On Patience: Los Angeles & Screenwriting
downtown la (background) & prospect studios (foreground), april 2022
I was back in Los Angeles last month for a film festival and have been living alongside LA again since, in both memory and real time, the mirror and it’s reflected image simultaneously. I lived there from 1997-2004 and cede authority to LA as the constant, though it’s changed just as much with the passage of time, a nail salon where once stood a video store, looming condos in what was once the chevron at Franklin & Western, and so on. There’s the aspirant me of 20 plus years ago and the filmmaker me of now, both still having ego driven needs for validation but one older and, let’s presume, wiser. I don’t need the same version of things I needed then but I still am in touch with that part of myself, patiently observing.
On a related note, found a journal entry from early 2001 (below, in italics). It is a snapshot of the then me in space and time. The prose is a bit flowery to be generous (and heavily influenced I suspect by a couple intoxicants) but still has a power for me b/c it encapsulates where I was then, at a Los Angeles crossroads, 2 yrs post film school, just started working the mailroom at a production company at a job I felt/knew was beneath me but took hoping it would open doors (update: it didn’t) all while I was desperate to get my scripts read and my talents acknowledged on a broad scale, presumably globally. I had been in LA for several years here and was fully wrestling with all aspects of breaking in, particularly the unexplained delay in my celebration. I arrived in LA, like many, full of arrogance and entitlement, knowing in my bones that it was just a matter of time. My goal was easy-peasy: sell some scripts, take the acclaim and $$$ to make my own films and along the way advance cinematic language and form. No sweat. A legend in my own mind but with no real world reflection of this. I had been hip pocked by a not great manager who didn’t move the needle and left him and was now flapping around while everyone, seemingly, was selling scripts by the side of their pools, getting development deals, getting the white-hot glare of attention, acceptance, validation I was wailing for like a baby sitting in its own mess. I was desperate to the marrow to be validated by the machine and lived within endless recurrent cycles of hope and despair (like many/everyone in the film industry). To counter this, I had been working actively on being patient and trusting that, if only I could stem the gushing flow of my ambition and learn to be zen and in-the-moment, it would all come together for me down there (update: it didn’t). This moment is reflected in the journal entry.
I moved out of Los Angeles in 2004 but still feel the force of its draw on me, like an ex who still has complete ownership power over you even though you’ve both redefined yourself, like a recovered addict who forever hears the looping seduction call from their vice of choice. I know that I am so much better without LA in my life but that doesn’t mean I don’t still lay awake sometimes and wonder what if.
2/28/2001 8:51 AM
A word ‘patience’ repeated ad nauseum like an aspirin for an unintentional amputee; a song teetering on the edge of a gaping abyss wherein should I fall I can content myself with the lunatic mutterings of ‘what ifs’ and ‘if only’s. There are times it’s maintainable; controllable - and then there are times it’s not. My monster, demon the gruesome grey block of ambition that has hitherto propelled me into the illusion of being propelled anywhere now sits sour and congealed in the heat lamp glow of the sun. A forgotten monument to youthful naivete. And now, alas, to cling to such a monument seems to indicate more the desperate (and uncertain) aims of a fool than the strength and endurance of a survivor. If any midway or reconciliatory pose between the two can be struck it has of yet remained unrevealed. How I’ve pined for ____. For what? For approbation, acceptance and money (?). Unshakeable the realization of shaky steps , missteps in the forest. Alien paths, alien lanes heading toward seeming unscalable, impenetrable brick walls stretching skyward. So desperate the desire but one only needs to take one step back and gaze upon a larger image to allow the demon clouds of doubt to billow in and overtake the landscape; the indelible black sentences that appear to hang in the air before me: “who are you kidding?” - “how much longer will you let the joke be played?” - “When is not enough enough?” - “when shall you relinquish your grip on the illusory aims of a heartsick fool?”. The blunt, crude edges of that word ‘patience’ my only defense; slay the dragon with a pebble. Impossible. The dark storm clouds gather exponentially w/ no sign of abatement and I’m left to dreaded admittals of failure and resignation. I can trace my steps backward and exit or wander for several more years of seeming futility banging my head against the trees leaving smears of blood in my wake, hoping , praying, waiting for a sign that could never come. One more step back: and now these black musings seem entwined in the process, that the way one deals with them is the test. What’s past is preface. Climbing into the density of trees is one component but the more essential is the battling of grim (predictable) emotions when no clues are left. No discernible paths to follow. And then the soothing balm of that monstrous two-syllable pebble: Patience. Patience.
PATIENCE!
