WTF To Say And How To Say It

Unexpected, weird, new ideas surfacing during difficult times

Apologies all around for my absence, and thank you to those who stuck around, many of whom are all across the globe. I tend to under-share, which is a Substack no-no and a content no-no. Visibility is the commodity. How can you prove your hustle when you’re nowhere on screen? The brand. The platform. The messaging. You gotta be out there, sayin’ stuff, reminding folks of who you are and what you do.

And yet.

Looking glamorous while feeling like shit and toasting Governor Gavin Newsom.

If you’ve been following the news, Los Angeles is making headlines once again; 2025 has been quite the year for my beloved LA LA Land, and we’re barely halfway through. First, wildfires and now ICE raids, and I have found myself closer to both than I might have expected. Since January, I’ve worked at a school in South Central Los Angeles. My students are Latino. My colleagues are Latino. When I park my car, there’s a little old Latino lady behind a gate who waves to me while she sweeps her driveway. I hear Mexican music playing all the time. There are roosters crowing near the parking lot. On the penultimate day of school, I played Loteria or what’s sometimes called “Mexican bingo” with students. Not too far away, ICE agents roamed. Teachers were asked to stand near the gates at dismissal to ensure students’ safety. Thankfully, the final week remained celebratory, everything went smoothly. ICE didn’t come by. An ice cream truck parked in the courtyard and doled out sugar under a hot sun. Students asked me to sign their T-shirts and backpacks. The kids were loud and laughing, the sounds of summer.

I’m very proud of how L.A. is standing with immigrant communities and pushing back against these racist raids. L.A. is the Latino community, not red carpet Hollywood. Yes, Hollywood is the signature industry here, which is going through its own difficulties, but it’s a small piece of L.A. My L.A. is the one where someone blasts Mexican love songs and keeps a rooster behind a gate (one that cock-a-doodle-doos at all hours, including at 4 PM) a few blocks away from a Tom’s Jr. My L.A. is the street corn vendor I pass by when I walk to my car (before I reach the loquacious rooster). My L.A. is five different people selling the exact same bundles of white sage for different prices along a bike path facing the ocean while skateboarders from all kinds of backgrounds are briefly airborne before they loop around one another. My L.A. is driving by that giant fiberglass donut advertising Randy’s Donuts because that’s my commute home and–no joke–I smile every time I see that big ol’ fake pastry peeking out from behind a highway overpass.

L.A., like many American cities, is a city of immigrants, and if you’re not standing with immigrants, you’re on the wrong side of history. I voted for Kamala. I won’t even say that other guy’s name and I won’t go into the sickness that’s consuming American politics right now. You can doom scroll and find that anywhere and everywhere. What I will go into is what does chasing the dream in L.A. look like in 2025? Is anyone dreaming anymore? Why bother amidst all this dystopia? There’s been so much going on lately, it’s been difficult for me to write, and I tend to under-share, under-post, under-promote, not because I’m shy (unless it’s karaoke, which is a hard no). I’m not. IRL is where I am fucking fine. Posting stuff when America is in a free fall? I go inward, but thanks to my friend

Sacha Cohen

who is chasing her dream in France, here I am, writing, firing up the creative juices, carrying on.

Chasing the dream in Tinseltown involves more zigzagging now. It’s going to be more uphill because everything now is more uphill. Not only am I of an age when people don’t usually try to “break into” a new industry, there’s less industry now to break into. L.A. is on the precipice of becoming a rust belt town, having outsourced the very industry it built. It’s too expensive here and the production of film and television is increasingly moving to anywhere else that’s cheaper, from New Mexico to North Carolina. On-location shooting is down by more than 22 percent this year and it’s expected to continue to decline. A few weeks ago, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass signed an executive order to make it more affordable to shoot projects in L.A. and to support the development of film and TV crew jobs, many which were lost after the 2023 Hollywood strikes in which I regularly picketed (mostly at Amazon’s studio). Folded up in a dresser drawer is my blue WGA T-shirt, which I wore at every picket, even though I’m not yet part of the WGA because I haven’t yet sold anything, and even now there might not be anyone to sell to unless government and industry turn things around.

It’s contraction in every direction, this widespread sense of decline and worry. I had coffee with a screenwriter a few weeks ago who’s had a fair amount of success in this town, and she thinks L.A. is going to belly up like Detroit after automobile manufacturing abandoned everyone.

No one has any good news to share lately.

So what am I doing to cope?

This past week, I started writing a horror film after the idea pinballed around my mind for a month. This makes no sense (or maybe it does?) but stick with me for a sec.

I started writing a horror film and on top of that, a rom-com I wrote two years ago got accepted into a competitive writers’ workshop at UCLA Extension that takes 12 students who are committed to polishing up their work and submitting it to contests and the marketplace. It’s not a workshop for hobby writers; they made that clear. It’s a workshop for people who better fucking commit to this craft. And, hopefully, there will be a marketplace to go to.

So, I’m writing a new screenplay that’s kind of Cthulhu meets Kate Chopin’s “The Awakening,” (very English major nerd stuff) and dusting off another one (my only completed screenplay so far) when there is nothing in the current environment to indicate entrepreneurial fecundity of any kind. How many screenwriters or writers of any discipline started writing down an idea when everything around them was going to shit? Probably several. At least ten of us. No, one hundred. Possibly a thousand. Maybe thousands and thousands over the years? A huge group of disillusioned writers who had no idea what to do with their fear and their rage other than to write it down? Like Facebook big? Binders big? Yeah, that’s it. Consider me part of that group now.

I write not because I want to “break into” anything; I love teaching and I love my school. I plan to remain a teacher, hopefully at my current school. I hope to sell my novel. I hope to sell a screenplay. I’ll keep on showing up to school every day. I write because I love writing. It’s All The Things.

When shit goes sideways, dries up, whatever, that’s the time to create, to reconnect with our humanity. Am I a novelist? I don’t know. I wrote a novel. Am I a rom-com writer? I don’t know. I wrote a rom com. Am I a horror writer? I don’t know that either but I’m writing a horror flick. Given the current administration and the dissolution of democracy, I would imagine many of us might possess untapped horror writing skills. Let’s see what the next two to three years generates in terms of books, film and TV.

I can’t tell you why I’m writing a horror feature other than I am and it seems to be gelling. I should be writing another book but this horror feature idea is so present. Sounds ridiculous, but it’s true: it’s showing up for me. It’s saying “Write me. Please. Now. I’m here. This matters. Fucking do this. Do not give up.”

Last Sunday, I was at The Georgian Hotel having brunch and sipping a pink cocktail, a mix of prosecco and watermelon juice. Who doesn’t want to feel a bit numb these days as the U.S. Constitution takes brutal beating after brutal beating? Dining at this hotel has been an L.A. dream of mine, and nearly seven years later, I finally got to do it. On the outside, I looked kinda glamorous even though on the inside, I felt like shit. Not far from The Georgian is my bike path and the sage vendors and the skateboarders and the dudes with dad bods playing volleyball and the hot girls on rollerskates and the guy with the bleach blonde hair who yells out “Champion!” to everyone and anyone and the lady in her sixties or seventies who wears a thong and has a killer serve and my gaze is towards everything I love, love, love about L.A. My city. Where all kinds of super fucked up shit happens, where all kinds of commuities live side by side, where ideas come to life, and it’s because of these struggles and complexities that I feel my commitment to the City of Angels deepen, I feel my creativity take root.

Let your landscape surprise you, as mine did.

P.S. I’ll fix typos after I hit “Publish” as we all do here on Substack, so apologies for anything that’s not squeaky clean, but I needed to get back on the Substack horse. Meanwhile, I’m trying not to listen to mopey music. I have on vinyl Ella Fitzgerald “Live At Montreux 1969” and I’ve had that on replay on Spotify, specifically the first track, “Give Me The Simple Life.” It’s a peppy, pink cocktail-at-The-Georgian song, very old school even though 1969 was its own tumultuous year; the song was written by Reuben Bloom in 1945 and introduced in the 1946 film “Wake Up and Dream,” speaking of dream chasing. No doubt 1945-1946 were years people wanted to feel good again. “Wake Up and Dream” is classic Hollywood, a musical that was filmed at 20th Century Fox Studios on Pico Boulevard, a 20-minute drive from me. I don’t know the movie but I am charmed by the lyrics, including:

“Some find it pleasant dining on pheasant
Those things roll off my knife
Just serve me tomatoes and mashed potatoes
Give me the simple life…”

I’ve eaten many things all over the world including camel, barracuda, and alligator, but never pheasant. Right now, for me, small, simple pleasures have become magnified during these horrible times. A pink cocktail near the beach. A favorite song replayed. Kids eating ice cream. That rooster near my school. That old lady waving hello. Stay connected. Be kind.