Thanks for coming to the read-through of my new film. There’s pizza and pasta for after—that’s right, the good stuff, so that should keep you in the seats. Even if my dialogue isn’t quite al dente enough for your taste, the spaghettini will be.
Which is maybe a good time to remind everyone—well, thanks again for coming and sharing your thoughts, I want and need your thoughts, feedback, reaction, takes, and any lines or ideas you may have, but also, it’s a good time to set the table I think for the kinds of notes I need at this fragile stage of the project.
You are all here because you are willing to say the hard things, which is definitely what I need, as I said in the email.
But looking at all of you now, um, and with the trip to the shaman a bit further in the past, the voice in my head is saying that I am not so interested in what you don’t like about the piece.
The part about wanting all your feedback, while true, is more sort of true. I really mostly hope you laugh in the right spots.
And let me clue you in, those spots are when the actors sitting around this table raise their voices at the end of the lines in that buh-duh-bum rhythm we all recognize from, well, I mean, from our whole lives, really. You know when you are supposed to laugh. So LAUGH!
And so, yes, I need the unvarnished best of your minds, so that I can whip this thing into shape to secure funding and maybe move a little further away from the subway, so that the damn rumbling doesn’t step on that comic rhythm again and again.
Ugh. If I can take the conch and be honest with you, I am already feeling pretty mixed about the prospects for it and could use some unbridled enthusiasm as though you like it and me and didn’t come here on your Thursday night just for the pizza and pasta and fellowship that was promised in the communiqué.
And really, what I do need is to feel like I didn’t make the wrong choice when I left law school just before the start of my last year in Michigan.
I know, I know, that was a really long time ago. And I have had more of a career than anyone at the time thought possible. Certainly than my effing father did. That’s for damned sure.
But I don’t want to feel like the best of it is already behind me. And I do, just a little bit. Which…
And I want to add that I know that when some of you have asked me to read your stuff a while ago, I was too busy directing those TV procedurals to give it the kind of attention that maybe it deserved. And that when certain others of you asked me to look at your audition tapes for those shows I might have said something along the lines of “There’s a reason we have casting agents,” but I was busy, and more than that, I thought I would continue to be busy enough that it wouldn’t, you know, bite me in the ass these few years later but I guess here we are, right?
If I could go back, I would have definitely paid more attention. Especially to you, Beth-Anne. I mean, you’ve got your Tony now. If I had paid attention, maybe you would have agreed to star in this thing or at least to participate as one of the actors in the read-through, which would have brought more attention to the project and almost certainly gotten me back into Manhattan.
Not that I don’t love Bushwick. And that I am not totally aware of how nice it is that you came here for this in such a generous spirit, after I was perhaps not quite as generous when I was in your position.
Which, I never was, exactly, as successful, and if I were, even tomorrow, it is possible I would revert to the bad behavior, because, face it, we are who we are. And I liked how it felt to be powerful and dismissive. If you had my father, you’d get it. You. Would. Get. It.
All that out of the way, a few things to keep in mind as you are watching and thinking about how to respond.
Although I am presenting this as my new work, it was really my first script, the one that got me that agent who suggested I leave law school to get started and then, just before going “out to the town” with it, did that thing to that actor at that after-party that made him not my agent or your agent or even an agent. The irony is, had I stayed in law school, maybe I could have helped him. No, that’s a lie. No one could have helped him once the tapes came out.
But back to me!
I have had a pretty hard time writing lately, because of the subway noise, sure, but also because I have forgotten why or how to write, if I ever really knew.
I did clean this bad boy up, of course. Adding in smartphones and taking out certain jokes.
I have re-inserted a few of those jokes because we are in a post, post age, in a way, and I couldn’t think of any better ones.
So if your notes are in that direction, better to keep them to yourselves.
In fact, I think that might be rule number one here. Keep the notes to yourselves unless the notes say something along the lines of “Warren, you are a genius, every word is perfect, this thing is so good it makes me want to jump out a window and never see, hear, or think of anything ever again.”
And… yeah… that should do it. I’ll be reading the stage direction. And let’s all give a round of applause to all the folks around the table who came here out of friendship and the goodness in their hearts and because mostly I told them that you would be here, Beth-Anne, and they are hoping you notice them and tell someone about them, much as you had hoped I would do for you a few years back.
And now let’s get started. I am grateful you are in the room, and that I am part of your creative community, and you, mine.
Okay… Fade In.