I've started a new category called "Human Behavior Lessons." Follow it to discover amazing things about humans! Better understand humans and you will write better characters. Write better characters and you will write better screenplays.

I hope I haven't left you hanging too long, dear readers, but I've had to spend the last day and a half trying to repair my email system and address book due to a corrupted email synchronization, due to a computer intrusion.^[1] The repair failed so I had to restore my hard drive from a backup. Lost a day and a half of work.

Now, today's lesson: How To Prevent People From Telling You the Truth:

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So in Part One I went to Maine, and in Part Two I went to Canada and got blown up at.

In Part Three I return to Maine and have a terrific week with Fancy Pants, FPS (Fancy Pants' Sister), and their assortment of very large dogs. I really like those girls. They're smart and goofy and kind of ruthless; they're full of odd personality combinations. They love the outdoors and have cynical senses of humor. They love their dogs.

We left Canada and headed back over the border. At the border checkpoint, I sat in the passenger seat. Both times. Both times I passed my identification over, and both times the border guard–up in a booth on the driver's side–examined it and waved us through without looking at my face. I could have handed them some other dude's ID while smoking a joint wearing a turban and they'd have given me a gift basket.

Marshmallow Fields Forever

The thing that surprised me most this trip was that in Maine they grow marshmallows on farms. They're lined up in rows, in field after field, each one the size of a cow.

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I decided to apply for a $20,000 Commissioning Grant for the new screenplay I've been working on. I've been doing round-the-clock web-design work to afford food; this grant would free me up to take a break and finish writing. It could be a hell of a movie if I could concentrate on the damn thing for more than an hour a week. So I asked a Hollywood producer who's seen and liked my work to write me a recommendation letter.

Today he wrote back and said, "Please send me the letter you'd like. I'll sign it and return it to you on my letterhead."

Am I right to feel vaguely dirty about this, or should I be falling all over myself with gratitude?

I mean, the guy likes what I've done. He's trying to help. But this just feels downright fucked up.

Maybe I should stop being so creeped out by the way they do things out there and just write myself the most glowing recommendation letter in the history of the planet.

Comments?

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In 2003, I was selected for the Sundance Screenwriter's Lab. The Sundance Institute does not just put on a massive film festival every year; they have fabulous all-expenses-paid artistic development programs in film, poetry, theater, and more, and provide a kind of fertile creative soil which I never knew existed and might not have believed had I not been lucky enough (and believe me, it's more luck than talent) to get planted in it. You're housed for a week in the Sundance Village in Utah, surrounded by woodfire cabins, forested mountains, and Academy Award-winning screenwriters. The airfare is paid, the expenses are paid, and there are three grade-double-A buffet meals a day plus social events and–if you stick around a few days beyond the Lab–some free Film Festival tie-ins. There is no industry talk except around informal dinner tables, no producers, no worries, no focus on anything except the art and craft of screenwriting. Plus there's a THX theater where you get to watch prior films by your fellow participants, and get sneak-preview 35mm screenings of films that are about to premiere at Sundance. It was among the very best and happiest weeks of my life.

How did it happen?

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