John August

First Person

In which I attend the Grammy Awards

First Person, Los Angeles

As I might have [mentioned](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2005/dude-i-got-a-grammy-nomination), I got nominated for a Grammy Award (along with Danny Elfman) in the Best Song TV/Movie/Visual Media category for “Wonka’s Welcome Song” from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

The nomination came as a surprise, in that (a) I didn’t realize the Grammys were coming up, (b) I didn’t know the song was eligible, and (c) it’s an absurd choice for Best Song. It’s a fun ditty, sure, kind of a riff on “It’s a Small World” from the eponymous Disney theme park ride. But there it was, on the list.

I promptly called Danny Elfman. After making plans for a play-date for our respective offspring, I asked if he planned on attending the awards. He was horrified at the prospect, which I guess makes sense for a professional musician with a shelf full of awards.

But me, hell. When am I going to get nominated for a Grammy again?

So I went.

Here’s my first-hand account.

To begin with, “Music’s Biggest Night” is actually “music’s longest afternoon.” They give out awards in 108 categories. Of those, only 11 are televised. The other 97 are passed out during the pre-telecast ceremony, which begins at 1:30 p.m. We left the house at noon to get there in time.

The pre-telecast was held in the West Hall of the convention center, next door to Staples Center, where the main awards would be held. It was friendly and low-key. Anoushka Shankar and Michael Bublé performed (separately), and most award-recipients were quick to get on and off stage.

My category was #31 on the list. The whole time, I was thinking about what I would say in the (admittedly unlikely) event that my name was in the envelope. I settled on:

Hi, wow. [Stare at trophy in disbelief] I’d like to thank the Grammy academy. Of course, Danny Elfman, for writing really catchy music. And especially Tim Burton for saying, “Sure, yeah, melting puppets. Singing. Great!” Anyway, this means a lot. Thanks. [Hold up trophy]

And then I’d start to go off stage in the wrong direction, only to be corrected by a pretty young woman who would take my elbow and lead me the right way.

As it turned out, it ended up being a lot simpler. I clapped politely while Glen Ballard accepted the award for the song he wrote for The Polar Express. He was gracious, so I certainly can’t begrudge him. And I’m happy I lost to someone who at least showed up.

We ducked out of the pre-telecast awards during the gospel section (sorry, Jesus), in the hopes of getting properly liquored before the grown-up Grammys, which started at 5 p.m. The instructions on the so-you’ve-been-nominated-for-a-Grammy sheet noted that alcohol would be not be served after 4:30 p.m. While this was technically true, the more accurate description of the situation could be found on signs at all of the food stations:

SORRY, NO ALCOHOL AT THIS EVENT.

No, really. There was a kind of sad, strange comedy in eavesdropping:

  • GUY IN SUIT
  • Could I get a vodka tonic?
  • SERVER
  • Sorry, there’s no alcohol.
  • GUY IN SUIT
  • How about wine?
  • SERVER
  • No, there’s no alcohol.
  • GUY IN SUIT
  • Just beer, then.
  • SERVER
  • There’s no alcohol at all.
  • GUY IN SUIT
  • Anywhere?
  • SERVER
  • No, sir.

Now, in reality, if Kanye West had wanted a mojito, someone, somewhere would have found some mint leaves to muddle. But for the hoi polloi, the event was drier than a Kansas wedding. I was left with Diet Pepsi and rage to wash down my nachos.

Fortunately, the Grammys themselves were fun.

Having been to quite a few premieres and fancy shindigs, I can say that the Grammys were the most consistently entertaining. The musical performances were good, the groan factor was low, and every celebrity had to walk by my seat at least once.

Our seats were on the floor, next to the aisle. Whenever a performer and/or presenter needed to go from their seat to backstage, they were walked by us. Even better, running across the aisle next to our seats were thick cables covered with a floor mat. Although marked with white tape, this hazzard was very easy to trip over. Many celebrities did.

Celebrities who tripped and/or wobbled included:

* Sting
* Sir Paul McCartney
* Teri Hatcher (meta-alert!)
* Jennifer Love Hewitt
* The woman in Destiny’s Child who is not Beyonce or Kelly

In general, I’m not star-struck. But the combination of mild danger and celebrity almost made up for the lack of alcohol. The guy sitting next to me won a Grammy for mixing the Green Day album. So that’s cool.

The official after party was back at the West Hall. Everyone knows that the official party sucks and that all the cool people go to their own secret after parties. However, we were not invited to any of the secret after parties. So we went to the normal one.

It took forever to get in, but the food was fairly tasty. And the drinks? Free-flowing. On the whole, it felt like a big Hollywood premiere party, with good production design and some questionable entertainment choices. (Interpretative dancers, for a start.)

We were home by midnight. There’s no Grammy to set on the mantelpiece, but on the whole, it was a fun 12 hours. I haven’t watched the show on the TiVo yet, but I doubt I’ll see myself. The closest call probably came when Chris Martin of Coldplay galloped down the aisle.

God, I wish he’d tripped.

Because not all screenwriters live in Wisconsin

First Person

I recently did an e-mail interview with the good folks at the [Wisconsin Screenwriters Forum](http://www.wiscreenwritersforum.org/), only to realize that a significant percentage of my readership base (aspiring screenwriters, [confused Christians](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2005/liam-found-a-mistake-in-the-bible), web-surfing office drones) lives outside of our 30th state, and therefore might not receive the newsletter.

So with WSF’s kind permission, I’m reprinting it here.

Could you tell me a little about the process you went through from the time you decided you wanted to write screenplays, to the time you wrote GO?

I wrote my first script in graduate school. It was a romantic tragedy set in Colorado. Reading it now, I don’t think it’s all that good, but the writing showed enough promise to get me some meetings, and ultimately an agent. By that time, I had already written the first part of Go, designed to be a short film. It was only several scripts later (after How to Eat Fried Worms and A Wrinkle in Time) that I went back and wrote the full version of Go.

I pretty much always wanted to be a writer, but I didn’t really know anything about screenwriting until I got to Los Angeles. Like all new screenwriters, it took a while to get used to the format.

How did GO make its way from an idea in your mind to your first produced feature film?

Go came from a bunch of little incidents I’d collected over the years, some true, some not. A lot of people focus on the structure of it, but I think what makes it work is that moment-by-moment, you’re not sure where the hell it’s going. That’s very much the experience of being twenty.

What process do you adhere to, if any, when approaching an adaptation?

Adaptations are really no different than originals. You’re looking for what’s inherently the “movie idea.” Sometimes that’s obvious (Jurassic Park) and sometimes that’s more work to uncover (Big Fish). But in both cases, you’re best off building the movie from the ground up, rather than trying to force the original material into a cinematic shape.

What are some of the smartest things you’ve done in regards to your career? Things you feel have helped bring you to your current level of success.

I was never a big networker. I didn’t keep up relationships on the off chance that someday I’d work with a certain person. But I learned how to be good in meetings, which means knowing when to talk and when to listen. When people would give me stupid notes, I wouldn’t reject them outright, but would rather try to intuit what they actually wanted, even if they couldn’t articulate it. And I’ve always tried to be the guy who comes up with solutions, rather than pointing out problems.

Have you made any mistakes along the way, in regards to your screenwriting career, which others could potentially learn from?

Especially early in my career, I’d fall in love with a given scene and do anything to keep it in the script, even if in my heart I knew it wasn’t working for the story. Now, I’m a lot more ruthless. There will always be other great scenes. What’s important is that the piece as a whole is working.

How do you approach writing that snappy dialogue you’ve become popular for?

Dialogue is just the way people would talk if they had a few extra seconds to think about what they were going to say. It’s not exactly natural; it’s more compressed and streamlined. I think it’s a lot like how illustrators do animation, flipping pages back and forth to see how it moves. I’m constantly reading from line to line, making sure the rhythm works.

What are some of your favorite movies? Screenplays? Books?

My favorite movie is Aliens, which is probably my favorite screenplay as well. I don’t know that I have one favorite book. I don’t tend to re-read books the way I’ll re-watch movies, so I don’t have the same kind of familiarity with any one work. But in general, I love the dysfunctional family genre, such as Augusten Burrough’s RUNNING WITH SCISSORS or David Sedaris’ NAKED.

What piece of advice could you have used back when you were an aspiring screenwriter?

To worry less about the format and more about the words. Honestly, if a script has terrific writing, no one will give a rat’s ass about the margins and sluglines. There’s far too much emphasis on doing things right, and not enough on doing things brilliantly. When you read a great script, the paper disappears and you feel like you’re watching a movie. That has nothing to do with 12 pt. Courier. It’s artful writing, and that’s the only crucial element

Readers write in: Don’t put gum behind your ear

First Person

envelopeDear John,

I am a big fan, since GO. We finally got a DVD of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and showed it at my 8/9 year old daughter’s birthday sleepover. Great movie, great time. When the time comes for your baby to have a sleepover don’t fret it. It was fully successful and not bad at all. Remember this in eight years or so and email me for pointers.

A few days later when the _real_ birthday arrived, we took our three daughters (5,7,9) to dinner and then went to have our nine-year old’s ears pierced. Before getting her ears pierced, the birthday girl took some of her birthday money and bought her sisters gumballs (one of those nice gestures that you love to see your kids do. Just wait. It makes the other miseries of parenthood worth it).

The ear piercing went well. Little apparent pain. No tears. Because we live in Michigan and it is miserable cold, I went and got the car so I could pick-up my women at the door.

When they got in the car, our youngest, Mika, was crying and my wife looked harassed. Mika had gum in her hair. When we asked why, she told us that she was trying to be like Violet and put the gum behind her ear.

violet beauregardI wish I could say that I was completely calm and sensitive, but mostly I kept barking at her not to play with it and not to lean back into her car seat, and that I would take care of it when we got home. She whined and cried the whole way (one of the terrible things of being a parent that make you wish that those _gumball gift_ moments came more often).

About an hour later, after ice, peanut butter, one ruined fine-toothed comb, much crying and my reluctant use of scissors, the gum was gone. She also has a bald spot behind her right ear. We hope it won’t be as obvious as her self-cut bangs that just now are growing out enough to make her no longer look like Twiggy/Stevie Nicks/Mia Farrow as Rosemary.

In the shower when I was washing the remaining peanut butter and little strings of gum out of her hair, I asked her if she learned anything. She said yes: Don’t put gum behind your ear. A good parent would have been happy with this, but I am not a good parent. I want more. I want bigger lessons. I suggested that the other lesson is: Just because you see someone do something in a movie this does not mean that you can do it in real life.

Anyhow, I know you didn’t create the gum-behind-the-ear schtick that Violet does in the movie, but boy was I cursing you during the car ride home. On reflection, I am grateful. I would rather have Mika learn to suspect the world of fiction after emulating Violet and having a bad experience with gum behind her ear than learn that lesson at 21 after a bad experience emulating the behavior of any of the characters in GO.

Because I read your blog, I feel like I know you, which is a little weird. If I were to see you in the Farmer Jacks (grocery store in Michigan) I would probably walk right up and start talking as if we were friends. I imagine this is the thing that (other more visible?) celebrities find unsettling.

Have a great day.

— Fred

I am a white male of European descent

First Person, Tarzan

Gene MapMy last normal job — the 9-to-5 kind — was as an assistant at [Oliver Stone’s](http://imdb.com/name/nm0000231/) production company. At the time, he was in post-production on [Natural Born Killers](http://imdb.com/title/tt0110632/), and developing future projects, one of which was a remake of Planet of the Apes.

Any version of Apes must tackle the basic question of, “How does the hero get stuck on a planet full of goddamn apes?” Screenwriter [Terry Hayes’s](http://imdb.com/name/nm0371249/) adaptation forewent rockets and crash-landings, and instead had our hero (or heroes, it’s been a while) traveling backwards in time through mitochondrial DNA. The device itself didn’t make a lick of sense, but it all felt very [Michael Crichton](http://www.crichton-official.com/): with enough jargon, almost anything sounds plausible.

The Terry Hayes/Oliver Stone version never got made, but it was my first introduction to mitochondria, which are fascinating relics we all carry with us. Essentially, they’re like little power plants inside our cells that are only vaguely related to us. We inherit them only from our mothers, which means geneticists can use mitochondrial mutations to track back lineage, determining who is related to whom, in a very broad sense.

So it was with my Planet of the Apes memory that I was intrigued by a post on Kevin Kelly’s very geeky [Cool Tools](http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/000923.php) feed about [National Geographic’s Genographic Project](http://www.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/). It’s an attempt to learn more about how humanity spread out around the globe by doing genetic testing on indigenous populations. The timing has become somewhat urgent, because people don’t stay put the way they used to, and they don’t always marry within their ethnic/tribal groups. In a generation or two, it may be very difficult to say exactly whose genes are whose.

National Geographic’s program is actually a kit you can order, which includes swabs for taking samples from the inside of your cheek. You mail the samples in, and a lab processes them. A few weeks later, you can enter your special code number on their website, and pull up a history of where you came from, genetically. For women, they track mitochondria. For men, they track the Y-chromosome, which is passed from father to son.

The home-test version is pretty rudimentary, and is really intended mostly to fund the larger project of testing indigenous groups. But it ended being pretty fascinating anyway.

The test revealed that I am a white male of European descent.

No shocker, there. My family is largely German, with a little English and Scottish thrown in. This translates to Haplogroup R1B (M343). I’d venture that most white guys reading this would be similar, if not exactly the same. But what’s more interesting than the result is the journey, which National Geographic charts really well. The report generates a map which shows where your genetic line branched out, in my case charting the journey from Africa (M168), through Central Asia (M9), and finally to Europe, where they kicked the shit out of those Neandertals.

pamirFor instance, my ancestors travelled through the Pamir Knot, which I’d never heard of. But looking at the picture, you realize that somewhere back in history, some relative lived there. Hunted there. Died there. It was 40,000 years ago, but it’s still in my blood.

And perhaps more importantly, it’s a shared history with pretty much anyone in the Northern Hemisphere — the Eurasian Clan, which includes Native Americans.

All of this got me thinking more about my long-gestating (or perhaps dead; it’s hard to say) adaptation of Tarzan at Warner Bros. One of the fundamental challenges with Tarzan is finding a way to handle race and ethnicity; having a bunch of white people fight over Africa brings back unwelcome memories of colonialism. My answer was to build the Mother Africa meme deeply into the story. No matter where you come from, no matter what color your skin, you’re related to exactly one African man who lived 31,000 to 79,000 years ago.

To me, that’s the Joseph Campbell/Star Wars-y aspect of Tarzan. Africa is destiny.

My little genographic field trip won’t advance science much, nor will it move Tarzan out of development limbo. But it made for a nice diversion. For $107.50, it’s a nice family project, particularly if your kids are old enough to understand why you’re scraping the inside of their cheeks. It’s a nice way of demonstrating the connectedness of things, and helping break down common assumptions of “us” and “them.”