. . . BUT I REALLY WANT TO DIRECT, PART 1

Let's just start out with an apology. OK, I am very sorry for the lapse in taste and judgement which led me to dwell on Britney Spear's (lack of) panties. I don't know what I was thinking. I hereby promise that I will never again sully the otherwise unbesmirched reputation of this forum with anything so base as a discussion of celebrity panties, or celebrities without panties. Unless it's Courtney Love. In fact, I hereby and furthermore shall not ever use the words "panty," "panties," "panty-less," "crotch," "commando," or "up-skirt" again. I swear.

Let's move on.

Before the unfortunate detour, I had wanted to discuss movies. This was prompted by my moving from work on a screenplay entitled "Logan County Lazarus," to getting a fresh start on my long-stalled horror/comedy novel "Midnight at the Heaven," which is set in a haunted movie theater. This just weeks after the completion of my science-fiction story "The Eternal Movie" (still no word from the publisher on that, by the way,) set in a cinema which has been launched into space. It seems that if I'm not writing a movie recently, I'm writing ABOUT movies. So what gives?

It's always been an obsession of mine. I love movies. More than that, I love going to the movies. (Haven't been able to do that much recently.) There's just something about sitting in a large dark room with dozens of strangers, looking up at a massive glittering screen. Going to the movies is one of the most prevelant themes of my dreams. I'm not sure if I love these dreams because they remind me of going to the movies, or if I love going to the movies because it seems so dreamlike.

I think it factors so heavily in my writing because, at heart, I really want to be a filmmaker. In my head, the stories are already movies. I SEE them, as images, rather than hearing the words. (Which may be part of the problem with my strangled prose style.) However, there are several factors which keep me in front of a keyboard rather than behind a camera:

1) MONEY. Making a movie, even a "low-budget" one, costs millions of dollars. I don't have millions of dollars. The people who do have millions of dollars aren't so inclined to give their money to people like me. In contrast, writing a novel costs nothing but time. Time I have.

2) I DON'T WORK WELL WITH OTHERS. I do enjoy collaborative processes. My work with Coyote Radio Theater has been very rewarding. Andrew Johnson-Schmit and I have worked together on several projects, and I've always enjoyed that process as well. But I don't know that I would enjoy putting all the blood, sweat and tears into something like writing a film, only to see my vision diluted. In a novel, the author is the undisputed God. In a movie, the screenwriter is, at best, a minor deity. Even the actors are higher in the pantheon. The director of a film is widely considered to be its "author," even if he didn't write the script. Then there are the producers, the studio, the money people, the focus groups, etcetera, etcetera.

3) FREEDOM. Most of my novels, if filmed "as is," would be 12 hours long, X-rated, budgeted at a billion dollars, and would have almost no mass-market appeal. There are many fewer restrictions concerning length and content placed upon a novelist. Plus, novels have the advantage of being able to describe "internal action," to get into the heads of the characters in ways that movies can't do without cumbersome voice-over narration.

4) AN UNPUBLISHED NOVEL IS STILL A NOVEL; AN UNPRODUCED SCREENPLAY IS NOTHING

5) BOOKS ARE BETTER ANYWAY, RIGHT? Uh, well, sort of. While this holds true with very few exceptions for novels adapted into movies, it's really like comparing apples and oranges. Reading and watching are entirely different experiences. Movies have an advantage of being more direct. The imagining has been done for you. I just watched "United 93," the movie about the 9/11 flight in which the hijackers were overcome by the passengers, and I was RIVETED, experiencing the story in a visceral, emotional way which I've never received from a book.

Anyway, I keep writing screenplays. While I have yet to finish a novel, I have actually completed several scripts. They range from the God-awful ("The Electron Kid") to the actually-not-half-bad ("Night of the Unicorn" would make a great cheesy horror movie.) And I have several more in the works. So why do I torture myself? The movie business is much harder for a writer to break into than getting a novel published (or so I gather.)

But, dammit, I want to SEE my visions on the screen. I want to hear actors speak my dialogue. I want to burrow into people's heads with images that they can't skim over. I want to, in the words of the Soul Coughing song "Screenwriter's Blues," "see my name five feet high and luminous."

I'm not asking much, am I?

Next time I'll talk about the movies which have directly informed my writing. Until then, the balcony is closed. (Bonus points to anyone who remembers what that line is from.)