I’ve alluded to the irretrievable implosion of my screenwriting career in many a previous blog post. I never felt ready to write about it at length before now. So, since we were just recently discussing the artful revelation of backstory, here’s mine.
Given the long odds of a career in Hollywood, even under the most favorable of circumstances, the unexpressed question that looms ominously over every aspirant is: How do I know when it’s time to call this quits?
My wife and I were having drinks at the S&P Oyster Co. in Mystic, Connecticut, when I knew I was done with Hollywood forever—that my ship wasn’t coming. That was September 24, 2014, during a visit to the East Coast for her aunt and uncle’s golden-anniversary party, exactly thirteen years to the day after we’d relocated from our hometown of New York City to L.A.
Right out of college, I’d landed representation as a screenwriter—though that management company folded a few months prior to my move, catalyzing, at least in part, my decision to try my luck in Tinseltown—and I had a reel full of TV spots and short films I’d cut while working as an audiovisual editor in SoHo, so I felt certain I’d land on my feet in Hollywood, this despite having no contacts there.
So, in the predawn hours of Tuesday, September 11, 2001, I left the Bronx, the only home I’d ever known, and met my wife, though we weren’t married at the time, at JFK Airport to embark on our new adventure together. Perhaps the cosmic timing of our departure (which was delayed by two weeks) should’ve been taken as a sign that the road ahead would be bumpier than I’d naïvely anticipated?
It took a full year in L.A. before I could even get a call returned, but finally I got some opportunities to edit a few independent shorts and features, and began networking my way into the industry. But it would be another seven years yet before I procured representation as a screenwriter again, during which time I can’t tell you how many contemporaries I watched pack up their shit and abandon their dreams to move back home. They’d decided it wasn’t worth it, that life was too short. I’m certain I’d have been one of them were it not for my wife, who remained steadfastly supportive, and for a few friends—notably my buddy Mike—who were also Hollywood hopefuls determined to keep at it, too, through bad times and, well, less bad. We were going to be the ones that hung in there and made it.
By 2009, things were looking up—considerably. At long last I’d found representation once again with a management company, this time off a spec I’d written called Leapman, and all manner of opportunities soon followed: to turn Leapman into a comic-book series; to sign with a big-letter talent agency; to vie for open screenwriting assignments; to develop an undersea sci-fi thriller (in the vein of The Abyss and Sphere) with a red-hot producer.
Around this same time, I got friendly with another up-and-coming screenwriter—we were repped by the same management—and he and I formed a critique group, enthusiastically enlisting half a dozen fledgling screenwriters we barely knew. In short order, we all became close friends, meeting every other Tuesday night at one watering hole or another around Hollywood to trade script notes and war stories. All unknowns at the time, some of those scribes have since gone on to write for shows including The Handmaid’s Tale and Women of the Movement, as well as WandaVision and Ted Lasso.
I was also, during this period, developing a short film with Mike. He and I had met in 2003 on the postproduction crew of an indie film; we were on location in the redwoods of Marin County, right down the road from Skywalker Ranch, cutting dailies in a ramshackle cabin that looked for all the world like Ewok Village Hall. Under those circumstances, it didn’t take long to become fast friends: We were the same age, came up on the same cinematic influences, and—most notably—shared the same irreverent sense of humor, turning our verbal knives on all of Hollywood’s sacred cows, delighting in making one another howl with one progressively outrageous remark after the next.
Also like me, Mike was married to his teenage sweetheart, sans children, so we were both in the same place: free to pursue our Hollywood dreams with the support of the women we loved. It was and remains the closest male friendship I’ve ever made in my adult life. As Mike continued to come into ever-more-promising editorial opportunities on studio features, my screenwriting career was kicking into high gear. With aspirations to direct, he asked me if I wouldn’t mind taking one of my concepts—a horror/comedy I’d pitched him that reflected our mutual sensibilities—and scripting a short film for him to shoot. So, there I was, developing a big-budget monster movie for a legit prodco by day, and a no-budget monster movie with my best friend by night. After over a decade in Hollywood, everything had clicked into place.
And then came 2014. Frustrated with the inexcusable lack of progress on the short—I’d written a script all of us were expressly happy with, and yet years had gone by and we were no closer to rolling camera—I put pressure on the project’s producer, Mike’s spouse, to do her part. Consequently, for the first time in our decade-long association, our friendship grew strained, and once we both crossed the line and turned our caustic criticisms, the source of so many years of bonding and hilarity, on each other, our relationship eventually became irreversibly poisoned. I’d lost my closest friend and ally in Hollywood, and that was only the beginning of my troubles.
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