Twilight Over The Mountains

The twilight over the mountains on Topanga Canyon Boulevard was beautiful last night...I love blurry photos!

Swimming With The Fishes

I had a great time yesterday at UCLA talking to visiting film students from the University of Miami about my "journey as a writer" (mostly on the 101 and 405 to get to the campus).  It's always good to experience the enthusiasm and fresh perspective of those aspiring to work in the business - and it was wonderful to see my friend, Paul Lazarus, who runs the film program at UM, where I used to teach graduate screenwriting.

Paul, who is a former movie producer (Westworld and Barbarosa are among his credits) told me a tale of the high days of Hollywood in the 1980s, when - during a negotiation on a particular project - he received a call from a heavyweight (in every sense, including the Vegas-"connected" variety) show business attorney, who asked Paul, "Are you trying to screw my client?  Do you want to wind up at the bottom of a lake?"

Paul - a former entertainment attorney himself (Mel Brooks was a client) - answered: "Are you threatening my life?"

To which the other attorney simply answered, "I have nothing more to say to you," and hung up.

Somehow I don't think studios like Pixar today engage in such dialogue with those they are negotiating with...but who knows?

Meanwhile, one of the visiting students, Rodrigo Diaz McVeigh, told me of a documentary he has directed called Havana Surf!, which is a mix of travelog and surf documentary following a group of young Cuban surfers around the beaches of that wonderful island.

As a visitor to Cuba twice myself, and a huge fan of its people and culture, I can't wait to see the film, which has already played at festivals around the world.  Here is a link to its website: Havana Surf!

Paul Bowles' The Sheltering Sky

Some years ago, the British film director (and wonderful friend and collaborator) Nicolas Roeg gave me a book and told me, “Read this, it will change your life.”

I had no idea what to expect – except that with Nic, I trusted that he knew what he was talking about.  I went home and read the book, Paul Bowles’ magnificent novel, The Sheltering Sky, set in Morocco and first published in 1949, and indeed it both woke me up, psychologically and emotionally, and changed the way I thought about things.

The novel is set in Morocco, where American-born composer and writer Bowles lived for most of his life, and among its other effects, The Sheltering Sky made me fall in love with the country, too.  Marrakesh became one of my favorite cities in the world (I still dream of its exquisite architecture, its wonderful people and its unforgettable desert beauty) and the drive from there to the Sahara through the Atlas Mountains is still one of the most memorable and remarkable journeys I have ever made.  To touch snow in the Atlas Mountains on the same day that you ride a camel up a Saharan sand dune is to know how extraordinary our world is.

Recently I mentioned to a friend, Lisa Anderson, my favorite passage from the book – which literally made me sit up and think differently about life, so startling are the words.  Lisa, who also found it remarkable, was kind enough to look it up and email it to me, so here it is.  Please read it, and read the whole of The Sheltering Sky.

Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1990 movie of the book captures some of its mystery, but nothing can compare with reading Paul Bowles’ masterpiece.  (His short stories are also probably the best I have ever read.)

"Death is always on the way, but the fact that you don't know when it will

arrive seems to take away from the finiteness of life. It's that terrible

precision that we hate so much. But because we don't know, we get to think

of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens a certain number of

times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you

remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so

deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life

without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even. How many more

times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all

seems limitless."

- Paul Bowles (The Sheltering Sky)