We here at Forth pride ourselves on digging deeper than the surface most other publications merely scratch. Without oppressive printing-costs to cut us off at the knees, we can indulge ourselves above and beyond the claustrophobic brevity that is generally imposed on standard Q & A’s. For those of you with a crippling case of A.D.D. your time is probably better spent watching the latest cute animal blunder on Youtube. For the rest of you: pour yourself a choice glass of wine, kick your feet up, and enjoy this one-of-a-kind conversation about failure, perseverance and how a writer boldly chose to follow-up his enormously popular novel-turned-Academy-Award-winning-movie.

Continuing the Dionysian exploits of Miles & Jack, Vertical – Pickett’s long-anticipated sequel to his now iconic Sideways — had me alternately laughing and crying through this hilarious, heartbreaking and ultimately moving meditation on Fame, Friendship and Family. I found it equally poignant and profound the way this epic road novel slowly but surely strips Miles down to his naked, sober soul — a bittersweet, existential deconstruction of everything this man is. Vertical managed to break my heart and then put it back together again, piece by piece, and should abolish any lingering doubts whether the author just got “lucky” with Sideways. This is a work to be both admired and savored like the great Willamette Valley Pinots Miles exults over (**Quoted on the back of Vertical’s hard-cover edition**). A story such as this, about real human beings experiencing real emotions, is unfortunately considered High Concept at a time when most “literary” adults are reading about vampires and wizards. Bravely dipping a pen in the ink of his own soul, Pickett’s novels chart a winding path from divorced, struggling writer in the throes of a mid-life crises, to celebrated author coming to grips with his success. A journey that should serve as inspiration for any underdog artists who feel that time — and hope — is running out for them.

I recently sat down with Rex at a coffee shop in Santa Monica to discuss Vertical and all the wine, sweat & tears that lead up to it. At 6’ 1” and with a full head of hair, the San Diego native is the complete antithesis to the nerdy portrayal of his alter-ego in the film.

MM: I admire what you’ve been through, Rex. You’ve fought the good fight.

RP: I’m blogging about it now (verticalthenovel.com), but you know, even after Sideways life wasn’t rosy. Success isn’t like one of those pianos that play themselves. No. There’s a blank page. People think they’re going to write that one thing and it’s going to be the be-all, end-all, well… think again.

MM: So for those who are unfamiliar with your background, describe the catalyst behind the writing of Sideways.

RP: My life was pretty much in the shit-can. My agent had died of AIDS; my mother had a massive stroke that rendered her left-side totally paralyzed; my younger brother took over her care out of ostensible altruism and then proceeded to gut all of her savings in a mere two years. I went through an amicable, albeit disorienting, divorce with my wife – who won an Oscar for a short-film I wrote in 2000 [My Mother Dreams the Satan’s Disciples in New York.] So I was pretty much nowhere when I wrote a novel called La Purisma – named after a golf course up in Santa Ynez – and it was a mystery novel. First novel I had written since some epigone avant-garde experiments in the ‘70s. It got me a publishing agent who took it on, but we couldn’t sell it. So that’s the other thing: if you have an agent and he likes your work, you can still have trouble getting published; it’s no guarantee just because you have representation. And in the novel world, things move slowly, unlike with screenplays. The rejection letters trickle in like a slow morphine drip.

MM: The frustration of Miles Raymond comes into focus.

RP: So thus we have Miles, the guy who can’t publish his novel. I started spending a lot of time up in Santa Ynez Valley. Initially I went up just for the golf – uncrowded and beautiful — then I started staying overnight at, where else? The Windmill Inn, just like Jack and Miles. Then I had to have a place to eat, so I ambled over to the nearby Hitching Post, now an iconic landmark because of Sideways. I would always go up mid-week when there was no one on the golf course, and practically no one dining at the Hitching Post. After a few glasses of their Pinot I’d strike up a conversation and suddenly I realized: “Oh my God, there’re wineries around here!” So, frustrated with my novel La Purisima, I took frequent sojourns up there. Then, because it was so beautiful and uncrowded I started taking friends. Once I went up with a buddy of mine, Roy, and we went from tasting room to tasting room, cracking each other up. He’s the inspiration behind Jack and he said, “Rex, you gotta write this as a screenplay”, and I thought, “Yeah!” So I wrote Sideways as a screenplay but it didn’t work. It so didn’t work, I didn’t give it to my agent.

I traveled to Telluride, Colorado for the first time earlier this month for the town’s annual film festival. I journeyed there looking for inspiration, and my expectations were high. I was counting on cinematic artistry and natural wonder to come barreling toward me the moment my feet hit the dirt. I packed pads, pens, camera, digital video recorder- all in hopes of capturing something tangible- something that might ignite my own creative fire. Lucky for me, I found more than one something.

The Telluride Film Festival is one that stands apart from the others. Press was unnoticeable and the urgency around landing a distribution deal that exists elsewhere was nowhere to be found. By all appearances, it was merely (and impressively) a community of cinephiles assembling to celebrate and debate contemporary work. And by cinephiles, I don’t mean only those of us working in the industry. I met a librarian from San Francisco, local students, a Palo Alto tech-geek who has been a faithful attendee for a quarter century, an oil painter with a gallery on Colorado Avenue (Telluride’s Main Street), an extreme sports television producer, an advertising executive and her Wall Street fiancée both of whom began as volunteers years ago and now count themselves as paying festival goers. What struck me most was the sheer loyalty of so many of the attendees, who are a community in and of themselves. In fact, cinephile may be too broad a description for this group; a better one might be Telluridist. One local teacher presented me with a detailed account of a Brooklyn writer and three year veteran who gained a sort of fame by purchasing the least expensive pass yet finagled his way into some thirty screenings the year prior; a number most likely exaggerated as the festival only runs four days.

So what is it that keeps these Telluridists coming back? With two direct flights via prop plane from Denver daily, Telluride is no easy destination to reach. Yes, the Western style downtown nestled into the green mountainscape is idyllic beyond measure, but there’s something more…something dare I say magical about the place during this time year. Without a doubt, the beating heart of the festival lies in the artists themselves. I sat cross-legged on a grassy field a few feet from Colin Firth, Werner Herzog, Danny Boyle and Peter Weir listening intently as they discussed the value of a close up (a tool Mr. Herzog strongly believes to be overused), the rehearsal process (or lack thereof), and the neurological side effects of creating a character’s physical disability, such as a stammer, in the name of a great role. A question from the audience never went unanswered and most of the filmmakers loitered in lobbies following their screenings to speak directly with whomever wanted to pay them a compliment or present them with a late thought-up inquiry.

Following what turned out to be the unofficial US premiere of Black Swan, a petite young woman in her twenties shot her hand in the air to ask Darren Aronofsky the first question of the Q&A session. Her mouth opened, but instead of words a well of emotion burst forth shocking us all, her included. She just barely managed to get out, “thank you.” It was a surprising reaction to a psychological thriller, but Mr. Aronofsky, ever congenial with his easy Brooklyn manner (that may sound counterintuitive but I assure you it’s accurate) thanked her right back, acknowledging “this is why I do it” and added, “we’ll talk after.” He meant it too. Later, I discovered that she was a dancer and actress. Presumably, the film had struck a chord, perhaps gaining an emotional clarity that she hadn’t possessed before. Afterall, that is what the best art does, holds up a mirror and reveals a part of ourselves or our world that we have left unnoticed or worse ignored.

A Letter to Elia, a documentary by Martin Scorsese and co-director Kent Jones, was representative of the theme of artistic influence that ran throughout the weekend whether intentionally or not. The film serves as a message of thanks from one great filmmaker to another. It highlights the personal and artistic influence of controversial figure Elia Kazan and his films on a young Martin Scorsese, before the ambition to become a director was even a whisper in his great mind. Mr. Scorsese narrates the film with an uncharacteristically slow, effective pace and vulnerable demeanor. He talks about going to see Kazan’s films during the onset of adolescence, and how they articulated something about his own life that he could not yet name. He felt understood much in the same way, I would imagine, as the young lady in the Black Swan screening. East of Eden was a particularly important experience for Scorsese, who spends a great majority of A Letter to Elia discussing it. He admits, “I stalked it” and confesses to seeing it fourteen times in various theaters around New York City. The film is not a retrospective of Kazan but a grateful acknowledgement by Scorsese of the influence those films had on the direction of his life. It brought viewer, panelist, and filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier, who witnessed the tragic effects of Kazan’s testimony to the House Un-American Activities Committee first-hand, to tears. A Letter to Elia addresses the blacklisting that Kazan took part in, but only to examine the influence the events had on his body of work. Scorsese believes that Kazan’s best films came after this period of time. The issue of betrayal becomes paramount in his pictures following the testimony. Clearly influenced by the events of his own life, the director increasingly looks inward to tell stories with heavy personal meaning to him. It was then, Scorsese argues and most would agree, that Kazan transformed from director to artist.

The concept of artistic influence was touched on by directors responsible for two of the highest profile films in Telluride, Black Swan and The King’s Speech. After the sneak peak of Black Swan, Darren Aronofsky repeated the oft-mentioned notion that “nothing is original.” He went on to say that he, like most other artists, is influenced by various sources, in this case the most obvious being Tchaikovsky’s ballet Swan Lake, but also Dostoevsky’s The Double and Roman Polanski’s Repulsion. He explained how he “puts them into a blender and makes (his) own smoothie.” What comes out is unique- he’s made the story his own- but the underlying ideas at play have been contemplated by countless artists and thinkers before him, since the beginning of storytelling itself. In the case of Black Swan, because the original work Swan Lake plays such a prominent part in the story, the influence may work in reverse as well. Of course, Tchaikovsky is not alive to rewrite Swan Lake nor would we want him to, but Black Swan influences the audience’s experience of the ballet in two obvious ways. First, it informs the original by presenting a literal re-telling of the story at the center of both works. The audience witnesses a modern day translation of the symbolic ballet complete with evidence to support how and why the fragile yet driven woman at the center of both tales unravels before our eyes. One woman commented, “It made Swan Lake make more sense.” Second, while leaving the theater, I overheard a group of enthusiastic filmgoers discussing that they’d “love to see Swan Lake again.” It’s possible that the ballet will see increased interest quantified by either more productions being staged or more tickets, DVDs, and/or books being sold.

During the introduction for the final screening of The King’s Speech at Telluride and with a similar sentiment to that articulated by Mr. Scorsese, the first thing out of director Tom Hooper’s mouth was an expression of gratitude for iconic filmmaker Peter Weir’s attendance. Hooper went on to site Weir as the preeminent influence on all of his period pieces. Hooper specifically recounted how he used Weir’s Master and Commander as a “touchstone” for the John Adams miniseries he directed that aired in 2008 to much acclaim on HBO. He admitted that he was thrilled to meet Weir for the first time in Telluride because his films were viewed and discussed often in his home while growing up. Although raised in London, Hooper, like Weir, is of Australian descent. His mother, an Australian expat who moved to London before her son was born, encouraged Tom to watch Australian films and specifically Weir’s work. Hooper recalled her saying, “If you like film, you’ve gotta watch Australian cinema.” From a spectator’s point of view, there is nothing as influential and inspiring as watching an artist you admire come face to face with one of his or her own creative idols for the first time. But that’s par for the course at Telluride.

For me, it’s obvious why people come from across the world to the far-flung town of Telluride year after year. Not for the mountains or the rolling waterfall, although both of those help, they come for the promise of inspiration- or influence- even for those of us who don’t normally think of ourselves as artists. The creative force lies within each of us. But only some have the ability and curiosity needed to access it. In places like this, when we stumble upon inspiration, whether accidentally or after a long, sought out pilgrimage, we change- our perspective shifts and we understand something about ourselves that we didn’t before. We come one step closer to becoming artists ourselves.

Early on in Bret Easton Ellis’ “Imperial Bedrooms” (his long-awaited sequel to his debut “Less Than Zero”) this old Hollywood joke is shared between characters. Not because it’s funny, but because it offers a hint to the novel’s central theme: the Screenwriter’s Sexual Revenge. A theme that could have been used in so many effective ways to further the narrative Ellis set in place 25 years ago… but ultimately falls flat.

When I was maybe 16 or 17 I randomly picked a copy of “Less Than Zero” off the Barnes & Noble shelf in my hometown. The bright yellow spine beckoned me like a moth to flame, and the title was so very cool. The red and blue colored sunglasses on the cover didn’t promise much, but a quick glance at the back reeled me in. It was about sex, drugs and rock n’ roll set in Los Angeles. That’s all I needed to know, because I was already entertaining notions of moving out to Hollywood after graduation.

Little did I know that the novel I was about to read was already a cult sensation, having spawned a popular movie by the same name starring Robert Downey Jr. It centered on an apathetic, bisexual college student named Clay returning home to decadent L.A. for the Christmas holiday, and followed his downward spiral around the dirty drain of hedonism before leaving it all behind once again. With its blunt style, and casual approach to shocking content, it cemented Bret Easton Ellis as a literary force to be reckoned with. Hedonist. Misogynist. Nihilist. Love him or hate him, it was the spring-board for a prolific career that has produced controversial works such as “American Psycho”, “The Rules of Attraction” and “The Informers” (all adapted into half-baked, but mildly entertaining cinematic versions).

With each subsequent novel, I became more and more immersed in his bleak, twisted universe – a dark dimension disguised as a sexy party where “hope” and “love” are considered vulgar apparitions. His protagonists are superficial, addicted, oversexed and indifferent to any emotions including their own. College students, Wall Street serial-killers, fashion-model terrorists, socialite vampires and mid-life crisis movie producers – all damned by their own infinite appetites for lust and greed. Scathing, gross and sometimes hilarious, his body of work comprised a colorful Rubik’s Cube of doom, which could never be properly aligned no matter how much you read between the lines.

And at just about the time I thought I had him figured out, when it seemed his bag of tricks would finally become deflated and dusty, he tossed 2005’s “Lunar Park” our way, and completely turned his own world up-side-down – and my head effectively inside-out. This brilliant novel was about a writer named Bret Easton Ellis who is haunted by a book he wrote called “American Psycho”, who becomes a family man in the suburbs in some half-assed attempt to reconcile his relentless demons. Self-deprecating to the point of satire, the novel then miraculously shifted gears from horror story to a bittersweet redemption plot. When I closed that book, I was flooded with conflicting emotions, but none of them were negative. The impossible had happened: I was genuinely moved by the coldest writer in modern American fiction. It seemed as if Ellis had finally turned a corner of some sort. In short, he had elevated his own game.

Lindsay’s arrest on July 24th 2007 for drunk driving was an unwanted punch-line to an already overlong joke. Before my current “glory days” at Forth, I was a cheap entertainment journalist, desperate enough to do a stint at the National Enquirer but contemptuous enough to piss people off and not keep the job for longer than a month. I never DID publish a single word with them, and in hindsight getting paid to sit at a desk in their corner and pretend to look busy was the easiest money I have made so far. Back in those days, I was hungry for dirt, worms and all, and my research into the ’07 Lohan case yielded some shocking revelations. Revelations that a sorry excuse for a rag like the Enquirer could not comprehend.

If the Santa Monica Police Department’s blood-tests of the troubled starlet were true, it would indicate that she was not only above the legal blood/alcohol limit and had traces of cocaine in her system, but that she also shares the same basic DNA of “Periplaneta Americana” …also known as the American cockroach. Such insight suggests genetic tampering for “youth retention” purposes, or perhaps some extraterrestrial origin that we are too afraid to contemplate. Either way, this information spells trouble, as Lindsay’s resilience could render her indestructible to the penal system, tabloid criticism, and worst of all, fire and pitchforks.

“We’ve tried everything,” said an anonymous source working at the undisclosed treatment center Lohan was located in ’07, “Electro-shock therapy, synthetic cerebral injections, even exorcism.”

Exorcism?

“Well, yes, a priest was called in and performed a seven hour purification.”

And the results?

“He packed up his things and shook his head.”

If such reports were true, if she was really locked up in some secret facility in the outskirts of the Utah desert region, and if she was really beyond the helping hands of science and Jesus… the question for 2010 is: what now? At 24 years-old, Lohan has already been to rehab three times, faced two DUI arrests and served approximately 84 minutes in jail. Her recent 90-day sentence is either the poisonous crescendo to a cursed life, or the set-up for a sordid porn to be shot on prison guard’s iPhones — maybe both. How long will this poor fair-skinned creature be left to wallow in such heartbreaking conditions? Would you let your dog suffer this long? Or would you take pity and finally have her put down, the humane way? Here’s a glass of warm milk, Lindsay, good girl Lindsay, drink every last drop Lindsay…

“Just look at her mug-shot,” James Butts, chief of the SMPD told me in a phone interview after her ’07 arrest, “Look at her expression. I’ve seen hundreds, maybe thousands of mug-shots in my day, but this one really stands out.”

How so?

“Just look at how her eyes are pleading to us. Her eyes are begging us, please, please world, please believe in me. Don’t give up on me yet. I am a mixed-up little girl and I have a lot of love to give…” Butts cleared his throat and resumed a professional tone, “At least, that’s what I see.”

The jury is out on whether Lohan is, in fact, mortal, or if when she dies she will simply implode and instantly re-appear in some other terrestrial form, like a jellyfish or a cloud. Reincarnation is NOT the prevailing theory at the local church, as His Eminence Roger Cardinal Mahony attested over the phone. As the archbishop of Los Angeles, Mahony speaks for nearly five million members when he says, “Nonsense. This girl is flesh and blood. If we burned her at the stake, she would very much catch fire and not come back.”

Could Lindsay have been sent among us to be punished for all our sins?

“If you are insinuating that this troubled young woman is the Second Coming, I am afraid this interview is over.”

Well, if God’s first and only son was a poor carpenter who partied at weddings and hung out with prostitutes, is it really such a leap in logic that perhaps his only daughter might come in the form of Lindsay Lohan?

“My son, there is no redemptive quality within that girl. If anyone has sent her among us, it was the devil.”

Brittany may have shaved her head and flashed her hot-pocket all over town, and Paris may have released a porn and done her stint at prison, but all of these things seem to pale in comparison to Lohan’s current state of affairs. She has remained in the unflattering limelight long after her peers have all but faded into irrelevance. Perhaps Brittany and Paris were mere test-patterns, perhaps Lindsay is the devil’s TRUE magnum-opus — as the Archbishop would attest — his David or Sistine Chapel of cocaine sluttery. It is true that Lohan is not the first and only celebrity train-wreck to hit rock-bottom. Robert Downey Jr. is no stranger to the Man Downstairs himself, but Downey is removed from Lohan by one slight distinction: he can act, and act well, whereas Double L has freckled cleavage and… that’s about it. Watching the verdict being laid down on her on CNN was like watching an anguished baby seal realize that the club looming over her head is not for providing shade, after all. Her pathetic balling showed signs of some base instinct still kicking around her addled head, a tiny echo of an ember of the little girl who once had a bright future in front of her and has no idea how it all went wrong.

Surely if the actress was a 24 year-old black male, none of this would have happened. She would have been maced, tasered, arrested and thrown behind bars back in ’07 faster than she can do a bump in the bathroom at Hyde. Her privileged stature has gotten her this far, and how much mileage is left in her withered karma is hard to say. It is the opinion of this humble journalist that the collective media perform a “Lohan Blackout” effective immediately. No more reports, articles, pictures or sound-bytes. No updates, interviews, rumors or hearsay. Maybe, just maybe, if we all ignored her she would cease to exist… poof …out of sight, out of mind. The real question remains: how can we expect Lohan to overcome her addictions when WE are incapable of overcoming our own? Can it be that we are all locked into some kind of sick, symbiotic relationship from which there is no escape?

Deep thoughts and heavy questions on a topic that has as much nutritional-value as a worm’s semen. But in 2010 America, worm-semen can be quite the lucrative commodity, and a strung-out 24 year-old girl the perfect target for our sins.

FROM: the Desk of Marco Mannone / Executive Editor @ Forth Magazine

TO: the Desk of Richard Verrier / Los Angeles Times

RE: “Screenwriters Find Work is Dwindling” (July 3rd article)

Richard,

Just read your sharp piece “Screenwriters Find Work is Dwindling”. Shedding light on this topic is like pushing a vampire into the sun… Executives and Greedheads around this town tend to burst into flames when they’re told they should Respect their writers. After nearly a decade of sheer desperation, 2010 has proven the most lucrative year for me yet as a paid, working screenwriter here in L.A. The catch is, my checking account is still running on fumes and I might have to siphon gas from some fat-cat’s Lexus in order to drive my car off Mulholland Dr.

That I’m on the verge of turning 30 and that I’m still without representation shows some kind of resilience on my end, I think. Two projects back-to-back have found their way to me this year, both where I am receiving sole credit. The first was financed by a millionaire living in Arizona and stars a handful of well-known television actors, the second is being financed by a millionaire in Canada and I am currently neck-deep in revisions (awaiting feedback from the director is the only reason I even have the time to write this now). Without belonging to the Almighty Guild I have been compensated mostly with peanuts and loose-change, but both films stand a fighting chance to see some kind of distribution in the not-too-distant-future. My point is, while Guild writers working within the Studio System might be falling on hard times, there is an underbelly to this story about us non-Guild writers who are like rats clinging to the cables of billion-dollar cruise ships by our tiny, pink paws. Instead of going for the all-you-can-eat buffets, we are surviving on the crumbs left behind and making the best of it.

These despicable “one-step deals” that are holding writers hostage are not limited strictly within the Studio System — although within that system it is even more heinous because of all the Big Money being swapped around like bodily fluids on a constant basis (you would think they could afford to feed the Idea Men a bit more). Working in lawless international waters as I have been, I can attest that the one-step deals are also common in the field of Independent Filmmaking. Treatments and First Drafts are essentially lumped together as one, and Revisions and Subsequent Drafts have no distinction whatsoever. This is easier to stomach where I’m coming from, because even though the movies are being funded by millionaires in the ether, the fact remains these are private investments with a single risk shareholder for each, not to mention I am not entitled to any legal rights without belonging to a union. Sadly, a gun-for-hire is a gun-for-hire big or small, and when it comes to the quality of even Independent Cinema, you get what you pay for.

My advice to your readers (other than finding themselves a millionaire with money to burn) would be to abandon the Studio System altogether in favor of (true) Independent Cinema, and pool together their precious resources — however limited — to create their own mafias. To hell with the Big Bastards. If they think they can fleece the writers of this community for everything they’ve got, let’s see them regurgitate the same tired material on their own. What they are too greedy to realize, is that these one-step deals which save them money up-front are actually doing the Studios a disservice in the Back End, because “finding a movie in a second or third draft” is precisely why so many films coming out are half-baked turkeys ripe with Salmonella. After all, this total disregard for Originality and Risk Taking in the industry has proven to be so hugely successful (sarcasm) this dismal summer season, which is the worst since the 90′s.

Mind you, the Guild writers are also to blame so long as they choose to stay in these abusive relationships. Wallowing around for another black-eye is nothing less than masochistic, and if they have any sense whatsoever, they would secede and create on their own. This is precisely what I am doing now with a script intended to be shot on a shoe-string budget called “Mark & Tom” — the short film version of which will be screening this month at the L.A. Shorts Fest, a fine venue for us semi-young filmmakers still full of piss & vinegar to showcase our passion for originality… along with our general disdain for a failing system beyond repair.

With Fervor,
–
Marco Mannone
Executive Editor / Forth Magazine
www.forthmagazine.com