Rex Pickett's Blog, page 3

As Luck Would Have It

 

   I have written extensively about this elsewhere in a recent piece on Stage32.com titled My Life on Spec:  the Writing of Sideways, but I thought it bore being isolated, and amplified, on its own.  The subject is luck.  Some prefer the term serendipity, but serendipity implies “happy accident,” and, to me, that’s an entirely different preternatural phenomenon all together.  Jung’s term synchronicity perhaps better explains what I’m about to write because that word was coined to explain conjoined events that are, well, inexplicable.

   As everyone who knows me and the story of Sideways by now knows, my unpublished novel was optioned by Alexander Payne and Michael London in the winter of 2000.  Payne’s romantic, somewhat impetuous dream, was to rush it right into production, shoot it in Super-16 mm – a format that automatically ends up in 35 mm, but which allows for the shooting of a lot more footage, since the raw stock is cheaper.  Great.  After a decade of much-chronicled suicidal despair and destitution I was ready to watch my ship — hell, my argosy! — come in.  Not so fast.

   In March of 2000, after having taken one reconnaissance trip up to the Santa Ynez Valley where my book is set, Alexander Payne called me.  He began by casually asking me for a wine recommendation, remembering a wine I had recently exulted over.  I reminded him what it was.  Then, in a somewhat halting, sheepish, voice, he told me that he was going to have to put Sideways on hold — my heart fell into my stomach! — that there was another film he wanted to make first — nonplussed would be a mild term for what I was feeling at that seemingly fatalistic moment.  That film was About Schmidt.  He went off to make it.  I didn’t hear from him in nearly two years.  He and London kept re-upping the option on my book, but it still remained unpublished, unfilmed.

   About Schmidt was released in the winter of 2002 and collected a number of awards.  In the winter of 2003 Alexander Payne returned his attention to Sideways.  Or, ostensibly.  I took a trip up to the Santa Ynez Valley with him and this then wife, Sandra Oh; George Parra and his then wife (forget her name); Michael London and his still current wife, Lynn; and me.  It was a heady time, and I sensed that a film was finally in the works.

   Then, one Monday, around 10:00 a.m., shortly after this trip, I got a call from Michael London.  He was unusually animated for him.  He said he had just had the weirdest conversation with Alexander Payne.  Apparently Payne, on the previous Friday, had been offered a lot of money to direct a remake of a ‘60s caper film titled Gambit.  The script had been retooled by no less than Joel and Ethan Coen and was to star the lead in Payne’s critically-acclaimed Election, Reese Witherspoon.  On Friday, as the story unfolded from Michael, and unbeknownst to both of us, Payne told his agent David Lonner to close the deal for him to direct Gambit.  Michael swore he no knowledge of this until he got the call on Monday.  However, over the weekend, Payne apparently had had an apostasy on Gambit.  According to Michael, Payne explained over the phone that he had had a “panic attack” about telling us, after three long years, that he wasn’t going to be making Sideways after all, and that he had phoned his agent and told him to call Paramount – or whatever major studio it was – that he was reversing his decision and wasn’t going to make Gambit, that Sideways was going to be his next film.  He concluded the call, in his effusive manner, by telling Michael that he loved him, he loved me, he loved the project, mea culpa, etc.  The rest is history.

   If Payne had made Gambit I am convinced he never would have made Sideways for a host of reasons, the main one being that the project would had just languished so long on his docket of films that he wanted to make that the bloom would have been off the rose for good.  Why he had a “panic attack” and turned down what no doubt was a very healthy payday to accept a way lesser payday — that worked out for him in the end since he got serious back-end remuneration on Sideways — I’ll never know.  Understand something, Dear Reader:  no one else wanted Sideways.  Hell, no one else got it.  Not a single publisher, not any other director or Hollywood development company that it had been submitted to.  Let me repeat:  NO ONE wanted this project.  And yet, to this day, the film is fondly remembered.  So fondly, there’s now going to be a play that will be staged, premiering May 18th at the Ruskin Group Theater in Santa Monica, CA.  So fondly that, as I reported in the below post, that to this day, the Santa Ynez Valley is overrun with Sideways fans more than seven years after the film was released.  With no immodesty intended, Sideways has become a certified iconic film/book.

   And yet but for a panic attack there almost wasn’t a film.  Was it luck?  Did some unseen being, smiling down on my wretched soul, inhabit Payne over that fateful weekend and have a little heart-to-heart with him in the middle of a restless slumber?  One wonders how many films that could have been a Sideways — now enshrined with commemorative plaques in the WGA Theater in Beverly Hills as one of the 101 Greatest Screenplays of All Time — never got made because that preternatural voice never bothered to raise His voice.  Was it luck?  Was it “meant to be”? — a phrase that always makes me cringe because, well, was it “meant to be” that 19 religious zealots would kamikaze fly jetliners into three buildings and murder 3,000 people in the name of Allah?

   And, yet, it’s true:  Sideways was almost never made because of one weekend panic attack.  Because of one sensitive artist, with agents and studios pulling at his sleeves every five minutes of the day, imploring him to do this, do that, who had, in a moment of monk-like self-reflection, a true enantiodromia.

   The following week after his epiphany that spending two years of his life on some studio remake of a ‘60s caper film would not have been a wise choice for his auteurist oeuvre, Payne settled down and started to write the script with his longtime writing partner, Jim Taylor.  In a matter of weeks they had cranked out a first draft.  The die had been cast.  The hook had been set.  I was pretty sure now there was going to be a film.

   I always tell aspiring writers that one day they, too, will get lucky, that their work will wend its way into the hands of someone who has the power to make it happen.  But when that moment arrives, they have to have the goods.  Maybe the strength of the material is what bought me that blinding fulguration of “luck.”  Or maybe it was just … luck. 

   Or, as the great golfer Ben Hogan – a laconic man known for his blunt sententiousness – once answered when asked if golf was a game of luck.  “It’s a funny thing, the more I practice the luckier I get.”

"Sideways" Play Cast & Crew in The Santa Ynez Valley

   For 15 months Sideways the Play has been in the works.  It all began when a young Jason Matthews approached me in the Barker Hanger at the Santa Monica Airport where I was signing copies of my Sideways sequel Vertical.  Then, as I blogged in here before, we met.  He was intelligent, focused, in no way sycophantic.  A few days later I met with the rest of the Ruskin Group Theater brain trust:  Mikey Myers, Mike Riley, and John Ruskin.  All smart, all eager and devoted to guiding my writing to the stage.

   The greatest decision I made was hiring just turning 30, newly-married, Amelia Mulkey.  I heard through the grapevine from some that I had lost my mind.  For those who know me this would not exactly be a news bulletin.  Amelia has been great, professional, on point, never missing a beat.  In the 6 months we’ve collaborated on honing the script, we’ve never once had an argument.  Not one.  We’ve never had a serious point of disagreement about anything.  And this has not because she’s been in awe of the source material, given that it’s already achieved a measure of fame in both book and movie form.  No, quite the opposite:  she’s pushed hard to get the words right so that when we went to casting – and then rehearsal and staging (where we’re at now) – that it would all fall into place.  It’s been one of the most creatively rewarding experiences of my “artistic” writing life.

   Last weekend, the some 15 cast and crew of the Sideways play journeyed up to the Santa Ynez Valley where my novel is set and where the movie was shot.  I planned a trip, much like Miles plans for Jack the first day they’re up there.  We started our grape tour north at one of my favorite wineries and tasting rooms, Foxen – where Jack was supposed to meet Terra (Stephanie in the movie), but for filmic reasons ended up being shot at another winery.  Sarah and the gang at Foxen gave our team – most of whom had never seen the Santa Ynez Valley – the royal treatment.  It was a blustery, blue-sky day, a little nip in the air from a storm that had raged through the previous day.  From there it was down to Fess Parker Winery for the corporate wine experience – and where the famous drinking-from-the-spit-bucket scene was shot.  All agreed that the wines did indeed taste like Raid and decomposed rodents.  From there it was a short drive to the town of Los Olivos.

   When I first started going up to the Santa Ynez Valley in the ‘90s, Los Olivos – literally a postage stamp-sized town no more than two blocks in either direction – had only two tastings rooms:  Longoria and Andrew Murray.  The rest of the quaint establishments were “hobby” shops for the rich:  art galleries, that sort of thing, along with a few restaurants.  And the ubiquitous Fess Parker and his inn and terrible restaurant.  That was it.  For years.  Cut to today:  there are now 38 tasting rooms in Los Olivos.  You can go into one, stumble out, go in either direction 10 feet and be in another.  Mikey Myers had a raft of the great posters that Amelia – yes, she’s an all-purpose director — designed with input from yours truly and my friend, Pamela Smith.  Every tasting room we went, there was immediate excitement about the play.  At Andrew Murray a cat fight broke out over my signing posters and … “Could I have one, please?”

   The Hitching Post was a zoo.  There was an over an hour wait for a table.  Well, not if you’re the one who put them on the map.  Generous owner Frank Ostini, bedecked in his iconic pith helmet, greeted the cast and crew and treated us to a repast that I’m sure all will remember, pouring Highliner liberally and grilling up his meats.

   From there it was back to the Days (nee Windmill) Inn for a little freshening up.  Then, it was over to the Windmill Inn’s Clubhouse Bar, a 50-pace walk.  The Clubhouse Bar is not for wine aficionados.  Their specialty is beer and shots and pool tables.  Their clientele is working class, mostly guys, and mostly guys who work on heavy machinery, and mostly guys who get really fucked up on the weekends.  I mean, like black-out drunk fucked up.  So, into this mix gambols our gypsy troupe to shake up the place.  Kristelle, one of our understudies and choreographers is a flamenco dancer and, after a long day of wine, was eager to showcase her moves.  Then Julia (our Maya) got into the act.  That galvanized the men.  Soon our Miles and Jack and Boar Hunter were dancing.  The heavy machinery operator drunks were sort of mouth agape/nonplussed.  It was quite a scene.  But, there was a third contingent in the bar:  women up for the Sideways tour.  A lot of women.  And, in fact, that was one of the motifs of the whole trip:  women dominated the tasting rooms, dominated the locations – the Clubhouse was used in two scenes in the movie.

   It’s been more than seven years since Sideways was released.  Many thought there would be a tourism bubble and it would die.  It hasn’t abated one bit.  People are going for the Sideways tour, but they’re returning because in many ways the place hasn’t changed.  Santa Barbara County has strict building codes and, from a distance, or just driving around, I notice little development from the ‘90s when I first starting sojourning up.  You only really notice it when you stop in Los Olivos and hit the tasting rooms, or try to get in for dinner at the Hitching Post, or make a point of seeing one of the locations.  Other than that, little has changed. 

   And yet, much has changed.  In my life, particularly.  I went up a day early on Friday and met with the two lead actors, John Colella (Miles) and Jonathan Bray (Jack).  I drove them to windswept Jalama Beach where several scenes in the book (and the play) take place.  We met at La Purisima Golf Course.  It had rained all day, but the sun was out and it was glistening green.  I started to tell them the story that I’ve told so many times, and which you can read in the Foreword to the Deluxe Edition of Vertical, or online at Stage32.com, titled My Life on Spec:  The Writing of Sideways.

   Now, there’s going to be a play.  It’ll be, of course, different than the movie, and, though closer to the novel, different than that as well.  Reading a novel is a private experience with everything left to your imagination.  A movie is a two-dimensional experience that employs montage and music in a way that a book or play can’t.  But a play is truly three-dimensional, palpable, raw, real.  In the five cold reads and one cast read-through, through now 18 drafts of the play script, it’s still funny as hell to me.  And maybe even more poignant than the movie or book because the characters are right there, so real.

   Every night, included in the price of admission, you’ll be poured a high-end Pinot from a different winemaker who’ll be in attendance.  In proper stemware.  And you’ll be able to take it inside the theater.  Sideways lives on.  In yet another artistic medium, this time theater. 

   Thank you Ruskin Group Theater, and especially Amelia Mulkey.  And thanks to the entire cast and crew.

Brad The Boar Hunter

   Hamilton Matthews — Brad the Boar Hunter in Sideways The Play

   In the '90s when I was sojourning up to the Santa Ynez Valley and unwittingly researching my novel Sideways, which ultimately became the iconic Alexander Payne movie, I experienced a lot – not all! – of the things in the novel.  One night, after a few too many Pinots at the Hitching Post I shambled back to the Windmill (now Days) Inn.  I guess I needed a few more because I trundled over to the Windmill Inn's Clubhouse Bar.  It's a nondescript bar with pool tables, hard liquor, standard beers and dreadful wines by the glass.  I was sitting at the bar when I struck up a conversation with a guy who told me he was a boar hunter.  Inebriated, naturally I was intrigued.  He explained that he hunted them at night, that they were nocturnal animals, that he shot them with a long range rifle, but sometimes with a .45 magnum.  Now, that intrigued me!  This conversation took place, I'm guessing, at about 11:00 p.m.  At some point he invited me to come out to bluff above Jalama Beach to go boar hunting with him.  I declined.  I did not have a good feeling about driving out with him to Jalama Beach – 30 miles away – and watching him shoot wild boar with a .45 magnum under a full moon at midnight.

   A few years later when I was writing the novel, it occurred to me that, at a certain moment in Miles's and Jack's crazy week, maybe they should go out wild boar hunting with a character I named Brad.  I remember laughing out loud when I wrote it.  I remember being disappointed when Alexander Payne didn't include it in the script.  When I asked him about it he told me it was "too much of a set-piece scene."  What?  Three guys and a gun?  Alexander doesn't like action sequences – you'll rarely see one in his movies.  He told me once that he doesn't even like car shots.  He prefers the comfort of interiors.  The "boar hunt scene" promised to be an all-nighter in some remote location. 

   When Jason Matthews approached me about doing the stage version of Sideways one of the first things I asked him was what he thought should or shouldn't be kept in the play from the novel (the play is based on the novel, not the movie, for both artistic and legal reasons).  I was almost sure that the Boar Hunt Scene would be one of the first things eliminated because it would be too difficult to stage.  No, he wanted it in.  Not only did he believe it could be successfully staged, he thought it would differentiate and distinguish, the play from the movie even more, something we were endeavoring to do.  I included it in the first draft, adapting it almost verbatim from the book.  It read well in the first cold read, was funny as hell.  It made it to second cold read, still fresh and funny.  When I started interviewing directors the first three I met – all men, by the way – all said there was no way they could do the Boar Hunt Scene.  Really?  My fourth interviewee was a 29 year-old, fearless, woman named Amelia Mulkey.  I liked her instantly.  Somewhere in the course of our nearly two-hour "interview," I asked her about the Boar Hunt Scene.  She said something to the effect:  "Oh, of course we have to have the Boar Hunt Scene."  "Yeah, but these other directors, all men, some award-winning, said it couldn't be staged."  She looked at me like:  What?  I would have hired her anyway – and it's one of the greatest decisions I've ever made in a life where I've made some really bad ones – but when she said "Of course we have to have The Boar Hunt Scene," I knew she was my director.

   In the first three cold reads, Mike Meyers, the Managing Director of the Ruskin Group Theater, read Brad The Boar Hunter.  And, you know what?   He was pretty damn good.  But "Mikey" is one busy dude, and he's integral to making sure that Sideways gets put on right, so Amelia brought in Hamilton Matthews (see above picture) for the fourth cold read.  First of all, when I saw him, I almost said out loud:  "My God, that's the guy!"  It was if I had been transported back to the Windmill Inn's Clubhouse Bar and was revisiting that wine-soaked night.  Hamilton also read it really well.  We did audition others, but Hamilton had the role from the start.  A side note:  Hamilton, unlike Brad, is actually an intellectual of sorts, well read, mild-mannered … just goes to show what a real actor can do to fool you into thinking he's someone totally unlike who he is in real life. 

   This Saturday (4/14), most of the cast and crew of the play are journeying up to the Santa Ynez Valley to visit some of the locations in the novel.  Hamilton (uh, Brad) will get a chance to see the real place where I met the guy who inspired his character many moons ago.  I hear he's very excited.  Congratulations on getting the role, Hamilton.  You earned it.

The "Sideways" Play is Here!

   I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.

                                                                        — Oscar Wilde

   It has been a year-long ride since Jason Matthews of the modest Ruskin Group Theater, here in Santa Monica, approached me at a huge Pinot Noir (of course!) wine event where I was peddling copies of my Sideways sequel Vertical and wondered if I would be interested in turning Sideways into a stage production.  I was circumspect.  We met a few days later to talk about it.  Not only for contractual, but for artistic, reasons, Jason was insistent that the play be based on the book, even though the now iconic, and wildly successful Alexander Payne film of my novel was pretty damn faithful.  I was impressed with his articulate, and intelligent, pitch.  A few days later I met the core of the Ruskin Group Theater:  John Ruskin, the Artistic Director; Mike Myers, the Managing Director; and Mike Reilly, the Production Manager.  As blogged here previously, all were sincere, smart, devoted to this art form I knew little or nothing about.  I knew about character, I knew about story, and my forte, dialogue, has often been praised, I'd written tons of scripts, directed two indie features, hell:  why not theater?

   Two nights ago I got to see the first cast read-through of the finished play.  It was a staggeringly satisfying moment of personal, and collaborative, accomplishment that nearly brought tears to my eyes.  The cast we assembled were simply amazing — and they have a glorious six weeks of rehearsal to get even better!  The writing process went through 15 drafts, 5 cold reads to test those drafts, a director interview process, and a grueling audition and casting ordeal.  As I said, the cast is set and will be announced any day.  I couldn't be more thrilled.  But there were doubts on my part all along the way.  What never wavered for me was the story and the characters.

   One of the great decisions I made was selecting relatively young (30) Amelia Mulkey as the director.  (Yes, the writer is king in theater, and he gets to choose his director; unheard of in Hollywood.)  Wisdom would have it that a neophyte playwright like might should elect to go with experience.  In my case I wanted someone – Amelia only has one full-length play to her directing resume – who would take risks, who would work harder than anyone else to prove that she was the right choice.  But, even more important, I wanted someone I could work creatively, and copacetic, with.  I didn't want anyone who didn't share my vision, but, by the same token, I didn't want anyone who would be so in awe of the fact that I was the guy who wrote Sideways that she wouldn't challenge me on the play-script.  Amelia was neither.  After two cold reads, and with the play in an inchoate, but still developing, form, she was officially hired after a two-hour interview in which she mesmerized me with her profusion of ideas, exciting energy, eagerness to roll up her sleeves and make this as great as it might be. 

   Amelia went to work on the script — I should say:  we went to work on the script.  I have to say in all honesty that we never once had an argument, we never once even had a heated discussion.  Many of her concerns centered on the pacing and staging, but she also supplied several other very important things:  she got me to focus on the women characters (Maya and Terra) a little more, and she pushed me to come up with creative solutions for problems that arose in the staging without losing things that she wanted to keep.  It was a process.  She critiqued, I wrote; she critiqued, I wrote; we held a cold reading, conferred … and always – always! – were in synch about what the play needed before we went to the casting process.  I sometimes shudder to think what this process what have been like – a process I had no idea was going to take this long! – if it had been with a director I didn't relate to aesthetically; hell, a director I didn't like personally!

   Play-script done, my writer friend Marco Mannone were getting ready to head off to, of all places, Texas, on a terrestrial road trip to research a screenplay we're going to write for my Oscar-winning ex-wife Barbara Schock – that's another story and another blog of high hilarity, coming later.  A week before our trip we held one final cold read (our 5th).  I was pretty sure the play was locked.  Not so fast.  A day after the read I met with Amelia and Jason to talk over final tweaks before we went out with the cast breakdowns, at which point the casting process would begin in full swing.  I was eager to put the writing process behind me because I was getting burned out.  However, John Ruskin had a radical idea.  It involved cutting 14 pps. from the second act.  14 pps.?!  Are you out of your fucking mind? I almost screamed.  I felt like I had been struck by a curare dart.  But the more I thought about it, the more I started to wrap my head around it, the more I realized what a brilliant stroke it was.  Not only would it make the second act more manageable time-wise, the scenes in question – iconic scenes in the movie – were simply just unnecessary.  Not only that, they involved making such compromises in their staging that it was a actually relief to see them go.  And when I did, something wondrous happened:  the other scenes suddenly came more to life; they slowed down, as it were and were like like discrete gems found scattered on a road leading to a terminus, which was the end of the play.  What was going to be a breakneck-paced second act now was going to be able to play out with the pacing we wanted.  Cutting those 14 pps. I was also afforded the opportunity to expand a scene with Maya and another one with Terra - characters whose roles I wanted so badly to enlarge because I loved the two actors we cast so much and didn't want to short-sight them - and make the women more prominent.  But, even more important, in considering cutting those 14 pps., I realized – and this was the point of the play all along – that this was no longer the movie, it was the novel, the novel I wrote in '98, and which wasn't published until '03.  Hard as it was initially to make that huge excision – with only a few days on my hands before my TX trip! – it was like removing a tumor when I had successfully executed it.  Even more surprising, I was shocked at how little collateral damage there was after I had done it.  A few little tweaks, and I didn't miss anything.  It was as if jet plane had cut a white wound in the sky.  Suddenly, everything effloresced … and the play, thanks to everyone at Ruskin who worked so hard through the writing process, suddenly, finally, became, at last, a thing unto itself.  It had unshackled itself from the book and the movie and was now like a sleek yacht, sails gloriously unfurled, bent to the white-capped water, speeding to the horizon.

   I gave a long interview the other day to a journalist doing a piece on the play.  The first thing he said to me after the usual introductions was:  "Rex, I confess I've not read your book, I've seen the movie numerous times, but after reading your play I think it's better than the movie in some ways."  Whoa, hold on there!  You said it, dude, not me.  Besides, it hasn't even premiered yet (5/18 is the official date), and I don't want you to jinx us.  For the record, I love the Alexander Payne movie, and though the movie is very faithful to the book, there are differences, and the main difference is the way in which Alexander viewed the characters of Miles and Jack.  It was different than how I saw – and lived! – them in the novel.  One of the first things Alexander said to me when we first met in person was:  "You know what I love about your novel?  Your characters are so fucking pathetic!"  Well, I thought, just make the movie so I can climb out of debt.  And he did, and it was brilliant, and it won over 350 awards and is now enshrined in the WGA Theater in Beverly Hills as one of the 101 Greatest Screenplays in the history of cinema – a flawed list, but still! - and the rest is cinematic history.

   But the characters aren't pathetic.  Miles is who I was circa '98 and Jack is my old friend Roy Gittens, a film electrician, circa the same time.  The novel chronicled our friendship, narrated as it was in a frenetic week of excessive wine drinking and sexual, and other, escapades.  But they weren't pathetic.  Sure, they acted transgressively at times, but they weren't pathetic; they were just singularly human.  And that's what, I believe, the play, based on my novel, not on the film, celebrates:  our foibles, our frailties, our attempts to produce light out of the darkness, comedy out of the despair; in short, the humanness in all of us.

"Sideways" Play in Wall St. Journal

"Sideways" Play in Wall St. Journal

2012 (long overdue) Update

   I'm sorry it's taken me so long to blog again.  Actually, I've been blogging like crazy in other places and, after discovering the power of Twitter, well, I've been Tweeting maniacally, spurred by Gary Vaynerchuk's exhortation to get on Twitter and work it, engage in it (thanks, Gary!).  I feel like the guy in the above photo with Twitter being that crazed gremlin on my shoulders — but in a good way.  I love Twitter, and I urge you to Follow me there @rexpickett.  I Tweet mostly #writing advice to aspiring scribes of all ilk:  novelists, screenwriters, et alii.  And I love the feedback that I get.  If ever I wanted to feel loved …

   Over December Rich Blotto of Stage32.com ran my 6-part serialization My Life on Spec:  The Writing of Sideways.  It details everything I went through with the writing of Sideways, the indignities I endured, the making of my novel into a movie, and the eventual fallout from that.  Thousands, I'm told, read it, riveted by my story.  The comments left were unbelievably gratifying and I want to thank each and every one of those who took the time to read it and left their remarks  With so many damn blogs out there these days, one wonders if anyone takes the time to read these things anymore.  I guess they do!

   Speaking of my blogs, my inaugural Huff Post Books blog, It's the End of the Word as We Know It, is now LIVE.  Yes, I've gone legit, thanks to Twitter and meeting renowned author Jennifer Weiner who made the introductions.  I will continue to blog about my travails in the traditional publishing world and my eventual landing on the self-imprint path.  So, look for that.

   Other news:  we held the third cold read — but the first for my director Amelia Mulkey — of the Sideways play.  Amelia and I had agreed to some major restructuring of the first act and needed to hear it read and timed out.  After the read, I went back inside and did another revision.  Plays, unlike novels, and even movies, are works-in-progress until opening night.  Even then, they can still change!  The hard thing for me is not to get inured to the humor — i.e., start to think things that were funny in the first read are no longer funny and take them out because I'm tired of them.  Also, because it's a "cold read," the actors are not off book, there's a non-actor reading the stage directions, and you have to really see through the "cold" reading of the dialogue and maintain perspective.  What's going to be exciting is when we start casting.

   Speaking of which:  Casting will commence middle of February and conclude by the end of February so Amelia's and my chosen actors can launch immediately into rehearsals.  I believed esteemed, and multiply-credited, casting director, April Webster, is now on board to help us with finding the right actors for this — forgive my immodesty — hilarious play.  Oh, and did I mention, I love working with just-turned 30 Amelia Mulkey?  She hails from an acting family, and although she has only helmed one full-length play, she is a force of nature.  She's opinionated, stands her ground, but so far we have collaborated felicitiously, with zero conflicts or disagreements.  We are totally in sync, and that makes me happy because it was something I was worried about.  She's been great with her input on the script, knowing full well that she's critiquing — for the stage — a now iconic book/movie.  I also know my place in this production and am careful to listen to her input and not step on her toes.  And although I will be intimately involved with the casting, the staging of the play is going to be her responsibility and it's going to be a big one.

   I don't know who we're going to cast.  Playwrighting is a different animal than novel writing and screenwriting (though the latter does bear some similarities).  Because a play is all dialogue-driven, and because those characters are literally living in my head, I know exactly how I want every line to be read, how I want their timing to be just so.  But this is not how you direct actors.  They have to find it themselves.  It's maddening for a playwright when the actors muff a line, miss the timing of a joke or mispronounce a word.  I see why so many playwrights have turned to alcohol and drugs and inhalants and fashioned nooses.  When you're writing a play you can literally see and hear it, line-by-line, in your head, and it's almost impossible to believe that that could ever be duplicated on stage.  Hell, it might even be better.  That's why I can't direct this, and that's why I have the redoubtable Amelia.

   Life is incredibly busy.  I continue to do a lot of PR for Vertical, my Sideways sequel.  A lot of it is over the Web:  Skype interviews, e.g.  It seems there's no end to the people who want to talk about that movie and my book that spawned it, and the sequel that now is widely available everywhere.  In fact, tonight I'm going to be on Twitter at 6:00 PST hosting a Live "hashtag" interview with whomever weighs in at #winechat with their questions.  It's a good chance to see how the Twitter world works for those who are unfamiliar with it.

   My HBO pilot continues to be in development.  I'm excited about a Merlot I'm coming out with my name on it in partnership with Bion Rice of Sunstone Winery.  My friend Pamela and her friend Arzu created the cool-looking label, and it looks awesome.  Sunstone Winery & Rex Pickett Present the Author's Series:  "The Apostate" Merlot.  I know, it sounds kind of ironic and funny, but … it's a delicious wine from the Santa Ynez Valley.

   So, check out my various blogs.  Sorry for the absence.  I wake every morning and barely leave my couch, the computer on my lap, Tweeting and blogging and conducting interview and answering the tons of E-mail that I get every day.  I guess you could say I've come out of the 20th Century closet and have now totally, fully, entered, and engaged in, the wide world of social media.

Cheers, Rex

"My Life on Spec" to be Published on Stage 32

   Richard Botto is one of the co-founders of the Web site Stage 32, a social media site for film and TV industry professionals.  We met each other through Facebook.  A huge fan of Sideways he asked me to write a guest blog.  I had a better, more ambitious, idea:  why not serialize the entire novella-length Foreword that I wrote for the Sideways hardcover that's coming out soon.  He Jumped at the chance, one e-mail led to another, a friendship was forged, and the 6-part serialization, titled My Life on Spec:  the Writing of Sideways, will debut on Stage 32's Web site beginning 12/8 and will run the entire month of December.  I'm taking the liberty of posting his blog introducing this exclusive I've granted his Stage 32 site.

   In October of 2004, I was living in Scottsdale, Arizona.  At the time, I was editing a national men's magazine called Razor.  There are many perks to co-owning and editing a magazine, but perhaps none bigger than the swag.  Everyone wants coverage and they're willing to send you just about any item, big or small, to secure a couple of column inches.

   For me, the thrill lay in books and movies.  We would receive galleys sometimes nearly a full year before a novel or biography would hit the shelves.  Movie screeners would arrive at our office months ahead of their release date.  Accompanying the screeners, what we called a "Beggar's Pack," were press releases, McNugget quotes from the actors or the director, and requests for interviews.  In mid October, as we were putting together our year-end issue, the one that would include our "Best of 2004 Cinema" summary, I realized there was only one film with Oscar buzz for which we had no material:  "Sideways."

   "Sideways" had its debut at the Toronto Film Festival in September.  We were covering the festival, and the buzz was strong.  Many felt it was a sleeper, a film surely to be heard from during awards season. I used all my powers as a magazine editor to secure a screener.  I called in favors. Nothing. Honestly, I had never seen anything like it before. Most studios would sell their souls for a blurb. But the company line out of Fox Searchlight (20th Century Fox's speciality division) was that they wanted the word of mouth to be organic.  This was a movie of the people, for the people, press be damned.

   On October 22, 2004, "Sideways" opened in very limited release.  For a person living in Scottsdale, limited release means a 50-minute flight to LA.  To my amazement, the film was showing in a theater 40 miles away.  I enlisted a female friend of mine, seven years my junior (worth noting), and dragged her ("sounds boring") to an opening night screening.

   From minute one, I was invested.  By the time Miles and Maya have their "wine as a metaphor for life" conversation (concluding with Maya's infamous line:  "… And it tastes so fucking good."), I was convinced not only that I was watching the best movie of the year (with all apologies to "Million Dollar Baby"), but one of the most well constructed and fully realized character studies of any film — a fact emphatically confirmed with each repeat viewing.  The ending — Miles, hangdog expression, appears on Maya's doorstep with nothing left to lose, and seemingly nowhere else to turn, timidly knocking on her door to seemingly await his fate — was so pitch perfect, so optimistic, that it did what few movies ever do:  left me wanting more.

   My date was much less impressed.  "I didn't get it," she said.  "It's like a chick flick for dudes."  And that's when it hit me.  Sure, there had been films for guys before.  Most of the time, they're about high-speed chases, blowing shit up, or cops bickering with one another while trying to catch the ubiquitous "bad guy."  But had there ever been a film before that so captured the complexities of male friendships?  One critic called it a "Dick Flick" — the review was positive — and I remember nodding in agreement … and wishing I came up with that phrasing first.

   In the ensuing months, I assisted Fox Searchlight with their organic word of mouth campaign.  I told anyone and everyone I knew to seek out the film.  My interest piqued, I searched for the Rex Pickett novel on which the film was based.  It wasn't an easy task. For a film with rising momentum, featuring memorable characters and precise plotting, promotion for the novel was surprisingly sparse.  From a business standpoint, the lack of support was stupefying.  As a writer, and as someone who had been around the film business for a number of years, witnessing the back door politics firsthand, I couldn't help but wonder about the story lurking behind the novel and the process of bringing it to the screen.

   My curiosity reached another level on February 27, 2005 when Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor, much to my happiness, accepted the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for "Sideways."  They immediately thanked Rex Pickett, but the cameras never cut to him.  I remember wondering if he had been invited.  He hadn't.  He had to beg for a ticket.  As Payne and Taylor walked off stage with their shiny new awards, Rex was sitting in the balcony, solo, his bittersweet journey coming to an end.

   A few months later, I finally read "Sideways."  It was a thrill to re-enter the world of Miles and Jack.  I was struck by a few things:  1), Payne's adaptation was lovingly faithful; (2), the nuances of the characters, so well illustrated in the film by the performances, were even more rich and rewarding in the novel; and, (3), Rex Pickett is a hell of a writer with a staggering vocabulary.  I've vowed never to play Scrabble with him.

   The influence "Sideways" had on the wine world is well documented.  Upon its release, sales of Merlot dropped 4%, while sales of Miles's favorite grape variety, Pinot Noir, increased by 17%.  The Santa Ynez Valley wine country recognized unprecedented visitation. The Windmill Inn (now the Day's Inn) was consistently booked, and securing a table at The Hitching Post a nearly impossible feat.  Wineries sold "Sideways" maps and people came from all over the world to tour the same vineyards Jack and Miles visited in the film.

   About four years ago, three of my lifelong friends and I decided to spend a week touring the Napa and Sonoma wineries.  A few days in, over a couple of bottles of vintage Cabernet, we got to talking about "Sideways," and decided, spur of the moment, to head south toward Santa Barbara Count and the setting of the movie.  The next morning, we started at Sanford (the first winery Miles and Jack visit in the film) and hit all the haunts.  We even stopped by the Los Olivos Café to recreate the "no Merlot" scene in the alleyway (my buddy Lou playing Miles, me playing Jack).  The week was as memorable as any in my life. The experiences invaluable.

   Last year, we did it again. Only this time, it was the Willamette Valley trail in Oregon. In almost every tasting room we visited, the buzz was the same:  A "Sideways" sequel was on the way.  Rex Pickett was working on the novel.  It would take place at the International Pinot Noir Celebration (IPNC) in McMinnville, Oregon.  Filming would begin within the next 12-24 months.  The excitement throughout the valley was palpable.

   As it turns out, part of the story is correct.  Rex has written a sequel called "Vertical," and it's every bit the equal of "Sideways."  Miles and Jack are back on the road, their placement in the world a bit upside down, the boundaries of their friendship tested in a variety of hilarious ways.  It's another brilliant character study and a must read.

   Over the last few months, I've forged a friendship with Rex.  Based on his writing, and on the fact he is the model for the character of Miles, he's exactly what you would expect — smart, funny, analytical, selfless, and pragmatic are a few words that come to mind.  As I imagine any fan — and probably even more so, a fellow writer — would, I couldn't contain my interest as to his experiences with "Sideways."  The path from conception to screen was something that fascinated me.  I wanted to hear about the challenges and triumphs, the bumps, bruises, and broken bones.  It would be an understatement to say I got more than I bargained for. 

   At some point along the way, playing to his penchant for generosity, Rex offered me (and, by virtue, the Stage 32 community) the exclusive story detailing the twisting, winding roads of his "Sideways" travels.  I jumped at the opportunity.  Rex's tale is alternately inspiring and heartbreaking, filled with the highs and lows, the self-doubt, and the paralysis associated with surrendering control of your talent, which should be relatable to any artist.

   I believe that relatability is the reason "Sideways" has grown in stature over the years. Every guy sees a little of himself in Miles and/or Jack.  Years later, even my date came around, phoning me to say: "I get it now. I SO understand Maya."  Great art connects; the journey infinitely more interesting than the destination.

   Rex's journey has been nothing short of fascinating.  I appreciate him sharing his experience with the Stage 32 community. It's truly a gift. 

RB 

Rex Pickett's six part series begins Monday, December 8 and concludes on Thursday, December 22.  New posts will debut every Monday and Thursday.

11.22.'11 - "Sideways" Play Update

  — Amelia Mulkey

   Last night a group of us met at the Ruskin Group Theater Co.  There was Jason Matthews, whose idea it was to bring Sideways to the stage; Mike Myers, their Managing Director; Mike Reilly, Production Manager; and, our director, Amelia Mulkey.

   A month ago I interviewed a slew of potential directorial candidates.  (I love the fact that the writer gets to select the director.  In Hollywood, for a screenwriter, this would rock the world with eye-watering laughter, at the mere mention of the thought.  You're lucky if you get invited to the set!)  They were all accomplished and all brought something different and unique to the table.  Amelia was the only woman I interviewed.  Even though on paper she's relatively inexperienced — one feature play to her credit, which, according to those who produced it, resulted in a "night of magic" — I loved her seemingly indefatigable energy, I loved the fact that she "got" the novel that the play'sgoing to be based on, and is now prepared to devote the next 6 months of her life to working on it with me.  And even though she's only directed one feature play, she's spent a life in the theater, as an actress, a writer of plays, and growing up with two parents who are also accomplished actors in their own rights.  (A side note:  In my second feature film, From Hollywood to Deadwood, I cast her dad, well-known actor, Chris Mulkey, in a small part.)  Everyone at Ruskin is enthusiastically behind her.  And though that might sound like something anyone would write or say, it's actually the unvarnished truth!

   We talked dates.  Which, no doubt, is what those of you reading this want to know.  There's another play that's getting ready to go up in January at Ruskin, and it'll run until the end of March.  Sideways, barring any disasters, will now premiere around the third week of April.  This is kind of how it breaks down:

   December and January:  Amelia and I will be meeting and getting to know each other.  We're going to be seeing a lot of plays, just for me to get a feel for theater and to give us a chance to talk about staging.  (This was Amelia's idea.)  We'll talk staging exigencies, casting, and, most important, the script for the play itself — Amelia's already got notes!  During this time I'll rewrite, refine, hone, etc. until we get the script to where we want it.

   February:  We'll start the casting process.  Because we anticipate that there's going to be no shortage of actors vying for the roles — especially Miles and Jack — we'll rely heavily on a casting director for the winnowing process.  But I believe there'll also be an opportunity for actors who follow Internet casting calls.  Casting is going to be central, as it almost always is, to the Sideways play.  The role of Miles is going to be pretty demanding and challenging as he has a LOT of dialogue.  (Those who know me personally probably got a pretty big laugh out of that one!)  But, even more important will be finding a Miles and a Jack who have the right kind of chemistry.  Let me state emphatically again:  the play is based on my novel, not the movie.  This is not going to be the greatest hits of Sideways the movie, but rather an honest book-to-stage adaptation.

   March and April:  5-6 weeks of rehearsals.  The staging, the script, everything, will come together, hopefully in a felicitious confluence.

   I'm really excited about the team we've pulled together.  I liked Jason from the beginning.  He's been very smart about shepherding this to the, pun alert, stage where it's at.  I also really like the two Mikes.  They're super articulate, know ten times more about theater than I ever will, are huge fans of my work, and I can just tell that it's going to be great to work with them.  And my choice of a woman to direct a "bromance," if you will, might startle some.  But it's exactly the right choice.  I also like the fact that Amelia hasn't directed a ton of plays.  I don't want someone who's set in their ways.  I want someone, as I told her last night, who will take risks, who will think outside the, uh, bottle.  I'm confident that she's that person.  Plus, being a woman, I think she'll bring a balancing sensibility to what is really a guy's story.  Even more, I'm looking forward to gettting off the computer, driving over to the theater, working with the actors, Amelia, the two Mikes, and watching this whole thing come together.  I liken it to turning back the clock and returning to my indie filmmaking days, albeit in a more controlled setting.  The premiere, I'm positive, is going to have that same excitement that a first screening holds.

   I plan to blog a lot about the play's progress.  I wouldn't do a theatrical adaptation of Sideways if I didn't think that this third incarnation of Miles and Jack didn't have something new and different and fresh to offer.  After two cold reads, I'm convinced that it does:  a transcendent night of theater, funny as hell and concomitantly truly heartbreaking.  If everything works out, we hope to do a live Web cast of the premiere.  More on that later.

  I'm just going to conclude with:  I'm really happy that I'm getting a chance to do this.  Writing novels and screenplays is a lonely life and is fraught with endless disappointment.  One of the reasons I became an indie filmmaker back in the '80s is that, for better or ill, I knew I was making the end product.  It's also going to feel great to have that community of people that you have when making movies who are all coming together to bring a vision — my vision — to fruition, this time on the boards.

"Vertical" and the Story of My Mother

   The above are three photos of my mother back in her nursing days.  She plays a huge part in my "Sideways" sequel "Vertical."  The following article was written for a magazine, but it felt too personal to publish, so I turned down the offer.  I decided to post it here for those who have read "Vertical."  It might give you an unique insight into my creative process.  For those who haven't read "Vertical," I think the story will resonate on another, just as powerfully, emotional level of verisimilitude.

                                           When Alcohol Trumps Death

   My mother was an alcoholic.  Take my word for it.  I personally don't like the term alcoholic.  I find it judgmental and stigmatizing, but for want of a better term – heavy drinker? over-imbiber? – if the definition of an alcoholic is someone who can't stop after she starts, if, as the head of the NIDA Nora Volkow defines it, her dopamine inhibitors are blown to smithereens, then my mother fit the definition of an alcoholic.

   My mother – and father – were 5:00 p.m. alcoholics.  They rarely, if ever, drank before five o'clock, and they always had a glass of cheap wine in their hand by 5:01 p.m.; never, God forbid, as late as 5:05.  Later in their life, when they had semi-retired to a seaside bluff condominium north of San Diego, they drank every night.  (When I was younger I don't believe they did, but then there are things we don't realize when we're younger.)  I was attending UCSD in La Jolla at the time.  I lived in the neighboring hamlet of Del Mar, a mere two miles from my parents.  Though I got along with them very well, I learned never to visit them before 5:00 p.m.  Once I came over around lunch time because I was desperately in need of a loan to buy some books to feed my avaricious reading habit.  My father, irascible – no doubt battling a crucifying hangover – practically bit my head off, shouting at me to go get a job.  From that point on I always timed my visits for 5:15 p.m.  By then it was guaranteed that they had just finished their first glass of wine, the dopamine surges had commenced, a warm, rosy glow had come over their faces, and they would loan me money with alacrity.  I never stayed past 6:00 p.m.  Never.  By then they had started to grow slurry and maudlin, would start blubbering things that they could never utter when they were not drinking; e.g., we love you.  It was particularly embarrassing to someone like me who is uncomfortable in the presence of blatant displays of sentimentality and filial affection.

   In '88 my father went under the knife for a triple bypass.  During the five-plus hour operation he, we learned later, suffered a massive stroke.  He was wheeled out of the OR with a new, powerfully-beating, heart, but, in exchange, was left brain dead.  The family was informed that he would never return to consciousness.  After a few days, they ordered him on full life support and transferred him out of ICU into a "step-down" unit where he slowly wasted away on a ventilator.  My aggrieved mother visited him every day, often twice a day.  She spent a lot of time with the man she had been married to for forty years.  She whispered to him, believing his spirit could hear her.  She squeezed his hand and asked for a response, which she never got.  She grew depressed.  I had since relocated to L.A. and gotten into the film business and was in the throes of post-production on my second indie feature when this happened.  I visited when I could.

   After several months of my father being artificially kept alive, being turned over on a regular basis so he wouldn't become afflicted with bed sores, my mother and I finally broached the difficult subject of what our options were.  The attending physician was the cardiologist who had performed the triple bypass.  We met with him.  I remember him telling us in no uncertain terms that he would not authorize a "pulling of the plug," as it were.  We then demanded a meeting with the V.A. Hospital medical board, a three-person representative group consisting of a physician and two social workers.  My younger brother was away in another country and my older brother did not attend.  I delivered an impassioned speech on why my father should be allowed to die with dignity, that his wishes were clearly expressed in a living will, which I waved in their faces.  Reluctantly, they supplanted the attending physician with someone who was more compassionate, and then, shortly thereafter, they granted our wish and pulled my father's feeding tube.  It took another three weeks for him to die.

   After my father's death, my mother fell into an even deeper depression.  She told me that she missed having her five o'clock wine and "shooting the breeze" with my father.  What she wouldn't admit was that she didn't like to drink alone.  But she did, probably heavier.  What I didn't realize then was that their drinking is probably what kept their relationship alive for 40 years, ensconcing them together in that warm cocoon that alcohol ephemerally provides.  What I also didn't realize then, because I was so wrapped up in my career, was that they were a pair of five o'clock alcoholics, and that alcoholism ruled sentinel over their lives.

   For example, when I met a beautiful woman – whom I would eventually marry – they were interested to meet her, but when my future wife made plans for all of us to go out to dinner they declined, giving some reason about not wanting to spend the money.  When my future wife said she would pay for dinner they fabricated another laughable excuse.  The bottom line is that they didn't want to wait until 7:00 p.m. to go out to dinner because they would have had to cold turkey that two hours.  If they had started to drink at 5:00 p.m., knowing that they had dinner plans two hours later, they were now faced with the challenge of staying sober enough to get through dinner without embarrassing themselves.  They were smart enough to realize that there was no way to pace themselves, and thus concocted what seemed to them a reasonable excuse.  We never had that dinner.  My future wife thought it was weird.  At the time I never chalked it up to alcoholism.  I just concluded that they were either socially awkward or didn't approve of my future wife.

   My wedding was held in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and was a big deal because my fiancée's father was a prominent man in that small city.  My parents declined to come.  My father complained of angina.  My mother was worried he wouldn't make the trip alive.  The truth:  there was no way they would have been able to structure their 5:00 p.m. drinking regimen – and, no doubt, their consequent sloppiness (which I never witnessed) – around a traditional wedding.  How could they possibly make it through a rehearsal dinner that would begin at 7:30 p.m.?  How in God's name – I'm imagining I'm them now – could they hold off on drinking and feeding those desperate cravings for dopamine through a reception that would begin at 8:00 p.m. and go until 11:00 p.m. with nearly 300 guests in attendance?  Unimaginable.  Thus, the fatalistic medical excuses.

   As I said, after my father died, my mother fell into a bottomless depression.  She spent a lot of time alone.  A year and a half after my dad died my younger brother returned from overseas and moved into an apartment in Solana Beach to be close to her – for reasons, it turned out, that had more to do with money than altruism.  I was in London, hired by 20th Century Fox as one of the last writers on Alien III, David Fincher's (The Social Network) first feature.  My younger brother phoned me in London and said Mom wasn't doing very well.  Her ankles were badly swollen.  Five years earlier she had had swollen ankles, indicative of clots.  One of those clots dislodged and traveled to one of her lungs and she suffered a pulmonary embolism.  Fortunately, my father was with her when she collapsed unconscious.  Paramedics were summoned and performed all-out heroic measures, resuscitated her and got her to the hospital in time to save her.  Now, her ankles were badly distended again.  I exhorted my brother to take her to the doctor.  My pusillanimous brother said she didn't want to go.  My mother, an RN by profession in her youth, never wanted to go to the doctor.  She feared hospitalization.  She hated hospitals.  She always said to me:  "That's where you go to die."  I urged my brother to take her against her will if need be.

   My younger brother finally managed to convince my mother to see her physician.  Her blood pressure was an eye-popping 240/140 (if I recall).  The swollen ankles and the past history of clotting, not to mention the pulmonary embolism that nearly killed her, were of intense concern to the doctor.  She spent an hour and a half in his examining room.  Her physician feared the imminency of a stroke.  But my mother was adamant about not wanting to be hospitalized.  The doctor apparently explained to her that a simple procedure would be performed whereby a small strainer would be surgically implanted into each of her two femoral arteries near the crotch area in an effort to block the clots if they were to become dislodged.  They would put her on an IV of Heparin – a powerful blood-thinning medication – until they could dissolve the dangerous clots.  Without hospitalization he was powerless to help her.  All he could do was prescribe an oral blood thinner (Coumadin), but that would take much longer to dissolve the clots, and by then …

   Armed with a raft of prescriptions and a nitroglycerin patch affixed over her rapidly-palpitating heart, the doctor reluctantly let my hospital-phobic mother return home.  Thirty-six hours later I got a call in London on a cold gray December day from my younger brother.  In a voiced hobbled by emotion, he said bluntly:  "Mom's had a stroke.  She's in ICU.  We don't know if she's going to make it."

   Three months and a massive heart attack later she was released from the hospital with full left-side paralysis, a half-necrotic brain, and the mind of a child.  Wheelchair-dependent now, she was moved back into her seaside condo.   As soon as my mother returned home and was introduced to a new routine, complete with nurses and difficult transfers for toileting and all the rest that involves caring for a stroke victim, she demanded her wine.  When I took over her care after two years, one of the first things I noticed was how difficult it was to turn her down after her agreed-upon two glasses of treacly Chardonnay that she was daily vouchsafed at exactly … 5:00 p.m.  She always requested that she be wheeled out onto the patio where she and my father started their drinking and "shooting the breeze," while overlooking the swimming pool and tennis courts.  It was just like the old days, except I had assumed the place of my father and my mother was in a wheelchair, lost in an intracranial theater of memories and easily provoked emotions that often reduced her to uncontrolled blubbering.  There was also one other difference:  when it came to her wine, she now had to stop every night after her two allotted glasses.  The wine was in the control of whomever was taking care of her.  Several times, after much wheedling from her – a stroke victim now, she had no conscience about embarrassing herself in her quest for a third glass – I would grudgingly allow her a half glass more.  Once, I gave her an entire third glass and was berated the following day by the night person who had struggled to put her to bed.

   Over time I have come to realize that my mother's debilitating stroke, the ten horrible years that she survived afterward, the divisiveness that it caused in my family, was possibly all a result of her refusing to be hospitalized.  A few years ago it dawned on me as I was going through my own struggles with drinking that the reason she didn't want to be hospitalized is because she would have had to detox, something she wasn't psychologically, or physiologically, prepared to do.  Forget the fact that had she allowed her physician to hospitalize her and she had been honest with the hospital doctors and told them she was an alcoholic – a word my mother never ever used, and never thought she was because, well, she didn't drink until 5:00 p.m. – they would have not only implanted the strainers in her arteries to halt the clot that eventually rocketed near-fatalistically to her brain, resulting in total cellular necrosis of the left hemisphere, they would have also put her on medication – probably Librium back then – to help her detox.  As it turned out she had to detox anyway, and no doubt the morphine she was given in ICU was her substitute dopamine disinhibitor.

   In the decade that has passed since her glacially slow, horrible death in a nursing home, I have come to the ineluctable conclusion that my mother's inability to admit that she was an alcoholic – whether she did anything about it or not – was the chief reason for her devastating stroke.  When alcohol rules our lives, when the fear of that sense of dysphoria if we have to stop is so omnipresent, we will even go so far will, even on the precipice of medical calamity, and demand that we not be hospitalized for dangerous clots that could result in a pulmonary embolism, heart attack, or stroke, so that we can go home and, in my mother's case, pour a glass of wine at 5:00 p.m. and feed the cravings that now have colonized our beings and turned us into a slave of the alcoholic's regimen, no matter how high the eventual, consequential cost.

   My mother might have had a stroke anyway if she had been able to be an abstemious drinker, but there is no question in my mind that her addiction to alcohol was the principle cause in her later life infirmity.  I learned a lot from it at the time.  I learned about a brother who exploited her condition to his advantage and, more or less, absconded with all of her savings and, with it, my modest trust fund.  When I wrested control of her care from my larcenous brother, I learned about humility.  I wrote a script about it titled The Road Back.  It was optioned for 5 years, but never made.  Then, when Sideways became a movie and I was Hollywood's and the publishing industry's flavor of the month (year?), I decided to novelize The Road Back.  As with the script, once again, I found myself facing all those questions about my mother again.  When The Road Back novel ultimately morphed into the Sideways sequel Vertical, and my mother became, once again, a real flesh-and-blood character, I had to face my relationship with her all over again.

   In the end I found peace with my mother in the writing, albeit fictionalized, of her story.  I'm sad to report that my mother never found peace until her death.  Her inability to realize that drinking was destroying her, was the main cause of her depression – euphoria/dysphoria, euphoria/dysphoria, the alcoholic's endless cycle.  Had she quit she would have had to look herself in the mirror and face herself as who she was.  She elected not to do that.  Had she, a woman who swam and played tennis and didn't smoke, might have lived well past the age of 69 when she had her massive stroke.  Sure, she lived another 10 years after it, but the damage it caused to everyone around her was not a legacy I'm sure she would have wanted.

   For nearly 8 years I cared, on and off, for a parent whose alcoholism made the second half of her life a living hell.  Ten years after her crippling, devastating stroke, I held her hand near death and gave the doctor permission to  end her life with a morphine drip.  In the end, it's sad for me to think that she found happiness, but I take comfort in the fact that, because of her suffering, I discovered selflessness.

Information Overload -- Art is Hard Work

   

   When I was 17 and fell in love with reading — deep immersive reading — there existed no Cable TV, no DVD or VHS, no smartphones and, alas, no Internet — the scourge of true reading everywhere.  I did not read commercial fiction; I read deep works, and I read, easily 4-5 hrs. a day, every day, engrossed in whatever, or whomever, it was I was reading.  When I was 19, with a small sum of money I got from a car accident, I bought the entire Collected Works of the great Swiss psychiatrist, C.G. Jung.  I read all 20 volumns.  I had to drop out of UCSD to do it.  It took me nearly six months.  It transformed my life.  I don't think it would be possible for me to attempt, let alone pull off, that feat today.

   I read voraciously in my twenties, slowed in my thirties as I dived into the making of two indie films that robbed me of nearly eight years of my life.  I still continued to read whenever I could because, well, there were authors who I needed to read.  Sadly, I don't read as much as I used to, and every day — every day! — I feel guilty about it.  I don't mean I don't read at all.  I read articles in The New York Times, The New Yorker, various articles in The Hollywood Reporter, etc., ad infinitum, but what I mean to say is that I'm not reading in that deep immersive way that got me through, e.g., Fyodor Dostoevsky's masterpiece, The Brothers Karamazov, a book so transcendent when you finish it that you're almost breathless when you finally come to the end and put it down.

   And why?  Because in order to read works like The Brothers K or The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, you have no choice but to surrender to the hours necessary to stay in the work, in the imagination of the author, if it's fiction.  You cannot read for ten minutes, put the book down, check some E-mail, buy something online, or re-jigger your Netflix queue, then come back to Dostoevsky.  It doesn't work that way.

   I've been ruminating on this a lot lately, not only because mySideways sequel Vertical is nearly 150,000 words — average by yesterday's standards, long by today's — and I fear that people aren't reading it the way they would if this were the '60s, when deep immersive reading peaked, but also because I fear what this absence of deep immersive reading is doing to us as a culture.  I'm written about this before, so I don't want to belabor the issue, but there's nothing that replaces deep immersive reading.  Nothing.  What it does for the development of the mind — the building of powers of abstraction, e.g. — just can't be duplicated by the ways in which we take in content today.

   And speaking of taking in content today.  That's the other problem.  The DSM-IV manual — which defines all psychological disorders from depression to addiction to schizophrenia — will, I'm told, in 2013 list excessive hours spent on the Internet as an official addiction!  I have to freely admit that I now spend more time on the Internet than I do reading traditional books — I still haven't caved in to the Kindle or the iPad (though I want to).  I try to rationalize this seismic shift in my content intake as being a result that I spend my day immersed in words — my HBO pilot that I'm writing (and rewriting), the Sideways play, which is going through rewrites — and the last thing I want to do when dinner time rolls around is turn off my TV, shut down my laptop, and open a book.  I've read a great deal in my life, but I still feel a tremendous sense of guilt over the fact that I write books for a living, but I now have difficulty reading them.  And I LOVE books.  I love the feel of books.  When I was young, it meant a lot to me to finish, e.g., D.H. Lawrence's masterpice Women in Love and place it on my book shelf.  It symbolized a certain accomplishment.  The more books that filled my shelves, the more shelves I had to buy, the more I felt like I was intellectually and artistically pushing forward in some undefinable way.

   I'm worried that novels will only be written as fodder for movies — which is not altogether a bad thing.  I worry that what's replacing the experience of reading — where only the mind turns the page and nothing else — will create a generation of ADD and ADHD individuals who can't even enter into an extensive discourse because their verbal skills are so undeveloped from lack of deep immersive reading.  Everything has been shortened:  we don't even E-mail; we text.  We've moved from Facebook posts to 140 character Twitter flicks.  The langorousness of, say, letting oneself go to Cervantes unqualified masterwork, Don Quixote, may become an experience that's a relic of the past.

   I don't know what I'm saying here.  I'm just musing on these things.  I'm worried that I see so few movies in the theaters these days, and, instead, watch them in these fractured ways where I pause, check some E-mail, answer the phone, go back to the movie, instead of just surrendering for two hours to the experience, transformative or appalling, of being in the theater in the hands of that filmmaker's vision.

   But, books haunt me.  Their unopened presence — the ones I haven't read, that is — makes them seem lonely.  My heart goes out to them.  And there're so many of them.  It didn't seem that way when I was 18 and reading 4-5 hours a day.  I felt like I could read my way through the entire UCSD library.

   I worry in this day and age of information overload from so many content generators that the book, the experience of being alone with the unique imagination and voice of another, and the feeling one gets when they reach the end of a beautifully crafted, eloquently written, story, will one day be lost forever.