How Now Low Crow

I've finished a first draft of the script and have handed it in to The Producers.

It's pretty good. But not great. It's a first draft. The fact that I can note that parts of it are downright crummy and other parts fat and lazy, and other parts some of the better work I've written, and not get too glum or too excited about any of it, is a sign that I'm actually growing up into an adult - an adult writer - which is something very few people ever get to do. It's a privilege, an honor, a blessing, to not be so narcissistically wrapped up in the outcome and quality of work as I used to be. The work is the work, and the quality is none of my business. I've said that to myself a lot over the years, but I've been unconvinced most of the time. It usually sounds like I'm whistling through the graveyard, trying not to be frightened, becoming increasingly frightened with the increasing effort applied to avoid being frightened.

To be great is no great thing. To be right-sized is very, very rare.

Grass Diptych

Video - Aircraft/Ducks

Mother's Day Proclamation

It's Mother's Day in the USA today - time to be reminded of the "Mother's Day Proclamation" written in 1870 by American poet and activist, Julia Ward Howe:

Mother's Day Proclamation

Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts,
Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly:
"We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the bosom of the devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own.
It says: "Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace,
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God.

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And at the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot

White Hunter, Black Heart 3

Clint Eastwood's "White Hunter, Black Heart" (1990) - in which director Eastwood plays director John Huston on the shoot of Huston's "The African Queen" - is one of the great unsung movies about filmmaking and filmmakers.

Before Eastwood/Huston shoots his movie, he feels compelled to hunt down and shoot an African elephant. This obsessive desire to bag the biggest of game animals endangers the life of the motion picture he's been hired to make.

In what I would call the film's key scene, screenwriter, Pete Verrill (a fictionalized Peter Viertel - who died last fall a few days shy of age 87), confronts director, John Wilson (Eastwood doing an unapologetic John Huston impression) on his reprehensible quest to hunt down and make a trophy of an African bull elephant. 

VERRILL: You're either crazy, or the most egocentric, irresponsible son-of-a-bitch that I have ever met. You're about to blow this whole picture out of your nose, John. And for what? To commit a crime. To kill one of the rarest, most noble creatures that roams the face of this crummy earth. And in order to commit this crime, you're willing to forget about all of us and let this whole god damn thing go down the drain.

WILSON: You're wrong, kid. It's not a crime to kill an elephant. It's bigger than all that. It's a sin to kill an elephant. Do you understand? It's a sin. The only sin that you can buy a license and go out to commit. That's why I want to do it before I do anything else in this world. Do you understand me? Of course you don't. How could you? I don't understand it myself.