Michael Greenwald
January 24, 2010
By: Michael James Greenwald
If you’re a writer, sleeping with a writer, want to sleep with a writer (hey!!!!!), check out my usual Sunday blog post at the Parking Lot Confessional.
Oh, and find out what the heck this video:
has to do with anything (it might not, knowing me).
Hope y’all have a nice Sunday. Send your questions, on writing, on dating, on life, to jonah14646@gmail.com. I’ll post your question here and give it the best riff I can.
Thanks for reading.
MJG
Here’s the link to my guest post from Sunday January 17, 2009 on The Parking Lot Confessional. I wrote on: You-Know-What or That-Which-Must-Not-Be-Named (Ahem…Writer’s Block). Please Check it out!
The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (2008)
By: Michael James Greenwald
Turns out there’s a lot going on in Pittsburgh…who knew. Turns out, as well, I’m a little late to the party…well, everyone knew that.
On Thursday night I took a screenwriting class at Story Studio Chicago and the Chicago screenwriter and teacher, Danny Kravitz (not Lenny’s brother) mentioned he’d reviewed The Mysteries of Pittsburgh late the other night on Showtime. I’d heard of the the best-selling book by Michael Chabon, but had never seen the film adaptation. Boy, was I missing out.
Starring the marvelously chameleon-like Peter Sarsgaard, gorgeous and complicated Sienna Miller, and Nick Nolte playing tough like not many actors can, the movie chronicles one summer in the life of the recently graduated, Art Bechstein (played deliciously wide-eyed by Jon Foster), who has three months to do what he wants before beginning his straight-laced life at a top Pittsburgh investment house, a position his mobbed-up father (Nolte) strong-armed for him. Bechstein gets a job as a bookstore clerk, begins banging his boss, and in one drug-fueled night out meets the catalyst who will change his life.
Coming of age stories have formulas, and this movie, and the book (which Chabon wrote as an undergraduate at the University of Pittsburgh and submitted as his MFA thesis at UC Irvine), I assume, though I’m currently working on Chabon’s Wonderboys and haven’t gotten to it yet, follows the formula quite closely, but somehow this is not disappointing. I think this has to do with the richness of the characters, especially Sarsgaard’s Cleveland and Nolte’s Poppa Dick, and the beauty with which the story of a summer in the life of three people who deeply love one another is told.
I’ve often heard that great stories are told like icebergs, where the peak of the berg is easily visible above the water, but the greater portion of the thing exists below the surface of the water. The friendship triangle between Jane, Cleveland and Art is the focal point of most of the movie, but the viewer feels, from the second Art meets Jane and when Art discovers Cleveland’s bi-sexuality, there is something more intimate lying below the water’s surface between these three. The brilliance of Rawsom Marshall Thurber’s writing and directing, though, is found in his restraint in rushing the sexual aspect of their connection, and even though you, as a viewer, know it’s inevitable that two or all three are going to succumb at some point, watching the strength of their bond develop is so captivating, at the end of the movie you’re left with the residuals of the power of friendship more than anything.
For me, great movies leave me with a sense of hope that such magic, of love or friendship or family or community, can be found in the real world. Sitting in my comfy chair, watching the credits of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh roll, I felt that exact feeling.
[Posted originally for my Sunday guest spot on the Parking Lot Confessional]
I’m not one to take to intimately about myself, mainly because I don’t think people give a shit about my life (being that we’re firmly entrenched in the selfish area, where most people will listen to your problems solely to have the right to unload their own issues, in some sort of quid pro quo misery transfusion), but, as Adam Sandler so eloquently put it, “I have a microphone and you don’t, SO YOU WILL LISTEN TO EVERY DAMN WORD I HAVE TO SAY!!!!”
Last summer, I moved back to Chicago, for two reasons. I turned thirty and was living the life of a nineteen year old stoner: bartending for a living and living rent-free in my folk’s summer home; serial dating, not for the reasons I told myself then–I just can’t find someone to be with!!!– but because it allowed me to not having to commit myself emotionally to another human being, thus eliminating any chance they’d ever learn enough about me to realize what I loser I was; making less than 20 thou a year; drinking, a lot (I’m sorry, but anyone over thirty doing a keg stand should really evaluate their life choices); flirting with 19 year olds (I didn’t even like 19 year olds when I was nineteen, I mean, really, how many “The Hills”–I’m firmly Team Lauren, BTW–can one have?); going to Scottsdale clubs, rotating one of three dress shirts I owned, finding myself gravitating to the 50 something guys sitting at the bar watching a sports game on TV and eye-screwing every 20 year that wandered by…you get the idea. Loser.
The other reason I moved back to Chicago was because my father asked me to. Most of you don’t know (sorry Dad), but my father suffers from bipolar disease (it is a disease, not a disorder–the term disorder is demeaning because it pigeon-holes mental illness in a less-egregious category –and it is bullshit that it’s taken the legislature and the public this long to understand that a mental illness is as debilitating as a physical illness like cancer…I’ll get my 3 inch heel caught in the carpet on the stairs of my bully pulpit now and fall flat on my face) and basically has trouble most days just waking up, so the idea that he could run our family business anymore or provide any kind of support to my mother and sisters was unrealistic. So, I moved from Scottsdale, Arizona (S-Dale!!!) to a suburb 15 miles south and west of the city of Chicago, where I grew up. I’ve been volunteering (literally) my time at our family’s business learning the ins-and-outs and picking up the slack (feeding the dogs, taking garbage to the street, carrying the Christmas tree up from the basement–Mike lift heavy thing, grrrr, man) at home.
So, how has this changed Michael the Writer?
Well, let me put in this way. In the three years I lived in Arizona, all of the writing peers marveled at my productivity. My writing goal was 2,000 words a day, and there were days when I’d drink two pots of coffee and write 10 k, but I had the time to do it. I’d wake up at 8 AM (o-kay, 9…fine, 10:59), freshly hungover (best way to write), suck down enough coffee till I felt as though I was a rapid-beat of the heart away from a heart attack (want to motivate yourself to write, get the gongs of mortality ringing in your head), close and lock my office door, and open my laptop. There were days I’d get in such a groove I’d quit writing when the pain in my stomach became so horrible, as my caffeine-infused digestive acid ate away at my stomach lining, I was typing doubled over (almost all of my characters from those three years had ulcers) and find it to be dusk out my office window. I’d shower and head out to Pearl Sushi in Scottsdale, where I’d plant myself at the bar and drink Asahi sake bombs, eat my favorite Fish Shticks, and type another 2,000 words, drawing on the inspiration of the sophisticated, cultured, classy Scottsdale crowd.
The sophisticated, cultured, classy Scottsdale crowd
But now. Well, let’s just say 2,000 words is still my goal…for the week. My fellow PLC writers are all involved in committed relationships (SCARRY!!!) and have kiddos and Big-Girl/Boy jobs and for the first time in my writing life, I realize how difficult it is to justify sitting down at a computer and writing when the scenes we create today and tomorrow will not buy milk on Friday and Pampers and help mom lug the Christmas tree up from the basement and develop a marketing strategy to draw 20 somethings into your bowling center.
So, my primary goal for 2010, my progress report, if you will, is to m-a-i-n-t-a-i-n, keep some semblance of, as Amy described, momentum, and figure out how to re-prioritize myself. The analogy that comes to mind is a juggler. When I lived in Arizona, I had one big red ball to toss up in the air and catch (no dude: binge drinking; three-somes, unless they are twins; sleeping; and tanning are not balls). I’d just toss that thing up and catch it whenever I want, but now, now, I’m these guys:
So since I’m new to this whole prioritizing thing, I’d love any advice you can give me. How do you juggle your balls (ummmm…did he just say that?)? Seriously…how do you not neglect people and projects in real-life and still get your writing done?
Thanks for reading. Stay tuned next week, for when I probe the delicate nature inherent in the big, bad WB…
Not that WB, silly. The OTHER WB.
From five years old to fifteen (when girls, booze, and pot took over my life) I had my Reading Tree.
My Reading Tree
As you can see, it sits in the P’s backyard, limbs formed into a cone-shape, which nestled my awkward, adolescent body quite comfortably. There had even been a hole in the trunk deep enough to squirrel three books (and later, two issues of “Barely Legal”), much to the chagrin of Charley the Squirrel, who lived in our backyard, and found his cubby full of useless square, bound pieces of parchment.
Charley, Dealing With Homelessness
Useless pieces of parchment? Oh Charley, if you only knew.
Those books, my Reading Tree, the solitude of being away from my family and my painful adolescent world, teleported into 1840’s England with Pip, Joe, and Mr. Wopsle I cannot even begin to explain to you now the impact the Magic of Books had on me. I’d zip through three hundred pages in an afternoon, completely enthralled by the worlds opened up to me by these great (and sometimes not very talented–I read a lot of John Grisham and Hardy Boy’s books too) writers.
Now, though, I’ve found that books have lost their magic hold over me. Why? Could it be that modern writers do not have the skill of enrapturing readers? No, I don’t think so. Michael Chabon, Jonathan Lethem, Dave Eggers, Richard Russo, George Pelecanos, all have a skill level as great as Dickens, Fitzgerald, Lee.
No, books have lost their magic for me because of two reasons. The first reason aligns with my decision to become a Writer of Great Importance. Somehow, I flipped a switch and could no longer read books without using my Critical Eye. And you know what I found? Where I used to read five to ten books (there were some marathon summer sessions) a week, I now struggle to read fifty pages in a sitting. Reading has become a punch-in and punch-out job, an ingredient in the recipe to become a W.G.I.
I spend more time trying to study writing technique, mentally critiquing each scene–well, she made the decision to do this, but that doesn’t support the allegorical subtext she’d been building up to this point; purple description there; how does this scene advance the plot, build tension, grow character; wow that’s a fascinating description, how can I steal (ummm…borrow) that one–that I lose what drew me, as a child and adolescent to books in the first place. And that’s sad. Don’t you think?
That in my life, books have become TPS Reports.
The second reason, I think, is common even for non-writers. I blame the educational system (great, just what the public schools need, more fault for crushing the innocence and freedom of children). I remember when I was a kid teachers would hand-out a Summer Reading List, which I’d devour during the first week of summer, loving every second of reading the recommendations of my teachers, who at that time, I didn’t loath. It wasn’t until high school, for me, when book reports and pop tests in English class drove me from the bound texts of “popular classics” to the abridged yellow and black Cliff’s Notes. Once teachers made reading a necessity for a good grade, it seemed only natural I’d find the most productive way of achieving this requirement.
I mean, isn’t that what forming us into proper worker drones is all about? Productivity?
Now, I’ve noticed, book reports and/or worksheets with study questions begin in grammar school (maybe earlier by now, preschoolers getting handed both a bottle and a Q/A sheet). By the time kids reach high school and plot and structure and character are being deconstructed on a grand scale, long gone is the innocent magic of novels, the free pleasure of reading, replaced by the necessity to become a literary mechanic, getting under the book’s hood to determine how the plot engine and characterization transmission work in tandem to motor the car. This might work for some teens (the ones desiring to be book mechanics, IE, lofty, high-society literary critics), but for most of us, taking apart the guts of books, seeing the innards, the tricks, the technique, causes the magic of the bound parchment to evaporate.
No wonder the next generation gravitates to Internet and movies and TV. They aren’t being bashed over the head with study questions and analysis requirements on “Grey’s Anatomy” (course, what is there to study? McSteamyDreamy’s pouty face and how it speaks to 21st Century sex mores?), they can just sit back and watch the magic show.
So, I’ve decided to try my best to return to the purity of reading. Not thinking, analyzing, deconstructing; just reading for the entertainment of the thing. It has been hard, to click off my “professional brain”, to disconnect years of technician training, but I’ve found the more and more I read, the better I’ve become at doing this.
Can you believe that? A thirty-year-old man relearning how to read. Well, that’s me. You can now find me nestled in my Reading Tree with Chronic City, Lowboy, The Great Gatsby.
No goals, analysis, criticism, evaluation, or agenda.
Just Reading. Wow, what a novel idea.
Sorry Charley, but your burrow in the Reading Tree has been reclaimed.
"Aw nuts! I hope he gets my favorite book."
Charley's Favorite Book
SleepSunshine 