Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Kevin Arbouet tagged me with a quiz about the worst things I've written and done. Ken Levine had some very clever answers for these questions but I'm afraid I don't.

I don't remember my worst lines. For one thing, at the time I'm sure I thought they were good lines. But if someone hated them, I probably chucked them and forgot about them. The worst lines of all are just flat dead flavorless lines. And those are hardly worth remembering.

I find that an important part of my process is forgetting. When you're writing, the hardest thing to do is read the script as if it were fresh to you. So remembering prior drafts would just drive me insane anyway.

I am not even sure I can point to disastrous business decisions. There is one person I surely would not ever work with again (a decision I gather more and more people are making as time goes by), but working together we accomplished quite a bit. So I'm not sure that was a mistake from a professional point of view. From the point of view of the deep unhappiness it caused, yah, big mistake. But not professionally.

So Kevin, I can't help you. If I had it all to do over again, I would have jumped right to TV rather than wasting time in features (though that helped me hone my craft). I'd probably have looked for a first job with an agency instead of an independent producer. And I would have tried to keep things platonic with the wonderful lady who became my first wife. The rest of the scar tissue was, on the whole, worth earning.

Of course, if I had it ALL to do over again, I'd have explained the butterfly ballot to the right 274 elderly Jewish voters in Palm Beach in 2000, and we wouldn't be in the mess we're in now...

11:34 PM

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