Writing

August 24, 1979

To put this in context – I’d just learned that my spec script, which had been optioned by Steve Friedman’s Kings Road Productions to be a feature film, was going to be re-written by another writer. Bill Froug was my screenwriting professor and mentor at UCLA.

My agent and my mentor were correct. Having your work rewritten by someone else is part of a writer’s life in the film business (less so in television but it still happens). I ended up rewriting many more scripts by other people than having my own scripts rewritten which ought to make me feel better but it doesn’t. The fact is, it always sucks to be told you’re off the project – especially when it’s your own original spec script.

I suspect other professionals would react the same way if this was routine practice in their business. Imagine a surgeon being told that a new surgeon in town had been hired to remove the heart he’s just transplanted in order to insert a better one – or an interior decorator who gives her best only to learn all of her work is off to Goodwill and a new interior decorator will start from scratch. It hurts to be replaced. And it never got easier, although I did get better at hiding my emotions. (Hint: It is considered bad form to cry like a baby when – not if – this happens to you.)

I understand why it sometimes has to be done. Sometimes it even works out for the best. It’s easy for a writer to get tunnel vision and see only one way to solve a problem. New eyes spot new solutions. Given the fortunes and executive jobs attached to the success or failure of a film, no wonder so many execs play it safe and bet on the flavor of the month instead of a newbie. If the “hot” writer tanks, at least they had a reasonable basis to believe he’d succeed.

If and when it happens to you, remember it’s not personal. It’s only business. And then cry your eyes out in solitude.

August 16, 1982

THE LATE GREAT BRILLIANT WRITER & MUSICIAN, DAVID ACKLES

Chris met his future BFF when he was two; he and Geo Ackles both attended the Church of the Lighted Window’s Montessori School. I noticed that whenever I picked CD up, he was with the same boy who – at that time – bore a striking resemblance to CD. Unfortunately, one of them (I don’t remember which) moved to another pre-school. As these two-year-olds lacked the social skills to exchange phone numbers or arrange play dates, a beautiful friendship almost died before it began.

But fate intervened! My in-laws stopped on their way to Temecula and took CD and me out for lunch at Bob’s Big Boy.

By miraculous coincidence, David Ackles was there with his son George. Our two-year-olds were delirious with joy. They leapt across the restaurant to greet each other like long lost brothers. David and I exchanged phone numbers and promised to get them together.

I assumed we’d facilitate play dates but otherwise pass like parental ships in the night. I was astonished to learn David was a fellow WGA member as well as a talented singer/songwriter who recorded for Electra (check out Road to Cairo – my favorite of his songs – if you haven’t heard it).

DAVID ACKLES SINGING HIS SONG,"ROAD TO CAIRO," IN 1967 — DAVID ACKLES SINGING HIS SONG,”ROAD TO CAIRO,” IN 1967

Not only that, he was witty, charismatic and just plain delightful – and although it almost seems impossible – it gets BETTER! His wife, Janice, was just as quick, hilarious and fun as David.

Before long, we were dressing up and role-playing mystery games with Joyce and John Salter, Terry McDonnell, Matt Rowell, Anne Kurrasch, Jake Jacobson and others. I wish I’d had the foresight to tape or film a few of those sessions. We laughed until it hurt.

The world lost a great artist and we lost a great friend when David died of lung cancer on March 2, 1999 but his music lives on – as does the friendship between Chris and George.

PLAYING A MYSTERY GAME - Top row: Joyce Salter, John Salter, Anne Kurrasch, Terry McDonnell, David Ackles; bottom row: me, Janice Ackles — PLAYING A MYSTERY GAME – Top row: Joyce Salter, John Salter, Anne Kurrasch, Terry McDonnell, David Ackles; bottom row: me, Janice Ackles

July 12, 1968

Judging by the October 1955 photo above, even at four I wasn’t a “thank god I’m a country girl” type. Still, I couldn’t help wondering what my life would be like if I’d grown up in Missouri instead of Silicon Valley.

Fishing with some of our relatives in Iowa.

Most of my cousins – almost all of my extended family – lived in the Midwest in 1968. Every other year, our family loaded up the station wagon and drove to Estherville and Graettinger in the northeastern corner of Iowa. There are aspects of Iowa that are buried deep in my subconscious, images that are inscribed on my brain – brick or white houses, humidity and mosquitoes, dinners with fresh buttered sweet corn and strange puffy homemade bread. The smell of coffee wafted through the day – coffee and musty old books. The basements, which all contained a washer, dryer and toilet were damp and a little bit scary even though that’s where we always played. It was cooler down there even though sometimes it was still so hot all we could do was breathe and sweat. I hate to sweat.

With adult cousins on my father's side — With adult cousins on my father’s side

My grandfather, commonly referred to as R.S. by all grandchildren, was a real go-getter, a non-stop talker. Even after retirement, he didn’t quit; he took volunteer work in a funeral parlor, probably to remind himself on a daily basis of how much more vital he was than the average man. In a box in his basement, he stored the obituaries of all his friends. The basement also held a pool table and assorted recreation equipment but my cousins and I enjoyed the obits most. I suppose our fear of death – and its imminence for all the aged people of Estherville – made it an object of high hilarity.

With adult cousins on my mother's side - at the tiny (very tiny) Spencer airport — With adult cousins on my mother’s side – at the tiny (very tiny) Spencer airport

We had no idea how quickly time could pass.

July 8, 1970

Let’s just say, I don’t have piles of “Employee of the Month” awards hoarded in a drawer – for starters I was rarely employed for a full month. Outside of academia, I was successfully challenged by the concept of a work ethic. I tried to get the hang of it, kind of, but I am what I am, I can’t deny it. I’ve got a real affinity for sloth. My mother complained I was lazy and inept about helping her with housework. (An effective combination. It was easier to do the dishes herself than enlist me.) Exasperated, she warned me to get rich because I’d need a maid. She intended it as a threat but I heard a swell idea.

During my high school and college years, I worked at various part-time jobs. Bulletin-folder for my father. Neighborhood babysitter. Corn dog cashier at the Santa Clara County Fair, salesclerk at San Jose State bookstore and UCLA bookstore – perfect, except when I had to wait on customers. Paper slicer for two days. UCLA Med Center OB/Gyn ward clerk. Typist at the naval base on Coronado Island.

When I graduated, I figured my days of dead end jobs were behind me. I was eager to launch myself into a fun career like Mary Tyler Moore did on her show. Something in the entertainment business with a warm family atmosphere and witty supporting characters like Mr. Grant and Murray.

At my first employment agency interview, I took a typing test and dazzled the room. (I was not Outstanding Typist of the Year at Wilcox High for nothing.)

I’ll never forget what my recruiter said next.

“Honey, if you learn shorthand, you can rule the world.”

Hmm, a lack of shorthand didn’t hurt Mary Richards. Why is it a problem for me? In a moment of clarity, the illusion of living Mary Richard’s life dissolves. I face a future as a secretary in a coma-inducing office devoid of wise-cracking curmudgeons.

I know what I have to do. There’s just one place I function slightly better than average instead of below the mean and I can stay there forever if necessary. Grad School, here I come!

June 22, 1969

Less than ten days prior, I endured graduation from Wilcox High – so how did I wind up here?

On a rainy Sunday afternoon, months after my acceptance as a fall English major at UCLA, I got bored and flipped through the UCLA Catalog of Courses. It changed the course of my life.

UCLA General Catalog - No Math - No Science - Sign me up! — UCLA General Catalog – No Math – No Science – Sign me up!

That afternoon, in a burst of clarity, I realized that simply by switching my major to Film (College of Fine Arts as opposed to Bachelor Arts), I could jettison every single math and science class – for the rest of my life! And that was just the beginning, once I viewed college like an academic Chutes and Ladders. I didn’t have to land on boring chutes like Shakespeare (I confess, not a fan) and Milton – I could climb crazy ladders instead. In addition to a smorgasbord of fantastic film courses all I needed to win a degree was a few English department creative writing courses and my choice of esoteric lit classes.

First thing Monday morning, I was on the phone with the UCLA registrar to change my major from English (already sounding dreary) to Film Writing (until now, who knew that anybody actually wrote films? Not me, but it sounded more entertaining than Chaucer in the original Middle English.)

Disclaimer: Don’t bother making the same request today. For starters, you must be a junior to apply. Once a year, the Film Department admits 15 juniors from disciplines within UCLA and 15 juniors from outside institutions. To compete, you must submit a creative portfolio, envelopes stuffed with cash (that’s a JOKE) and pray. Sixty out of thousands of applicants are selected for an in-person on-campus interview. Thirty of them move on to become next year’s film majors.

STUDENT ID CARD FRESHMAN YEAR (going for the popular Serial Killer look)

To be sure, it was not exactly a cake walk in 1969. The registrar said, “Here’s the thing, Miss Knutsen. You can do it if you start this summer instead of in the fall.”

I relate to a sculpture in the wonderful Sculpture Gardens conveniently located in front of the Theater Arts and Art buildings.

This might have given me pause had I not been paralyzed by self-diagnosed severe clinical depression. With no rainbows on my horizon, what could I lose by sacrificing a final Santa Clara summer for a new start in LA?

So I said YES and it changed my life. Plunging into college that summer opened the door to a perfect career (for me) in a field I literally did not know existed until I noticed the difference in basic course requirements between English and Film. Was it serendipity, fate, luck or the hand of God? It depends on your point of view, I guess. All I know for sure is I wasn’t searching for my purpose or a path – but it was waiting for me to say yes and leap.

June 20, 1964

Cousin Connie at Janet's left w/her two little sisters and my Grandma O — Cousin Connie at Janet’s left w/her two little sisters and my Grandma O

Here’s a tip for anyone asked to read a piece of creative writing by anyone else – a relative, friend, co-worker, neighbor. No matter how savagely the writer deprecates their own work, in their secret heart they believe it is a masterpiece. They don’t want your nit-picking notes, your criticism or your suggestions for cuts and improvements. As they see it, no improvement is possible. Every word is perfection precisely as placed. So why did they give it to you to read and ask for your “honest opinion?”

What they’re looking for is love, unconditional love and approval for their very existence. Anything less than a flood of admiration will, at best, fail to satisfy. You don’t want to be responsible for “daunting a dream,” do you? It was more than a little galling to be so cavalierly dismissed by a cousin at least two years younger.

Perhaps the need for validation is more pressing for amateur (unpublished or unproduced) writers. Professionals like myself have learned to suck it up, absorb a torrent of “notes” from well-meaning but clueless production executives and remain standing. No one survives in this business without a thick skin.

Who’s kidding who? Professionals yearn for love and approval every bit as intensely as my 6^th grade self craved it from my cousin Connie. A little love and approval goes a long way.

My family with Connie's family except - where's Kathy? Hiding and crying her eyes out, that's where. Is it my imagination or does Connie sport a self-satisfied smirk? — My family with Connie’s family except – where’s Kathy? Hiding and crying her eyes out, that’s where. Is it my imagination or does Connie sport a self-satisfied smirk?

Case in point. I did my best work – above and beyond the call of duty – for a producer who started every conversation with five minutes gushing about the brilliance of my last draft before easing into that minor matter of a few “tiny” fixes. His praise was so addictive, so intoxicating – and, at least for me, so unusual – I’d hurl myself into yet another unpaid rewrite just for another taste of the sweet stuff.

Just to be clear, I do not advocate manipulating writers. But Thumper’s mother got it right in Bambi – especially when dealing with the tender heart of an amateur. If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.

June 15, 1966

Was I an optimist or what? From the sound of this entry, I sincerely believed that merely winning the outstanding English student award in 9^th grade would be enough to give me confidence when my faith in a writing career – always a risky endeavor at best – faltered. Even my father, possibly my staunchest advocate, regularly handed me clippings he just “happened to see” about expanding career opportunities in library science among other liberal arts fields besides creative writing. It’s not that he didn’t believe in me, he just thought it would be prudent to have a real job to fall back on. To his credit, he never pressured me to choose a more sensible major than film-writing but that’s another story.

Apparently, I believed the 7^th grade and my freshman year of high school were the nadir of my existence. Little did I know that all the things that made me so “neurotic” and turned the year “hideous” were trivial beyond belief compared to some of the real life problems awaiting me down the line.

Two of three female students in photo above (Literary Magazine) are named Cathy/Kathy. Cathy Hoover and Kathy Knutsen. Also pictured, Tal Pomeroy, Erin Heinlein and Gail Kaiser

Minor note, but one I couldn’t help but be cognizant of in those days – whenever I mention a girl named Kathy/Cathy, it’s accompanied by a surname. That’s because in every single class in my public school Santa Clara life, there were at least five Kathys – me, Kathy Kerr, Cathy Hoover, Cathy Silva, Kathy Kane, Kathy Scott, Kathy Reid, Kathy Locey, Kathy Kramer or some similar combination. I envied girls with unique names like Krystal Woodward and Joell Funkhauser. Today, while Kathy and Kathleen have fallen below the 500 most popular name mark, Krystal and Joell are on the rise. What’s in a name? Nothing, really, but I would’ve preferred something more distinctive.

Three of the six female students pictured above, myself included, are named Kathy (Kathleen or Catherine) – Myself, Catherine Kramer and Kathy Locey.

June 7, 1964

This was a huge day for me – literally, the first dollar I ever earned from my writing. It was thrilling to hear my name called and walk onto the Villa Montalvo stage/podium to accept my prize – even better when the lady who read my poem sobbed. In retrospect, though, she was a pretty soft touch when it came to tears. Misty hasn’t stood the test of time quite as well as I might have hoped.

(In the interest of full disclosure, the beautiful white cat pictured is not Misty – there never was an actual Misty although Whitey and Calico were real cats (such clever names!) The picture is of the beautiful and much missed Skywhys.)

May 28, 1971

This was one of the worst days of my life. To set it up a little, I was at UC Santa Barbara for one quarter of intercampus visitation and this was the day I showed the film I made for one of the classes I took there.

First, I take full responsibility for this debacle. For some bizarre reason, I believed that if I made a complicated incomprehensible film that nobody could understand, the audience would be awed by my superior intellect and love me. If you doubt how pretentious and wrong-headed my film was, allow me to dazzle you with its full title – JOURNEY: A RITUAL IN FIVE PARTS.

So why do I consider this disaster one of the luckiest breaks of my life? First, I made the film in Santa Barbara, where no one from the UCLA Film Department would stumble upon it and it could die in peace. If I hadn’t launched this colossal misfire in Santa Barbara, I almost certainly would have made a similar film for my Project 1 at UCLA – which, at the time, was basically a thesis film worth 8 units of credit on which your entire career in the film department depended. The humiliation in Santa Barbara saved me a far greater humiliation.

Second, and more important, I learned in a visceral punch-to-the-gut way that obscure pretentious films are not the way to an audience’s heart. (Why didn’t I know this already? I must’ve been absent that day.) My value system changed, as is reflected in my subsequent writing career. I finally understood the most important aspects of any film, story or book are to be entertaining, clear and accessible.

And, when I made my Project 1 three months later at UCLA, it was one of four films that was awarded the Jim Morrison Memorial Grant.

May 17,1980

These photos were taken a couple years later – at her baby or wedding shower – but they’re the only ones I can find of us together. It’s surprisingly awkward to ask someone famous to have their picture taken with you, even if you know them – especially if you know them, actually – because you’re supposed to treat them like just another average person. However, when they’re at the peak of their fame and people gawk, it’s hard to ignore the fact you’re hanging out with a star. It’s equally hard not to be aware that you belong on the other side of the red velvet rope, with all the fans and nameless people that don’t get “seen about town” in Variety. I’m not complaining – far from it. It’s exciting to orbit a star. I loved it.

Living in LA, it’s not unusual to see stars going about their daily lives. I ran into Dick Van Dyke at a play and got to tell him how brilliant he was in a TV movie called The Morning After. I passed Arnold Schwarzenegger in a Beverly Hills restaurant. He’s much shorter than you’d think. My most memorable celebrity spotting, though, maybe because it was the first, was eating lunch at a table very close to where Cindy Williams and one of her co-stars from American Graffiti dined. I didn’t interrupt them, ask for an autograph or gape openly – it was enough of a thrill just to spot a celluloid heroine eating like a regular human being. Given this memorable (on my end) early sighting, the working relationship and friendship we developed later felt fated – in a six-degrees-of-separation way. We met because Cindy was looking for a writer. A mutual friend recommended me, for which I am forever grateful.

Don’t bother looking for Little Miracles, the project we met about on May 13, 1980. The network shelved it. Luckily, our friendship survived.

Writing

August 24, 1979

August 16, 1982

July 12, 1968

July 8, 1970

June 22, 1969

June 20, 1964

June 15, 1966

June 7, 1964

May 28, 1971

May 17,1980

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