"Cold, Wintery weather last weekend."

It's getting to be so hard to find time to even write here once a week. My project at work is at its crazy peak right now, as we go through successive waves of installations at the customer site. What makes it even more crazy is that this period coincides with probably the most important week in the history of our customer's company. I was there on Tuesday, all day, as the shareholders voted on a crucial merger. And the project-manager there, with whom I've been working spent the day frantically polishing his resume.

Outside of work, I've gradually given over this half year to my screenwriting endeavors. The class continues to thrill me, and I return from class each Thursday evening so inpsired, and excited that I can't sleep. I've signed up for the intermediate class, along with at least half of my classmate, and that starts next week, before the beginner's class has even finished. So it will be another three months of ten-pages per week.

In tonight's class, we get to present the three monologues we had to write for homework. This turned out to be the hardest exercise for me. Unlike the other exercises where once you'd fastened on a story, the characters seemed to know what to say for themselves, for this exercise you had to know so much about your characters; enough for them to be able to speak non-stop for a page and a half. Try it sometime - I mean, try to speak about something for a minute and a half without interruption. Oh, and make it compelling.

Writing a monologue is not easy, and it seems artificial, yet it's a very important part of screenwriting. For one thing, when actors read potential scripts, they look for big meaty monologues with which to show off their skills. The other reason for writing monologues is that it's a great way to compress space and time. For example, your character can describe something that happened to them years ago, something crucial to their personality. It's much cheaper and quicker to stage a monologue than to have to enact that mind's eye scene with sets and multiple characters.

Here, anyway, is one of the monologues I wrote. I wrote it based on the protagonist of the feature-length screenplay I'm writing during class.

ANECDOTAL MONOLOGUE

FADE IN:

int. – vera’s house – kitchen -- morning

CHRISTIAN, early twenties, muscular and good-looking, serious, withdrawn, explains to VERA, charismatic, heavy, mid sixties transsexual, why he’s not close to his Dad. Vera and Christian met the previous day for the first time. Vera was the life-partner of Christian’s late Uncle, Eddie, whose funeral Christian attended.

 

CHRISTIAN

You know, it’s kind of hard to understand why we’re not close. I mean, we never really had a big falling out or anything. When I was a kid, I was close to him. We used to go for long walks together, with the dog. I guess I kind of worshipped him. He was the works manager at Ketchins Cannery and I’d go visit him in the factory at lunchtime once a week. Dad seemed so important, and I was proud of him.

(pause)

I suppose it was really me who started to change. I fell in with a different crowd in my early teens, and started to do more intellectual stuff. On weekends, I’d be off with my new friends and gradually my Dad and I stopped going for walks together. Like any kid, I wasn’t conscious that this might be hurtful to my Dad – I was just moving on with my life.

(pause)

It really wasn’t until my Dad started to treat me differently that I began to realize we were no longer close. He’d always be making little digs at me for stuff I liked to do, making out that it was girl-stuff. For a sensitive kid like me, it was very painful when my Dad made fun of me. At first, I’d take notice of him, and I’d drop the stuff he criticized. I remember he made fun of me one night that I wanted to watch “On Golden Pond” on TV. So I pretended I was only joking and didn’t really want to watch it.

(pause)

But at some point I started to really resent it, and I just clammed up around him. Would never tell him anything I was doing at school, or what I was reading. Would stay out of his path so he wouldn’t find out anything about me. By the time I left home to go to college, we scarcely seemed to have anything to talk about. We’d be stiff and awkward around each other. Or worse, he’d get angry at me for no reason – just really critical. And I’d learned to defend myself by then, so I’d bite back.

(pause)

Right after I went away, my Dad resigned from his job on a matter of principle. We were in the middle of a recession and he basically had no education. At his age, he just couldn’t get another job, and, something about him just seemed to vanish. He no longer seemed like someone of weight and authority. The only remaining shred of admiration I had for him – that disappeared too. I hated myself for it, but now I just saw him as a miserable, failed old man. And any motivation I once felt to try to mend our fences vanished too.

FADE out

I did have time, this past week, to go on a date with a man whose biceps I've admired for quite a few years. I don't know about you, but living in a big gay metropolis, there are always a few men who I get to see year in, year out, from afar, for whom I have an attraction. I see these guys, but never expect that anything would actually happen with them.

Well, one day, a couple of weeks ago, this one guy actually wrote to me and sent me his photo. And I immediately realized that it was Mr Biceps. He seemed rather short on words, though, in his emails, and I decided that he was likely to be one of those cold American yuppies that I've classified as a type unto themselves. So it was a surprise when we finally talked on the phone to find that he was a very feeling person. My heart warmed to him immediately and I had the absolutely strongest premonition that when we went on a date we'd like each other a lot.

So Friday rolled around, and, I confess, I was excited. We met in my lobby and walked through the wind-blown Arctic San Francisco streets trying to find a bar (I'm not much of a neighborhood drinker, obviously). We finally settled on The Waterfront Cafe (I think it was called), an expensive, stylish restaurant perched right on the Bay. As we talked, I couldn't believe that he was two years older than me. He easily looked to be in his early thirties.

Of course, afterwards, I invited him back to my apartment "to see the view", and we'll draw a discrete veil over the rest of the evening. But my premonition of how the evening would go had been completely fulfilled. The next day began my least favorite part of dating. That period where you're suddenly struck with nagging doubts - will he call? When should I call? I kept telling myself that I was past having such heart-scrunching feelings, that I was too mature to be fluttering about somebody I'd only just met. But my heart didn't listen to my head, and, frankly, I don't think even my head believed it. At any rate, we're on for a rematch on Sunday. And this is all great material for my screenwriting :)