For a long time I’ve wanted to share some of the small scenes that stole entire movies or featured an actor who delivered such a powerful performance, it stayed with you long after the movie was forgotten.

Such is the case with this scene in Outbreak featuring the late, great J.T. Walsh. He left behind a long trail of fantastic performances, but few as small and powerful than this gem in which he briefs the Joint Chiefs with the president’s position on Operation Clean Sweep, a bombing cam

paign that will vaporize an entire town in the United States to stop the outbreak of a deadly virus from taking hold and killing the greater population.

Jack Nicholson has been quoted as saying he needed to see at least two or three stand out scenes like this for his character before he will sign onto a project. You can see why. They pack a punch.

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Introduction:

What the hell is this, and what is it all about?

My name is Frank Hannah. I’ve spent the last three decades telling people the following sentence. “If you have a special skill, it’s just a cry for help. You’re just marketing your misery.”

As many times as I’ve said it, many more have asked for an explanation. I usually respond with a basic anecdote or two. It went something like this.

Sometimes, acquiring special skills points to a need for attention. A “love me” kind of reaction to a sense of lack. It’s not an original observation. It’s why the entertainment industry is filled with extremely talented, yet completely dysfunctional people who are starved for attention. Not all of them. I’m sure some of them are very well-adjusted, level-headed people. I’ve just never met any of them.

I count myself among these crazies. My desire to write movies was born out of a need to impress my father, who rarely handed out praise for anything. I knew he loved movies, and I figured if I could be one of those people who made them, he would finally think I was good enough.

Spoiler alert. I finally made it in the business, and boy, was he impressed. It didn’t change anything, however, as the real person I had to impress was myself. My father could heap praise on me all day long. It was the inner critic he installed in me that would continue to be unimpressed.

That said, this is not a book about pissing and moaning about my childhood. No, it’s a book about how to transform those moments of misery into something meaningful.

A little background. I was born in Clydebank, Scotland, but raised in Southern California. Despite being so far from home, I was surrounded by Scottish people. They were family, friends, and strangers alike, who all gathered together to share their experiences.

Something I realized over the years was how funny these people were. They were not comedians by trade. They just had a way of telling their stories that was hysterical and thoroughly entertaining. The content of these stories usually involved some mishap, tragedy, or misfortune. They had found a way to reshape their own struggles into something wholly transformative.

I didn’t think in those terms back then, but I knew I liked being around them. They were funny, relatable, and always ready to poke fun at their situation. It taught me, though I didn’t know it at the time, many important lessons about life, people, and our shared experiences.

Why is this important?

Everybody knows what it’s like to be around a negative person who just bloviates about their situation and sucks all the oxygen out of the room. We see them coming, and we run for the hills to get away from them.

The way I learned to express my pain and suffering was the exact opposite of that. It’s a part of the social tradition of Scotland. The storyteller. It’s not a position that looks down on people from a great height. It’s a ground-level spot where everyday people exist. It reaches out to connect with people and finds common ground.

Scottish people aren’t the only culture to do this, but I have come to call this trait Marketing Your Misery. It’s what I learned growing up, it’s what I’ve done all my life, and it’s been a big part of my success as a storyteller. I am ready, at last, to expound on this skill in a way that everyone can relate to and enjoy.

What I’m launching is a twelve-part series, laying out my full philosophical and creative engine. It has taken me a long time to compile, so there will be a paywall for it, while my regular posts will remain free. If you think there is value here, then by all means subscribe. If not, you will still be able to enjoy my regular content.

In the meantime, read the introduction and see what you think! Let’s market some misery, shall we?

Why Misery Sells

Misery gets a bad rap. It’s the thing we try to hide, the part of ourselves we edit out of résumés, holiday cards, and Instagram feeds. We’ve been taught that misery is weakness, that it’s better to bury our problems than parade them around. And yet, if you look at what people actually consume—stand-up comedy, memoirs, podcasts, TikToks, even advertising—you’ll see a different truth: misery sells.

Audiences lean into stories of disaster, embarrassment, heartbreak, and failure. Not because they’re cruel, but because misery is universal. We might not all share the same wins, but we all know what it’s like to lose, to hurt, to screw up spectacularly. Misery is the great equalizer—and when told well, it’s also the great connector.

Comedian Ali Wong once said that she built her entire career out of being “brutally honest about how hard marriage and motherhood actually are.” Millions laughed, not because they wanted to see her suffer, but because she gave voice to what they were already thinking. Her misery became her material—and her brand.

This book is about that connection. More specifically, it’s about how to take the struggles you’ve lived through and transform them into stories and ideas people actually want to hear. It’s about marketing your misery—not in a cheap, exploitative way, but in a way that’s digestible, meaningful, and sometimes even profitable.

The Paradox of Pain: Why People Are Drawn to Stories of Struggle

At first glance, it seems strange. Why would anyone voluntarily lean into someone else’s suffering? The answer lies in the paradox of pain: what hurts to live through is often irresistible to witness.

Remember when Jessica Lahey’s book The Gift of Failure hit bestseller lists? She wrote candidly about messing up as a parent and letting her kids fail. Instead of being shunned, she became a go-to expert. By admitting her misery, she turned it into authority.

We binge-watch true-crime documentaries about people’s darkest days. We laugh until our sides hurt at comedians turning their breakups into punchlines. We devour memoirs filled with humiliations and mistakes. Pain, once reframed as story, becomes fuel for entertainment, connection, and even healing.

The paradox is this: when we’re in misery, it feels isolating. But when we share misery, it becomes magnetic. The very thing we try to hide is often the thing that will draw people closer.

The Psychology of Shared Suffering

Why does misery resonate so deeply? Because it works on three powerful psychological levers:

• Empathy. We don’t want to feel alone in our struggles. Hearing someone else admit to the same pain gives us comfort, even relief.

• Voyeurism. People love peeking behind the curtain at someone else’s messy, imperfect life. It makes us feel both fascinated and human.

• Catharsis. When someone else tells their story of suffering, we get to release emotions without having to live through the experience ourselves.

Consider Brené Brown’s famous TED Talk on vulnerability, which has over 60 million views. The moment she admitted to having a “breakdown” instead of a “spiritual awakening,” the crowd laughed—not at her, but with her. That single confession transformed her from academic to cultural icon.

This is why misery works across mediums. A confessional blog post, a stand-up set, a TED talk about failure—they all let audiences tap into empathy, voyeurism, or catharsis. Done well, they leave people feeling lighter, closer, and more engaged.

How Brands, Artists, and Influencers Already Use Their “Low Points” to Connect

If you start looking for it, you’ll see that misery marketing is everywhere. Comedians build entire careers around self-deprecation. Influencers grow loyal audiences by admitting insecurities instead of hiding them. Even major corporations have leaned into their failures to sell products.

Take Domino’s Pizza. In 2009, the company launched an ad campaign with a shocking admission: their pizza used to taste awful. They showed focus group footage of people complaining about the crust being like “cardboard.” Instead of hiding, they owned it—and promised to improve. Sales exploded. By turning shame into story, Domino’s rebuilt its brand.

Or consider the rise of the #fail hashtag online. Influencers posting about their clumsy moments, fashion disasters, or awkward encounters often go more viral than polished perfection. Failure feels real. Realness builds trust. And trust builds loyalty.

Misery, when told with honesty and craft, isn’t a liability. It’s an asset.

Promise of This Book: Not Therapy, But Transformation

Here’s the key distinction: this book isn’t about wallowing in your misery or treating it like a therapy session. It’s about learning to shape it—editing, packaging, and delivering it so it lands with others.

Think of your misery as raw clay. It might be heavy, messy, and unformed, but it’s also full of potential. With the right tools, you can mold it into stories, products, and messages that not only free you from its weight but also connect with audiences.

In the chapters ahead, you’ll learn:

• How to reframe misery as story. Discover narrative structures that turn chaos into clarity.

• How to package pain for audiences. Learn the Digestible Misery Formula (brevity + relatability + twist) and how to hook people with your hurt.

• How to make misery relatable. Balance humor, honesty, and humanity so your stories connect rather than repel.

• How to market your misery. Choose the right platforms, build community through vulnerability, and even monetize your struggles without losing authenticity.

By the end, you’ll have the tools to turn breakdowns into breakthroughs, embarrassing moments into crowd-pleasers, and failures into your most marketable assets.

A Roadmap Through Misery

This book unfolds in four parts:

1. Reframing Misery. Learning to see your struggles not as shameful secrets but as narrative seeds.

2. Packaging Pain for an Audience. Mastering the art of hooks, story structures, and content formats.

3. The Alchemy of Relatability. Using humor, humanity, and lessons to build deep connections.

4. Mastering the Market of Misery. Finding the right platforms, monetizing authentically, and turning misery into a superpower.

Each section includes case studies, exercises, and examples—so you’re not just reading theory, you’re practicing transformation.

From Breakdown to Breakthrough

The truth is simple: misery is unavoidable. You will fail. You will get rejected. You will embarrass yourself, lose things you love, and make mistakes you can’t believe you made. That’s life.

But here’s the twist: those low points don’t have to be wasted. They can be your sharpest tools. Your most embarrassing failure can become your best story. Your heartbreak can become your brand’s voice. Your mistakes can make you money.

This book is here to show you how.

Misery, when marketed well, doesn’t just entertain. It connects. It builds trust. It creates belonging. And sometimes, it even pays the bills.

Welcome to Marketing Your Misery.

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When I think about the thousands of books the old demon has read over the last eighty years of his life, I am staggered. Voracious is a fitting way to describe it. As a boy, trips to the local library were common. He would take out three or four books at a time and make more than one trip per week.

It’s similarly troubling to think of all the books he’s forgotten. I like to joke that he’s forgotten more books than I will ever read in my lifetime, and I don’t think that’s an exaggeration. His thirst for knowledge was always apparent, and I think I have to give him credit for instilling the same sense of curiosity in me that remains as strong today as ever.

While he read anything and everything he could get his hands on, like most “dads” of his generation, he liked books about submarines, boats, and military battles. He loved Sharpe novels by Bernard Cornwell about English soldier Richard Sharpe during the Napoleonic Wars, the Jack Aubrey novels by Patrick O’Brian that started off with Master and Commander, and he loved anything that took place on the sea.

This love of the sea took hold early in his life. My father spent his early years in the merchant navy as a shipwright. He traveled the world many times over, and it opened his eyes to a wider perspective. As a poor kid from Glasgow, he knew the opportunities at home were few and far between. His coming of age did not happen on land. It happened at sea, and upon his first return home a year later, he found himself unable to stand being around his old friends. They remained close-minded, bigoted, and bitter about their chances.

The life and person he was becoming no longer fit into that small worldview. I think his love of reading was the next best thing to real adventure.

He loved to tell my brother and me about the stories he was reading. I have a distinct memory of my father telling us about Annie Wilkes, the demon caretaker in Stephen King’s book Misery. I remember him acting out the scenes where Annie questions the character of writer Paul Sheldon about why he tried to escape and how calmly and menacingly she spoke as violence loomed in the background.

He always encouraged us to read, and he would take us with him on his library trips. Mostly, I picked out Peanuts Comic strip collections. I was young, after all.

I would love to say I followed in my father’s footsteps and read voraciously throughout my childhood, but I didn’t. For some reason, it just didn’t take.

Then, when I reached high school age, reading became compulsory. We were tasked with reading books for English class, among others. I didn’t consider this reading for fun.

Then, one day I went to see a movie called The Believers. It was a thriller about a recently widowed police psychologist who is investigating a series of ritualistic child murders in New York City.

It starred Martin Sheen in the lead role. It explored the dark world of Santeria. While the film was criticized for its portrayal of a mostly benign, yet primitive religion, the film absolutely captured my imagination. So much so that when I discovered the film was based on a book called The Religion by Nicholas Conde, I sought it out and devoured it quickly.

It was the first book I remember reading for pleasure, besides Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl, which was in my early youth.

From there, I searched for other books that could give me that same jolt of excitement. I’ll be honest with you. Just finishing a book was an achievement. I would tell people I had finished a book, and they would say, “Yeah, I read that. It was a horrible book.”

All I could think of at the time was, “Well, yeah, but I finished it!”

It didn’t occur to me to have an opinion about them. There were a lot of touchstone-type books I read that really made an impression on me. As I read more and more, I built a library in my mind of the good and the bad, and the meh.

I started collecting books. Many more books than I would ever read. All from used bookstores that would cost a dollar a piece. It became a bit of an identity. If I have a lot of books, then people will think I am smart. Yeah, I know. Stupid.

One day, I was in a bookstore in the literature section, and a girl who worked there approached me, pulled a book off the shelf, and said, “Read this. It changed my life,” then simply walked away.

The book was Demian by Hermann Hesse. I had read none of his work before.

Demian was a coming-of-age novel that traced Emil Sinclair’s path from innocence to self-awareness. Raised in a protected world of clear right and wrong, Sinclair is gradually pulled into a more complicated reality through experiences with fear, doubt, and inner conflict.

Under the influence of an enigmatic stranger named Max Demian, he begins to question traditional ideas of morality and identity. As Sinclair struggles with both external pressures and his own internal contradictions, he learns that growth requires embracing the full spectrum of who he is — not just the acceptable, “good” parts, but also the darker, hidden sides.

Ultimately, the novel explores the difficult but transformative journey toward becoming a whole, self-defined individual.

Now, that description doesn’t exactly scream read me, but knowing nothing about the book, I read it, and it transformed me. I can’t explain it, but my best description is to say that it felt like a book about teenage angst. It was like a John Hughes movie without the silly comedy written in the early 20th century.

From there, I read all the Hermann Hesse books I could find. From Steppenwolf to Siddhartha, Narcissus and Goldmund, and Beneath the Wheel. All of them spoke to me in a way that other books did not.

As a side note, many years later, completely by chance, I saw the girl who suggested the book to me. I fell over myself to speak to her. She must have thought I was a crazy person.

“Excuse me. This is gonna sound weird, but like ten years ago, you suggested a book for me to read and you said it would change my life. I just want to tell you it did, and I tell everyone I meet about it.”

“What was the book?” She asked.

“Demian by Hermann Hesse.”

“Oh, yeah,” she said. “That’s a good one.”

To be honest, her response didn’t quite match my enthusiasm about it, and I felt a little embarrassed for gushing in the way that I did, but I know in my heart she felt a sense of satisfaction. It’s the same satisfaction I get when people I have told to read it have come back and gushed to me about it.

Thus, my journey into book knowledge continued. I cursed myself for not reading earlier, as my reading comprehension definitely suffered. Influenced by others, I read the works of Borges, Cortázar, and Gabriel García Márquez. One Hundred Years of Solitude was an enormous challenge for me to finish. While I set it down many, many times, the turning of the last page was so satisfying, I believe I might have welled up with tears.

For the old demon, reading was something so fundamental to his existence that he probably didn’t share the same epiphanies as I. Reading was a humbling experience. Like the ocean of my father’s early years.

I saw it as something vast and powerful, to be respected and learned from if only you are willing to step into the deep end.

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The short version. Almost everyone sucks at it.

You’ve read about it, you’ve seen it dramatized in movies and television. The story pitch is one of the most mystical and mysterious things in the entire industry. Why? Because it stands between you and all the fame and fortune owed to you by this despicable business.

Well, not really. The fantasy is that you go into a room to pitch a studio, a producer, or an actor. You spin a yarn so compelling and satisfying that they crack open their checkbooks and buy it in the room. Hell, they loved you so much, you’ll probably end up with one of those development deals where the studio pays you to develop projects they have no intention of making.

For most people, this is a fantasy. And as I will explain, if you sell a pitch in the room, I will bet money there were other highly lucrative factors involved.

Let’s back up a bit.

Pitching your stories is an essential skill that all writers must possess to be successful, but probably not for the reasons you think. If you think it’s so you can sell an idea in the room, believe me when I tell you that it is probably near the bottom of the list.

The ability to pitch a solid idea, story, or long-form TV series is a foundational skill. It reveals to your audience that you know what a story is and why yours is important. I believe all creative people should learn this skill, and the sooner, the better.

Not only does it illustrate your grasp of story structure, but it also helps you to refine your existing ideas so they are more complete. If you’ve listened to a lot of pitches, one of the most common things you will find is your desire for them to get to the point. Conversely, that is what they want from you. The essence of your story.

It should be clear, concise, and compelling. If you ramble on about setting, inspiration, and characters for too long, your audience will check out.

You might even know, if pressed, what the core themes and complications of your story are, but if you don’t present them, no one will hear them.

Distilling your idea down to a logline isn’t just for a development executive’s benefit. It’s actually for yours. If the story elements aren’t there, your logline will suck.

Example. Here’s a story idea I literally just pulled out of my — er, thin air…

The Right To Remain is a thriller about a cop who must bring down a drug trafficking ring in Chicago.

Okay. A cop movie. Yay. I love cop stories, but I don’t really care about this one. Why?

It’s uninspired. Unoriginal. I know nothing about the characters. There is no story complication. If you pitched this idea, it’s likely you would give me a laundry list of things the cop does and throw in some badass set pieces, but it wouldn’t add up to anything. It wouldn’t be a story.

The reason why people hook onto a story pitch is that they fall prey to a strong complication. In other words, the story dilemma is clear.

I know what you’re thinking. What do you mean? Story Dilemma? Story Complication? I don’t get it.

Sometimes, story complications are expressed through a story theme. Something like “blood is thicker than water,” or “Charity begins at home.”

They don’t represent the plot. They represent the moral dilemma or story complication inside the plot, which makes it a story.

For example, a medical researcher dedicates her life to finding a treatment for a lesser-known and underfunded disease. She works tirelessly and wants to help the world. The story complication is that her long work hours force her to miss quality time with her family, and she doesn’t see the pitfalls ahead. If she put her focus more on helping her family, she could avoid it. The powerful pull of her research and her family creates a strong dilemma you can use to create conflict.

Let’s get back to the cop story. Let’s change the logline to reflect a strong story complication.

The Right to Remain is a psychological crime thriller about a self-serving, crooked vice cop who loses a niece to a drug overdose and is tasked with taking down the drug lord responsible, knowing his crooked connection to him puts his life and career in jeopardy.

Okay, better. Now, we have a troubled cop who has a dilemma. He’s a selfish vice cop on the take who’s looked the other way for years, and now that has led to the death of a young woman he knows and cares for. He can take down the man responsible, but it will destroy his reputation and career.

The complication? Is he willing to sacrifice himself to do the right thing or remain the same selfish person who looks the other way to line his pockets?

How would you crank up this dilemma even more?

What if the cop was over-leveraged? He took blood money to keep his sister’s restaurant afloat. He’s not a totally bad guy. His ability to pay off these debts means taking money from criminals. So, his choice to take down the drug lord is more than just about his reputation. It affects others.

You can see how this builds from just having a solid complication up front. The simple exercise of writing a logline helped to craft a story dilemma big enough to hang a story on.

Now, granted. My example isn’t exactly an award-winning idea. It’s derivative and basic. The point is to have a moral dilemma. That’s the reason people read books, watch movies, or listen to stories. They want to experience your story through your characters. They might not be a crooked vice cop, but they definitely know what it’s like to choose family over careers or some variation.

At the very basic level, your elevator pitch doesn’t have to tell the entire story. It only has to give us the complication. Who is the story about? What do they want? And what’s at stake for them if they fail?

That’s basically it. If people pitching stories started from there, their storytelling would be miles above the status quo.

Example…

Chief Brody in Jaws has to catch and kill a shark in a small beach town. That describes what happens, but that’s not the story. His dilemma is twofold. He needs to stop it before it ruins the town’s entire tourist season and, oh yeah, he’s afraid of the water. The dilemma makes it a story.

Example…

Elliot Ness in The Untouchables is tasked with taking down crime boss Al Capone. You could pitch that, for sure, but it becomes a compelling story when you realize Ness is a Boy Scout and a by-the-book lawman who wants everyone to follow the rules. His dilemma is that the entire system is corrupt, and for him to nail Capone, he will have to cross the line to do what needs to be done. Can he live with it? Now you have a story.

Hopefully, you get the picture. If you have the basic story complication, you have a great blueprint for how to tell your story to someone.

Here’s a little secret that you only find out from doing it. Some people can pitch the hell out of a story, but they can’t write it for shit. It’s a mystery to me, given that a good pitch tells you everything you need to know and more about your story.

Sometimes, a person can write a fantastic story, but crash and burn in the pitching department. This is usually because they are shy, self-conscious, and don’t have the confidence to hold the attention of a room. It can be stressful.

The larger point I’m making here is that writing and pitching are two completely different skills and aren’t necessarily interchangeable.

There will be a time when you find yourself in a meeting with a producer at your side, or a director, and they will pitch something so masterfully that you will beg them to teach you how they do it. It’s like voodoo. They speak extemporaneously without notes and hit every emotional point dead-on.

It’s in moments like this that you realize how magical the practice actually is.

Here is my advice to you. Build rapport. Know your story’s complication. Keep it simple.

There are several types of pitches you may be asked to give. A brief idea pitch, a summary pitch, or the dreaded long-form pitch.

If you are in a general meeting with someone, they will not be expecting, nor will they ask for, a long-form pitch. This is where the idea or summary pitch comes in. It’s the most powerful weapon you have. It is easier to master and leaves your audience wanting more. This is where you can define your lead character, their mission, and the all-important story complication that will hook them.

If successful, they will probably ask you to provide a written summary, which should be good news cuz you no longer have to keep speaking.

The long-form pitch is a nightmare, and I defy anyone to tell me different. It’s where you are called in to pitch your story in its entirety. They want the first act, the second act, and the third act, along with set pieces, turning points, and the finale.

This maniacal form of torture is every writer’s worst nightmare. What to say? What to leave out? Is it too short? Is it too long? By the time you discover the answers to these questions, it will already be too late.

It’s hard to lay out a full story. We will overcomplicate it without trying and fail to trust the material or the audience. Every tiny pause or stumble seeds a deeper level of doubt in the audience, and there is a tipping point when you just know they have checked out completely.

My advice here is to provide a written outline or beat sheet that tells them all they need to know, even if you fuck it up somewhere along the way.

This leads me to the most important reason pitching short-form ideas is so crucial. And I can’t stress this enough.

You are probably pitching your idea to a development executive who is trying to make their bones. They probably suck at pitching worse than you do. So, if you pitch your idea and it’s a little too overcomplicated, muddled, or unclear, imagine what it’s going to sound like coming out of their mouth? Your pitch is only as good as the person who is pitching it to their boss.

The only defense against this is making sure your short-form pitch or elevator pitch is bulletproof. That way, it can be easily pitched up the chain. That means simple, concise, relatable, and complete.

Who is your main character? What is their mission? What is at stake? What flaw will they need to overcome to succeed?

As I mentioned at the top. Most people suck at it. You just need to try to suck less. A lot less.

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Being raised in a Scottish home in America in the seventies wasn’t that different from other immigrant families, but I like to call it living under Scottish rule.

As children, we had chores, like cleaning our rooms, washing dishes, and other menial housekeeping activities, but the one non-negotiable thing in our lives was peeling potatoes.

The potato was the centerpiece of just about every meal we ate. When you think of potatoes, you might think of the Irish, and while that is true, the Scottish are no different.

It’s a basic staple of Scottish cooking. We are a meat-and-potatoes kind of people. Like the English, we get hammered for the stodgy, bland food we pass off as cuisine. It’s not bad. In fact, a lot of it has become comfort food to me, but it is unapologetically bland. Seasoning, if you’re lucky, comprises salt and pepper.

In my childhood home, the only form of added seasoning was a brown sauce called HP sauce. It’s a vinegary concoction that is put on just about everything. The power of this stuff is that it makes everything you put it on taste like HP sauce. It masks everything. The good, the bad, and the ugly.

“It’s saved many a meal,” my uncle was fond of saying. He knew what it was for.

The old demon, having traveled the world as a merchant seaman, found new comfort in the spices and flavors of the exotic cuisines he discovered in every new port of call.

Returning home to the bland flavors of the UK left him cold. Upon moving to the United States, the meals prepared by my mother and grandmother also left him wanting. When he came home from work, he would check the stove to see what was cooking, and the inevitable doctoring would begin. He tried everything to add spice and flavor to our meals. What resulted was a mish-mash of disparate flavors that had no business coming together.

He foisted these vile experiments on his family, and while many of them were disgusting, there were a few highlights.

Regular old Kraft Macaroni and Cheese became a hearty meal filled with sautéed onions, mushrooms, hard-boiled eggs (yes, hard-boiled eggs), and some kind of leftover meat. While these things sound disgusting, they actually tasted good.

Other times, he would make his own spaghetti sauce with so much garlic it could keep vampires away for months at a time. He was never afraid to try different things. While his spaghetti sauce was good, adding local mussels to it? Not so much. Southern California is known for many things. Mussels are not one of them. For days after the meal, the house smelled like low tide at Santa Monica Pier.

Unfortunately for us, we lived during a time when opting out was not an option. You finished whatever horrendous concoction that was laid out for you.

And so it went.

Aside from spicing up dinners, his work lunches were hideous creations featuring tinned sardines and kippers. Kipper Snacks were a staple of his diet. A kipper, for the uninformed, is a piece of salted or pickled herring, usually served on toast.

The aftermath of this preparation stunk up the entire house, rising from the trash can in the kitchen. It was like a fermenting bomb that gave off heat as the old tea bags, banana peels, and coffee grounds intermingled and started a volatile chemical reaction.

If asked, the old demon would probably just shrug. He liked what he liked. He wasn’t in the business of apologizing for anything in his life. That he loved to eat imitation crab salad wasn’t the problem. The problem was forcing it on the rest of us.

Being forced to eat disgusting food preparations is not a unique experience for my generation. If you refused, it waited for you the next day. The notion that my parents would cook special meals for their children’s finicky tastes was laughable. In fact, if you were brave enough to tell my father that his concoction smelled funny he would just say, “Och! Your nose is too close to your arse!”

Nowadays, I am not as adventurous as the old demon about food, but I like a wide variety. Looking back, it may have pointed to his desire to escape. It certainly illustrated a black and white dichotomy within both sides of my immediate family.

My mother was raised Catholic and remained devout throughout her life. My father was raised in a Protestant home, but as an adult, he did not tie himself to any form of organized religion. In fact, he even claimed to be an atheist.

My father came from nothing. He grew up with one brother and parents who were the furthest thing from happily married. My mother’s family was large, closely knit, and remained so all her life. They were not rich, but owned a corner store and were affluent and well-respected.

My father wanted to escape the clutches of family tradition and strike an alternative path with his own wife and children. My mother remained anchored to the extended family structure with five brothers and their own children.

And, of course, my father enjoyed all the exotic cuisines of the world. My mother was happy to exist in the simple, bland world of everyday meat and potatoes.

Is it any wonder that the marriage didn’t last? Everything seems so obvious in retrospect.

Nowadays, as I watch the old demon eat bland frozen dinners from the supermarket for his dinner, I wonder if it is poetic justice or just the natural surrender to a world of bland, flavorless decrepitude.

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When I was a boy, I didn’t dream of becoming a doctor or a lawyer. I didn’t want to be an astronaut or a professional baseball player. No, I wanted to be a stuntman. Nothing in the world seemed as exciting to me as crashing out of the window of a high-rise building onto an airbag, taking a spray of bullets, and dying on screen as convincingly as possible.

I don’t know why this appealed to me, but it seemed like so much fun. As a movie fan from a young age, I think I always enjoyed the behind-the-scenes stuff that peeled back the curtain on how things were done.

After my first trip to Universal Studios and experiencing the tram tour, I was hooked. I wanted to be a part of the magic that made movies extraordinary. In fact, when I go to Universal Studios now with visiting family, I am always let down by how short the actual studio tour part has become. It’s less about the practical effects that were the bread and butter of the industry and more about rides, CGI, and entertainment.

So, when I first saw the film Hooper, it was probably in the early eighties. It spoke to me in a way that I can hardly describe even now.

Hooper is the story of a professional stuntman named Sonny Hooper, played to perfection by Burt Reynolds. Once at the top of his game, he’s now aging out of the job. There are only so many high falls and crashes your body can take, and he is quickly reaching his limit. The story finds him at a crossroads in his career.

After a charity event, Sonny meets a young daredevil named Ski, played by Jan-Michael Vincent in his prime. Sonny invites him to work with him on his new film, a high-octane Bond-type thriller with plenty of action.

The stunts are all of a practical nature. What you see is what you get. Not only do you get to see speeding cars flip over, but you get to see how it’s done.

Sonny Hooper can do it all, but it requires a steady supply of Coors beer and painkillers to keep his body moving. Everyone around him tells him it’s time to hang it up and retire. “Let the young turks take the risks.”

As the rivalry between Sonny and Ski escalates, Sonny’s own ego places him deeper and deeper in trouble, and we just can’t look away to see if he can survive.

The love interest, Gwen Doyle, is played by Sally Field, who is the daughter of Sonny’s mentor, Jocko Doyle. Jocko is a legend in the business who represents one version of what Sonny might become — a broken-down version of himself.

The world created in the film feels so believable; the danger our hero experiences feels more real. The pressures of the studio getting what they want, as well as the self-obsessed director making demands, all add to the tension of the story.

Oh yeah, and it’s a comedy.

Director Hal Needham, a veteran stuntman in his own right, has been responsible for some of the best comedies of the seventies and eighties. While many of them venture into farcical territory (Cannonball Run, Smokey and the Bandit), Hooper retains an edge that doesn’t slide too far from the serious world of the story. It really is a love letter to the world of professional stunt performers.

That’s why Sonny Hooper is a lesser-known hero to me.

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My first produced film was an indie movie called The Cooler. It was an idea I conceived in 1999 about a degenerate gambler with infectious bad luck who worked for a casino to protect their bottom line. Then he meets and falls in love with a cocktail waitress who changes his luck from bad to good, and the story unfolds from there.

I pitched it to a writing colleague who encouraged me to write it. After a while, he would ask if I had written it yet. I said no. Eventually, he told me he wanted to write it with me and direct it.

Not long after, we wrote the script and took it around town. People loved the script, but no one would touch it. Too dark, too violent, the lead characters were too old. “It’s a feathered fish,” they’d say. “It’s neither fish nor fowl.”

This is industry speak for when a script doesn’t have a clear identity. The industry likes consistency. If it’s a comedy, it needs to just be funny. If it’s a romance, it shouldn’t also contain gritty violence.

It’s mostly a nonsense excuse. What it means is that the story creates uncertainty, and that scares the bejeezus out of studio and development execs. On occasion, it does point to a structural or tonal problem that could be remedied by making a more consistent choice.

Anyway…

Three years later, by some miracle, the film got made. It had an A-list cast and cost peanuts to make (maybe 4 million). While the conventional wisdom was this feathered fish couldn’t be made, the likes of William H. Macy, Alec Baldwin, and Maria Bello disagreed.

Shooting commenced in May 2002. Six months later, the completed film was chosen for dramatic competition at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival, and things were looking up. The film did not win any awards at the festival, but it was very well-received and the first film to sell that year to Lionsgate.

None of this was the problem. The film was released in theaters, and award buzz swelled around the acting performances. By the winter of 2003, the film had snagged two Golden Globe nominations for Alec Baldwin and Maria Bello, and then a Best Supporting Oscar nomination for Alec Baldwin.

None of that was the problem. While neither won in their categories, it was a monumental achievement to think that this film had captured the imagination of the world.

While nobody made any real money on the film, that I know of, the film offered a level of street cred that you simply couldn’t buy. Every meeting I went to, producers, development executives, and company heads praised the film in a way that told me not only did they see it, but they loved it, especially for its courage.

Even that was not the problem. So, what was the problem?

Believe it or not, these situations can fill your head with magic, and you start to get a little high on your own supply. You believe you can do anything.

So, there I was, sitting in meetings with studio executives who wanted to hear what I had to say. Many of them were TV producers of shows I not only watched but loved. I even met with Alan Ball’s company, which was in the middle of its run of Six Feet Under. When asked by their producer what I thought of the show, I had the audacity to tell him the first two years were their best. The show was currently in season four, and I had thought it best to tell him why I thought the show had lost its way.

High, meet supply…

I cringe even now when I think about that meeting. What an idiot. As mortifying as that meeting was, that wasn’t even the worst mistake I ever made.

No, friends, my big mistake was misunderstanding something so fundamental about the entertainment business that it caused me to lose my way.

Yes, the Cooler was being lauded and praised, and there was a hell of a lot of goodwill out there for it. I had no problem getting meetings. And I pitched my heart out. I gave it my all, and I mostly failed.

I am only slightly ashamed to admit that I had a lot to learn about the business and, more importantly, I had even more to learn about the craft of writing.

I thought these producers wanted more of what they had seen. Naively, I thought they wanted more edgy, indie, morally ambiguous films about deeply flawed characters who might not even be likable. I thought they wanted another “Cooler.”

With every meeting, I watched their faces go from highly engaged and focused to let down, disappointed, and checked out. I might be exaggerating here, but you get the point. It never occurred to me to change what I was doing. Instead, I just felt puzzled. “Why don’t they like my pitches?”

Here’s the sad truth. The Cooler, its success, and all the heat that came with it, was a miracle. So many amazing films go unnoticed and never have the chance to make their mark on the world. While it seems ridiculous to say it, to the industry, the heat and street cred thrust on the film had very little to do with the type of film it was. It existed in an almost entirely different universe.

Studio executives and development types were thrilled you found some other poor suckers to push your heavy rock up a hill. No, they don’t want your edgy movie. They want your heat.

My mistake, and believe me, it was a big one, was that I got to the big show and ended up pitching small, difficult stories with red flags around every corner. What they wanted was to use the heat I had on me to get a commercial studio project set up. And instead of being the facilitator for something like that, I steered the ship into the rocks.

My ideas weren’t horrible, by the way. I did sell a TV pilot to CBS. That was a fantastic idea, but it sold mostly on my heat.

After that, I continued to pitch around town, both TV and film projects, but I was unsuccessful in leveraging the heat and power I had, and as expected, that heat waned quickly.

In current times, if I spoke with a young development executive, there is a very good chance they will not have heard of the Cooler. It does not even exist within their frame of reference. Time marches on. You don’t have unlimited influence in popular culture.

At this stage, I rarely speak of the film at all. It represents another time, and while I am proud of the work so many did to create it, I live in a space now where the film is safely tucked away out of sight. If people remember it or ask me about it, I smile and nod and let it drift back into the aether.

I don’t even say all this to piss and moan about it. It’s a cautionary tale. It took me years to claw my way back, and I feel grateful to share my story.

So, what should I have done? How could I have avoided that mistake?

It’s an excellent question. As writers, we all have a certain sensibility, and even if we write broad, commercial stories, we naturally imbue our distinct mark on them. There is dark humor in every story I write. Even the comedies, and I don’t apologize for it. It’s who I am. It’s important to understand that you don’t need to be ultra indie and dark to write in your style. There is a sweet spot, and it’s up to you to find it.

As for the past? I think the best course of action would have been to listen more and realize what was being offered to me. It’s not a red pill choice. You’re not sacrificing your artistic integrity in that moment. Play things as they lie. Listen to the wants and needs of a studio that is dying to hire you. All you need to do is not fuck it up by telling them their big-budget buddy comedy is fine, but you’d rather write a black and white “Sin City” style film about Peter Lorre traveling back to his homeland in Hungary during his off time between shooting Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon. Once there, he will get embroiled in a murder mystery that only he can solve. Oh, and we’ll get Johnny Depp to play him, and it will be amazing. I’m sorry, what was your last question?

“Who is Peter Lorre, again?”

“Character actor. Big eyes, great voice. Have you ever seen the films Casablanca or The Maltese Falcon?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Oh, you know the character of Ren on Ren & Stimpy?”

“Oh, yeah, I know that character.”

“Okay, then. That’s an impression of Peter Lorre.”

“Oh, you mean Peter Lorre does the voice of Ren?”

“No, the character is a caricature of — you know what? Do you validate parking?”

And yes, this was a real discussion, and it served me right for thinking I knew better. Let’s be honest, though. The Johnny Depp playing Peter Lorre project would still be awesome. In my mind, anyway.

So, in summary…

Shut your mouth, listen to what you’re being told and asked to do. Ask yourself honestly if you can add value to that situation and take the early wins while you can. It seems so obvious now.

I’m sure you will still want to pitch your passion project, and you might even be prompted to do so, but think hard about who is asking. If it’s not the head of a studio or a producer who has carte blanche, just keep it to yourself for now. There’s a great buddy comedy in your future, and I just know you’ll be able to imbue it with at least some of your dark, indie impulses.

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I finally reached the age where the old demon’s deep love for animals, well, it really gets on my tits. That love isn’t new. While we could never have pets in the house growing up, my father seemed to find a new, unconditional love in animals after he left the family home. There were exceptions, of course. We had two budgies as children. They chirped away, night and day, and didn’t seem to bother anyone.

They didn’t have names. We weren’t explicitly forbidden to name them; it just never happened. No one prompted my brother and me to pick names or invest in them in any personal way. When mentioned, they were simply called “bird,” “birds,” or “budgies.”

The budgies are notable in this story for a specific reason separate from my father’s undying love for his own pets. They are touchstones of a dark time in our childhood.

It wasn’t uncommon for my father to come from work and head to the bar for a night out. By himself, mind you. It wasn’t a date night with my mom. Sometimes he wouldn’t even come home from work before heading out. Many times, my brother and I would be asleep before he staggered home.

What happened next was common. After tying one on at his local, the old demon would come home at one or two in the morning and have an immense hunger for something to eat. You know the feeling you get when you leave the bar and find yourself at the drive-thru and order up a half dozen cat food tacos* from Jack in the Box?

The old demon was too cheap for late-night drive-thru. He would routinely come home hammered and decide he was starving. There was no dinner left out for him. That ship had sailed. Anyway, he would open the freezer and pull out a Hungry Man dinner.

Keep in mind, this was the seventies. Our family couldn’t afford a microwave oven. No, my father would spark up the oven, pop in his Hungry Man dinner, and promptly head to the couch, where he would immediately pass out.

An hour or two later, smoke filled the house. My brother and I would awaken to the sound of my mum yelling at my father about how he’d nearly killed us all.

Mum opened the doors to let the smoke waft out into the early, predawn air. My father, for his part, said little in his defense. It happened, and it couldn’t be taken back.

The creepy part of the story was not the fact that we all might have suffered smoke inhalation. No, we had escaped that immediate danger. The spooky part was the morning after.

When my brother and I got up for school the next morning, my father had already left for work. The house had a distinct smell of burnt food and smoke.

There on the counter, left in plain sight for all to see, was the offending item. The blackened, scorched remains of a Salisbury steak Hungry Man dinner, the aluminum tray intact, its items all in their designated sections. A charred hunk of black processed meat acted as the centerpiece, flanked by mashed potatoes rendered indistinguishable from the apple cobbler. The side of peas was reduced to little more than a pile of little black stones.

It was as if my mum had left it out on purpose. There was no sweeping it under the rug. No cleaning it up before the world saw it. No, there it stayed as a reminder of the reckless behavior that ruled the days of my childhood home.

But wait, there’s more…

When I walked into the living room, I looked over at the birdcage. I saw only one budgie on the perch. I stepped closer and looked inside the cage. There, lying dead on the bottom of the cage, was one of the two budgies. Its poor lungs couldn’t take the level of smoke in the house and croaked.

You might call this the proverbial canary in a coal mine moment. It should have been a line in the sand about the way we were living.

It wasn’t.

Not too long after, the second budgie succumbed to the same fate. My father, half in the bag, threw a Hungry Man dinner in the oven and once again passed out cold on the couch. By now, my parents had installed a smoke detector, and its bleak warble roused us from our slumber. We were safe, but the second budgie was not.

But I digress…

In the years after my parents separated, the old demon developed a powerful love for dogs and tropical fish. So devoted was he to these treasures that he spent hours tending to them. He acquired larger and larger fish tanks, and one dog turned into two.

Along with the great care with which he tended his flock, he bragged about them night and day. “You really need to come back and see the fish tank. I got a new Plecostomus fish.”

Listening to him dote and wax on about them drove me crazy. Here, my brother and I were his living offspring. Nothing was ever good enough for him. We were always being knocked back and brutalized, but those damn fish were amazing, weren’t they? The dogs were so smart. He was so impressed. I’d hear him telling people about them all the time.

The fifty-cent armchair psychologist’s explanation for this phenomenon was that the animals were something you could love on your own terms, and they didn’t put conditions on the relationship. His capacity to love them was never in question, and as long as he fed them, they would remain loyal to him. They would never leave him, so there was no rush to push them away.

Now, in the twilight of his life, the old demon found himself alone. His second wife had passed on after a long illness, and the last two dogs they shared had finally given up the ghost. This devastated him more than he could express. I could see and feel it. I knew well enough not to suggest getting another dog, but something in me knew it was only a matter of time.

When he came around to the idea, he found himself the new owner of a black and white Sheltie. The dog was cute, sweet, and loyal. The question of why someone would abandon such a beautiful and kind pup came up more than once. Then he found out.

He never knew the dog’s history, but he quickly observed a series of strange behaviors in the animal. At times, the dog would become almost like a different animal entirely. It was prone to manic episodes of frantic activity, filled with running around and barking at nothing. It created such a frenzy in the dog that its ears would turn off, and you simply couldn’t talk to it. Then, it would be over, and the dog would return to its normal, loving state. The old demon would refer to this as the dog’s “mad half-hour.”

It also had a penchant for stealing my father’s things and dragging them out to his large backyard. Shoes, slippers, and TV remotes were just a few of the things he would abscond with to his domain.

Yet, my father remained unmoved and permissive. The dog could do no wrong. The dog stole a shoe. “Aw, that’s okay. He’s just being a dog.”

The dog shit on the floor again. “I can’t be mad at him. That’s my fault.”

When the phone rang, and my father told me about how the dog had stolen and eaten an expensive pair of hearing aids I had acquired for him, he laughed. I was furious.

His answer? “He’s just my wee pal. I can’t be mad at him. He doesn’t know any better.”

I wondered where all of this compassion was when I was a child. It really beggars belief that he never put it together. He treated animals with so much care and compassion, but had very little for his family.

If I’m honest, it heartened me that he developed such a strong connection to the dog. The bond humanized the old man. Every time he returned home and saw his little dog, he would say, “There he is! The wee guy!”

Seeing his genuine joy showed me his capacity for love, even if it was buried beneath a mountain of his own childhood trauma. It wouldn’t surprise you to learn that my father’s childhood was no picnic.

Have you noticed I haven’t given you a name for the dog in this story? It has a name, but he’ll remain anonymous for the duration of this story.

While he is a crazy dog, he is a gentle, loving animal that I have grown to love despite everything. During the time the old demon was hospitalized, I took the dog to my house. There, he displayed none of the madness that my father permitted. He didn’t bark maniacally; he didn’t work himself up into a frenzy, and didn’t display his usual neuroses.

Why?

I don’t know. I think maybe he just adapted to his environment. After one particularly stressful hospitalization, where I looked after the old demon and his beloved dog, I finally got him home. He sat down in his armchair, and I saw him glassy-eyed and weepy.

“Are you okay, Dad?” I asked.

He broke out of a short reverie and looked me in the eye. As single, solitary tears rolled down his face, he said, “I don’t know what I’d do…”

There was a pause while he pulled himself together.

“…without my dog. I’d be lost without him.”

“I know,” I said, feeling invisible, “I know.”

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Anyone who knows me will tell you I reference movies and television constantly. When I was young, I did it to reference a life experience I did not have yet. “Like that episode of the White Shadow in the seventies where one teenager tried Angel Dust, lost his mind, took off all his clothes, and tried to jump out of a tree because he thought he could fly.”

In later years, I referenced them for all kinds of reasons, but mostly it was to illustrate a story solution in someone’s writing or my writing. I cannot tell you how beneficial it is to have watched thousands of hours of film and television. It offered me access to a treasure trove of options for story and character.

While mentoring young writers, I would make all kinds of references to all kinds of films and ask if they understood what I was trying to tell them. When the results of their writing left me wanting, I would ask if they’d even seen the films I was referencing, and they simply shook their heads. How on earth could I expect them to understand if they’d never seen the films I was talking about? Sure, they might read a summary online, but they wouldn’t have access to the emotional power the story offered.

I took for granted that everyone I mentored had the same vast film knowledge in their heads. Younger writers would also point out that my references were outdated and meant nothing to them. “Why don’t you watch newer movies?”

Well, that’s a story for a different time. Modern films aren’t without brilliant structure, but finding them seems harder.

But I digress.

Watching, studying, and internalizing the emotional impact of films is crucial. Over time, it becomes a shorthand. A secret knowledge or language that we all have access to.

Nowadays, rather than assuming everyone has seen the movies I reference, I simply suggest they watch and study these films to fully understand where I am coming from.

Here are five character-driven films I love to reference.

1. You Can Count on Me (2000)

This film is such an emotional powerhouse; it is hard to quantify its impact on me. Written and directed by the amazing Kenneth Lonergan, the story involves two siblings whose parents die in a car accident when they are younger. Now adults, they live separate lives. Terry, a ne’er-do-well played by Mark Ruffalo, and his sister Sammy, a single mother who struggles to make ends meet in a small town, played by Laura Linney. Both siblings are emotionally frozen as a result of their parents’ deaths. Both act out in different ways.

Terry is a drifter who refuses to settle down in any one place or commit to anything or anyone. He drifts in and out of town to see his sister and nephew, usually for money, and quickly bails out before family obligations sink their hooks into him.

Sammy is the opposite. She anchors herself so securely in place that it quietly kills her. She is dutiful and righteous, but refuses help even though she desperately needs it.

I don’t want to ruin the story for those of you who want to check it out, but the reason I loved this movie and its structure is that it is almost entirely driven by raw character emotion.

Terry’s ritual of coming and going quickly is altered, and he agrees to stay for a while.

The ensuing clash between siblings effectively blows their relationship completely apart in order for it to heal. It is one of the most effective emotional narratives I have ever seen.

The character traits of both siblings are so clear and so diametrically opposed that the audience knows their time together is a powder keg waiting to go off. What you hope to avoid all while watching it becomes the only sensible solution to the problem. That’s what makes it so satisfying.

2. The Remains of the Day (1993)

I reference this stuffy, period drama a lot because it stays the course unapologetically and without fear. A Merchant Ivory film based on the novel of the same name by Kazuo Ishiguro, the film offers story arcs about the English class system, the war, fascism, and unrequited love.

In 1930, Mr. Stevens, played to perfection by Anthony Hopkins, is the head butler of Darlington Hall in England. His efficiency and immovable sense of duty mask a deeply emotional and repressed man. When the new housekeeper, Miss Kenton, played by Emma Thompson, arrives, she brings a cheerier, looser air to the home. Though everything is so subtle you can barely taste it, the feelings between the two build behind tall fences of restraint and propriety. We know she is in love with him, and we also know he is in love with her. He, unfortunately, cannot express it.

Instead, he leans into his duties and the comings and goings at Darlington Hall. As the years trudge on, Miss Kenton accepts a proposal of marriage to another man. It is clear this is not what she wants, but it is probably the most sensible choice she can make given her current circumstances.

When she tells Mr. Stevens of her proposal, hoping to elicit an emotional reaction, something to give her a glimmer of hope that he feels something for her, he gives her nothing. He simply congratulates her on her engagement with a straight face and a smile.

Meanwhile, the devastation is clear on his face and forces him to escape to his private room to avoid a complete collapse.

As a study of character motivations and a commitment to keeping them steady, this film is both maddening and thrilling. When he congratulates her, we too feel the devastation and scream at the screen for him to tell her how he feels. Spoiler alert. He doesn’t.

It illustrates the unique prize you get when you don’t force your characters into a preconceived plot and let them flirt with total annihilation.

3. The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984)

While I’d like to think everyone has seen this gem, time marches on, and younger generations miss it. This film, flawed as it is, is the reason I got into the film business. It’s a character-driven masterpiece. Aside from being an acting clinic, it offers the audience a chance to see how a character’s core motivations can run him down and paint him into a corner.

The story takes place in Greenwich Village in New York. Two Italian cousins struggle to make ends meet. They are dreamers who live in a world full of wiseguys, mobsters, and Little Italy. The setting, the dialogue, and the characters are so Italian, you can smell the pasta sauce cooking in the background.

Charlie Moran, played powerfully by Mickey Rourke, is a maitre d ’ at an Italian restaurant. His dream is to own a restaurant of his own. He is from the neighborhood, but cleans up well. He is well-respected, but wants to go to the next level.

Pauly Gibonni is his reckless cousin who fast-talks his way through life and has an excuse for everything. He wants to be successful, and if that means stealing, then so be it.

Two opposites bonded by blood. The theme? Is blood thicker than water? The answer pushes both of them to the hilt and beyond.

Clearly, Pauly wrangles Charlie into one of his boneheaded schemes. One that puts him squarely at odds with the local mob boss, “Bedbug” Eddie Grant, played by a menacing Burt Young.

Watching their blood bond get driven to the edge inside such a wholly complete world is funny, exciting, and frightening. Throw in a waspy love interest, Diane, played by Darryl Hannah, and the powder keg is set. When she asks Charlie why she doesn’t just outgrow his bumbling cousin, he says, “You wasps, you outgrow people. We Italians, we outgrow clothes, we don’t outgrow people.”

4. The Last American Virgin (1982)

If you were told this movie was just an eighties sex romp, you would dismiss it entirely as dated dreck. This movie is so much more and takes you through a journey that reflects real life more than the fantasy of teenagers living life on the edge of abandon.

Based on an Israeli film called Lemonade, written and directed by Boaz Davidson, The Last American Virgin is almost a shot-for-shot remake, but loses nothing in the translation. As the title suggests, the story is about a virgin. Gary is a decent guy. He is a pizza delivery boy and does not have the moves to make it with girls. He’s sensitive. You might almost read his character as gay, but as the story progresses, you realize he feels deeply and is in love with an unattainable girl named Karen, who has moved to town.

Gary and his two friends, Rick and David, are on a mission to get laid. Rick is a good-looking jock, and David is the chubby friend who is along for the ride. While this makes up most of the comedic turns in the film, Gary somehow remains unsullied and untouched.

What follows is a love triangle between Gary, Karen, and Rick. Gary is in love with Karen and would do anything for her. Rick just wants to bed her and have fun while it lasts.

Critics say the film’s power stems from its ending, but the ending only works if you’re invested in Gary’s journey. He puts it all on the line for love, but in case you thought this was a fantasy, nice guys definitely finish last.

I’m a sucker for a character who is committed to their undoing. It guarantees conflict and doesn’t rely on “plot” to take them where they need to go.

5. The General (1998)

Not to be confused with the Charlie Chaplin film of the same name, the General I’m talking about is the masterpiece by John Boorman about real-life Dublin criminal Martin Cahill. He’s played by Irish actor Brendan Gleeson in a legendary performance.

A cult hero to many, he was seen as a Robin Hood of sorts who ran his gang of thieves in Dublin, trusting only those who came out of the Hollyfield Buildings, a demolished housing estate where he grew up. Fiercely loyal, but brutal when loyalty to him is crossed. He lives by a code, and that code infiltrates every aspect of his life. He is not political and does not side with either the Irish Republican Army or the UVH (Ulster Volunteer Force).

His secretive world is challenged when drugs and greed create cracks in his defenses. The themes of loyalty and power set against a world in turmoil.

All of these films can and should be studied for their character arcs, their commitment, and their choices.

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Parents, as they get older, fall into and feel safer within their routines. When their bodies, their minds, and the world around them become more and more out of reach and out of their control, they cling to the routines that show them they are surviving in an unforgiving world.

The old demon has followed a routine for the last thirty years. There were certainly years we didn’t speak where I was not privy to his day-to-day schedule, but I suspect it didn’t change that much.

To be precise, it’s not one routine “to rule them all” it’s actually several routines. For our purposes, we will stick to the two main routines. The morning routine and the evening routine.

As a boy, my father would get up early for work and retreat into the bathroom for forty-five minutes. This was not strictly a shower and shave ritual. While that was part of it, the absolute necessity was emptying his bowels.

He would tell my brother and me he shit every morning on the dot. It was a non-negotiable in his mind. Even as a boy, I knew this could be a tricky operation. I mean, you can’t really know when you’ll have to go, will you? Some days it might be after lunch. Some days, not at all. I knew this as a kid.

“Well, what do you do if you don’t have to go?” I would ask.

My father would just look at me and say, “You need to concentrate. You need to train your mind.”

This sounded like a ninja training operation. Forcing a turd every day on the dot seemed excruciating. Not to mention, a recipe for chronic hemorrhoids. I didn’t know what a hemorrhoid was at that age, but I knew what straining on the toilet felt like.

It says a lot about the mental gymnastics my father must have gone through. This attempt at controlling your body and environment has revealed itself over the years to mean different things. When I was younger, I saw it as a special power endowed to fathers. Specifically, fathers as intense as mine. Years later, as a grown man, I saw it as a desperate attempt to right a ship that was already leaning over to one side.

I think that’s what routines are. An attempt to control the uncontrollable. Friends and family might advertise them as time-saving, daily hacks to make your life easier, but it’s really just a way to stifle it. Eventually, it becomes a prison from which you can’t escape.

Some routines appear benign and almost necessary. “We like to do our shopping during off-peak times to avoid the heavy crowds.”

Sometimes you hear about a routine that makes you spit out your coffee. The father of an extended family member told me years ago that he taught his dog to shit on command.

When I heard this, I did, in fact, spit out my coffee and laughed hysterically. He wasn’t laughing, though. When I asked him to explain how that actually worked, he told me that when he took the dog for walks, he would simply give the dog the command “Release!” And the dog would stop, squat, and shit uncontrollably as if it was a button installed deep inside its colon that, when activated, forced the dog into a hyperactive peristalsis that pushed the turds out automatically.

I told him I didn’t believe that for a second. If a dog has to go, it goes. Was there really a need to install such a command?

“Listen, time is money. If I don’t give the command, that dog will sniff around for an hour just to keep the walk going.”

The password is control.

He was serious. One day, he had his dog with him. Can’t remember the dog’s name, but when he took the dog for a walk, I told him I wanted to see this command in action.

He was perfectly fine with that. And as we walked, the dog made no normal displays of sniffing, circling, speeding up, or posturing that would tell you a shit was imminent. Nothing. The dog just lumbered along slightly ahead of us.

Then I looked at his owner. I intended to get satisfaction. He didn’t say a word to me, but called out his command in a stern, forceful manner. “Release!”

The dog stopped instantly, squatted on the sidewalk, and pushed out a large curling turd onto the hot pavement. When finished, the dog walked away from it as though it didn’t exist. His owner picked it up with a plastic bag, and that was that.

This routine appeared wholly unnecessary and rather oppressive to the dog. It took the fun out of the walk, I imagine.

But I digress…

Thus ended the morning routine for my father. It didn’t matter if it was a workday, a weekend, or a day off. It was always the same.

Most family members get scuppered by the evening routine. For my father, the evening routine was based around happy hour. The hour from 4 P.M. to 5 P.M. was the sacred time when my father and my stepmom would go to his local bar for a drink. None of these places was fancy. They were local bars, some of them dives, and a collection of fraternal organizations such as the Eagles, the Elks, and the Moose. Any place that offered a cheap beer or a glass of wine. Some of these local bars were attached to restaurants. So, if you sat there at the bar with him as he had his daily consumption of drinks, you would smell food and get hungry. Sometimes, you went in starving.

What you couldn’t do was order food. If you were hungry and said, “Listen, Dad. Do you mind if we order some food? I’m starving.”

“Just wait,” he’d bark. “We’ll eat when we leave. We’ll take it to go.”

It was just one of the weird quirks he had. You simply had to sit there and wait until he was ready to go, then you’d order the food, but not eat it, until you got back to the house.

Now, what part of his ego or world this rule was holding up, it was doing a hell of a lot of heavy lifting. It was not a “one-off” thing. This odd situation repeated many times over the years.

Control.

In later years, I would call my father up and tell him I was coming down for a visit and that I wanted to take him to a nice Indian restaurant. I knew he loved Indian food, so it only made sense to me that he would enjoy a pleasant change.

“I found the best Indian restaurant in your town. I want to take you there for some food.”

I could feel the hesitation on the other end of the line.

“Do you not think you would like that, Dad?” I’d ask.

“Well, yeah,” he’d answer, trailing off at the end.

“What’s worrying you?”

“What time will we be back? We go to the lodge at four.”

The mere idea that a shitty, cheap glass of red wine would be more important to him than a kick-ass Indian dinner at the best Indian restaurant in San Diego County was mind-boggling to me.

But such is the nature of the routine. It commands loyalty and attention. There have been many planned or soon-to-be-planned outings I’ve had to scrap simply because it’s not worth hearing about how badly it screwed up his daily routine. You simply stopped asking because it wasn’t worth the grief.

For me, I eventually settled on the rule that if I spent time with him, it would need to be within the structure of his daily routine.

I’ve been known to be a bit of a curmudgeon. Now, at fifty-five, I’m finally aging into it nicely. I know this about myself. Even things I want to do, I shake off. A friend of mine once asked me at the last minute if I wanted to go see the band Motorhead.

I love Motorhead. Of course, I wanted to see Motorhead.

“It’s tonight,” my friend said.

“Right. Ummmm,” was all I could manage to say.

When my friend asked me why I was hedging, the following words came out of my mouth. “I think I’d like it better if it were my idea.”

Wow. What an incredibly telling statement. I’d seen Motorhead countless times. There wasn’t a pressing need to see them. I, in fact, wanted to see them, but I had chosen not to go because it wasn’t on my terms.

What a miserable bastard. I wonder where I got that from.

So, while I can understand how routines based on control can start, I also know what it’s like to live under the tyranny of one.

Now, in 2026, my father still has routines, but his age and frailty make it hard to follow a solid routine as his body refuses to cooperate. For him, making it through the day takes up more of his time than worrying if he’s following the golden routine that has carried him this far in life.

Watching it wither and die is kind of comforting in a way, but sad when you realize there is nothing to take its place. It’s just a void.

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Does Art Really Need to Meet Commerce?

The short answer is no. The end. Thanks for reading.

The longer answer is more complicated. Artists of every stripe have been saddled with this dilemma for centuries. The sheer nature of art comes from a place that transcends sales, money, and brand recognition. It is a singular entity.

The issue only arises when you intend to share your work. Sure, you can share it for free, and many do. We live in a world now where most forms of art comprise ones and zeroes, and the desire to own physical media has all but vanished.

I come from a generation that collected forms of art. Paintings, pictures, movies, music, and everything in between. It was a point of pride to own a vast collection of, well, anything.

I had thousands of books and CDs. I had boxes of movies, some bought many times in each new and updated format.

People no longer need those physical things. My generation even thought it was necessary to own the digital format of media. The next generation just wanted it for free. Why should they have to pay for it? They know somebody is struggling to get their art seen in the commercial space, but they feel like it shouldn’t be them who has to fork over the money to have it.

This latest generation doesn’t even want to own anything. The idea of having to carry around the physical media they enjoy is foreign to them. Access to the internet is enough for them.

There is a point to this tangent, if I can pull it all back together. I think it is important to understand how art has been delivered over the last fifty years to get a sense of the connection between art and commerce in the modern world.

The internet and the technology that came with it have offered artists many more ways to express themselves and share their creations with the world. If you are willing to share them, you can reach the entire world in an instant. That you would give away your creations to the entire world for free in the snap of a finger is both amazing and frightening.

Now, labels, producers, and promoters encourage artists to divest themselves of their goldmine because if they don’t, they might just get left behind.

An unpleasant side effect of this instant delivery is that it transforms your art into an ubiquitous commodity, so plentiful that it devalues itself and absorbs quickly into the torrent I call “sea of everybody.”

My guess is, if you are reading this, you are not in the Emily Dickinson camp where you intend to write in secret for a lifetime, and it’s anyone’s guess if the world discovers your brilliance after you’re gone. However, if that is the road you choose to travel, then embrace that to the fullest extent you can.

I suspect you probably want a wider audience to see your work and want to be paid for the work you do, so your work must transform within this narrow intersection where all true art is alleged to die.

Here’s the tricky part. If I say to you that the intersection of art and commerce requires a set of broad rules and expectations, you will surely point out a highly successful writer, director, etc., who has blazed a singular path so out of the mainstream that you believe this proves you can be as out to lunch as you want and still make a big success.

Maybe. There are plenty of people in aggregate who have succeeded this way, but the air is even more rarefied up there.

Michael Haneke, for example, wrote and directed a collection of movies that are, at best, difficult to watch, and at worst, horrifying examples of trauma on screen. This is not a judgment of his work. He is a singular voice that has carved out for himself a fanbase that respects the work he does. Check out his films, The White Ribbon, Funny Games, and Cache for examples.

Similarly, Lars Von Trier is seen by many as the enemy of fun. His films are provocative, challenging, and hard to watch. He is not interested in providing you with a fun time for the whole family. No, he is trying to show you something truthful in a way that people would normally turn away from. Check out any of his films. Dogville, Antichrist, Dancer in the Dark, and Breaking the Waves are all powerful downers.

Even the great Paul Schrader, who penned films like Taxi Driver, Hardcore, and Raging Bull, was not looking to deliver feel-good movies. He deals in painful, raw emotion, and the ways human beings destroy themselves trying to make sense of, or completely avoid them.

Even his fantastic adaptation of Russell Banks’ novel Affliction is a stone-cold, spine-tingling descent into unspoken family trauma being dragged out into the light and paraded around for the entire world to see long before his characters have had a chance to deal with it.

These are all great examples. When I watched Uli Edel’s adaptation of Hubert Selby Jr.’s book Last Exit to Brooklyn with a script by Desmond Nakano, I remember being horrified as I left the theater. It was 1989, and when I asked my buddy what he thought, he said he hated it. I wanted to say that I hated it, but I couldn’t.

“I feel like I need to wash my hands,” is all I could say. It made me feel dirty.

Some people believe that movies should simply entertain, not preach, and definitely not end on a downer. Something occurred to me as I walked to my car. The movie left me feeling dirty and sad, but wasn’t that what the writer and director wanted me to feel?

Well, he succeeded, and I recognized that as an important milestone. You don’t have to feel good about the story. The important thing is that you feel something.

Permit me to go further down the rabbit hole. I will share a story with you about the end product of being made to feel something through art.

Reviews.

I have had the good fortune to have some film, tv and comic book projects make enough of a splash in the marketplace that reviews were written. Many reviews. I know a lot of artists who don’t read them, and I respect that.

I’m not like that. I will read them, but I look at them differently than most people. When I wrote a series of comic books based on the Evil Dead film franchise, I knew their fan base would be brutally honest. They are fiercely loyal to the films and the main character. You could be sure they’d throw in their two cents.

One review would sound something like this. “Frank Hannah’s Evil Dead 2 comic series is the greatest adaptation of the films ever printed.”

Wow. Thanks for that. It’s nice to read, but my knee-jerk response is dismissive. Not the compliment, but the extreme nature of the review. They liked it. Good. Is it the best thing they’ve ever read? Hardly. When I read reviews like that, I simply don’t believe them. I think it’s nice, but I’m not likely to get high on my own supply.

Sometimes, the reviews sound like this…

“That comic book written by Frank Hannah is the worst piece of shit I have ever read. He should stick to what he’s good at, which is toiling in obscurity.”

Ouch. How mean. Ha. The truth is, I don’t care about these types of reviews either. I don’t believe it’s the worst any more than I believe it’s the best. They kind of cancel each other out.

In the end, if you really want to cut me to the quick, simply write a review that says you felt nothing. If your thoughts on my work can be summarized into the word “Meh,” then I will definitely feel wounded.

It says I didn’t do my job. This is the worst outcome of all. Most people who write reviews are more bombastic and extreme, so I’m completely happy with those “off the deep end” responses.

If your primary goal is to move people emotionally with your work, then the commerce part of the equation will depend greatly on whether you intend to make your audience feel good or feel bad.

The best advice I can give you is to find a balance between the hard-to-swallow moments and the feel-good moments mainstream audiences expect.

Remember, this advice pertains only to the art meets commerce part of the conversation. Your creative work is not bound to this. I think we need people who write material that forces us to look at ourselves in a way that is uncomfortable.

I had a teacher at UCLA who believed stories should strictly be entertainment. When someone pitched her difficult material, she would hold her hand up with her thumb and forefinger inches apart and say, “That’s a small story…”

It was so dismissive; it pissed off a lot of people in the class. Knowing what I know now, I can see that she was trying to instill a commercial sensibility in the class, but it certainly rubbed us all the wrong way.

One last story that encapsulates this concept perfectly.

Many years ago, I was pitching an edgy comedy called The Paradise Ranch around town. It was a story about a straight-laced U.S. Marshal who is tasked with running a seized business while the criminal case tied to it is handled by the Department of Justice.

There is an interesting rule about seized assets. If, for example, the DEA or IRS charges the owner of a dry cleaning business with racketeering or tax evasion, then the authorities seize the business from the owner, but the authorities must run the business at the same profitability or better than when they seized it. That way, if the prosecutors cannot make their case, they can hand the business back to the owner intact.

Running seized assets is the purview of the U.S. Marshals Service. They are a custodial agency that transports prisoners, hunts fugitives, and manages seized assets.

The asset in my story was a legalized brothel in Nevada. So, now a Dudley Do-Right marshal must get his hands dirty in the day-to-day operations of the brothel. To help him in this endeavor, he located a pimp he placed into witness protection after testifying against the mob. The story about the lives of the working girls and the uptight U.S. Marshal was filled with comedy set pieces, raunchy sight gags, and all-around comedy moments.

One such pitch meeting was with the legendary producer Lawrence Bender. I thought to myself, this is Quentin Tarantino’s guy! He is going to eat this up.

So, I began my pitch and almost immediately he is laughing. And laughing. And laughing. It couldn’t possibly have gone any better than it did. He responded to all the right jokes, and he got a clear sense of what I was trying to achieve. When I finished, I sat back and waited for his response.

I swear, he wiped the tears from laughing so hard from his face. I’ve never been more sure of myself than I was in that moment.

“So, what do you think?” I asked.

“It’s very funny,” he said. “Very funny.”

I sat there waiting to hear more. I was on the edge of my seat. Then he said the following words…

“But does it have to be a brothel?” He asked. “What if it’s a Dairy Queen or something and it’s kids working there?”

I was stunned. I tried to speak, but no words came out. I cleared my throat and intended to ask for clarification, but I shit you not, here’s what came out of my mouth.

“You are Lawrence Bender, right?”

He immediately laughed again. He wasn’t offended. The meeting ended, and I can’t say I can remember much about our conversation before I left.

What has become crystal clear to me now is that even the great Lawrence Bender knows that art and commerce have to meet at some point, and it would be a damn sight easier to sell a Dairy Queen with kids to the studios than a story about a brothel and hookers with hearts of gold.

Now, could a bigger-name writer get my version made? Perhaps. I was no one special. I was just a young writer who showed up with a particularly tough rock to push up a hill.

Did I think my script was commercial enough? Yes, I did, but I wasn’t on the front lines convincing the rest of the machine it was worth the effort. I saw this as a lesson that he didn’t know he was teaching me.

Can I blame him? No. We want to think it’s all personal, but it’s really not. He is in the business of getting movies made; he probably had a long list of difficult rocks he was currently pushing up a hill, and he didn’t need another.

He also might have had a mandate. It’s good to know that if the mandate of a producer is to find broad comedies, you don’t go in with something too niche or in the wrong genre altogether.

In summary, art does not need to meet commerce if you don’t want it to, but the more people you want to see it, the more likely you will be asked to conform to the rules of play in the marketplace. You know, Dairy Queens and kids.

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Upon hearing the words, “I’m in trouble,” I immediately picked up the phone and called my father to find out exactly what was going on.

When he answered, he struggled to breathe, and his breath was weak.

“Dad, what happened? Are you okay?”

“No. I feel like shit,” he said. “I can’t eat, and I can’t keep my eyes open.”

“Why don’t you call 9-1-1?” I offered.

He immediately waved away the suggestion. “No, I don’t need that.”

What did he need? At that point, I didn’t know. I had no choice but to drop everything and head down south to the Mexican border, where he lived.

Just a little recap for you. My father, the old demon, at age eighty-two, had just undergone an elective procedure to install a penile implant to help him achieve a reliable erection.

His procedure included two key components. First, two inflatable tubes were inserted inside his penis on either side of his urethra. Second, a saline-filled bag was positioned in his abdominal cavity. This bag allowed fluid release into the tubes through a control activation within my father’s ball sack.

Too much? It’s science.

Now, where did we leave off? Oh, right. He called me approximately two weeks later and told me he was in some kind of medical distress.

I can’t stress enough that my father never complained about pain. He might tell you he was feeling pain somewhere in his body, but he simply got on with it. So, when my father told me he was in trouble, I knew it was bad.

A man in his eighties, living alone without family nearby during a medical crisis must have been scary for him. He wasn’t totally alone. There were dogs. He always had a dog or two at his side. It was a great comfort to me knowing he had his furry companions with him. He loved them more than anything in his life, and they loved him back. The dogs, however, cannot do what I can do, which is to move into action to save him from himself.

I raced down the interstate toward his house. He lived in a cozy, hilly neighborhood in Chula Vista. It was an enclave of mostly Latinos and Spanish-speaking residents.

When I arrived, I parked my car out front and sat quietly for a moment to steel myself. I needed to put on my mental armor. Once fully outfitted, I walked inside the house to find him sitting in his chair, looking miserable.

“How’re you feeling?” I asked.

“The same. I feel like death,” he answered.

I felt his forehead, and he wasn’t feverish, but clammy. He hadn’t really eaten beyond a discarded attempt at breakfast and some coffee. It was pretty clear to me he was going to need to see a doctor. To be fair, it would have been pretty clear to anybody.

There is something you need to understand about my father and his generation. The very nature of his call meant he knew he needed medical intervention, but I couldn’t just force him into a car. He all but refused help from a doctor.

“What are they gonna do?” Was the only thing he would say. Of course, they would do a lot but years of dealing with him taught me I was gonna have to make this his idea.

I tried one more time. “Dad, I really think we need to get you to a doctor.”

He still wasn’t receptive to the idea.

You are probably asking yourself why a person would go through this charade. What exactly did he expect me to do when I came all the way down there? Why am I here, I thought?

No, this is going to take some Jedi mind shit. He was compos mentis and able to tell me exactly how he felt and what he wanted.

So, I bode my time. It was later in the evening, and my father announced he would be heading to bed. It occurred to me he might not wake up, and I would be faced with a corpse in the morning.

I did not sleep well that night in the guest bedroom. I never slept well while at my father’s place because the guest room was covered in dog hair and was either too hot or too cold. I refused to get under the covers because I was convinced there were spiders, fleas, bedbugs, god knows what else hiding beneath the surface. And mouse turds. Everywhere.

I eventually dropped off into unconsciousness and awoke to the sound of traffic driving down the street, pouring in from the open bedroom window.

I felt a bolt of anxiety race through my body. My mind was grinding back up to full speed. Then, a hint of relief.

I heard my father shifting around in the kitchen. Well, he was alive. That’s something, at least.

I got up and walked into the kitchen, but he had already made his way back to the den, where his chair and television were located. He kept the TV volume at about 85%, which was agreeable to him, but mind-ripping to anyone else. Once he noticed I was up, I physically muted the TV myself.

“How are you feeling this morning?” I asked. He looked no better and no worse than yesterday.

“The same.” He answered.

“Have you eaten?”

“No. I tried some coffee,” then shook his head.

It was crucial now to make my move. I thought it through during the night and was sure it was the way forward.

“Dad, you’re gonna need to show me something or we’re heading to the doctor. You understand?”

“Yeah,” he answered.

“Why don’t you try to eat something. Like a bottle of Ensure or something?”

“Yeah, I guess I could try that.”

I fetched the cold Ensure bottle from the fridge and opened it. I handed it to him.

He took a couple of long pulls from it and set it down. He made a face as though it was the worst thing he’d ever tasted. I monitored him to see how he fared.

It wasn’t long before I heard his stomach rumble, and a long, juicy fart erupted from the seat of his chair. He immediately moved into action.

“I need the toilet,” he said as he got up and staggered to the bathroom.

I followed him to make sure he didn’t fall and watched him make it to the toilet and close the door.

I waited. And waited. I gave him a reasonable amount of time to take care of business, then went to the cracked bathroom door

.

“Dad, are you okay?” I asked,

A long pause followed. Then, “No…”

I opened the door to find my father completely naked on the toilet with his head in his hands. He was only semi-conscious.

“Dad?” I asked.

No response. Whatever I said after that, he didn’t hear or comprehend. It was time.

“Dad, I’m calling the paramedics.”

No response.

I stepped out into the hall and dialed 911. When the operator answered, I explained the situation, and she told me she would send emergency services. I thanked her and returned to the old demon.

“Dad?” I asked. No response. I called out louder. “Dad!”

“Yeah?” he answered.

“I just called the paramedics. They’re on their way.”

“Nooooooooo!” my father cried. He said it in the most disappointed tone I’d ever heard. “I told you not to call them!”

“Dad!” I asserted. “I told you I needed you to show me something. You couldn’t, so here we are!”

My father, still naked, still on the toilet, looked pathetic. I felt an incredible feeling of empathy for him. This was no way to live. Then…

“You’re right. I know,” he mumbled.

When the paramedics arrived, I let them in and escorted them to the toilet where my father was sitting. They asked him several basic questions, but he was delirious at this point. They knew he needed to go to the emergency room to be checked out.

There was only one problem. My paramedics downgraded my father’s disposition to “biohazard mess.” He had soiled himself, and when they told him they needed to get him on a gurney, he informed them he wasn’t done shitting.

This changed things for them, but only slightly. Within seconds, they had brandished and put down a tarp of some kind onto which he was lowered and carried out of the bathroom onto the gurney, which was waiting in the hallway. Once securely on the gurney, they wrapped him up in the tarp like a biohazard burrito. They loaded him into the back of the ambulance, and I watched them shut the door.

The paramedic then told me which hospital they were taking him to and gave me some other details. I nodded and thanked him, and then he was gone.

I stood there in the street watching the ambulance drive away, and I sobbed uncontrollably.

And it wasn’t out of a sense of loss, or fear that my father would die, or anything like that.

I had an obvious sense that this was really all the built-up tension and stress finally being released. That a decision and an action were taken. The outpouring of emotion lasted about ten minutes, but remained just under the surface, waiting for another chance to escape.

By the time I arrived at the ER and had time to see my father, he was being treated by nurses, putting in IVs, drawing blood, and cleaning him up from his earlier “mess.”

They relied heavily on me to answer questions as he was in and out of consciousness. They asked about medications, his home situation, etc.

“You know,” one nurse asked, “When we were cleaning him up, we saw some surgical staples. Did he have surgery recently?”

Here we go. “Um, yes,” I answered.

“What kind of procedure?”

“Yeah, it was a penile implant.”

All the nurses stopped and turned to me at once. They thought I must be joking. When they saw I was serious, they looked at the old man in the bed, and their minds raced with the hows and whys. He was far from the picture of health. This scenario repeated itself a dozen times as shift changes brought in new staff, or specialists needed to be engaged to have a look at him.

A couple of hours later, the doctor informed me that my father was septic and that he was a very sick man. Had he not come in when he did, he would probably have died at home. The infection was so severe that his kidneys had shut down completely, and his body was in a kind of toxic shock.

It was inconclusive whether the recent surgery was the exact cause or if it had been there all along. The remedy was intravenous antibiotics and a steady stream of blood tests every hour on the hour.

My father was mostly unconscious through most of this, but after a couple more hours of IV fluids and antibiotics, he came around.

The doctors ordered an ultrasound or an X-ray, and while they were wheeling his bed out for the testing, I heard a new nurse ask him if he’d recently had surgery.

My father, having no idea this had been asked a dozen times before, happily answered almost as if bragging.

“Yes, I did, as a matter of fact. I had a penile implant,” He waited for them to acknowledge him and then added, “You know what I always say? When in doubt, you just go bionic.”

Yes, for the record, the old demon announced that loudly for anyone and everyone to hear.

The nurses laughed out loud. They had the benefit of hearing it in his Scottish accent. Pain in the ass that he was, he still was charming the pants off of these nurses.

The hospital subsequently admitted him, and he recovered a little every day. I knew he was on the mend when he complained to me about wanting to go home. He felt so inconvenienced by the entire ordeal.

I had to smile. One moment, on the day of his discharge, my heart swelled with personal pride when the doctor came to see him. He told my father in no uncertain terms, “Your son, here, saved your life!”

My father smiled and nodded. If it sank in at all, it wouldn’t last, but I remembered.

I remembered it all.

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There will come a time in your career when you discover that the total of your experience, beliefs, and convictions will become crystallized in your mind. It will be so clear to you that stepping outside of that vision will simply seem like walking around in the dark, trying to find the source of a fart.

It will be here, ladies and gentlemen, where you realize that no one on this planet will ever match or exceed your enthusiasm for a project you believe in.

You can lobby them hard to get them on board, and you might even succeed. You can make your case so clearly that only a fool could see it any other way, but alas, they still will not rise to the occasion in any meaningful way.

It’s a strange paradox in the entertainment industry. It makes no sense that you could conceive of an idea or story so moving, to you anyway, and find it impossible to recruit an ally or two who is married to your vision.

It’s not to say that people don’t love ideas, scripts, and pitches. No, they do, but they love what they see in it, not what you see. So great is the idea that it lights a fire in the hearts of others. Yes, a fire — but a different fire. Not the same fire. And it will never be the same fire.

I’ve been on both sides of this predicament. When someone pitches me an idea I really like, I am the first one to tell them why I like it. I might recognize that it’s a high-concept idea, or a well-developed story narrative, but what sparks in me is the parallel universe in which your idea lives in my brain.

If a story complication is pitched to me that is so good I can start shouting scenes out to you instantaneously, it might look like I am building you up. I suppose I am in my own way, but what I am responding to is my reaction. Often, what I will tell my friends or mentees is something like this.

“You know where I really thought you were gonna go with this…?”

Then I would pitch them my version of their story. I’m not a monster, so afterward, I help them craft their story in the way they want it. It’s their story, after all, but my enthusiasm is for my version of their story. Not theirs. And any enthusiasm I have left over will be for the writer to do justice to the idea they want to write.

Now, this is a microcosm of the entire entertainment industry. It’s collaborative. Everyone wants to put their stamp on the project. They must collectively piss on their little corner of it to let people know they were there. Some people describe this as justifying their position, but it’s more than that. They want to be a part of the creative process, and that’s as it should be.

Problems arise when the visions are vastly different. Two conflicting visions, and you will find yourself in a power struggle. You may win, you may not, but someone’s vision will prevail. For better or for worse, the project will survive. Three or more visions? You are doomed.

Case in point.

In the fall of 2003, I was going around to producers to pitch a TV show for the cable networks set in an area of the Angeles National Forest that was infamous for being a body dumping ground for serial killers and murderers. The show was called Angeles Crest.

It was a spooky show about a man whose wife had been kidnapped as a result of a home invasion. As the weeks and months dragged on, he was quite certain she was dead, but her body was never recovered.

His life completely cratered, and just at the point that he was at his wits’ end, a woman arrived at his door. She claimed to be a psychic medium who could communicate with the dead. She was hiking in the Angeles National Forest and felt a strong connection to a woman who ultimately led her to his door.

He couldn’t believe it. It must be a scam. This woman was trying to bilk him out of his money. Only when she brandished the scarf his wife was wearing when she was kidnapped did he finally believe that she made a genuine connection to his wife.

He took the scarf in his hands and found himself pulled back into the darkest parts of his grief. He sent her away. So much grief and fear consumed him that he burned the scarf immediately to put an end to his torment.

The next day, he regretted his actions and sought the woman out. When she asked for the scarf, he admitted he burned it. Now, without the connection to her body, they were back at square one.

Undeterred, she made a deal with him that whatever body they found, they’d have to follow the trail wherever it led. Thus began the adventure of finding bodies in the Angeles National Forest, which was two and a half times the size of Manhattan, and reconnecting them with their families, etc. The next body might be his wife, or it might not.

This was the type of stuff I was writing. I loved supernatural shows, and while this was well before wildly successful shows like Ghost Whisperer and Medium, I felt like this would be great television.

I pitched it around town, and while it got some interest, I was mostly told that shows about mediums and psychics didn’t work. Which was true. Until they did.

I eventually met with a producer who was a former head of a cable network, who knew all the major players at the TV studios and networks. I pitched him the idea, and he flipped. He loved it.

I know now what he really loved was his version of my idea. He knew CBS was looking for a spooky show, and Angeles Crest could be that show.

This sent me over the moon. I was very naïve and green in my writing career. I had one movie under my belt that had yet to be released, but had made a splash earlier in the year at Sundance.

To say I was highly motivated was an understatement. Working with this producer, he told me that this idea would not work as a supernatural psychic show, but would work as a show about cops who investigate murders in the Angeles Crest area.

This wasn’t my idea, but I believed I could make that work. It turns out Forest Rangers patrolled the Angeles National Forest, and they worked in concert with the Sheriff’s Department to investigate any criminal cases. It was a perfect situation.

So, I wrote up a pitch based on this new angle, and we ended up going straight into the network to pitch it to the head of CBS. In case you’re wondering, no, this was not a normal thing. Nothing about this was normal, but there was a small window of opportunity, and this was the way we were going to make it happen.

No star attachments, no eight-hundred-pound gorilla. Just the former head of a cable network and a very green, naïve writer.

Long story longer, we sold the show in the room to the network. Amazing. Now what? We had no studio, so we had to lay off the show onto a studio, which was a great problem to have. What wasn’t great was that studios hated this as they were coming in behind the eight ball and didn’t feel like their imprint was on it.

We found a studio, deals were negotiated and signed, and then the actual work began of crafting the pilot for Angeles Crest.

We now had four cooks in the kitchen, and wouldn’t you know it, all the visions were heading in different directions.

I wanted a scary, sharp, edgy cop show, using the landscape to build the horror of the premise. I wanted a deeply flawed lead who made mistakes and was frequently knocked back by the enormity of his grief.

My producer told me that the lead and the team did not, and will never have, flaws. They were superheroes. They didn’t stumble. They were flawless.

Womp. Womp.

The TV studio wanted a more middle-of-the-road cop show, which didn’t excite me, but I could deal with it. The network came back and said what they wanted was CSI in the Mountains.

That’s not what they bought, but that’s what they wanted. I felt my soul drop out from under me. They wanted to take my edgy drama series and turn it into a show for their target audience, who at the time had an average age of 87.

Get ready, get set, GO! Write a pilot!

What followed was a disaster. Every single note yanked the story in a different direction until it pulled itself apart. There was no way to make this work without disappointing someone. The pilot had moments, but failed to entertain on just about every level. I turned it in. They did not select it for filming, and I sat back afterward, wondering what in the hell happened?

We didn’t have two conflicting visions; we had four! Twenty-three years later, I look back and ask myself what I would do differently. You could try to reach consensus on the vision for the show, but that, it turns out, is also a moving target.

The worst part of this fiasco? Not only did no one match my enthusiasm or vision, but the process killed my initial enthusiasm altogether.

So, what’s the point, you ask?

It’s not about being so rigid in your view that nothing gets done, but knowing that your vision is yours alone. Getting others to get on board with it only comes when you’re the 800-pound gorilla in the room, and that might just be your folly. Collaboration is key, but just understand its nature.

And also, if CBS tells you they want a spooky show, don’t believe them. Ever.

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The day the old demon called me to tell me he wanted to have a penile implant installed, I was admittedly caught off guard. My father, like many men his age (82) suffered from erectile dysfunction. He spoke openly about this issue and was not ashamed to admit it.

“My biggest problem is that bloody ED,” he would say.

Of course, there were several other medical and health problems plaguing his body, but the ED issue was the only one that ever rose to the level of personal urgency.

I think it’s important to note that the old demon was quite the cocksman in his day. He could be a stern, overbearing father, but he saved his charms and good humor for the fairer sex. Whether it was his Scottish accent, his sense of humor, or smoldering charisma, he seemed to do okay in the female department.

This was evident to me as a kid, and even after my parents separated, there were times I unknowingly stumbled over this fact.

When my parents separated, the old demon, in his infinite wisdom, moved into a studio apartment around the corner from the place we lived. It gave him the ability to drive by and see what was doing at the house. One explanation was that he wanted to stay close to his family. His two boys. The other is that he wanted to check to see if my mom was seeing anyone.

He needn’t have worried. My mother, as a single mom, worked her fingers to the bone and had zero time for a social life after coming home and taking care of our needs.

But I digress…

One Sunday morning, I decided I would walk over to his apartment and bring him the Sunday paper. I was probably ten or eleven at the time, and didn’t tell my mother of my plans.

I went to the Boys Market next to the apartment and checked the paper machine for the Sunday Edition. At the time, it was fifty-cents. I searched through my pockets and realized I only had thirty-five cents. I couldn’t go to his place empty-handed, so I stood in front of the entrance and begged people coming into the market for the fifteen-cents I would need to buy the paper.

It took a little while, but I eventually got the change I needed, and I purchased the paper and headed over to my father’s apartment to surprise him.

And surprise him, I did.

When I knocked on the door, it took a moment or two for him to answer. When he did, he looked disheveled, as if he hadn’t gotten out of bed yet.

“Hi, Dad,” I crowed. “I brought you the Sunday paper!”

The look on his face told me something was very, very wrong.

“Look, son. It’s not a good time. You’ll need to come back.”

For me, as a kid, I couldn’t understand why a father would refuse his son. Especially one bearing gifts. I saw the look on his face. It didn’t occur to me at first that what I was seeing was embarrassment.

I spied behind him and I saw a pair of legs lying on the Murphy bed against the wall.

Oh, I thought. He had company. My eyes met his. There was nothing left to say. I simply handed over the paper. He took it and shut the door. I walked away feeling butt hurt for being pushed aside.

Now, all these years later, I empathize with his situation. He was out on a Saturday night and hooked up with some hottie from his local bar. Can’t really blame him for that. I also kind of get that I was trying my best to be the “goodest boy” for my father. It’s a level of control you try to wield in a completely powerless situation.

I count this incident as one of those indelibly burned moments that acts as a signpost about the life I was living at the time. I don’t remember speaking to him about that moment ever again. It became one of those family secrets you simply keep without being asked to.

Point being…

He was a bit of a player in his day, and I knew this. Now, age and male-related ailments had left him without a hard-on. To a cocksman like my father it must have been a tremendous blow to his self-esteem. To his manhood.

He tried all number of remedies over the years. Viagra, Cialis, you name it; he tried it. He even went to a clinic that offered him an injectable solution that could help him achieve an erection. That had worked apparently, but was problematic for reasons I won’t go into here. He fell prey to any and every crackpot remedy or treatment on the market. He even paid thousands of dollars to have shockwave therapy sent through his rod to help break up plaque. The kind in your veins that causes a lack of proper blood flow.

Thousands of dollars down the tube, but no marked improvement. So, to say the penile implant was a simple whim is probably being extremely unfair to the old demon. He had done everything he could to help himself and came up empty.

“What do you think?” He asked.

I need to tell you that when he asked; it wasn’t for show. He wanted my honest opinion on the issue.

Now, let’s break this down a bit…

My knee-jerk response was that he was out of his mind. I felt like his priorities were completely out of whack. Of all the things he needed in life, was a penile implant that high on the list?

Let me preface this by saying my father lived alone. My stepmother had died a year or two prior after a long, protracted illness.

Let me be blunt here —

There was no long line of women waiting in the wings to fuck my father. In fact, no women. None. So the idea of having an invasive procedure done in aid of something that wasn’t currently happening or bound to happen seemed wholly irresponsible and completely off the rails. Somebody had to tell him.

“I dunno, Dad,” I said. “If it’s what you really want, you might as well.”

Yeah, that somebody wasn’t me. He lived two hours south of me near the Mexican border. He also told me about this procedure in part because he needed me to drive him to and from the hospital.

When the day came, I took him to the surgical center and came back hours later to pick him up. I got him home safely and made sure he had everything he needed.

For all intents and purposes, the procedure had been a success. No complications, no issues, no hangups. Once he was settled, I headed back home and wondered if he would ever be able to use this magical wand and if he was happy with his decision.

Approximately two weeks later, I received a phone call from the old demon that went to voicemail.

“Frank, it’s your dad. I’m in trouble.”

His voice sounded panicked and urgent. I felt a ball in the pit of my stomach expand and churn. Anxiety raced through my body. I felt a tingling in my fingers as all the blood rushed to my heart.

End of Part One!

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A provocative title, but let’s be honest. Literally none of the advice people gave me when I was younger moves the needle at all in this current age. The exception, of course, is having talent, connections, and being in the right place at the right time. Everything else? A complete waste of time.

There is a classic origin story that anybody and everybody who has made it in the entertainment industry will tell you. It’s the same story I will tell you now.

When I made my decision to get serious about writing screenplays, I came into contact with veterans of the industry. People who had made it. They had sold scripts, gotten movies made, and lived to tell the tale. Without fail, they would ask me the same question.

“Is it money you want?” They would ask.

“Well, money would be nice, but—”

“Because if it’s money you want, there are about fifty million other things you can do that are easier to make money.”

“No,” I pleaded. “This is what I want to do.”

“Because,” they said without hearing my answer. “This is a despicable business. Honest to God, it’s bad. And by the time you realize it for yourself, it will be too late, so I ask you again. What do you want?”

The truth is, I wanted all the things he described. I wanted to make millions. Have an enormous house in the Hollywood Hills. I wanted famous friends, to be a household name, and leave a legacy that would live on long after I was dead.

Now, thirty years later, I am the one asking young writers the same question. I have a deeper understanding of its meaning, and the breadth of my experience informs my perspective.

I used to think asking these questions was about thinning the herd, and I still believe that to an extent, but it turns out attrition is a self-cleaning oven. You might worry you need to derail young talent to keep yourself from becoming irrelevant. You don’t. Believe me when I tell you they will derail themselves with no help from you.

So many writers I have mentored struggled with the one key element you simply can’t teach. The unquenchable desire to write.

These people, nice as they may be, will never achieve the success they think they want. Why? Because it’s incredibly difficult to master. It’s the work of a lifetime, and if you can’t find the desire to start, you will never have the stomach to finish.

I’m sorry. I said it. Without that desire, you will never get the notes and constructive criticism you need to get better. Nor will you grow the tough, thick skin needed to listen to people tell you no. You’ll miss the very important stage where you realize and accept that the stuff you wrote early on is complete and utter shite.

But I digress…

To master any craft takes focus and tremendous drive. You don’t just want to do it, you need to do it. It’s not a chore for you, even when it’s hard. Stopping is out of the question. This drive is a crucial part of every success story, but it’s not the only thing.

It has to be paired with a tireless need to get better. It’s a place where you’re never satisfied with where you are. You can feel a sense of accomplishment and make a note of how far you’ve come, but you will always look for and soak up any new pieces of wisdom along the way.

So, let’s assume you’ve checked all the above boxes. You’re ready to take the town by storm. Let’s see if the old advice holds up.

1. I was told you needed to live in Los Angeles and drive a nice car.

This advice doesn’t hold up. The theory about the car was if an agent or producer saw you pull up in a beater car, they’d assume you’re a fraud. Just a nobody who’s clearly never had a measure of success before.

It’s sad to think that you hopping out a black Land Rover really made that much of a difference, but it did back then. You needed to look as if you already had the thing you were hoping for and didn’t really care if you got it or not.

Nowadays, none of that is true. Why? When was the last time anybody went to a meeting in person? Everything is a Zoom meeting or a FaceTime call. You simply never show up in person. Your reality is virtual. Your Zoom background image can turn you into anything you want to be.

Similarly, your location is less important. As long as you have a computer and an internet connection, you can plant your flag wherever you want.

2. I was told you needed a fresh perspective. You needed to be good, but also original and like nothing anyone’s ever seen.

Okay, for the record, I thought this was bullshit then, and it’s definitely bullshit now. Nobody wants to take a chance on anything in Hollywood, let alone you. Originality scares the shit out of Hollywood. Films are giant rocks that a large team of people reluctantly push up a hill, usually for years. If you show up with a shiny new rock they’ve never seen before, they simply smile and send you out to the front desk to get your parking validated.

Why? Why are they so scared? I’ll tell you. A smart person once told me that if a producer says no 100% of the time, they are right 99% of the time. Think about that. Let that sink in.

That translates into pre-existing properties, sequels, franchises, and anything that is a known quantity. The safer, the better. Despite what you might have heard, it’s not a dream factory. It’s a business. It’s about market share, stockholders, and profit-and-loss statements.

3. You need to be networking and meeting people constantly.

What? In person? Networking in Hollywood is only as successful as you are useful to people. I understand the idea that if you are being seen; you are being talked about, and if you are being talked about, you are part of the conversation. While this, on its face, isn’t bad advice, smart people are doing this without leaving their house. Social media has become the meeting place for the world. Making yourself a part of the conversation happens because you are the one leading it. Why? Because you have a sizable social media presence, and they engage with you. Showing up for drinks at the latest hotspot is both a waste of time and money. If people see you are making waves in the social media universe, they will be more willing to pay attention.

4. I was told countless times that I should focus on either film or TV projects. You can’t go back and forth. You will get pigeonholed, and you can never get out from under it.

Oh, to be pigeonholed. The world of streaming has changed the entire landscape. Jobs are so scarce that talented writers may specialize in a specific medium, but they know they have to be flexible.

The rise of big mega blockbusters and multiverse superhero projects is miles away from what passed as a blockbuster in the seventies, like Jaws or Star Wars.

The slow death march that killed what we used to know as independent cinema simply re-emerged as the long-form serialized TV series on every streaming service in existence. It just takes a quick peek at the creators, writers, and directors of these shows to discover most of the legends of indie film are working in TV.

5. How about this one? If your script is good, it will rise to the top of the heap.

Maybe. But I’m also kinda calling bullshit here. Why? Because the competition is fierce. Despite hearing how bad scripts are out there and how nobody is writing anything new, the truth is, they are. And a lot of those scripts are fantastic, but no one is going to make a fantastic script about Jim Henson dropping acid and conjuring the Muppets during a lengthy road trip to Burning Man.

Yes, write great scripts. Of course. Just understand that it may end up in a pile alongside other fantastic scripts. And if the subject matter is difficult or too niche, it will make a beautiful doorstop before it ever makes a movie.

I can hear what you’re thinking. Frank, I’m only going to write what I am passionate about. Why should I change? Why should I dumb it down for the masses?

Why, indeed? The short answer is you don’t have to. If you want to write the kind of material that has a limited audience but is fantastic and compelling. More power to you. I think that’s great. I take no issue with what people choose to write about.

This article, however, isn’t about what makes up a good story. It’s about breaking into Hollywood, which many would argue is a place that does not exist anymore.

The main point here is that somewhere along the line, art must meet commerce. It’s the entertainment business. You are here to entertain. You want to change the world? You have to find ways to make the medicine go down.

This all seems so dour and depressing. What does all of this mean? What advice do you actually give people in this day and age if they want to be a successful writer in Hollywood?

That’s easy. You might not like it, but I’ll be happy to tell you. There’s no gatekeeping here. I’ll hold the door for you. Honest.

This goes back to the original question. What is it that you actually want?

Success? Fame? Money? A big house? All the above?

If those are your primary answers, then I would probably recommend another profession. Why? Because if “Creating something” isn’t the number one item on your list, you might as well be a paper pusher.

Now, if you want to create something from nothing and engage the part of your brain, that sees that anything is possible, then you’re speaking my language.

Here’s some advice.

1. Use any form of new media you can.

Currently, in 2026, the tools available to you as a creative person are endless. There has never been a time when access to the public has been easier. Social media sites offer platforms where you can mainline your creative projects directly to your own audience. Cameras on smartphones are good enough now to shoot short films on.

And for all the talk of AI stealing jobs from people in the entertainment industry. Yes, that is a valid concern. As a working writer in the industry, my imagination overshadows my fear of it. I see these AI apps as tools to help me be better at my job. And it does make me better. We can’t bury our heads in the sand and tell people we won’t accept it. It’s already here. There is no putting the genie back into the bottle.

And no, in case you’re wondering, I don’t worry about AI writing a better story than me. Here’s why. You know who else can write a better story than me? Thousands upon thousands of real people who have their own unique perspectives. That didn’t stop me before, why should it now?

By the time we stop using writers to create, we will have bigger problems on our hands. The reason this doesn’t bother me is that AI does not affect my core motivation in life, which is to create.

Money, fame, and success are simply side effects that come and go with the territory.

2. Keep a low overhead

.

This is my biggest secret. It’s one I stumbled on over the years because I gained a clear understanding of my priorities. Life is expensive. Even the basic, single-serving option you start out with as a young adult.

Sacrifices must be made to continue the luxury of living a purely creative life. Do you want a wife, a house, and a family? Okay, that’s fine. Do you want them now? If so, you can probably forget about living the dream.

Damn, Frank! That’s harsh! Not really. If you want kids, great. If you have kids, then you’d better make them your number one priority. If your screenplay baby is more important than your kids, then you’ve made a massive mistake.

Is it possible? Perhaps. Is it realistic? No.

Bottom line, to continue doing what you love, you need to be prepared to make sacrifices. It’s why I keep a very low overhead. What that looks like for you may be entirely different. That’s okay, there is no one-size-fits-all. I’m simply suggesting that understanding this upfront will make it easier to decide what is possible and what is not.

3. Understand that creating is a spectrum.

Let me explain. You must accept that your career, if there is one, will ebb and flow constantly. This means you will probably need to take on other jobs to make ends meet while you await your next big payday or residual check.

Take a moment to appreciate that being a writer means creating something. If this is indeed your passion, you stand to get a powerful hit of accomplishment from many other forms of creativity. This is the key. This will keep you from choosing a job that is complete drudgery and one that feeds your soul just enough to keep you in the game.

It’s a delicate balance, and knowing what those things are requires trying them. That’s how you find out.

I love expressing myself in various ways, and knowing there is a spectrum of choices at my disposal keeps me from going insane.

4. Be Prepared to Do it Yourself!

I spent a great deal of time waiting for people with power to tell me I was good enough or whether my ideas were worth pursuing. I quickly became tired of hearing the word no. Either my idea was too dark, too niche, too expensive, or too crazy.

It’s soul-crushing. I woke up one day and literally heard myself announce to no one in particular that I was just going to do it myself.

I was going to stop waiting for permission from others to pursue a project. Sometimes, that means learning how to do things outside your comfort zone. The tools are there, you just need to take advantage of them.

Will you fail? Of course you will. Will it be immensely satisfying? You bet it will. The trail of dead ideas and projects I have left behind me is long and storied, and I don’t regret a single one of them.

I don’t love to fail, but it doesn’t scare me. If I choose not to do something, failure is no longer the reason. Every failure has taught me something. Every misstep, bad decision, and bellyful of hubris that exploded in my face has strengthened me. It’s given me the courage to take on things I probably had no business starting.

Don’t wait for people to tell you yes. You have everything you need to say yes to yourself. Do that and then sit back and see what you come up with.

There! I’ve said too much, but I’m sure there were a few gems in there somewhere.

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The letter from the sheriff’s department was addressed to me, but I thought little about it. Most physical mail you get these days is marketing trash or junk mail made to look like an important piece of correspondence, but reveals itself to be a come-on.

The letter sat on my desk for a few days before I opened it. When I did, my jaw dropped in shock as I read.

“Dear Mr. Hannah. A car registered in your name was involved in a hit-and-run accident in October 2025. Please contact Detective So-and-So to schedule a time to come down to the station.”

The letter included the license plate of the vehicle, which I recognized as my father’s car. A car he had signed over to me a year prior, as he was not really driving anymore. I agreed to register it and insure it for him. And now this…

My stomach churned at what all this could mean. Once again, the old demon had found a way to interrupt my regularly scheduled life and upend my serenity with thoughts of car wrecks, criminal proceedings, arrest warrants, and prison sentences.

Had my father run someone over? Had he left the scene of an accident? I just couldn’t imagine what he must have been thinking. Had his cognitive decline finally reached a point where he couldn’t remember a hit-and-run accident?

I immediately called the detective assigned to the case and left her a message. I gave her a basic rundown of my understanding of the situation, which wasn’t much, and asked her to call me back.

I then checked the web for what to do if you receive a hit-and-run letter from the sheriff’s department. Every piece of advice, whether it was an AI summary, a law firm, or a criminal lawyer, said the same thing, and explicitly. “Do not speak to the detective without a lawyer present under any circumstances!”

My heart sank. Of course, I convinced myself the brief, yet vague message I left for the detective would be enough to implicate myself somehow in the entire ordeal. Accessory after the fact! I felt incredibly stupid and vulnerable.

According to California law, the criminal penalty for engaging in a hit-and-run accident could mean six months in jail and a thousand-dollar fine. If a person sustained physical injury or death, the charges get exponentially more serious.

And that’s to say nothing of the civil charges that might pop up for damages, both physical and mental. Punitive damages might be assessed, and I could lose my house. I could lose everything. How did I lose control so quickly?

All because I let the old demon continue to drive his car to the market. Why didn’t I stop him? I had a sneaking suspicion the real reason was that I knew his inability to drive would mean I would be on the hook for the day-to-day chores he needed to complete.

So, in short, all of this was my fault!

My mind reeled with the possibilities, and none of them were good. I wanted to call the old demon and scream at him, but I couldn’t do that until I spoke to the detective to find out exactly what had transpired.

When I calmed down enough to think straight, and the taste of metal that precipitated projectile vomiting subsided, I remembered my father had already told me about this fender bender.

He called me and said he had gotten into an accident in the parking lot of his local supermarket. It was not a high-speed crash, and while he admitted he was at fault, he said the other vehicle had sustained no damage. He further explained that he had told her he had insurance and gave her his contact information.

“She didn’t have any damage to her car,” he said. “My car, now that’s a different story.”

It occurred to me that if she had not sustained damage to her car, she might choose not to contact her insurance carrier. My father wasn’t interested in having his car fixed. There was a chance this would resolve itself if the other driver didn’t need to have her car repaired.

“Dad, you need to tell me right away if that woman tries to call you,” I told him.

“I will,” he answered. “Don’t worry.”

Over the next few days and weeks, I asked the old demon if he had received a call about the car accident. He told me he had not. I didn’t believe he was lying.

That, of course, doesn’t mean she didn’t try. She may have tried numerous times. He just doesn’t answer his phone. Why? Because he doesn’t hear it. He is severely hearing impaired, and half the time I call him, he doesn’t hear the phone. I was living in a fantasy land that somehow this important call about his fender bender would be the one call he would hear and pick up.

The next day, I tried the detective again, and she picked up. Success. I was nervous, but I spoke respectfully and apologetically, throwing myself at the mercy of the court, so to speak.

After a brief exchange, I explained what I knew about the accident and calmly told her what my father had relayed to me. She curtly interrupted me.

“Sir,” she said into the phone twice to get me to stop talking, “that’s not what happened.”

My heart sank again.

“It was not in a parking lot. Your father pulled out onto a major street without looking and was struck by the other car.”

The detective spoke in a very exacting manner. Very matter-of-fact. The breezy, friendly tone of the conversation was gone, replaced now by something altogether more ominous.

“Okay,” I said. “I understand.”

“Also,” she added. “Your father’s driver’s license expired in 2023.”

“Oh,” I responded. “I see.”

I wasn’t even sure how to respond to this information. Do I give them an address where he lives so they can arrest him? Do I stop the call and tell the detective I don’t want to continue without a lawyer present?

Maybe I should just tell them he’s old and doesn’t really know what he is doing. He might be guilty of everything you describe, but isn’t there a way we can make this right?

My father was unaware of the atomic bomb that was going to be dropped in his lap. As far as he was concerned, everything was status quo.

When I finally arrived at his independent living facility, I asked if I could speak with him privately. His girlfriend was in the apartment. She was a sweet woman and had a fiery relationship with the old demon.

When she left, I lowered the boom. My father was incredulous. He simply couldn’t believe this was happening. He was sure this woman had not damaged her car. Well, there was plenty of evidence to the contrary. I explained that the Sheriff’s Department had sent me a letter and that criminal charges were hanging in the balance pending a thorough investigation.

His face read the severity of my words, and I savored that moment, but I have to be honest with you. When you know the person will largely forget what you are saying, it lessens the impact substantially. You end up having to remind them over and over about how much trouble they might be in, and then you become the asshole in the scenario. Unlike someone with short-term memory loss or dementia, his memory failure does not erase conversations from his mind. My father mostly remembers the recent conversations, but unless the subject is in his face all the time, it will happily drift into the back of his mind, where it will eventually wither and die like an old furry tomato in the back of the fridge.

The selfish part of me wanted to impart to him how much stress and turmoil this was putting me through. Me, me, me, me, me! He understood that fact, but an apology was not forthcoming. It was all matter-of-fact information for him to digest — or not.

For example, not once since informing him did he ever pick up the phone or ask me how it was going. It was never on his mind like it was on mine. He would suggest something unrelated, and I would have to remind him. “Well, you know, we still have to resolve the incident with the sheriff.”

“Right,” he would answer. There would be no follow-up questions or updates required on his part. I really wanted to punish him over this situation, but how?

If I couldn’t shame him over the mess he created, there was only one option left, which was to negotiate the pitfalls of criminal and civil charges by stepping up and becoming the lightning rod for my father’s transgressions. The sheriff and the aggrieved party could now load for bear and take aim at yours truly.

The detective correctly surmised that I was not the victim in all of this, but the person left holding the bag. She agreed that because my father had stopped and spoken to the other driver involved in the accident, this was not a hit-and-run. Thank God!

“Listen,” she said. “These people just want somebody to step up and pay for their repairs.”

“That’s me. I’m the guy,” I offered.

“I’m happy to let the insurance companies handle this.”

The detective graciously let it end there. She understood my father should not be driving, and I clarified the car was no longer available to him. I explained I would happily pay for the damages to the other driver’s car, and we could put an end to the issue altogether.

This seemed to satisfy her. Now, it was up to me to get the estimates and make things right.

What I didn’t count on was that the old demon would try to sell the car out from under me. He spoke to someone interested in purchasing the car, and when asked what he was looking for, my father said, “I dunno. Fifty bucks?”

The buyer in question had the good sense to know this was not the price on the car. “Let me call your son,” He said.

When he called, I told him I needed to get as much for the car as I could as I was on the hook for the damages to the other car. Damages my own insurance carrier wouldn’t cover. He understood.

Shortly thereafter, I paid for the repairs on the other person’s vehicle, but the car still sits in my driveway, staring at me, taunting me as a reminder of what thrills and spills may be in my future.

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I’ve been mulling the idea of telling stories about my crazy Scottish father for a very long time. For those of you who know me personally, you probably understand how embedded my father and his shenanigans are in my daily life. He has been a source of pain, inconvenience, and deeply held trauma, and finally writing about him seems almost inevitable. I held off in doing so in large part because he was still alive and the things I had to say would probably upset or anger him.

My father will turn 89 this year and, well, I believe I have waited long enough. He is an old demon, and as these stories will tell you, he’s been brought back from the brink of death so many times that when doctors and surgeons try to tell me how sick he is, I just nod and smile. Those same doctors later find me in the halls of the hospital ward and proclaim how well he is doing. They simply can’t believe the recovery he’s made.

On a recent visit to his Nephrologist, his kidney doctor informed him how good his numbers were and asked if he was doing all of the things he suggested. My father looked at him without an ounce of irony and said, “No…”

Old demon.

Let’s face it. He’s not going anywhere anytime soon, and even if he does, he will remain deeply seated in my mind as a gremlin, unable to leave and happy to stay and make trouble.

For thirty years or more, the memories of my father and the stories that accompany them dealt strictly with the insane upbringing that comes from living with a violent, angry, abusive alcoholic. Thankfully, time has blessed me with a great many stories so completely divorced from those scary years, it’s almost as if I don’t need to tell them.

Of course, I will tell them, for context, but I don’t want these stories to come off as a bitter and sad list of grievances. I wouldn’t call myself a fully evolved human being, so there is a lot of repressed anger still shoved down deep inside waiting to come out. I want these essays to be entertaining, but also informative, and to have some kind of point. Whether I achieve that goal is to be seen. We shall see.

I’m inherently fascinated by evolving situations and conditions. I marvel at how a groundswell of goodwill can reach a tipping point and then nosedive violently into annoyance, anger, and eventual apathy.

An example of this can be found in the pews of a local catholic church. I had been invited to a First Communion Mass for one of my cousins’ kids. Nobody really wants to go to these events, but you do it to keep up appearances. While I was sitting there, I looked around and found a packed church full of family members there to celebrate their loved one’s first communion.

At first, there was a level of nervousness, followed by a feeling of pride and joy. As the mass continued on and on and on, trying to accommodate the endless line of candidates, the groundswell of support and joy turned sour. People looked at their watches, they looked at one another, and shook their heads. This was all fine and well, but enough is enough. The entire production lasted close to three hours, and the overall vibe of the congregation was more akin to that of an arsonist looking for something beautiful to burn to the ground

.

This feeling of aggravation was on nobody’s radar just three hours prior. No, this was purely situational. An unspoken social contract had been broken. I would attend your child’s religious claptrap for no more than an hour, and then I would travel to your house for refreshments, where I would eventually sigh and tell you all about the busy day I had planned, some of which had to be moved around to accommodate this beautiful ceremony. Cards or money would be handed out, and I would be free to go home and fall asleep on the couch in front of the television while a professional pickleball league on the Ocho lulls me into a deep restorative slumber.

But I digress…

This is but one example of the kind of tipping point I’m talking about, and it won’t be a surprise to learn that I see the troubled relationship with my father as a prime example of this phenomenon. The universe does not care about the hardships, trauma, or history surrounding your family relationships. You can make all number of agreements with yourself about your motives and your true intentions, but none of it will matter. In the final analysis, you will learn that there is no final analysis. There is no end to the experiment.

My father, the old demon, now lives in a clueless state, having forgotten the horrible years of abuse and psychological torture he inflicted on his family. And just in case you’re wondering, I’m not talking about a state of dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. No, I believe the culprit here is a mixture of good old-fashioned senility and selective memory.

It’s pretty simple in his mind. “If I was so bad, what are you doing here, then?” It never occurs to him that someone would be there for him in spite of his behavior. The only conclusion to be drawn — in his mind — is that he was, is, and will always be a great father.

It actually makes me laugh. You have to hand it to him. That is an ingenious way to survive. You must adapt. You must press on. If you can’t change it, you have to accept it. If you can’t accept it, you have to — well, you have to make up whatever story works for you.

My father has been many things over his lifetime, and they are not all bad. For reasons I will endeavor to explain in the coming weeks and months, my father lives by a strict code. He is not afraid to speak his mind, and this has landed him in trouble more times than I can count. He has no qualms about being the proverbial “turd in the punchbowl.” He lives with such conviction that he never hesitates to tell someone they are full of shit, or defend the actions of someone he sees as honorable.

He is a voracious reader, and I can tell you now with certainty that he has forgotten more books than I will ever read in my lifetime. He was very able-bodied, not so much now. He was a part of that generation that knew how to do anything and everything. Build an addition to a house? Sure, I can do that. Fix a broken-down car? Yup. Fabricate parts he needed by first fabricating the tool he would need to fabricate the part in question? Absolutely.

He possesses an unquenchable curiosity. He loves to learn new things and is willing to ask the simple question. “How do I do that?” The words, “I can’t do that,” never cross his mind.

He has a terrific sense of humor. He understands one of the greatest secrets of existence. He knows that every tragedy, hardship, and setback can be looked back on with an eye to humor. He taught me that you could tell people about your hardships in a more palatable way if you simply made it entertaining for others to listen to.

My childhood was filled with my father’s embarrassing stories, told as funny anecdotes with him cast as the butt of the joke. People laughed because they could see him laughing at himself. It’s such a useful skill to have and it’s the core of the Marketing Your Misery philosophy I live by as a writer.

He was all those things and more, and I am who I am in large part because of him.

For reasons unknown to me, I came to a point in my life where I was no longer angry with him for what he put our family through. If I knew, I’d bottle it and sell it. As it is, it’s a blessing that I came through the other side. Why do I say that?

Because, to be fair, he was also a rageful alcoholic. The height of his ability to laugh was only matched by the depths of his anger. He drank, he yelled, screamed, punched, and kicked his way through my childhood without a word of apology or remorse. He terrorized my mother, my brother, and me in a way that baffles me to this day. He created an environment of anxiety, fear, and stress that remains as an artifact in our lives.

What he is now, however, is an old demon, stripped of his real power and energy, and I’d like to tell you about him.

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If you live in California, you have probably noticed that supermarkets and convenience stores have reverted back to the humble paper bag. With new laws mandating the elimination of single-use plastics, like the cheap, shitty plastic bags they’ve used for years, and the regulations on the thicker reusable bag tightening (these are the ones they charge for), the paper sack has once again become the go-to container for our store-bought goods. 

I don’t know why, but for some reason, I feel a great deal of comfort being given a paper bag. It’s not even for the reasons they are being used, but because it evokes a nostalgia and a return to a time in my life when I didn’t concern myself with such issues as destroying the rainforests, slashing and burning, and all the other horrible things we are doing to the planet.  

The official reason the paper bag has returned is due in part to its compostability and recyclability. These paper bags can be made from post-consumer content and do less damage than the single-use plastic bags that, once disposed of, end up in the sea in a circling trash island the size of Rhode Island.  If we’re lucky, we get to see some of them in YouTube videos being used by people in India who turn them into plastic items such as mats and containers for other useless junk.

I wish I could say I always bring all my reusable plastic bags or cloth tote bags to the store, but I never do.  I always intend to, but it never happens.  In fact, these bags end up in a corner of the kitchen, waiting for a use that never comes. 

Even now, the handled paper bags given out at my local supermarket are folded up neatly and tucked away with others in a single paper bag that I assume is to be kept around in case they are needed by somebody for something.

I’m not a hoarder, but this behavior does make me think of people I have known who live with the sickness of hoarding. I think of the boxes within boxes within boxes that hold neatly stacked Tupperware containers that, when opened, reveal a tomb of neatly stacked condiment packets, separated by size and type. 

Somebody somewhere is bound to need these at some undetermined time and place in the future.  That time and place are useless, however, because no one is going to remember their existence when the time comes. 

My tightly stuffed paper bag of paper bags is harmless, I know, but the older I get, the more I realize that all the shit I have accumulated over the years will be of no use to anyone.  I’m not talking about bags, which are in and of themselves a useful invention. No, I’m talking about books, clothes, computers, and knick-knacks. So much junk in my life. All of it, circling the airport in a holding pattern, never to land and realize its true purpose or destiny. 

Nothing in life is permanent. 

After thirteen years in my West Hollywood apartment, I was forced to move back home, and all of my belongings were put into storage. It was a lot of stuff. A lot. It was a ten-by eleven-foot unit with a very high ceiling, and I can tell you it was stuffed to the gills. 

For over ten years, I paid for that storage unit, and I can count on one hand the number of times I went to visit the facility. My entire life, in a room, and none of it was necessary for my day-to-day life.

When a three-alarm fire that barreled for 12 hours straight burned my unit and all its belongings to the ground, I felt nothing. That’s not entirely true. I felt relieved that I no longer had to pay the $265 a month to keep the unit rented. 

Over time, I mourned the loss of the more sentimental items.  Boxes of correspondence letters I wrote in the eighties and nineties, the thousands of books, cds, and movies.  All gone, and there was nothing I could do about it. 

In fact, the fire was the result of arson, but the fire department and the police were unable to find the culprit who started it. I was more upset about the general lack of empathy I received from the owners of the storage facility than the fire itself. 

Now, several years on from that disaster, it all seems like the universe was telling me something I refused to accept.  That a part of my life was over, and now there is something new.  This moment.  The here and now. 

That’s ultimately what the return to the paper bag has indicated for me.  A return to the present moment. A highly compostable, recyclable moment that is ephemeral in nature and will not last, even if you shove it neatly into a bag filled with other bags.

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If you’re like me, you spend a good deal of time on YouTube searching for answers to questions, solutions to problems, or tutorials on how to do something.

I have crossed the abyss into home improvement, electrical work, car repair, and computer science, all thanks to the wonder of YouTube and its legion of loudmouths, know-it-alls, and subject matter experts. 

Sometimes, it’s straightforward.  How do I change out the hood lamp bulbs on a Lexus from Halogen to LED? What’s the easiest way to clear a clogged drain?  Sure, there may be differences of opinion, but all of them are following the same basic roadmap.

There have been no end of time-saving tips and tricks.  One of my favorites involves cleaning out a clogged dishwasher drain.  There is usually a vent on your kitchen sink top that can be accessed.  Once opened, you slide a full roll of kitchen towel over it, place your mouth over the end, create a seal with pressure, and blow!

The foul-smelling, putrid gunk that sprays out into the disposal drain is both stomach-churning and strangely satisfying. You will need to be prepared to wash that congealed death down the sink drain before the smell permeates the entire house.  

In the end, you finish your little home project with a sense of accomplishment and pride. You feel like you can add that to your tool bag, so to speak.  You will then find unique ways to tell the world about your success and offer your expertise on the subject like a haggard war veteran who has returned from the front lines with the top secret plans to overtake the reinforced concrete gun turret where snipers and spotters lie in wait. 

However, there are other problems that YouTube has become a lightning rod for.  General well-being or health-related problems.  Here is where it gets tricky…

If, for example, you have a shoulder injury. Let’s say, shoulder pain not caused by a traumatic injury. For people like me, this could occur from sneezing too hard or turning over in bed.  

The first stop will be YouTube.  You will ask for diagnostic information.  What kind of shoulder injury do I have?  A frozen shoulder, an impingement, perhaps a rotator cuff tear. Maybe it’s bursitis. 

What follows are a number of self-tests. You are asked to move your arm and shoulder in different ways to reproduce the pain, generate a clicking or a grinding noise, or determine the range of motion. If only the tests revealed a singular culprit.  Rarely, if ever, do you determine the exact cause.  In fact, you test positive for two or three of the injuries on the list.  

Now what do you do?  Call a doctor like a normal person? No, sir. We are miles away from that.

Assuming you identify the exact injury type, your next stop is treatment. These recommendations may overlap, or they won’t. One physical therapy expert will say, “You need to keep the arm in a sling and rest the shoulder.”  Great, that’s easy enough.  Another expert will have a video with a thumbnail that reads, “Whatever you do, do not rest your shoulder injury!” Or “Why your arm sling is making your problem worse!”

In your case, your injury or concern may be different, but the cold, hard truth is, YouTube experts will confidently offer advice that is diametrically opposed to one another. None of them will say, “Try a range of ideas and see what works.”  No, they are the one true god to follow, and god help you if you go somewhere else.

The end result of this leaves you frozen, unable to decide in fear of hurting yourself further or making your pain worse. 

Do you call the doctor now? No, dear reader, no. Now is the time for worrying about your problem and cursing the sky father for putting you in this situation. 

At some point, the injury disappears on its own or becomes less over time, so you never really have it treated, and it never really goes away.  

Having said all that, I wouldn’t trade YouTube for anything. I use it constantly for help with various issues and problems. I guess I just live with the fact that the source of the information might be, at best, in love with the sound of their own voice, and at worst, completely insane. We deal in extremes here. There’s no room for nuance.

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I don’t think I’m alone in thinking that this describes a great many people in life today. The world is upside down and backward. You don’t need me to make a list of grievances to relate. If you’re like most people, you feel numb inside.  You want everything to slow down, stop, and leave you alone.  

I’ve always been a bit of a curmudgeon. At age 55, I suppose my body is finally catching up to my mental disposition. I loved pointing out the obvious and not-so-obvious problems with the world. I love to do things, go on adventures, and be a trailblazer, but only if it’s my idea.  If you bring adventure to me, there is a good chance I am going to turn my nose up at it.  

Can’t help it. Just the way I’m built.

There is a joy in being able to put my hands up and look cross-eyed over some little transgression acted upon me with oblivious dispassion.

Recently, a friend and I were eating lunch in a vegan restaurant in Laguna Beach.  When I tried to pay in cash, I was met with visual disapproval and disdain. The green-haired zoomer behind the counter mumbled under her breath that I looked like the kind of person who would try to pay in cash.  

She was, in effect, actively “cash-shaming” me.  In that moment, I became every angry old man I’ve ever met.  I remember saying things like, “I thought cash was king,” followed by “Not anymore, I guess.”

Are we really moving to a world beyond cash money?  I know we just announced the end of the penny, but paper money still plays, doesn’t it? 

If you’re my age or older, you might be thinking about the legendary Howard Beale character from the film Network, who had finally reached his limit of society’s bullshit. The news, his job, his family, and friends had all become part of a vast conspiracy where every American had turned over their lives to a pilot not of their own making.

Much like Howard Beake, we feel like prisoners in our own lives, being acted upon by circumstance and bludgeoned into stupidity by mundane forces all around us. The everyday drip of autopilot desperation. 

We want to believe it’s as easy as opening up a window and yelling to the world about how mad we feel.  The truth is, Howard Beale went completely nuts. If he was transformed at all, it was in his sad and tragic death.

I’ll assume you want to avoid that and right the ship before you are too late to avoid the looming falls drawing you to your death.

I don’t have the answer to that dilemma, by the way, I’m just making an observation.  It doesn’t matter what political party you belong to, because no matter who is in office, the echo chamber you listen to is busy making sure you remain angry, disappointed, and looking for someone to blame.  

The twenty-four-hour news cycle introduced by CNN, improved upon by MSNOW (MSNBC), and mastered by Fox News is a nonstop alarm bell telling you that not only is the call coming from inside the house, the house is on fire and all the doors are locked. Every single tidbit of information is a Special Alert coming in like Conkrite, breaking into regular programming to tell you about the Kennedy Assassination. It’s not. Guaranteed it’s just another little gremlin they’d like lodged in the back of your mind. 

“If it bleeds, it leads!” That is the rubric by which information is triaged; only now, we are the ones bleeding.  For example, we become tribal and angry over the untimely deaths of five random people. The details of which are drummed into us so often that we think there must be an epidemic of deaths surrounding a person, place, or thing. 

No one bothers to use simple logic that there are 349 million people in the United States and five murders, while tragic, represent an infinitesimal speck of the overall population.  Is it a tragedy? Yes. Is it worthy of a Fox New Special Alert? Probably not.

You can’t say that out loud, though, or you’re un-American or part of the problem. It’s part of the genius of places like Fox News. They are able to craft the narrative in such a way that even trying to counter it with facts is unpalatable. It goes way beyond simple distortions like the Fox News Poll. During the Obama administration, they offered the following poll question for their viewers. “How often do you think President Obama lies?”

Not, “Do you think he lies?” or “Is he a liar?” but “How often…” They start from the most disingenuous position and go from there.

Look, I’m sure people could give me examples of the “Fake News Media” doing the same thing. I’m sure they do. I’m not defending them. The entire 24-hour news cycle is toxic.

I use Fox News as an example because they have mastered this format. It’s insidious.

Years ago, there was a new story floating around that Planned Parenthood was selling baby parts from abortions to the highest bidder. The mere idea was sickening. It really doesn’t matter which side of the abortion debate you are on. It was visceral, ugly, and abhorrent. Pro-lifers and Evangelicals wouldn’t stop talking about it, and places like Fox News amplified the story by repeating it over and over again. Not by newscasters, but by their opinion hosts.

The truth was much less salacious. No, Planned Parenthood was not selling baby parts to the highest bidder. They weren’t, no matter how many times they were accused of doing it. What they were doing, however, was offering, for free, the fetal tissue to research labs and medical facilities for work in stem cell therapies and treatments. The only caveat was that the research labs had to pay the freight or the shipping cost for the material.

Here’s the amazing part. Armed with the truth, any person who stood up and defended Planned Parenthood sounded like a crazy person. “They weren’t selling baby parts. They were giving away the baby parts, but they had to pay for the shipping. A lot of baby parts are heavy, and that’s not cheap!”

See what I mean? Brilliant. This is what passes for news.

It is so easy to tell people to just stop watching the news. If only that were the case.  News is no longer a half-hour program in the evening. It’s an entire channel or channels.  It’s websites, mobile alerts, Twitter postings, and everything in between. Technology is so ubiquitous that we hardly know when we are being manipulated anymore. 

No wonder our children are dealing with crippling generalized anxiety disorders. They can’t even point to a single traumatic event that shaped their mental disposition like Gen X’ers or Boomers can. They have no idea. It’s an overwhelming, free-floating sense of dread.  My generation likes to tell them to toughen up, but the fact of the matter is, these kids have spent their lifetimes being fed information without the ability separate real from perceived danger. They cannot parse information for nuance. It’s just a nonstop barrage of tragedy and horror.  Their minds don’t know or care that a Tsunami in Japan won’t affect them in Pittsburgh, PA. As far as they are concerned, the water levels will take them, and there’s nothing anyone can do.

“Just tell them not to worry about stuff they can’t control.” 

Sure, I’ll do that.

Like I said. We are all adrift, at peril from the angry sea. The crashing waves keep coming. We’re punch drunk, numb, or both.

I’d tell you to be strong and hang in therem but meanwhile, I can’t take a cookie from a tray at a party without scheming my way back to it before they are all gone. The world is a hammer, and we all look like nails.

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