Good stuff, Alina. Speaking as a writer who gets to write whatever I want whenever I want and pay the bills with what I write, it wasn't easy to get there, and I know very well writing while doing something I disliked, something I had to do to survive, like Stephen King and Dianne Thomas. I came to a point in Hollywood when I first got here where I was facing homelessness. But a German rock'n'roller I knew let me move into the garage in his back yard in Old Hollywood. It had a dirt floor from the 20s, and I slept in a sleeping bag on an army cot. I could either go get a job at McDonalds or find a way to write myself out of the garage. I chose the latter. I borrowed a long orange extension cord and ran it across the yard to the house and plugged in my typewriter. Over the next month I wrote what I later titled "In the Year of the Monkey," a Vietnam script based on all the "magic minutes" - the stories you don't forget - told me by fellow vets in the GI antiwar movement, done as "Moby Dick in Vietnam". I showed it to a director I knew who showed it to the only Vietnam combat veteran movie producer in Hollywood. Two weeks later I was sitting at the end of a very long table at Twentieth Century Fox with the head of production at the other end, lined with development executives to either side, who were saying "We want to make your movie!" Two weeks later I was walking Sunset Boulevard with a check from them for $50,000, trying to find a bank that would let me set up an account with only one piece of photo ID. (I found one( I never looked back to that garage, but I will always remember it. Like Stephen King who remembers where he wrote "Carrie" and Dianne, who remembered the bar where she came up with the idea for "Romancing the Stone," and Sylvester Stallone, who remembers turning down $350,000 for the first "Rocky" while being four months in arrears for rent because they wouldn't let him star in the movie. My script sank four movie studios and was last listed in 1990 by American Film as:"the best unproduced Vietnam script in Hollywood", but it got me out of the garage.
My writing mentor, the late Wendell Mayes, who wrote "The Spirit of St Louis," "The Hunters," "The Enemy Below,." "Anatomy of a Murder" (for which he received his first Oscar nomination), many others, and won his Oscar for writing "The Poseidon Adventure" (that's Hollywood, folks!) once told me what he had learned from 40 years in Hollywood:
You are only willing to succeed to the degree you are willing to fail.
That's true for any creative artist, and when I have run across the people I knew "back in the day" who never made it as screenwriters, the difference between them and me is what I did when I ended up in that garage as an alternative to homelessness.
Tom! Thank you so, so much for sharing! I am humbled by your kindness and openness! I love reading your stories and I draw strength from them. I am so grateful and I feel bewildered that I get to be in touch with you! Thank you so, so much!
Good stuff, Alina. Speaking as a writer who gets to write whatever I want whenever I want and pay the bills with what I write, it wasn't easy to get there, and I know very well writing while doing something I disliked, something I had to do to survive, like Stephen King and Dianne Thomas. I came to a point in Hollywood when I first got here where I was facing homelessness. But a German rock'n'roller I knew let me move into the garage in his back yard in Old Hollywood. It had a dirt floor from the 20s, and I slept in a sleeping bag on an army cot. I could either go get a job at McDonalds or find a way to write myself out of the garage. I chose the latter. I borrowed a long orange extension cord and ran it across the yard to the house and plugged in my typewriter. Over the next month I wrote what I later titled "In the Year of the Monkey," a Vietnam script based on all the "magic minutes" - the stories you don't forget - told me by fellow vets in the GI antiwar movement, done as "Moby Dick in Vietnam". I showed it to a director I knew who showed it to the only Vietnam combat veteran movie producer in Hollywood. Two weeks later I was sitting at the end of a very long table at Twentieth Century Fox with the head of production at the other end, lined with development executives to either side, who were saying "We want to make your movie!" Two weeks later I was walking Sunset Boulevard with a check from them for $50,000, trying to find a bank that would let me set up an account with only one piece of photo ID. (I found one( I never looked back to that garage, but I will always remember it. Like Stephen King who remembers where he wrote "Carrie" and Dianne, who remembered the bar where she came up with the idea for "Romancing the Stone," and Sylvester Stallone, who remembers turning down $350,000 for the first "Rocky" while being four months in arrears for rent because they wouldn't let him star in the movie. My script sank four movie studios and was last listed in 1990 by American Film as:"the best unproduced Vietnam script in Hollywood", but it got me out of the garage.
My writing mentor, the late Wendell Mayes, who wrote "The Spirit of St Louis," "The Hunters," "The Enemy Below,." "Anatomy of a Murder" (for which he received his first Oscar nomination), many others, and won his Oscar for writing "The Poseidon Adventure" (that's Hollywood, folks!) once told me what he had learned from 40 years in Hollywood:
You are only willing to succeed to the degree you are willing to fail.
That's true for any creative artist, and when I have run across the people I knew "back in the day" who never made it as screenwriters, the difference between them and me is what I did when I ended up in that garage as an alternative to homelessness.
Tom! Thank you so, so much for sharing! I am humbled by your kindness and openness! I love reading your stories and I draw strength from them. I am so grateful and I feel bewildered that I get to be in touch with you! Thank you so, so much!
Like ... mind blown!