May 2009 – Page 3 – Kelley Eskridge

Gone fishing

The first draft of the screenplay revision is turned in to the Important Producer and Director Peeps, after 42 hours of writing in a 78-hour time period during which I revised a 114 page script into 102 pages, including restructuring sequences, writing new scenes, polishing dialogue, and ironing out inconsistencies. I am fucking tired. And I had an absolute blast. And I think it’s pretty good work, although of course some of it is first draft and so needs to be tightened up.

It’s actually been a pretty interesting process lately with the screenplay, and I will talk about it at some point soon when my brain does not feel like a scrambled egg.

But not today. Today, I am going to read Stephen King; eat butternut squash soup and ham sandwiches and spaghetti marinara; drink tea, then beer, then tea again; sleep beyond 4 AM (very exciting!); and then tomorrow accompany my sweetie to a matinee of Star Trek, possibly followed by (wait for it….) more beer.

In other words, I’ve gone fishing. Hope to have a post tomorrow morning, but actual comment/conversations probably won’t resume until later tomorrow or Saturday. You are all very patient and I appreciate it. I hug you through the internets (but watch out for the fishing pole, those hooks can be wicked….)

Enjoy your Thursday.

Work/bliss

I’ve been up and working since before 5 AM. It’s raining outside my office window, cold heavy rain from a gray heavy sky, more like fall than spring, except that under the rain the garden glows brilliant green and pink and orange and purple. The lilac against the gray sky is amazing….

Seattle doesn’t know it’s May and is still playing the April weather game, but it’s okay. It makes my office feel cocooned and safe. All I did yesterday, from 4:30 AM until nearly 6 PM, was eat meals with Nicola and work on the latest screenplay revision. And that’s all I plan to do today. It’s been months since I’ve had the chance to do this work, and it’s a particular bliss for me: today I am a screenwriter. Whatever happens next, I am happy for these days.

And this is where I’ll be, in my safe rain-shrouded place with the people of my movie, until their story is done for this round and I come back, blinking, into light.

So now can we get to the important stuff?

Just so you guys don’t think I’m some googly-eyed myopic Obama fan who can’t see what’s really happening in Washington, I give you John Scalzi’s analysis of Obama’s First 100 Days.

I think he speaks for all of us, don’t you? Except possibly in the matter of Rosario Dawson… I would have to go with Jodie Foster or Johnny Depp, myself. And I might have to add the fact that I have not yet won the Mega Millions lottery, in spite of repeated requests through my Senators to bring this to the President’s attention.

Enjoy your Sunday.

*Waves thank you to Scalzi through the internets for a good laugh on a beautiful day.*

100 days of photos

photo by Callie Shell

Last October, I talked about a photo essay by Callie Shell that I really enjoyed, chronicling the Obama campaign. Well, she’s done it again. TIME magazine has just published Shell’s series of photos of President Obama’s first 100 days in office.

Here’s the thing: these are good photos, but they are not telling a hugely emotional story. They show the President and his people mostly at work, occasionally at rest. And yet, looking through them made me cry. Good cry or bad cry? Nicola asked when I told her. This was good cry, definitely.

I spent eight years believing to my core that there was not a single human being in the White House who was interested in understanding who I am and what I might need (not even as a citizen, never mind as one human being to another). I felt completely invisible to my government, except in all the let-me-monitor-your-email ways. And that was fine: I didn’t want to come to the attention of those folks, because no good ever came of that for most of us.

But I look at these photos, and I don’t feel that way now. I feel like smart people are working long hours to do their best for me. For me. I feel like it would be a pleasure and a privilege to sit with these people at dinner and talk about life, love, art, science, history, the beauty of the world and the people in it. I just like them, you know?

And I think this makes me cry because I had given up hope of ever feeling this way about government of any kind, ever again. The City of Seattle and the State of Washington take pretty good care of me; but suddenly, unexpectedly, I feel closer to these strangers in D.C. than I do to people running things in my own back yard. And it feels good.

(If you’re interested in an overview of the key events of the first 100 days, TIME also offers this very cool interactive guide.)