Diablo

The summer of 2002 was when I first became interested in creative writing. School was out and there were a good three weeks that needed to be killed before my internship began, so I decided on a whim that instead of working on a new rap album, I'd write a screenplay.

You know that oft-talked-about-but-rarely-actually-experienced best summer ever that always comes up when you get together with old high school or college friends? 2002, that was mine. Every day was kind of the same: drunken mini-golfing, shouting matches at dingy pool halls, Steak 'n Shake Frisco Melts, public urination, recording ourselves jumping off of rooftops into trash bins because we wanted to be Bam Margera.

But the nights were never over for me when I went home for the evening. I'd pop in Radiohead's Kid A album, flip on the black lights to display invisible laundry detergent murals, and I'd just sit in front of my computer for hours, diligently typing up my screenplay. Every night was kind of the same: I'd write until dawn.

The screenplay was called La Cosa Nostra. It was a comedy. A Pete Nguyen joint. The story centered around an endearing mafia hitman who, after an unsuccessful whack attempt on himself ordered by his boss, seeks revenge on the entire outfit by organizing a complicated heist operation. It was supposed to be an affectionate nod to all of those trendy Tarantino imitations, where every other scene is a car ride filled with dialogue bravado containing slick pop culture references, but no one that read my script seemed to agree with me about its cleverness.

"You guys don't get it; it's supposed to be like that," I insisted. "Of course I know all of the characters are silly caricatures with strange quirks written for the sake of idiosyncrasy! Of course I know it's all style and no substance! Of course I know how derivative all of those deadpan soliloquies are! This is a parody! You're not supposed to take it too seriously!"

And no one did take it seriously. For feedback, I sent a copy to my aunt's friend's friend's husband, who happened to be a Hollywood producer. After three months of anxious pestering, he finally emailed me a reply that some people might have found slightly encouraging, but I found terse and insulting: "Keep writing, and get back to me in 10 years."

That should have been the end of it, but then one day I was reading an interview of one of my favorite writers at the time, Chuck Palahniuk. He spoke about some of the odd jobs he'd picked up in his youth before becoming a writer, such as being a diesel mechanic, or working as an escort. And then, near the end of the interview, he said the coolest thing ever. Something to the effect of, "Everything seemed so easy for me as soon as I made the realization that I wanted spend the rest of my life writing the perfect sentence."

It made me think about my Best Summer Ever and how, even with all of my daytime shenanigans, the part of the day that I looked forward to the most was when I went home to write.

Onto the real reason I'm writing this entry. I just saw the movie Juno, not because all of my friends have been imploring me to, not because of the Oscar buzz, but because of Diablo Cody. She wrote the screenplay and has been a media darling ever since the movie came out, mostly due to her self-promoting sensibility, but also because of her interesting back story: she's a blogger turned stripper turned screenwriter.

I guess I must have nothing else better to do than read interviews all day, because a week ago I was reading one about her, and she had this to say about her random decision to become a stripper a few years ago:

"You make this really unexpected, half-cocked decision and all of a sudden it creates this weird energy that turns into something else."

That statement really spoke to me. It made it feel like something great can come out of all this writing I do, whether I ultimately become published or not. Because, as I'm sure Chuck or Diablo would agree, you don't have to be just one thing your entire life.

By the way, DO YOURSELF A FAVOR AND WATCH JUNO. Great movie. I'm hard to please, but this movie is probably the best-written thing to hit Hollywood in years.