Table of Contents
One Damn Thing After Another 1
The search for The Black Panther
Edward Elgar's moustache
Sitting in Starbucks talking about movies
A surprising find at the LA City Morgue
Importance of doing the boring things well
Location Location Location 9
Screenwriters not Film Makers
Unfairness of the credits arbitration system
Avoid the ostrich burger
Antony Trollope's dentures
Getting in The Zone and knowing when the project is complete
Story Structure On Dopey Drive 21
Location of Walt Disney's corpse
Lessons from the Animation Building
Easy reading as hard writing
Enlisting the subconscious as your writing partner
Snow White and you
Art House Versus Multiplex 29
Glass pants
Relatives tinged with lunacy
Drawbacks of fish gutting as a career
Speech and Drama
Not getting killed by an IRA bomb
A lousy actor but in love with the Stage
Spankarama 39
Advice on dramatic structure from a strange source
Demand for dialogue from similar
Charlie Chaplin's boots
Lessons unlikely to be learned in Film School
Getting away from miner's clubs with the booking fee
She's Not Listening, She's Bored 45
A drunken executive
Nefarious activity at a major entertainment agency
Los Angeles as a Tar Pit
Leave as much white space on the page as possible
Major legal trouble narrowly avoided at the American Film Institute
Two Murders 59
Involvement with FBI
Unfortunate choice of shoes
Bizarre killing in Coventry subway
The Lower Depths
Tips on drinking metal polish
Night terrors of writer when young
Good quote from Goethe
Unexpected Lessons Of Lolita 73
Chaos and Discipline
Tom Cruise's conference table
A hidden enemy
Writer's fear of being beaten like a tethered goat
The One Legged Chinaman
Saying No
The one thing that artistic temperament can't create
Getting The Story Onto The Page 85
Advice from a Hollywood legend
Genesis of Cool Hand Luke
The Watcher at the Gates of the Mind
Ole Sparky
Useful image for visualization of the writing task
Loss of notebook to Moroccan terrorists
Sunk Costs 91
Economic theory as a guide to screenwriting
Bananas and peanuts
Begging letter from Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Unusual behavior of producer in men's store
Obsession with detail
Quantum theory and the actor
Practical Ecstasy 105
Hopeless task in Death Valley
Oliver Sacks addiction
Writing as therapy?
Professional partnership
A talent for having talent
Sad tale of Chilly and Willy
Pissing on the peaches
Not Waiting For The Phone To Ring 117
Startling twist in drug bust
Dark past of Bambi's creator
Perils and joys of The Pitch
Edgar Wallace's mental collapse
Theatre of Horror
Real meaning of popular phrase explained
Take The Gig 127
Doctor Plastic
Amoebic Dysentery as writing hazard
Game show set in restroom
Elizabeth Taylor and me
Land of the Happy Pink Unicorns and Hippy Dipshit Fairy Dust
The shpilkes
Near-Death Experience On Washington Boulevard 135
Twenty-three Sambucas and twelve bottles of Guinness
Venice Beach at midnight
David Hockney quote
Gun ownership for beginners
Fifty laps around the racetrack at a hundred and eighty miles an hour
City Of Nets 149
Sean O'Casey's hand
Discovery of missing suicide note
Compliment to Sharon Stone
Uncooperative behavior of koi
Author compares himself to Virginia Woolf
Intrepid Living
The Irish in Brooklyn
The Making Of Monsters 161
Spitting toads
Sex crazed jellyfish
Brando's hammock
The Berlin Airlift
Ontogeny replicates phylogeny
Directing as a personality disorder
