1/20: The Official Sub-Page

Just as a matter of site stuff: I added a page here for 1/20, the movie I wrote. (It isn't the film's actual website, which is more comprehensive and informed; this is just sort of reminding me that I wrote a movie, and anyone else who winds up on that page too I guess.)

And Kayla Dempsey, who plays Yvette, and I were just interviewed yesterday on the punk variety show Rew & Who. Kayla bursts out with some a capella Janis Joplin because she is incredible. Rew is pretty amazing, too. I mostly just giggle and prevaricate. Here's Part 1. Edit: Here's Part 2! With Kayla singing Janis Joplin's "Mercedes Benz." She is so amazing.



And because I'm not quite ready yet to stop talking about it constantly: I wrote a new book! It's about my best friend dying and the R.E.M. album Automatic for the People and the first time I fell in love. Check it out and review it. You can even maybe buy it, if you've got $2.

1/20: A Motion Picture

Update: Watch the 1/20 trailer.
Other update: read about our first film fest, or all 1/20 news.

I'm finally allowed to tell the title for the movie that I've been working on, and there it is. The title, I mean: "1/20." (We've been saying it out loud as "One-Twenty," but if you want to be a real geek about it, you're welcome to use the "slash.")

The title doesn't give away all of the movie's secrets. It doesn't even reveal that much about the purpose or the theme of the film (although, if you read it the right way, it might).

I'm not really sure where to begin, so I'm just going to do a little interview with myself about it. If you want to see my older blog posts about the movie -- about 1/20, I mean! -- just look for the label the secret movie (by clicking on those words, I mean). And if you have any other questions, just put 'em in the comments section. I'll try to say everything I'm allowed to.

How did this happen?
A producer read my book Never Mind the Goldbergs and really liked it. Then he read all my other books. Then he asked if I could write a screenplay. I told him I'd never done it before, and he said that was okay, he'd never made a film before either. So that was that. A director (expereinced!) was brought on, and he had his own idea of what movie we should make. Then we enlisted a talented (and also experienced!) production company, who were like the Oompa Loompas, but without all the creepy undertones. They were just that damn good.

What's it about?
This is where it gets tricky -- how much I'm allowed to say, I mean. Two girls are stuck in the suburbs, beating their heads against the wall, and they decide to run away to Washington, DC. There's a little bit of science fiction. A little bit of a love story. A little bit about how to break up with your best friend.

You mean it's not Jewish or punk?
It's not Jewish -- well, not flagrantly. None of the main characters are -- all the characters are collaborations between me and the director and the actors, and I think we all squeezed a lot of our spirituality/religion/punkitude into them. Ayako, who plays the lead character, is the kind of brilliant that shatters glass from miles away when she's angry, and spreads love pheromones to people two counties away. She's this demure, soft-spoken girl who -- literally five minutes into the film -- emerges into something fierce and savage and beautiful.

It's pretty flagrantly punk, though. You'll see as soon as I'm allowed to show the movie poster -- Ayako's hair is an art piece. An art piece that's 18 inches tall.

Where did the idea come from, anyway?
I lived in D.C. for five years, from when I was 17 until I turned 22, moved to San Francisco, and decided to be a poet. It was a weird five years -- I became Orthodox, was homeless for a bit, became a coffee addict, got off coffee, spent a lot of time alone wandering around huge empty boulevards. You haven't lived till you've been alone at the Lincoln Memorial at 4 a.m. Of course, you also probably haven't come that close to being abducted by a psycho and disappearing off the face of the earth, either. D.C. is a beautiful place, but it's also frightening. It's where I learned how to be an adult.

Have you seen the movie yet?
I've seen a rough cut, and I've seen about two minutes with film. It's beautiful. Gerardo del Castillo, who directed the film (he's the only one whose name I know I'm allowed to reveal), is a genius. If he made thirty-second TV commercials, prime-time audiences would be jumping to their feet and giving a standing ovation five times an hour.

Where did you film?
All over the place. Most scenes were shot in Queens, Manhattan, and upstate (well, semi-upstate) (well, Monsey). Some great stories came out of that, mostly involving Ayako's mohawk and Hasidic Jews. The last week of filming was all in D.C. proper. I missed the last day of filming, which was on Thanksgiving and at my favorite location in the city. But I got to be at the White House scenes, which was way worth it.

What's your favorite part?
That would be telling.

Fine, then. Biggest surprise?
Melinda, who did the art direction and props. I didn't even consciously realize there would be an art director. But when I wrote about what Ayako's character's bedroom should look like, I was basically fantasizing -- it was my bedroom if I knew way more about electronics and graffiti art and hacking Christmas lights than I do.

What's next?
Filming was completed in November. Now the movie's getting all professional-fied: The film is being cut and edited in Barcelona. The actual sound is getting mastered in London, and they're working out the soundtrack. And we're trying to get a distribution deal, which sounds like nothing, but it's apparently the hardest and scariest part of this whole enterprise.

And, most of all, drumming up support. Talking to people. Letting you know how good 1/20 is going to be once you're watching it in a theater (it will be amazing, I promise) and letting the Hollywood Industry Folks know that there are people who want to see it. That a movie doesn't have to have naked folks or guns or blue naked people with guns...sometimes, that all it takes is a lot of heart.

Wish I Was Here

Pictures of a bunch of strangers mostly make me annoyed. Occasionally -- maybe it's a certain collection of facial expressions, maybe it's a waterslide in the background -- they make me jealous that I wasn't there or sad that I missed something important.

This shot from the set of The Secret Movie makes me a little of both. But it also makes me just happy that it exists in the first place (or, that it will), and that this many awesome people got to meet each other.



But, still, wishing I was there.

(but, thank you, Aleix)

On National Novel Writing Month

Q: National Novel Writing Month is making me wanna hurt myself. I'm trying to do 6 pages a day, but I'm constantly behind and nothing is actually happening at all and I try to use music to time it, like I average 1/3-1/2 a page per song.

The problem with NaNoWriMo, to get my soapbox hottened, is that it's purely homogeneous. It's not made to adjust for anyone who fits outside the norm. Stephen King writes maddeningly fast. Dickens wrote maddeningly slow. James Herriot writes 1 page a day, no matter what else is going on or how inspired he is. What Nano *is* good for is, it gives you a default deadline. If you need to adjust that deadline, hey, no one's stopping you. But at least you have a backup.

**

Oh, and update on the secret movie update soon, I promise. To keep you in suspense, though, check this out:



(Thanks to Joy for that.)

What I'm Listening to

Tonight's my first night editing in a while. Just found out that my fave Jewish punk band of the day, Can!!Can, is going to be in the movie. But that's not what I'm listening to. This is what I'm listening to. One's a dancing-by-yourself-in-the-center-of-the-room song by the emotionally perfect Hadara. And then my friend Soce just sent me this, and in the middle of it, who should be washing a car shirtless but Fred Chao. And that should make anybody's night.

P.S.

The producer of our film just forwarded this to the production staff. It's small, but I think it's sweet. I know it sucks to turn every Hollywood death into a Grand Statement (or, as is more usually the case, egotism), but I was blown away that he wanted to keep working on his TV series after the cancer diagnosis. It's like, 98% of acting might be being a celebrity or flirting with tabloids, but behind that facade are some people who really sincerely believe in their creative juices.

In an interview following Patrick Swayze's untimely death, Jennifer Gray recently stated:

"When I think of him, I think of being in his arms when we were kids, dancing, practicing the lift in the freezing lake, having a blast doing this tiny little movie we thought no one would ever see. My heart goes out to his wife and childhood sweetheart, Lisa Niemi, to his mom, Patsy, and to the rest of their family."

G-d, Kids, and Movies

First of all: the important things in life.


It's pretty quiet here, for a change. Working furiously on the new book, now that the movie script is in, approved (mostly), and everyone seems more-or-less happy with it, or if they're not, they're not being unhappy in my direction. Which is a relief. Secretly, by the beginning I was thinking that 120 pages was nothing and that I could spit it out in a heartbeat, but by the fifth complete revision, as I was adding up each 120-page draft in my head -- that's something like 600 pages. Definitely longer than any novel I've ever written. Way longer than anything I've written in three freakin' months!

For a good portion of preproduction, they tried to keep their top casting choices secret from me. They didn't want the people getting in the way of my voices for them, the producer said. Before the last draft, I sneaked a look at the audition tapes, and I could see why. Suddenly, I wasn't writing for my main character, I was writing for this snarky, beautiful, a-little-too-candid young woman who was going to become my main character.

But: There's a new novel in the pots. I don't know what's going to happen, but it tastes great so far.

And, finally, there's a new G-dcast in the house! These are the final few episodes, and I feel like we've upped our ante with them. First up this week: Dahlia Lithwick, who edits for Slate and NPR and Newsweek. And you have to come back on Wednesday to see Mayim Bialik's take on Vayelech. Oops. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say that.

How I Wrote a Film Script in a Week (drugless and caffeine-less)

Over Shabbos, I read my screenplay.

I know -- three logical responses to this:

* So what? You wrote it.
* What, you don't remember it?
* It's been, what, a month?

And the answer to all three is: Actually, I'd completely forgotten it existed in the first place. I'd spent five months trying to write this script, and writing something -- a thing that, at times, I thought was the script -- only to realize, once the producer (also known as the guy who's bankrolling this whole affair) had flown to Spain to meet with the director and was deep into plotting out WHICH character should be in exactly WHICH place, and whether scenes that were supposed to be filmed out deep in the country would be filmed in the suburbs or a vacant lot in the city, that the movie they were going to be making....well, it was going to be a completely different movie.

What happened exactly was, the day I sent it away, I wasn't completely happy with one of the minor characters. And that character ended up having their own movie. And that movie...well, 15 pages came out that day.

The producer -- who, ordinarily, has a reputation for being a calm and reasonable gentleman -- yelled at me over an international number. His voice sounded more like the Matrix than an actual voice, but the meaning was still clear. "WE. NEED. A. SCRIPT."

"Seven days," I begged. "Give me seven days."

And, in those seven days, all the thoughts that I'd been pushing to the back of my head for the past of those five months came rushing to the front of my head, and the sides of my head, and filling the rest of it, too.

So I wrote it. Put it aside for a week. Realized the ending was wrong, and that there needed to be a scene that there wasn't, and rewrote that part. And, with that, I handed it over to the people who know much more about the visual moving image than I ever will.

That was a month ago. Friday night, everyone else crashed out early, and I found myself wondering what had happened to my main character. And I found myself reading it. The entire thing.

I used to read parts of Never Mind the Goldbergs when it came out. Candy, too. Losers, I haven't read at all. But I've never actually

((yeah, i'm not sure what happened to the end of this...but i figured it was important to post.))