The Cat In The Hat

way back in the twenty-teens

Just that feeling of strolling through the Santa Monica farmer's market with a couple of bucks in my pocket, grabbing a few five-dollar pears or late summer peaches, pulling twenties out of my pants like magic tricks. I was back in the game. A screenwriter with a paying gig. And that wasn't all; a little indie movie I had directed, co-wrote and co-starred in had made it to the Tribeca Festival and was coming out on Amazon, AND I was three quarters of the way through my first novel; a re-imagining of Raymond Chandler; Swerdlow going Marlowe and having the time of my life. 2017 was a gift that kept on giving.

The writing gig started off pay by the day. I’d been summoned by an old pal to pen a little rhyming narration for a reboot of Dr Seuss’ The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. It was like going home and speaking my mother tongue. Two weeks later, I was reworking the whole script. Fresh from making a film I was up for the challenge; three months in the editing room teaching me more about screenwriting than thirty years of screenwriting had.

As for the Santa Monica market, I'd hit it every Wednesday 'cause I worked around the corner. I’d buy my breast-ripe pears, return to the office, slice a few up in the kitchen and prowl the building with a plate, saying, "Just taste this" to whomever crossed my path; watching the juice run down their chin, the happy moan of musky food sex, a perfect piece of fruit as much my calling card as anything I wrote.

I was a holy fool, and having known the king (the head of the company) for thirty years, I could get away with things that others couldn’t. He’d be in the middle of a meeting and I would walk into his office, kiss him on top of his bald head and walk out. Not to show that I could get away with it, but because I was so grateful that he had brought me back into the fold. My beard may have been gray, but it was springtime in my art-soul. Everything seemed to be opening, including my heart. I would tear up several times a day, the simple act of connecting with others wetting my eyes. It would rise up out of nowhere, so happy was I to have a purpose and place to go.

2016 had been rough. I was running on fumes and even tried driving Uber. I would wake-up and shudder at the mess I had made, rolling to my phone and hoping for some magic email that would set my life straight. Now, I rose bright eyed and bushy tailed, leaving early to beat the traffic, heading west in my new used car and straight to goodboybob, a hipster coffee shop so blonde-wood woke they told you the astrological sign of your Guatemalan grower. I'd grab my chosen pour-over (served on a little wooden board like a Buddhist offering), open my laptop and put in an hour or so on my novel before heading off to see the "boards."

Boards are the crude, or (depending on how far into the process you are) not crude animation as it is laid out. Sometimes it looks close to a movie you see in the theater and sometimes it's stick figures. You might get the real actor (in this case Benedict Cumberbatch) or you might get one of the animators being Benedict. The point is to see what is and isn't working. It's a bit like reading X-rays and after being in the editing room for months, my diagnostic skills were in fine form. Un-shy and urged on by the producers, I gave my notes with kindness but conviction. I felt alive, engaged, useful.

It is wonderful to have a long, uninterrupted run of success, but when a decade of "no" starts turning to "yes," there is no better feeling. Triumph may be sweet, but redemption is even sweeter. I roamed the halls with ripe fruit and rhymes and believed my purpose was to put tasty bites in people's mouths: word bites, food bites, random wisdoms I had returned from hell with. I dusted the crops with my ragged grace, and people were happy to see me and wanted what I had. Whatever had been lost was found, and with interest, the existential troubles of the last twenty years having shape-shifted into plenitude.