DIARY: Friday, November 14th, 2008

So, after my fainting spell the night before last, I spent most of yesterday sitting around and worrying, which I’m very good at.  Cheating death is a funny thing.  It definitely makes you ask some questions that you wouldn’t normally ask.  For example, who would have found my body?  Would they have attempted mouth-to-mouth?  Would it have bothered them that I was naked?  (Turned them on?)  Would they have taken pictures of my corpse with their camera-phone and posted them on the internet?  How would my friends around the world have discovered the news?  Would any of them have taken it upon themselves to break into my apartment and dispose of my porn, so that my mother didn’t find it?  Would anybody have made it their mission in life to produce my unfinished films or to publish my unproduced screenplays?  If Milos Forman decided to do a biopic, which actor would have played me and would he have been nominated for an Oscar?  Etc.  

Anyway, it’s a miracle that, with all of these questions on my mind, I managed to get any work done at all, but I did.  I wrote about two and a half pages of “GFE.”  This project is a dramatic comedy or “dramedy” (think: Alexander Payne’s “About Schmidt” or “Sideways”).  It’s set in the Bay Area and Hong Kong and will star a good friend of mine.  For those of you who might be wondering, “GFE” is simply the working title.  I was hoping to finish the script before I head back to New Orleans for the holidays.  I’ve been averaging at least two solid pages per day, which, on this particular script, is a good ratio because it’s an original and deceptively complex.  However, since I leave for New Orleans on Saturday, I don’t think I’m going to make my deadline.  Maybe Thanksgiving would be more realistic.  The truth is, I could have finished the script a long time ago.  My problem is (and has always been) that I care too much.  Sometimes, I really wish I didn’t.  I know guys who are very well known, very highly regarded, and very prolific screenwriters.  I know they’re able to land assignments they don’t care about and turn in dreck they don’t care about.  They feel no remorse and the studios continue to hire them over and over and over again.  They have nice cars, nice homes down by the beach, and they can always order the calamari.  So, why can’t I just manage to care less?  Why do I approach every script like it could be my last?  I don’t know.  I guess that’s just my process.  

Anyway, I should probably cut this short.  I have a lot to do today.  I have to write at least two more pages of “GFE,” pack for my trip, and hit the gym.  Then, as if all that’s not enough, I overcommitted myself yet again by telling Charlie I would work on our “Secrets in the Fields” documentary proposal and try to have it finished before I leave.  Why do I always overcommit myself?  I think the fact that I’m supposed to direct the thing, that we’re supposed to turn in our proposal to the BBC soon, and that Charlie is the one driving me to LAX tomorrow might have something to do with it.  

-Dax