4 ~ Wednesday, February 10, 1993 - North Shore News hing down in STRICTLY PERSONAL OVER THE years, I must have logged four or five months staying in various Lotels, motels and people’s houses in Los Angeles, mainly in Hollywood, of course, Shuffling around the edges of the movie biz. The scenes, added up, would play well as a little movie in their own right. The protagonist, me, goes through a very neat learning curve, His ‘‘arc”’ is lovely, as he pro- gresses from being a total country bumpkin (o just slightly less so, meaning a burned-out Hollywood dreamer. The piace is, it is true, inhabited by sharks. Everybody’s pretty : tough. It isn’ *t just the top level of movie mogul, either. The attitude affects the car-fot attendants, the - waiters, the beggars, the cops, and the script doctors. Especially the script doctors. All these people are linked, by the way, by the freeway system. Thank God for the L.A... ‘freeway! It is what allows, the civi- lization, such as it is, to survive. If you spend much time up on the freeway, you are caught in currents and tidal action quite beyond your ability, or anybody's, to control. a The freeway system forms a canopy over thousands of acres of. ‘ Ww. Van police “A ROUTINE “West Vancouver Police: patrol of the Gleneagles overload parking lot early Wed- nesday, Feb. 3, netted two suspects in a stolen vehicle. At about 2 a.m., the’ police ar- rested and. charged ‘19-year-old “Kenneth Awery Teskey, of Van- -couver, with possession of stolen “Sourney,"” city, and it serves as a ‘‘free’’ zone where you can avoid the angry people on the ground, Thus it is normally possible to go from one end of the city to the other without touching down. To touch down would be to enter a zone of barely apprehend- ed insurrection, a state of anar- chy. Even in Hollywood. One! time J was staying in a mouldering motel on Santa Monica Boulevard where Elvis had reputedly stayed, either when he was just starting out, or in the final zonked stages. | was working on a script. Every morning, 1 would meet with two producers and the direc- tor (it was a co-production), and they would tear apart rny work from the day before. The setting was terrific: palm trees, a bit of a view dewn into the valley before everything smogged out, the very weirdest of the weird people shambling, minc- ing and stalking by. But arguing over script details (especially when you happen to be cursed with genius and the two producers are too stupid to get it, but they call the shots because they’re footing the bill, and the director, like all directors, is a control junkie) i is a stressful activ- ity in its own right, believe me. An entire script mecting can get bogged down over a singie word. Strange power struggles develop, almost as though the script itself was coming fo life, infecting us. 1, the writer, of course, em- bodied the protagonist, and his as we say in the trade. The producers and director slipped into adve-Sarial roles ‘almost immediately, and within less than half an hour of our first meeting, we were all crazy. This, ! gather, is normal in the collabosative art form known as the feature film. if the thing runs its course, thousands of people will be simi- lariy infected until it reaches the mass mind, and is duly absorbed. After seven drafts (everything going downhill after Draft #3, as ‘is so often the case), they decided -to bring in the script doctor. Innocent schmuck that | was, I thought this was an excellent idea. Bring in a fresh perspective, by all means. nab suspects property over $1,000. A t7-year-old female was also charged with possession of stolen property over $1,000. The stolen vehicle was also wanted in connection with an armed robbery investigation. The robbery occurred in Van- couver on Friday, Jan. 29. The script doctor wasn’t into his 30s yet, with a list of credits longer than his arm. He'd “done stuff" on every sit-com and late-night show you could remember, and then some. He'd doctored hundreds of movies. He personally knew everyone. His knowledge of the unreal world of Hollywood was, | must admit, awesome. Whether he could possibly be in touch with any kind of human spark rernain- ing within him was another ques- tion entirely. Within less than an hour, | swear, he had convinced the two producers that the script ’d writ- ten could not possibly be shot. It wasn't a matter of fixing. It was unfixable. It would have to be torn apart entirely and rebuilt from scratch. And guess who the man to do the job was? What was really amazing was that the two producer-klunks He ATet aE ARTE WHE ET hel NORTHSHORE, NISSAN'S, went for it. The director shook his head in despair, knowing they were con- signed to ‘development hell,’’ as it’s known, for sure. Development hell is where a script has lost its ‘‘color’’ because of too many rewrites. {t has become murky, illogical, filled with plot holes: ‘‘good mo- ments’’ perhaps, maybe even a solid epiphany ending, but it doesn’t add up to any tingly fee!- ings. That’s what happened to the script, of course. As for me, | headed home, a wiser, older scriptwriter. I had learned a valuable lesson. Never Jet them bring in a script doctor. The snake will just try to steal your job. A crew had been shooting a rock video at the motel where I had been working. On the last night, dressed up as invaders from space, the rock babylon stars, all four of them, had scrambled al! over the roof, mak- ing it hard to get any sleep. in the morning, I went out for one last swim just as the four weary rockers reached the side of the pool. They were pale, coming down from something. I slipped into the water and paddled about, watching, mesmer- ized, as they took half an hour to remove their chains, and all the other heavy-metal paraphernalia. To have gone into the water otherwise would have meant sink- ing straight to the bottom and be- ing held down there, unable to escape the trappings of their trade. : It would have taken a crane to * get them out. . Hollywood. There it was some-- how. The twilight zone all day and night. Keep your back to the wall, sweetheart. And your hand on your wallet. 25 PATHFINDERS) re CHOOSE FROM We are offering the ‘six pack’ | special only 'til Feb. 28/93. We're determined to maintain our reputation as No. 1 PATHFINDER DEALER! ‘ig a aw, TUCK DEALE r AWARD OF MERIT WINNER 3 YRS. IN A ROW 990, 1991, é sine) } face! BEM A, Teacher salaries are NOT the issue West Vancouver School Board refuses to bargain language on: FOR QUALITY PUBLIC EDUCATION West Vancouver Teachers' Association a)