Hooray for Hollywood (sort of)
I was raised in Hollywood, on Hollywood. The Dream Factory is in my blood -- literally. My father Lyle was a Warner Bros. star in the Golden Age of Hollywood (that's him below, with Loretta Young). My son Joe is a movie director. Moviemaking is in the family. And yet it's poison. The myths created in Hollywood -- from Top Gun on down -- are the lies that run the country, the world. I should want to burn down the "entertainment" industry. But instead I want to turn it around.
I always have. After we graduated from college in the 1970s, my girlfriend Barbara Zheutlin and I headed back to Los Angeles, where we tried to subvert Tinsel Town, organizing a group of radical entertainment workers called the Socialist Media Group. We held our meetings in cinematographer Haskell Wexler's loft, and one member of our group -- indie film producer Sarah Pillsbury -- even wore our group's button ("Everybody Is a Star," with a red star) onstage when she won an Academy Award.
Barbara and I also interviewed lefties unhappily burrowed into Hollywood for our book, Creative Differences.
Spoiler alert: we failed to overthrow Hollywood. Our group dispersed to the far corners of the country. But as a writer -- and yes, as someone still infected with its dreams -- I kept coming back to Hollywood. There's a chapter in my recent memoir, Between Heaven and Hell, about my distressing experiences in the film capital, called "Hollywood Gave Me a Stroke." And it's true -- working for the dream machine was a nightmare for me.
BUT... I just wrote my first screenplay. It took over nine months and I had to learn the specialized craft as I went scene by scene (I had a great teacher). And I must confess --as painstaking as it sometimes felt, it was nonetheless a deeply pleasureful process. Go figure. Maybe the movie will actually get made.
Now I want to write a treatment for a limited TV series based on my book, Season of the Witch. We live in such gloomy times. Before I shuffle offstage, I want to remind people how we once liberated this country -- city by city. The war for America's soul has never been easy. This is a deeply cruel, violent, greedy country. The only thing "exceptional" about it is its bloodthirsty ruthlessness. But, like Hollywood, the USA is still worth fighting for.
That's why we fight. That's why I write. I never forget.
