Author Archives: Marin Gazzaniga

Doing Hard Time in the Writer’s Room

This is the view from the writer’s room I belong to in Gowanus. I love this space, because when I go there I am often productive. I am lucky to also have a nice home, but my office there is small and crammed with hard drives and a computer used for video editing. So when I write at home, it is on the couch or propped at the kitchen counter. I am easily distracted at home. I don’t know why. I’m not someone who alphabetizes CDs, bakes cookies, or does laundry to avoid writing. And I generally have my home to myself. It is quiet. But I don’t get nearly as much writing done in this cozy environment as I do when I go to this room with ten cubicles and bars on the windows.

What is it about the creative process that requires us to be hard on ourselves? I have spent thousands of dollars over the years on classes and workshops to “force” myself to write. To “shame” myself into having deadlines. To “light a fire under my ass.”

And I have spent enough time with other writers to know I am not alone in this. Why is it hard to make ourselves sit down and express ourselves? The very name of this blog – Deadline Gowanus – came from my fondness for the sword of Damocles.

I have been writing a spec script. Which means something I am writing on my own. No one is paying for it. No one cares if I finish it. So I can take as long as I want. And rewrite it over and over until I am satisfied. It’s awful. (The process. Hopefully, not the script.)

For six months last year I wrote a soap opera. The volume of pages I had to produce, and the tidal wave of deadlines was like nothing I’ve ever experienced. When people ask what it was like, it’s all I can do not to grab them by their lapels and shake them and say “You. Have. No. Idea.” It taught me that there is no such thing as writer’s block. If a cast and crew is waiting for three new scenes that have to shoot in an hour, you get very creative, very quickly. Did I mention it was also the most fun I have had as a writer?

Part of the benefit of a deadline – for me – is definitely about adrenaline triggered by a fear of failure. But there is also something about setting limits that I think helps creativity. When there is a time limit, an end point, we are forced to dig deep and do what we can with what we have at our disposal right at the moment. Not do a lot of research. Not think of all the things it COULD be. But just make it what it can be right now. And then, move on.

Hooked.

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What I Discovered in Room 237

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I watched the documentary Room 237 by Rodney Ascher this week, which presents several uber-fans’ analyses of Stanley Kubrik’s The Shining.

At first I was put off by some of the far-fetched hypotheses. Is this an ironic look at a bunch of conspiracy theories? But I was soon mesmerized by their passionate defenses – the excitement in their voices – and the footage Ascher (who also edited the film) used to illustrate their arguments. I say the “excitement in their voices” because you don’t see the fans. In fact, they’re sometimes interviewed over the phone (or according to this interview, maybe it was Skype), which adds another interesting layer of anonymity to their commentary. (There’s a great moment where a guy is deep into his analysis, which is being presented over footage of the Kubrick film, and you slowly become aware of an eerie sound of a child crying in the background. He suddenly interrupts his own commentary and says something like, “Do you hear that?” – for a chilling second I thought – what the hell is going on?? It was like a ghost had infiltrated his analysis the way ghosts haunt the characters in the movie. But then the guy says, “Hang on…” and breaks away to quiet his crying son, and I realized: Oh, that’s HIS kid. It was a weirdly thrilling breaking of the documentary’s fourth wall.) The effect of Ascher’s technique (never seeing his subjects) ultimately means you can’t judge the person, you can only judge the theory.

It made me think a lot about how we judge and what we judge and why.

I found myself thinking about the human need for meaning. We look for it everywhere. We are always crafting stories. Whether it’s an interpretation of a perceived slight from a friend or lover, an anxiety dream, or a can of Tang in the background of the kitchen scene in The Shining. What does it mean? Is he mad at me? Am I stressed out at work? Did Kubrick fake the Apollo landing? We are always wondering, looking for explanations, and when we hit on one, it’s hard for us to let it go, and we will defend it to the end. It seems to me almost every human preoccupation can be explained by this drive: religion, politics, psychiatry, film theory, tabloid journalism…

The film also made me nostalgic for a certain kind of criticism. In college and grad school I studied literary and film criticism and found it exciting. It was about trying to understand works of art. Looking for clues in an author’s or auteur’s work. Connecting stories to a personal or cultural history to better understand intention. Or just looking for clues in the work itself. But when I started working as a writer, actor and producer, “criticism” became judgment. It meant notes, revisions, reviews, or the look on someone’s face after a show or screening: Do they like the work? Do they like me? It became about success or failure. Good or bad. It became a verdict.

I miss the joy and pleasure of searching for meaning. The motivation to try and understand someone’s work, rather than to decide what’s right or wrong about it. Obviously it’s easier to obsessively analyze something you love, admire or relate to. But I wonder if there isn’t a way to get back to some of that critical analysis in our culture. Or at least in my own life and work. When I look more curiously at other people’s work, it helps me in my own. It allows more compassion for my own process of discovery in my writing, rather than the fear provoked by the rush to judgment.

Certainly Kubrick’s The Shining has had its share of critics, including the book’s author, Stephen King. But it also had its fans. The theories in Room 237 made me wonder: Can we reignite the joy and pleasure of finding meaning, and move away from the schadenfreude of discerning failure?