasy. Rather than go to a book store to buy this book, my former movie-
writing agent would order “coverage” from one of the readers at the mega-
talent agency where she works, where she pimps out writers, their talent
– or lack thereof, if you get my bad-movie drift – to thieves and idiots.
Coverage is sort of the Hollywood version of Cliff Notes. Prevents people
in the movie business from having to read books – or to be in bookstores.
She’d probably say to the reader down in the coverage department, “Never
mind the usual crapola, just sum up what the asshole says about me.” 

    But back to my fantasy. My former movie-writing agent would see the
title of this book all over the place and realize that she is the public butt of
my clever irony and likely get aggravated.

    By the way, did you catch the little redundancy in the subtitle, the A
Writer’s Memoir part of it? See, a memoir is always a writer’s memoir:
whoever wrote it is by definition a writer since only a writer could have
done that, i.e., written the fucking thing.  

    I didn’t sweat much over this problem, though. I figured Who’s going to
notice?

— 

* Unfortunately, though, Into Thin Air isn’t such a great title when translated to certain other
languages. For example, in the language of the Ogala Sioux, the expression “thin air” refers
to the situation that results when someone passes gas in a crowded teepee. Given the subject
matter of Krakauer’s book, the title Into Thin Air could be confusing in an Ogala Sioux edition.

** I’m sweating over this Author’s Note in late May, 2006, after completion of the book but several
months before publication. This is always a bad time for me, as all sorts of fears and self-doubts
and even self-loathing surface regarding what I’ve written. Not only do I sweat but some
days my forehead even hemorrhages a bit, although not as much as during the writing. So to
overpower the dispiriting thoughts I fantasize about great success.

GO TO PART 2: BREAKFAST WITH SEAN PENN
GO BACK TO PART 1

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