Experimental Therapist
I spent all day in therapy today.
Screenwriting is drawing thematic connections out of interactions — creating dramatic scenes from the scraps you’re handed. The stuff of life. Or IP as the case may be.
Screenwriting is like artificial therapy.
I screenwrite through my daily life.
It’s compulsive at this point, this structuring, drawing connections. A good therapist would have a field day.
I walked to my 11:30 meeting with wet hair. I sat alone in the conference room for a moment with all my stuff (I had been planning to hit Zinque after to do some work) so I ducked out to the bathroom hoping to find a hand dryer to blow dry my hair. Seriously.
No hand dryer, but the meeting went well. Three hours well. More than enough time to dry my hair. We wound up ordering tuna bowls from Zinque via his assistant. It was invisible. I didn’t even notice the time passing — it was like we were in a trance. All of my meetings have felt this way lately: long and trance-like.
I always say I write my movies slowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
THEN FAST
Meaning, I both write them slow THEN FAST and — I write them to be slow THEN FAST
I’m not saying I walk out of these long trance-like meetings and flick a match behind me and blow up the building. I’m saying that would be ideal.
“I’m good at reading people, and I feel like you have a lot of pain around all this.”
I do long in depth trance-like interviews on my podcast show Threat Surface. One of my guests called me “an experimental therapist.”
“I feel pretty beat up by this town.”
I finally broke the trance spell after three hours and stumbled out into sunlight — past people producing movies over lunches in some kind of outdoor kitchen — kind of unsure where or who I was. Going deep for that long will do that to you.
I had to immediately walk to the new therapist’s office. I told her, among other things, about how my dad disappeared on a sailboat when I was 11. How his disappearance had been so traumatic, painful and humiliating I hadn’t told my closest friends what had happened and let them assume I was still going to his house every other weekend — even though it meant not getting invited to stuff.
Then I had an hour and a half window before the next appointment, so I trekked home and meditated, hanging upside down. I asked myself “what do I need to know?” and thought about some guys I like and some business / writing issues and some themes that had emerged during the meeting this morning. The images that came to me were like a TV drama writer cross-pollinating the metaphors from the A-stories, B-stories and C-stories so they don’t seem so obvious.
We thought you’d be at your dad’s.
Then I had to go to the psychiatrist. It was just a coincidence that I had two mental health checkups in one day (and there’s nothing wrong other than routine anxiety) but the effect was profound.
A full day spent screenwriting my life — in therapy — and by the time I was in the psychiatrist’s trance, a revelation emerged.
My dad didn’t want me to be with anyone else. My dad wanted me to be with him. Even though he was always abandoning me. I was married to my dad.
I had never said that out loud before today.
I returned home to find my block surrounded by police tape. I told one of the cops “I live here. What happened? Was someone killed?”
The guy said there was an accident and to stay inside.
I duck under the police tape and go swimming in the ocean. The lifeguard has already gone in, which isn’t safe. But staying tight and constricted inside also isn’t safe.
I loosen up. Start attacking the waves head on. Start rolling with it. Letting them toss me a bit.
I see a sailboat and get the little chill-thrill I always get. Like seeing the beautiful model who took your dad away, skating cleanly across the ocean you may drown in at any minute.
I remind myself to look back — no one is watching out for you. How far have you traveled? No one will know if you disappear.
I decide better to go in now.
Back inside, I watch out the window as an emergency response crew scrubs human remains off the street.
