Writing Report June 11, 2021

“Let's get one thing clear right now, shall we? There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers; good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky: two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun. Your job isn't to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up.” 
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

. . .

This one goes in the “how this writer’s mind works” bin.

. . .

I’ve long been a fan of the Beats.

I’ve also long been of fan of old half-hour mystery dramas like T.H.E. Cat and Johnny Staccato.

Many decades ago -- perhaps as early as 1978, certainly no later than 1980 -- I wrote (for my own amusement) a pilot for a faux-1950s half-hour crime show called Too Cool For Comfort.

The protagonist was a Beat Generation (not a beatnik!) photographer who got mixed up in a murder when he took a gig to document a cheating spouse for a divorce lawyer.

He had a live-in Gal Friday / model who wasn’t a romantic interest, though today we’d call it friends-with-benefits.

Once I finished the script and got it out of my system, I filed it away and forgot about it.

(It’s not a bad little piece of work, nothing great, but entertaining enough; someday I’ll post it here so you can take a look.)

. . . 

I’ve long been interested in the history of Hollywood, both at the macro and micro levels, what “officially” happened, what actually happened, but especially Hollywood folklore as documented by Kenneth Anger in his Hollywood Babylon books.

(Don’t ever mistake Anger’s books for well documented factual accounts -- they ain’t -- but they are fascinating glimpses of the stories and lies and gossip Hollywood loves to tell about itself.)

Decades ago -- not as far back as Too Cool For Comfort -- I came up with an idea for a novel about the early days of Hollywood before WWI when the last of the real cowboys found themselves stuck in a small Southern California town that looked on them to recreate the myth of the recently vanished past.

Still wanna do that book.

That’s been a back burner one-of-these-days projects ever since.

. . . 

After leaving Stan Lee Media in the early 2000’s, I developed several graphic novel concepts for the Christian tween-to-teen female audience.

One was about a young woman who comes to Hollywood hoping to be an actress, and the struggles and conflicts she faces trying to balance her career ambitions with the Hollywood way of doing business.

While I had success with other ideas I’d generated at that time, this one never found a slot on the schedule, so while it’s not a bad idea, it remained an unfulfilled one.

Then I got this idea where I could combine her story with the pre-WWI Hollywood idea, a multi-generational look at Hollywood dropping in on every decade from the 1910s to the 1960s.

I recognized I needed a linking theme to bind all the books together, and the idea of a religious cult (and lordie, does Hollywood ever have a lot of those!) engaged in generations of nefarious doings sprang to mind…

…but it didn’t quite jell.

It would be okay for maybe one book in the series, but all of ‘em?

Nah.

Then I reconsidered the multi-book idea as focusing on one person as the series’ antagonist, a movie mogul who rises from entry level to running a big studio, and how his evil desires keeps everything stirred up.

Hmm, better, but still not good.

While jotting down notes for over a decade and doing research, I never got any traction on what the real story should be.

. . . 

I come up with a lot of story ideas, some only suitable for short stories, others for longer works.

One idea was a modern day variant on the old honey trap / badger game con games.

Cute idea, but in and of itself not enough to support a story.   

I noodled around a couple of additional complications that could occur and again filed this in the one-of-these-days bin. 

. . . 

Among the many ideas I’ve toyed with but never put any effort into working on was an epic covering the social history of the 1960s, from JFK’s election to Nixon’s resignation. 

There’s a wealth of material there, so be sure, but never an obvious angle of approach for me.

I’ve stockpiled a few books, bookmarked a few websites, but really haven’t put any effort into this.

. . . 

Read about a legendary hippie commune, a cannabis Camelot that lasted for the better part of a decade until Bastards With Money decided they didn’t want their property values dragged down by their free lovin’ neighbors so they waged a legal war on them to drive them off and take over the property.

Same old sad story.

Interesting…but nothing there.

Filed it away in the back of me widdle head…

…and forgot about it.

. . . 

The history of Bryanston Films always struck me as hilarious, and while I never attempted to tell the story in fictional form, I’m fond of relating it to others.

. . . 

And there’s tons of other stuff – people I’ve met / things I’ve seen / lies I’ve been told; ideas and concepts and flotsam and jetsam and trivia and factoids and rumors and all kinds of junk -- that I’ve encountered over the years and never did anything with except file them away in the grey cells of my brain.

. . . 

Had a dream a couple of weeks ago.

A really good dream, very detailed, and with an actual beginning / middle / end story to it.

It’s a comedic crime story, an overly complicated caper that goes awry in the worst ways possible dues to the crooks’ inability to follow instructions trust or one another.

This one I plan to do, fleshing it out as I go.  Out of necessity it needs to be a period piece, set no later than the mid-1970s, or else the cape can’t work.

A minor sub-plot involving a Mafia-run film distribution company ala Bryanston also figures into the story, and should be fun.

. . . 

The legendary commune drifted onto my radar screen again a couple of days ago.

I read the post, clicked on a couple of links, saw nothing really new or that I hadn’t been aware of before…

…then I remembered a couple of the people at the commune had been Vietnam war vets too stressed out to go home again, who calmed their hearts and souls and minds by living as close to nature as possible…

Then it struck me:  What if one of them was an 84-Charlie? (i.e., US Army military occupational specialty 84C:  Motion picture camera man.)

Holy cow…that’s not too far from my Beat photographer in Too Cool For Comfort, is it?

This guy comes back from the war burned out, can’t fit in back home, the only thing he knows how to do is shoot 16mm film…

Who was using 16mm film back in the 1960s?

Technical and educational film companies -- but they’re too straightlaced, he’s too frazzled to work there.

Underground movies?  There’s your counterculture.

Cheap TV shows and low budget exploitations?  There’s your gutter level Hollywood.

Porn?  There’s the overlap between crime and the counterculture.

Instead of half a century of Hollywood history, condense it down to the mid to late 60s, from 1965 to 1969.

Show how the changes that affected the rest of the nation, the rest of the world played out on Hollywood Boulevard.

The legendary commune?  This is a work of fiction, leave the real commune where it was actually located, create a fictional one that mashes up a bunch of groups and movements and places in California during that era.

The aforementioned religious cult?  Makes a lot more sense, seems a lot more plausible set in those five years than in fifty.

The honey trap / badger game?  That can figure into things by lacing several different elements together.

The moralistic actress?  She’s part of this story, struggling to keep her head and heart above water.

The Hollywood mogul antagonist?  That can be two or three characters now, each with a different area of influence, perhaps working together, perhaps in competition.

I’ve always been a fan of Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe books and how he made Los Angeles a character in the series.

Well, here’s an opportunity to do the same thing with Hollywood.

The pre-WWI Hollywood story and the 1970s bungled caper stories?  Still viable, and they can link up to this story without actually having to be a part of it.

I say “story” because I see this as focusing on what happens to my camera man character over the course of five years but I also see this as being several individual books, each covering roughly a year in his life and Hollywood history.

(And they won’t all have to take place in Hollywood; I can envision a sojourn to NYC to get involved in the world of grindhouse film making.)

There’s a rich tapestry waiting to be woven here.

© Buzz Dixon