Sunday, March 6, 2005

The Scratching Post

The scratching post.  Ah, there's a place beside which a cat can think.

I had a thoroughly inspiring afternoon.  Kendrick Strauch, an actor and former student (he played a bloody good Romeo in my 1998 staging of Romeo and Juliet), was in town with his rock band.  They're recording at a West Hollywood studio, and the two of us spent an hour together talking in a coffee shop on the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica.

Kendrick gave me his reactions to The French Inquisitor.  God!  It was startling to hear him evaluate our script treatment through the lens of literary criticism:  the time he's spent working at Yale with professors the likes of Harold Bloom has added real gravitas to his analytical perspective.

The last time I saw him, I think, was when he read for Sydney Carton in our first reading of A Tale of Two Cities back in December 2002.  Then he was just a college student trying to find himself.  He's still trying to find himself, but today when he met me in Venice Beach, he looked like a young George Clooney, albeit with deconstructed blond streaks running through his hair.

His passion for acting and music is even more powerful than it was back in high school, though, if that's possible.  His focus is more intense, too.  He knows what he's about.

We decided during the course of our conversation to work together to develop and create the pilot for a television series I'd like to produce:  Teachers.  We'll start hashing it out over the next few months by email.  I'd love to direct it as a low-budget pilot.  There's a new dream for you.

Meanwhile, my co-writer continues to develop the extended treatment of The French Inquisitor as I write.

A friend and her husband have offered us the run of their house, located in Topanga Canyon, for four days over spring break  A place far from the madding crowd, so to speak, where no one will distract us.  We just lock ourselves down until we churn out the first draft.

Well, enough of that.  I'm off now for Sequoia National Park.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Is a teacher in your series going to have to deal with an annoying student obsessed with business?