Huge post from someone else

This is supposed to be part of a post on Henry Miller, but it can come in two or three parts.

Terry Rossio wrote a lot of successful movies, and this is a piece he wrote called Throw in the Towel, at a blog I can no longer access [maybe you can, but in Taiwan, from this machine, no]. It starts like this:

You don’t get to hear the truth much in this town, so listen up. I’m gonna back up the truck and unload. Harsh truths, right here, right now. And we’re gonna start with the most brutal: You people really aren’t much good at writing screenplays.

In fact, your writing pretty much sucks.

I tried to be different. I tried to leave the door cracked open a bit. I politely asked you to send me only good stuff, your best stuff. And for years now I’ve been deluged by a storm of crappy query letters and mind-numbing script submissions. So many I can’t keep up, can’t even respond to them all. And not one of them has been any damn good.
Now I’m about ready to slam the door shut, and lock it down like how they do in cartoons, with a whole series of barricades and bolts and latches and such.

It’s disappointing. Especially after offering all this advice and encouragement. But man, I’m tired. Tired of being informative and helpful and optimistic. Tired of wasting my time answering your pedestrian-at-best e-mails and faxes and message board questions.

Tired of inventing nice ways to avoid telling you all that your writing sucks.
Hollywood, it is said, is the only place where you can die of encouragement.
Well, not here. Not anymore.

Your writing sucks.

You simply cannot write to a professional level. And you probably never will. It’s a safe bet to say that none of you will ever make a sale, anywhere, anytime; to think otherwise is just deluding yourselves. It’s a waste of your time, and that pains me, and it’s a waste of my time, and that pains me more.

Got it?

Oh, of course not. I knew you wouldn’t. I know you people all too well.

It's 5,500 words long, and it doesn't seem to be available elsewhere, so I've uploaded a WORD file to Google Docs, here.

People are a part of nature

Kurosawa's Dreams - Village of the Water Mills, Part 1

Drunk early in a BBQ restaurant, and the old realization that even if anything isn't possible, at least any feeling and thought is, which is good enough. Plus, the key to drinking early - and at any time - is to know when to stop, and for me that's always when I start to think that maybe it might be a good idea, perhaps, to put my hand up the skirt or down the top of a stranger. Once that thought is entertained, I always move on to water.

Part 2

Exotica and narcotourism

Finally got around to seeing The Darjeeling Limited. It wasn't good, but since I like the colors blue, green, yellow and red, and have a weakness for just-so mise en scène, I was more than satisfied.

When the movie came out it got criticized for a) making too much of India being exotic, and b) Jack [one of the American brothers] wanting to bed Rita [the Indian train stewardess]. This seems odd.

a) Anyone who goes to to India for the first time and doesn't feel it's one of the most colorful and exotic places they've been to has been to a lot of places, or they've come from a neighboring country, or they're missing a basic sense of awe. For Western film-makers and audiences it's not your everyday location, and to elide that would be forced. Also, it shouldn't be forgotten that for all it's seeming dominance the West is a shaky concept, with America not entirely like France. [My students are so happy to say Westerners do this, Westerners do that, when what they really mean is Americans in popular culture and myth.] Plus, this supposed West is far in the minority with regard to numbers, and we're exotic too. Place an Englishman in New York and watch him freak out at the cool of being somewhere else, never mind a guy from Mumbai in L.A..

b) The first or second thought of any young man [and I can only speak for them] when he goes abroad is how to f*** either a local or another tourist. If I was a historian I'd make sex and empire my specialty, and then become an alcoholic. My secret history of the British Empire would be young men setting out for adventure, $ and harems, fueled by patent medicines full of cocaine, opium and hash. The only way to travel.

Clip from the still above follows: