Monday, June 24, 2019

Vertigo Blues or Gravity's Got Me Down


Vertigo Blues

or

Gravity's Got Me Down

a life-and-death tale
about walking the dog

[solo performance transcript]
by Jamie Jobb


The characters, names, stories, incidents and mutts
portrayed in this improvised play are fictional.

No identification with real events,
locations, products, diagnoses or actual living
breeds – canine and otherwise – should be inferred
as none was intended by the author.








The Abandoned Script:
20 May 2019
performance at
The Marsh Upstage
1062 Valencia Street
San Francisco, California 94110


Traveling Light Studio
Post Office Box 12
Martinez, California
94553-0001
925 723-1782

(c) 2019 by Jamie Jobb

CHARACTERS:

ZORBA, male Tibetan Terrier - 117
ANDY DIAL, semi-retired male firefighter – 70
ZERENA DIAL, female dog trainer/yoga teacher - 66
FORTICIA KNOX, M.D., female general practitioner – 45
WILLY NORMAN, male insurance salesman - 75


SETTING:

A California foothill town


SCENES:

1. VERTIGO

2. ZORBA

3. DOCTOR’S OFFICE

4. DOG TALK

5. FINAL WISHES 

6. DOG WALK

7. CODA



1. VERTIGO

(ANDY enters up right, steady-to-wobbly)

ANDY: Once Upon A Time … Years Pass … Then One Day …

(stops down left, dizzy in First Position)

“Vertigo” …

(shows DVD box)
… Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece – greatest movie ever made.
Better than “Citizen Kane”. “Sleepless in Seattle”.

Starring Kim Novak, Jimmy Stewart and
(pause) Kim Novak!
Stewart hanging for dear life
while a cop reaches out for him, and falls …

A Virtual Tour of San Francisco peaks and valleys:
Fort Point, Muir Woods, Golden Gate Bridge.
Nob Hill, Coit Tower, Ferry Building.
Mission Dolores, San Juan Bautista.
Legion of Honor, Palace of Fine Arts, Cypress Point.

A plot as twisted as Lombard Street:
Fake suicides, recurring charades, mistaken identifications.
A fateful necklace, the mysterious wife, a possessed mistress.
Catatonic acrophobia, a dummy bell tower, the sudden nun.
A green hotel. The ironic reappearance of Judy from Salina!

All of it cascades into a dolly-zoom nightmare: “The Vertigo Effect”.
Designed by Paramount’s second cameraman Irmin Roberts.
The dolly moves the camera forward, while the zoom
moves backward – warping perspective of the viewer … me!

Hell, I have that special effect embedded in my head
– any time the lights go out.

(still woozy)

I feel it when I’m standing right here.
Right now.

(demonstrate: wobbly walk down center)

2. ZORBA


(… ANDY wobbles down right)

ANDY: Zorba was a furry fluff-ball
when he arrived here a pup 16 years ago.
Fully house-broken from Day One.
That’s important when you raise a show dog.

Dog-training is my wife’s passion.
Zerena's been training them her whole life,
long before she started Lucky Dog Yoga ten years ago.

She trained Zorba in a Berkeley backyard gym
built especially for breed dogs destined for shows.
The facility had piped-in crowd noise and
that helped our dog become an AKC champ.

Zorba has unique black and white markings.
While his trunk is black -- his legs, paws and tip of nose are white.
There’s a white “X” on the crest of his neck.

He a Tibetan Terrier from American Kennel Club’s
Non-Sporting Group … Here:

[produces TT Handbook, turns pages]

“Medium sized - 20-24 pounds.
Hair-in-face. Large dark eyes. Flat round feet.
Profuse coat that does not shed.
Powerful. Square. Compact.

Originally raised in monasteries by lamas 2,000 years ago.
Herding Dogs from the Lost Valley of Shangri-La.
Old Dogs, Lucky Dogs.
Gifted to outsiders, but never sold.
TTs appear in The AKC Stud Book in the 1970s.

Overall a "well balanced" dog for any sized family.
Loyal. Highly intelligent. Sensitive. Self-assured ...”

… except when they poop on the floor.
Or in their bed.

And they know who made that mess.

3. DOCTOR’S OFFICE

(ANDY down center, at stool)

ANDY: I'm in the Doctor's Office. I don't know what to expect.

(pants down, blue long-johns)

It’s a new doctor – my wife’s doctor. Dr. Knox.
Until now, all my doctors have been men.
She comes in, holding her laptop, and says

DR. KNOX: Pull your pants up. (beat) We're not doing that.

(pants up)

DR. KNOX (reads): Andrew Dial? Zerena’s husband …

ANDY: That's me.

She hands me my lab results.

DR. KNOX: You have BPPV -- Benign Perry-oximal Positional Vertigo.

ANDY: Benign ... you mean it's good?
DR. KNOX: Not exactly. It’s caused by floating Calcium Carbonate Crystals
that confuse receptors in the inner ear. It’s Fake Dizziness.

ANDY: Like Fake News, Fake Sports ... Fake History.

The Doctor doesn't laugh.

DR. KNOX: You’re a firefighter?

ANDY: Semi-retired – but first responders never quit.

DR. KNOX: What do you mean?

ANDY: We volunteer for big ones. (pause) Paradise Fire knocked me out.

DR. KNOX: How often do you feel dizzy?

ANDY: Depends on the light … Time of day.

DR. KNOX: Do you fall down?

ANDY: I know that’s The Red Flag doctors wave at everybody on Medicare.
I say “No.” But I don’t tell her I can’t climb ladders anymore.

Falling is The Main Curse of everybody my age.

Our friend Paula started losing her balance last year.
She’s in her 80s.

An avid hiker, she was reduced to using those Nordic Walking Poles
everywhere she went.
She fell on a trail,
She fell in a theater,
She fell in her kitchen.

Finally she had to hang up her walking sticks …

Now she’s home in bed, under Hospice care.

*

At least I know My Vertigo is fake.

Sometimes it hits me on the street.
I have to sit down. Or lean against a wall.
Do those strange eye exercises I learned on YouTube.

(demonstrate, down center)

I talk to friends about it.
Most of them First Responders, like me.

Three of them show me the same thing,
something they’ve observed watching heroin habituates
fall asleep on sidewalks in the City … like this.

(backs into wall, up center)

BART police call it “The Junkie Bend”

When you’re in that state of mind,
you need a safe way to avoid hitting the ground.

And you sure don’t wanna get dirty … like some old dog.

(ends up center, in Dog Position)

4. DOG TALK

ANDY: I talk to dogs. (pause) I admit it.
People won't talk to me, so I talk to their dogs …
In English! Very Plain English.
Only fools think dogs dig Romance Languages.

I get down on my knees to greet dogs.
I pet their chest, look ‘em in the eye.
If I don’t know the animal’s name,
I say "Hello Mutt!"

Why don't other people do this
in our dog-friendly town?
To most dogs, people are just a pair of shoes.
You gotta get down on their level, see ‘em eye-to-eye.

Lester, Marty's labradoodle can get quite frisky before his walk,
jump when he shouldn't ... No Lester, Down!

Sampson, Mary's labradane, comes up to say “Hello”
with his hindquarters – the way big danes do.

(stands to demonstrate, up center)

Our Zorba is 117 in Dog Years.
When I talk to him, he gives me His Look
... head bowed low, peeking up with dark sad eyes.

*

Now those eyes are clouded in cataracts.
His hearing’s shot, and … His sense of smell?
He can’t find obvious treats on the floor right in front of him!

He doesn’t enter dog shows anymore. He’s out of tricks.

I used to run him every other day … chasing tennis balls.
It wore him out. Maybe I overworked him? Like a jogger pounding bad knees.

Now he doesn’t wanna walk. “W-A-L-K!”
That magic word doesn’t work any more.
He can’t hear it. Worse, he can’t do it.

Without his walks, his legs are losing muscle tone. Mine too!
His front paws go wobbly when he’s on the stairs – we live up three flights.
His hips collapse inward.
And with his hips going out, it’s hard for him to lie down. He groans a lot.
Some days are better than others.

Then there’s his kidney failure.
This winter he started peeing on the floor and pooping indoors.
He wears diapers which restrict his movements, give him a rash.
They only catch the urine. They don’t stop the poop.

ZERENA: "I feel like we live in a pigsty!"

ANDY: … as she steps in more dog poop on the bedroom floor.
(demonstrates … down center)

We like a clean house. This is driving us nuts!
We know this embarrasses him.

I try to say something assuring, about “Quality of Life”
and those “Last Rites” we'll eventually face at the vet.

ZERENA: “He's lived his whole life here. (beat) You haven't."

ANDY: She's right, of course. I shut up.

We get a letter from Texas friends that includes this article from Dogster magazine:

[reads Dogster magazine]
Young female veterinarians who administer euthanasia often suffer from anxiety and depression. Due to the emotional demands involved in their line of work, vets specializing in small dogs and cats have especially high rates of suicidal ideation – meaning one in six of them THINKS about killing herself.

[reads letter]
Dear Andy and Zerena,

When we got married, Ross and I decided not to have pets.
They’re wonderful we know – and we love your Zorba.
But when pets become too old and infirm, these kinds of situations are something we deliberately chose not to deal with.

Life is already hard enough.

5. FINAL WISHES


(ANDY down center, with Chair)

ANDY: I come home from the doctor with what I think is good news.
But my wife’s sitting here and she’s very upset.

ZERENA: Where have you been?!?

ANDY: I forgot our meeting!

A stranger sits at our dining room table.
Light gray suit, dark gray tie.
He’s very serious, does not smile.
He hands me his card and this brochure.

[holds up “Final Wishes Questionnaire”]

I should explain: Zerena is very very successful financially.
She owns Downward Facing Dog Studios,
a chain of Canine-Yoga Day-Care Centers.
Combing yoga with kennels, dog training, grooming, bathing facilities.
She was the first doga instructor in the East Bay. That was ten years ago.
Thank God for dogs. Now she nags them about yoga – not me!

She earned her first million five years ago, and is considering further expansion.
Our family – we have two daughters and five grandkids – is set to inherit that legacy. So we have lots to account for in Our Final Accounting.

After we did our Wills. And the Codicils,
the Durable Powers of Attorney ...
All our Revocable Trusts.
After we certified what Body Parts we wanna give to people,
after all that Estate Planning paperwork ...

the very last thing we have to do is talk to this guy:
His name is WILLY NORMAN. He comes to our house!

He has a very strange manner, blinks a lot
… comes off as some cross between a butler and an undertaker.

(ANDY sits)

WILLY: I don’t work for a funeral home. I’m an independent insurance agent.
(blinks) Registered with the State of California.

ANDY: A Burial Insurance salesman!
Zerena is ready to write him a big check, no questions asked.
I know I’m gonna have to defend our assets.

Norman pulls out his Final Wishes Questionnaire.

WILLY (blinks): I’d like to take the time to do this thoroughly. You know,
these are very important decisions you’re about to make.

ANDY: The reason Norman is here ...
we can't go to the funeral home and say:
We wanna pay you in advance to bury us
– so our people won't have to worry about it.

No! We have to get Burial Insurance.
We might die in Colorado. Or Bakersfield.
Burial insurance covers all that.
It's required by federal law -- if we die out of state
and can't get back in time.

Suddenly I start feeling like I was when I was a kid.

(ANDY leaps up)

ANDY: I’m a giant on the other side of the room.
And everybody’s little Down There
… like the Grand Canyon. I mean I’m up here.
And they’re all Down There …

I’m down there too! (Looks at Table)
My wife ... me and this man with his checklist of Necessary Final Wishes:

Willy is quick to point out our “professional staffing needs” price list
does not include any actual burial plot, which we must purchase separately.
Like real estate – with a property description on file with the County Recorder.
No telling what that costs.
But Norman has done his due disclosure, now he’s making Final Wishes …

(ANDY sits)

WILLY: Embalming – not required by law, but (blinks)
if you’re not embalmed, you can Sanitary Bathe ...
Of course there’s Casket Dressing and Make Up,
Refrigeration of the Unembalmed Remains ... (blinks)
Repair of Remains after they remove the body parts.

Zerena looks down at the dog. I see her mind drifting …

WILLY: Transport Charges are based within a 30-mile radius:
Vehicle/Personnel to transport Deceased to Funeral Home ...
After the funeral, the Hearse itself ... (blinks)
Do we want a Flower Car? (blinks) A Limo for Eight?

(ANDY leaps up)

ANDY: I don’t know eight people! I know eight dogs. I don’t know eight people!
But I do the math, we’ve already passed 5,000 dollars right there.

Norman then takes out a glossy pamphlet.
Our Casket Selection Guide! It lists no prices. He starts at the top.
He shows us glistening promotional pictures starting with “The W-0h-Nine”
a 48-ounce Bronze sarcophagus with Champagne Velvet interior …

(ANDY sits)

WILLY: We call it “The Persian”.

ANDY: “How much?”

WILLY: Right now (checks his price list, blinks) … Ten thousand dollars!

ANDY: Zerena’s eyes light up the brochure.
This salesman will be the death of us!
Our bank accounts flash into oblivion right before my eyes.
Then, I note his No Price Casket List has other choices.
So, I ask him:

ANDY: How about “Alternative Containers”?

He’s shocked! He fumbles through his list.

WILLY: Those start at (blinks) a hundred and twenty five dollars.

(ANDY stands)

Zerena knows what I’m thinking --
I want to ask if that’s the ubiquitous A4 box
that she gets every day from Amazon Dot Com.
But she jabs me in the ribs.

ZERENA: You get Cremation at sea, mister!

I know she means it. I look at Willie Norman and smile.

ANDY: I’ll have to go back to work – just to afford to die!


6. DOG WALK

(ANDY walks up center, dizzy)

ANDY: I’m walking Zorba up Snake Road.
We’ve been doing this fifteen years – but today
… I’ll just show you what happened.
(demonstrates)

We pass the last house on the road,
before The Forest and The Snakes …
the one with the big deep gully down this side
(points)

Two dogs suddenly rush up and I turn to see them.
My dog has been attacked by dogs before.
I back up … and try to keep Zorba away from their dogs.
My feet hit a curb cut … I’m DIZZY!!!
My ass falls back to hit a white railing
and I flip over backwards, heels-over-head.
A hundred and thirty five degrees!

My back hits the ground (“POP!”)
In between a broken fencepost and a tree stump.
I land on my feet and … Next thing that happens,
I grind back up the hill – like some Roadrunner cartoon.
The whole thing took two seconds – to get back up to My Dog!

Meanwhile, my dog thinks …

(drops down to dog size)
ZORBA: Where’d he go?
(stands)

ANDY: I’m angry. I go to our chiropractor.
He says there’s nothing wrong with me or my back.

I want to kill those dogs that got out … of that house.
I don’t even know the people!
When we have our Summer Block Party, I avoid them.
I don’t wanna talk to the mothercussers!
Get your dogs outta here!

Like I said, Zerena and I don’t wanna face it, really.
We tried today to talk about it.
It’s like talking about Our Final Wishes …

*

She’s washing diapers every day.
Our grandkids are in college, and she’s washing diapers!
She’s cleaning off the dog’s underbelly
Today, there was blood there.
Do we have to go back to the vet?

We don’t wanna face it, really.
We don’t wanna face it.
But it comes up: Quality of Life.
Quality of Life for anybody:
A dog. A person. A mate …

We go to the doctor’s office.
They don’t wanna look there …

I don’t know. I would rather just wake up
and find the dog not waking up with us.
That would be the best way
for this to resolve itself.
Natural causes.

The onus would be off us.

We don’t wanna go to the vet knowing she might be
The one-in-six who puts the needle in our dog
as he looks up from that cold stainless steel table
… and his spirit just goes away,
like we’ve seen with three dogs before.

*

ANDY: I’m standing here – a dizzy fireman.
Afraid of Ladders.

I know I beat gravity once.
I don’t know if I can do it again.
But I don’t wanna die trying another time.

7. CODA

ANDY: Once upon a time
... Years pass
… Then one day …

My wife and I are on our way
to Davis to see a dog breeder
and meet our new dog – Bochy.

We get a letter from Texas.
Our friends have moved into assisted living.
Nobody there can have pets,
but ARF regularly brings in dogs for companionship.

And they’re learning to love the dogs
that come to visit … she writes:
“We get a new Best Friend every day.”

APOLOGIES

David Mamet, Irmin Roberts, Alfred Hitchcock, Cesar Millan,
Arthur Miller, Kim Novak, Jimmy Stewart and … Kim Novak.

THANKS
for help/inspiration in developing this script from stage to page.

Dan Hoyle, Geoff Hoyle, Charlie Varon, Kenny Yun, Fred Wickham, Mike Duvall, Harlan Bailey, Scott Hildula, Dexter Young, J.P. Tilleman, Evelyn Jean Pine, Jeff Hanson, David Steinore, Nina Sacco, Robin Fisher, Malcolm Grissom, Ruth Kirschner, Dr. Lisa Chu, Randall Nott, Doug Wright, Randy Wight, Jerry Pfeiffer, Bob Shipman, Mary and Arthur Crummer, Deanne and John Lindstrom, Stephen Barbata, Paul Craig, Scott Coddington, Meera Chaturvedi, Ved Prakash Vatuk, Ross and Iumi Richard Crow, Robert Perry, Franni Santelises, Morgan Olk, Sandra Spearing, Officer Jeff Sherwin, Dan Dorsett, Neil-The-House-Painter & Greta-The-Wonder-Dog, the crew at States Coffee and Mercantile, Terry Porter, Dena Zachariah and Bailiff Bailiwick, Esq. his own self.
*

– Linda Loman,
Death of a Salesman

*

copyright (c) 2019 by Jamie Jobb
all rights reserved

Caution: No part of this dramatic work may be reproduced, for any reason, by any means, including any method of photographic reproduction, without the permission of the author.

This play is fully protected in whole, in part, or in any form, under the Copyright Laws of the United States of America, and all other countries of the Copyright Union, and is subject to a royalty.

All rights – including professional, amateur, motion picture, radio, television, recitation and public reading – are strictly reserved. All inquiries concerning performance should be addressed to the author at Traveling Light Studio.

Contact Details
regarding performing rights
for the work included herein:
925 723-1782

produced in San Francisco and
Martinez California USA by
Traveling Light Studio
Post Office Box 12
Martinez CA 94553-0001


FURTHERMORE




Inside a Dog Yoga Class:
2:01


1:50



Lawson, Alastair (July 6, 2004). "Stressed out dogs relax through yoga". BBC News.

“My dad dug the dog’s grave and let the dog watch,” Hardy wrote.

“Healthy dog put down to be buried with owner in Virginia.”



Vertigo Parallelisms! *
2:14

The Making of Vertigo:
25:12

Finding Equilibrium in Hitchcock’s Vertigo:
90 minutes

Vertigo Alternate Ending:
1:47

Vertigo film score analysis
17:46

*

Bob Dylan almost falling on stage in April 2019 while saying:
‘Take pictures or don’t take pictures. We can either play or we can pose. Okay?”
(total clip five and a half minutes)
After tripping Dylan poses, then sings a short version of:
"It takes a lot to laugh, It takes a train to cry."

*

Roth and her team found that the patterns of cortisol levels in the hair of dog owners closely matched that found in their dogs in both winter and summer months, indicating their stress levels were in sync.

She thinks the owners are influencing the dogs rather than the other way around because several human personality traits appear to affect canine cortisol levels.

The researchers don’t know what causes the synchronization in cortisol levels between humans and their pups. But a hint might lie in the fact that the link is stronger with competitive dogs than in pet pooches.

The bond formed between owner and competitive dogs during training may increase the canines’ emotional reliance on their owners, she said. That in turn could increase the degree of synchronization.

But why do people influence their dogs rather than vice versa? Perhaps people are “a more central part of the dog’s life, whereas we humans also have other social networks,” Roth said in an email.

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Wednesday, February 13, 2019

Writers Writing About Writing

Bookend Rendezvous No. 2

What if books could slip under covers to swap stories?
This book report matches another pair of unknown titles,
– strangers to each other, until introduced here.

NOTE: Writers Writing About Writing may be a topic which appeals only to other scriveners, although sometimes readers may be surprised by what they find hiding in those professionally self-examined pages. Here we spotlight two stimulating books by writers about writing which may inspire a much wider readership.

* * *
Cell Baby at ARTU4iA 2015, artist unknown

Writers Writing

About Writing

by Jamie Jobb

Before a jazz program last year at our local music hall – where the 18-piece orchestra conspicuously outnumbered the audience – I chatted with another audient, a high school English teacher, who was lamenting the inability of his current students to read or write.

“They’re not interested,” he said. “It’s too easy for them to ‘Snapchat’ or ‘Instagram’ or ‘text’ – but not to actually read or write anything on paper!”

So in a world without readers, what’s the conscientious writer to do – particularly the writer tending toward fiction and/or dramatic works? Some of us choose to write for an audience who hears the text, rather than reading it.

In 1970s California, Marin County authors (myself included) hosted “writers block parties”. The joke was on ourselves. Nobody really had “writers block” because, as “freelancers”, we could Never Afford to Not Work. We were too busy making a living as writers without the steady income of staff positions. We were what’s now referred to as “gig workers”.

“Blocked” writers tend to be those driven by neither deadlines nor paychecks. They seem to have no back-pocket title to jump into when their one – and only one – project stalls.

Writers who gripe about “writers block” are more often seeking excuses for Not Writing Right Now. A writer working on more than one project at once can work any time – bypassing the stalled project to write where his momentum resides in that particular moment. And of course, a writer may be delayed by some not-yet-expressed notion from her muses, but that’s the eternal patience required of our craft.

Any writers who believe in their stage-writing potential could consider enrolling in a university which offers among its faculty a resident playwright or two. Indeed, “theatre professor” seems to be a primary career path for many renowned playwrights who – unlike screenwriters – are not known for Blockbuster Paydays.

Here’s an incomplete list of accomplished playwrights who have been employed by American universities seeking to attract bright young writing talent: David Henry Hwang and Charles L. Mee (Columbia), Paula Cizmar and Louis Alfaro (USC), Sarah Ruhl and Marsha Norman (Yale), Lynn Nottage (Columbia/Yale), Philip Kan Gotanda (UC Berkeley), Edward Albee (University of Houston), Wendy Wasserstein (Cornell), Rachel Dickstein (SUNY), Cheri Magid (NYU), María Irene Fornés (Brown), Rob Handel (Carnegie-Mellon), Charles Smith (Ohio University), Mary Zimmerman (Northwestern), Erik Ramsey (Northwestern/Ohio University), Paula Vogel (Cornell/Brown/Yale/UCLA), Anna Deavere Smith (NYU/USC/Stanford/Carnegie Mellon), David Mamet (Yale, NYU, Goddard College).

For writers with little interest and limited resources for collegiate pursuits, there’s always the library. Or a good bookstore. For our second “Bookend Rendezvous”, we’ll look at two books meant to spark the budding writer into purposeful florescence. Particularly a budding fiction writer seeking to grow dramatic roots.

* * *

“Writing Down The Bones”



Goldberg, Natalie:
Writing Down the Bones
Boston: Shambhala Press, 1986

By way of introduction to her illuminating 170-page tome, Natalie Goldberg states:

“This book is about writing. It is also about using writing as your practice, as a way to help you penetrate your life and become sane. What is said here about writing can be applied to running, painting, anything you love and have chosen to work with in your life.”

Author Goldberg is most concerned with the intra-personal chemistry of the craft: how a particular pen feels in the writer’s hand, where to sit in the coffee shop, how to write hot facts in cool comfort.

“When I teach a class, I want the students to be ‘writing down the bones’ – the essential, awake speech of their minds.”

Her book is structured not around chapters, but along a linear progression of solitary suggestions based on potent ideas, succinctly stated. Note her topic headings: “We Are Not The Poem”, “Man Eats Car”, “Don’t Marry The Fly”, “Fighting Tofu”, “A Tourist In Your Own Town”, “Writing is Not a McDonald’s Hamburger”, “One Plus One Equals a Mercedes Benz”. Goldberg obviously approaches blank pages based on her current frame of mind, and her feelings which always seem to be fleeting:

“I have found that when I am writing something emotional, I must write it the first time directly with hand on paper. Handwriting is more connected to the movement of the heart. Yet, when I tell stories, I go straight to the typewriter.”

For struggling beginners, Goldberg suggests a DIY timed exercise to “capture the oddities of your mind”. The exercise requires the writer to tackle a single topic for a randomly specified short period of time – using only pen and paper, while committing to these six rules:
1. Keep your hand moving.
2. Don’t cross out anything.
3. Don’t worry about spelling, punctuation, grammar.
4. Lose self-control.
5. Forget logic, don’t think.
6. Write about your own scary, naked truth(s).

Her book is a quick read and Goldberg slowly becomes, page-after-page, a real Pen Pal for any struggling writer who seeks straight-forward professional progress. Particularly the writer tangled up in blue and a temper turning mental. Her advice is sound and well rounded, although the entire book is written in that unfortunately annoying, apologies to Mike Krukow, Sporting-Announcer Second-Person Voice – (the “you” that is never “you” because “you” have no actual “curveball”!!!). Here are a few examples of Goldberg’s succinct scrimshaw-scribbled Bones:

“There is freedom in being a writer and writing. It is fulfilling your function. I used to think freedom meant doing whatever you want. It means knowing who you are, what you are supposed to be doing on this earth, and then simply doing it.”

Natalie Goldberg also understands that writers should consider themselves Service Workers as well as Struggling Artists:

“A responsibility of literature is to make people awake, present, alive. If the writer wanders, then the reader, too, will wander. The fly on the table might be part of the whole description of a restaurant. It might be appropriate to tell precisely the sandwich that is just walked over, but there is a fine line between precision and self-indulgence.”

Sometimes there’s a bit of theater mentor Sanford Meisner in Goldberg’s thinking:

“Writing, too, is ninety percent listening. You listen so deeply to the space around you that it fills you, and when you write, it pours out of you. If you can capture that reality around you, your writing needs nothing else. You don’t only listen to the person speaking to you across the table, but simultaneously listen to the air, the chair, and the door.”

Goldberg also spices her Bones with lots of free-spirited advice channeled through the likes of mystic authors Paramahansa Yogananda, Alan Watts and Ram Dass:

“Don’t ‘make’ your mind do anything. Simply step out of the way and record your thoughts as they roll through you. Writing practice softens the heart and mind, helps to keep us flexible so that rigid distinctions between apples and milk, tigers and celery, disappear. We can step through moons right into bears. You will take leaps naturally if you follow your thoughts, because the mind spontaneously takes great leaps.”

An uncertain neophyte writer would be well suited to try on this book for size.

* * *

“Three Uses of The Knife”


Mamet, David:
Three Uses of The Knife
New York: Columbia
University Press, 1998

David Mamet ranks among the world’s most renowned filmmakers and playwrights, but he also has produced scores of short essays which establish him as a thoughtful writing teacher in general. A Chicago native known for hard-boiled plots full of duplicitous women and street-scrabbled manly characters, Mamet’s bookshelf full of writing and performance offerings most often focuses on what he considers the essential question of drama:
What Happens Next?

That question must reside in the minds of every single audient during the unfolding of a drama from Rise to The End. The playwright must learn to instill in the audience a sense of anticipation, moment-to-moment, so they all each may ask themselves at every turn of phrase: What next? Good dialogue always punches that question.

The best of Mamet’s essay books is his 80-page dramatist’s crash course: “Three Uses of the Knife – on the Nature and Purpose of Drama”. Here Mamet offers a peek inside the structural tensions and clockwork mechanisms of drama – the succession of necessary beats that make a story worth staging.

The title of Mamet’s poignant pocketbook quotes Huddie William Ledbetter, also known as “Lead Belly”, who famously said a knife has three very distinct uses:
1. To slice the bread, so you'll have strength;
2. To shave, so you'll look nice for your lover;
and
3. To cut out her lyin’ heart when you find her in the arms of another!

Yes, and … nobody needs to interrogate Lead Belly on why he sang The Blues.

Mamet’s short book follows form of the classic Three-Act Structure, being broken into thirds like Lead Belly’s knife: Act I. “The Wind-Chill Factor”; Act II. “Second Act Problems” and Act III. “Three Uses of the Knife”.

Here, in a single paragraph, the playwright defines his dramatic writing process:

“Our understanding of our life, of our drama (and the drama on stage or screen can be nothing other than our understanding of our personal drama) – this understanding resolves itself into thirds: Once Upon A Time (narration that enables us to understand the difficulty/desire/goal of the hero), Years Passed (the middle time of struggles), And Then One Day (the inevitable yet unforeseen complication engendered, literally brought into being, by the quest of there in the middle term – the precipitation into the end struggle – which can be seen as the granting of the her’s wish, engendered in the middle term, for a clear-cut fight which would absolutely resolve the question at hand).
[emphasis added]

Mamet also recalls an allegorical writer’s in-sider joke: “One Use Of The Pretzel”

“There’s a great parable by Tolstoy about a man who was very, very poor. He had three small loaves of bread and a little pretzel. And he came home from working in the fields and he ate a loaf of bread. He was still hungry. So he ate the second loaf of bread and was still hungry. He ate the third loaf of bread. Then he ate the pretzel and was full. He said, “What an idiot I am. I should have eaten the pretzel first.”

Mamet knows Drama is more than metaphorically a musical conceit:

“So the dramatist, the blues writer in us, seizes upon the knife as both embodying and witnessing the interchange, subtly changing its purpose through the course of the drama. The knife becomes, in effect, congruent to the bass line in music. For the bass line, not the melody, gives music strength, and moves us.”

Dialogue Beats & Colloquial Verse

One way to measure the strength of scene is to hear the dialogue as if it were spoken in a foreign language. In that mind-set, your attention is on the rhythm of the words (the beats, or the bass-line) of the dialogue instead of any actual meaning the words may convey.

In “Three Uses Of The Knife”, Mamet points out that the pace of strong dialogue moves at the most common meter of English verse, iambic pentameter – any line of verse (or dialogue) has five metrical feet, each consisting of one short unstressed syllable followed by one long stressed syllable. Another way of hearing it: A line of verse (dialog) measures ten syllables long with the accents on every second beat.

And that goes a little something like this: 
"taDA taDA taDA taDA taDA / 
taDA taDA taDA taDA taDA."

Here’s how Mamet explains that rhythm working in dialogue:

“… in English, we speak colloquially, in iambic pentameter:
“I’m going down to the store to buy the cheese.”
“I told him, but he didn’t hear a word.”
“I swear I’ll love you till the day I die.”
“Not now, not later, never. Is that clear?”

If we listen we can hear people in a dialogue complete the iambic line for each other:
“I saw him on the street.”
“And what did he say?”
“He said leave him alone.”
“And what did YOU say?”
“What do you think I said?”
“Well, I don’t know.”

Here’s an outstanding video from the Royal Shakespeare Company on how their instructors introduce the rhythm of iambic pentameter – “the rhythm of the heartbeat” – to students learning to comprehend The Bard:
(6:51)

What Happens Next?

After CBS cancelled its crime series “The Unit,” head writer David Mamet confronted colleagues in the writers room about their comprehension of dramatic writing. Below you will find Mamet’s beef with his suddenly out-of-work writers. His critique may be applied to any kind of written dramatic scene/plot structure including novels, short stories and unscripted stage pieces:

The job of the dramatist is to make the audience wonder What Happens Next, not to explain to them What Just Happened, or to suggest to them what happens next.

Any dickhead can write, “But, Jim, if we don’t assassinate the prime minister in the next scene, all Europe will be engulfed in flames!”

We are not getting paid to realize that the audience needs this information to understand the next scene, but to figure out how to write the scene before us such that the audience will be interested in What Happens Next.

The audience will not tune in to watch information. You wouldn’t, I wouldn’t. No one would or will. the audience will only tune in and stay tuned to watch drama.

Question: What is drama?

Drama, again, is the quest of the hero to overcome those things which prevent him from achieving a specific, acute goal.

So we, the writers, must ask ourselves of every scene these three questions:
1) Who wants what?
2) What happens if she doesn’t get it?
3) Why now?

The answers to these questions are litmus paper. Apply them, and their answer will tell you if the scene is dramatic or not.

If the scene is not dramatically written, it will not be dramatic.




Three-Plus-One David Mamet Links

Although he was listed among America’s most prestigious theater faculty at Yale and NYU, Mamet continues to offer his unique writing perspective to a broader audience in his books, essays and videos on line – including his Master Class on line:


The essential Mamet video:
“Why are you telling me this?”
(seven brilliant minutes)

Mamet's best film:
(preview: 1:58)

Mamet's best caper movie:
(preview: 1:46)

* * *

Plant Your Pencils

Fellow author Robert Kourik has spent four decades self-publishing his writings and lecturing about wise garden husbandry. When he learned I had tackled the topic of Writers Writing About Writing, he couldn’t help but forward the following links about a curiously transformative writer’s tool that – with the essential assistance of a little water – grows itself into a well-rooted living being shortly after its writing life has ended! It merely needs an author to plant it!



Follow Robert Kourik on line:


* * *


Essential Bookshelf for Dramatic Fiction Writers

Aristotle. The Poetics. Athens: classic Greek text, c. 335 BC

Egri, Lajos. The Art of Dramatic Writing. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972

States, Bert O. Irony and Drama. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1971

Seger, Linda. Creating Unforgettable Characters. New York: Henry Holt, 1990.

Seger, Linda. Making A Good Script Great. New York: Samuel French, 1994.

Dunne, Will. Dramatic Writer’s Companion. London: University of Chicago Press, 2009

Hayman, Ronald. How to Read a Play. New York: Grove Press, 1977.

Mamet, David. Writing in Restaurants. New York: Random House, 1987

Kozloff, Sarah. Overhearing Film Dialogue. Berkeley: UC Press, 2000

Tierno, Michael. Aristotle’s Poetics for Screenwriters. New York: Hyperion, 2002

Root, Wells. Writing the Screenplay. New York: Henry Holt, 1980

Mast, Gerald. The Comic Mind. Indianapolis: Boobs-Merrill, 1973

Perret, Gene. Comedy Writing, Step-by-Step. New York: Samuel French, 1982

Horton, Andrew. Laughing Out Loud -- Writing a Comedy-Centered Screenplay.
Berkeley: UC Press, 2000

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