Hailey's Novel Diary – 6/23/17

What are the odds that a film directed by Bernardo Bertolucci would be canceled just before or during principal photography? It might seem unlikely, considering how much clout he has, but I bet it could happen.

Stanley Kubrick was relatively powerful, but his Napoleon film was canceled for budget reasons.

Ridley Scott wanted to direct an Alien sequel written by James Cameron, but it was canceled so 20th Century Fox could make a bunch of Alien vs Predator movies. That sounds insane, but it really happened.

Robert Zemeckis was never as powerful, but he had cartoon hits with The Polar Express, Beowulf and A Christmas Carol. Disney canceled his remake of Yellow Submarine anyway.

I don't think it has ever happened, but theoretically, Bertolucci could get canceled.

Malibu Lagoon State Beach

Hailey's Novel Diary – 6/22/17

We all know what an unreliable narrator is, right? The more time I spend online, the more I worry about how ineffective subtlety can be. In an age where people get their news from Twitter and entertainment from reality TV, sometimes it takes a baseball bat to make a point.

I'm bringing this up because I just wrote a scene that a 10-year-old might completely misunderstand. They might think the character is crazy. But this is not a children's book. Anyone who has read an adult book or two should get it, but I have been told that I overestimate the public too often. Personally, I think people are smarter than the publishers, studio executives and networks are giving them credit for, but Twitter and reality TV are working overtime to prove me wrong.

I was also thinking about titles for the fictional Bernardo Bertolucci film, and I wondered what he would call a film about Émile Armand. But I don't know Bertolucci at all. I have seen his movies and heard some gossip. That tells me nothing about what might be in the man's head.

I could come up with a few titles for a movie about a French anarchist who sleeps around a lot. But it seems to me that Bertolucci might be the kind of filmmaker who uses working titles.

Studios and producers love to keep their movies secret with working titles. Back to the Future was Spaceman From Pluto at one point. Return of the Jedi was called Blue Harvest to keep people in the dark. Annie Hall was famously called Anhedonia.

Woody Allen often uses generic working titles like Woody Allen Spring Project. So I'm calling the fictional Bertolucci film Untitled Bernardo Bertolucci Production. I think it adds a little something to the overall sense of confusion that a real title would lack.

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
Directed by Steven Spielberg
© 1982 Universal Pictures

Return of the Jedi
Directed by Richard Marquand
© 1983 Lucasfilm Ltd

Hailey's Novel Diary – 6/21/17

I finished chapter 9 in record time. I was pretty surprised by how quickly I punched it out. I was almost ready to pat myself on the back. Then I checked the word count. It's currently at 1,891 words. That is incredibly short for a chapter.

Obviously, a lot will change. This is only the first draft, and everything will either get longer or shorter when I get back to it. Some chapters are supposed to be longer than others, but I know from experience that the first draft will look nothing like the final print.

Chapter 10 starts with the scene that gave me the idea for the entire book. I almost started the story here, but it's better if you know the characters a little. It would be more shocking to start here, which makes publishers happy and probably helps sales, but I think there is more of an impact if you know the people involved.

It's like a jump scare in a horror movie versus something that is actually scary. Jump scares sell more tickets at the box office, but the truly scary moments are far more memorable.

This book is not a horror story, by the way. That was just an example. I'm sure I don't have to point that out, but this is the internet, after all.

The Exorcist
Directed by William Friedkin
© 1973 Warner Brothers

Hailey's Novel Diary – 6/20/17

Émile Armand was a French anarchist/pacifist who wrote magazine articles and books about communes and anarchy, mostly between 1900-1930. He was also a big fan of free love, and had some radically liberal views on human sexuality. Even today, some of his ideas would shock a lot of people, especially Americans.

The fictional Bertolucci film in my book is about Émile Armand. He seems like the kind of guy Bertolucci might make a film about. Émile Armand hated the establishment, was a raging atheist, loved the ladies and was a bit of a voyeur. Bertolucci could easily make a controversial film about him with sweeping French countrysides and plenty of wall to wall nudity.

I have made MGM the distributor. Mainly because MGM is all but destitute. I'm going to say some unflattering things about whoever produces the Bertolucci film, so I thought maybe it should be a studio that can't crush me like a grape.

I love the great MGM musicals. I think it's sad how far that studio has fallen. They were the biggest studio in the world, putting out all the best Gene Kelly, Judy Garland and Fred Astaire movies. Now they don't produce anything without another studio helping out.

I also hate the way studio executives treated people like Judy Garland. Some of the abuse she suffered is germane to this story. MGM is an appropriate choice.

I probably should not admit this, but I thought their office was in Santa Monica, which works within my story. It turns out they were in Santa Monica for a few years, but then moved to Beverly Hills, which has nothing to do with the story. Oh, well.

Émile Armand

Hailey's Novel Diary – 6/19/17

I have dragged Bernardo Bertolucci into this. In the story, one of the characters auditions for an acting part in a movie. I could have created fictional directors and producers, but I decided to use Bertolucci because of his reputation. He is generally considered a great filmmaker and a royal pain in the butt to work with.

If I created a director character, it would have been a Bertolucci type. Since the real Bertolucci is mostly a recluse, why not use him? I highly doubt he will sue me, for several reasons, and I don't have to worry about personally offending him since he will never know this book exists. I can pretty much guarantee that we will never meet.

Something I only just considered is that Bertolucci is not exactly a spring chicken. His health has been going downhill since he had a series of botched spinal surgeries. He is in a wheelchair now and rarely leaves his houses in Rome and London. If he dies while I'm writing this, I will have to change it. Obviously, his death, whenever it occurs, will have far greater consequences than any rewrites I have to make. I know how insensitive that sounds. But he has lived a pretty full life. Whenever he leaves, I think we can all be comforted by the great films he has given us.

In the meantime, I will use him for my own selfish gain.

The Conformist
© 1970 Paramount Pictures

The Sheltering Sky
© 1990 Warner Brothers

Hailey's Novel Diary – 6/18/17

I have finished another chapter. It's pretty short and mostly dialogue, so there will be some changes later.

Dialogue is both the easiest and hardest part to write. As an actress, I'm supposed to know how to read a character and say things the way they would say it. I have played characters who suffered from crippling insecurity, depression, insanity, alcoholism and a wide range of problems I know nothing about. If you are going to act, you have to play characters that are nothing like yourself.

Reading dialogue in another voice is easy. If I know who the character is, I can imagine how they would say it. The trick is deciding what they should say. Acting does not prepare you for that. You can't improvise Shakespeare or Tennessee Williams. Writing dialogue is nothing like reading it.

I have been told that I write good dialogue. I'm not trying to toot my own horn here, but it's worth noting that I usually think the dialogue is the worst part of any book I have ever written. People sometimes tell me it's the best part. The main compliment I usually get is that the dialogue fits the character, especially foreign accents. And that's exactly where I think I have failed the most.

The good news is that I will keep trying to do a better job. The bad news is that there are no foreign characters in this book.

Hailey's Novel Diary – 6/17/17

Ikea opened a store in Burbank, California a long time ago. That location was surrounded by hotels, a shopping mall and a freeway. So when they wanted to expand, they moved the store a few blocks south, opening the largest Ikea in the United States.

This is the kind of thing I'm learning while researching this book. It's not about Ikea and Ikea does not play any significant role, but when I mentioned it in passing, I wondered if there really was an Ikea in the neighborhood. According to Google maps, there were two next to each other. That seemed strange to me, so I looked around and read some articles about how terrible the parking was when the new store opened. It may be the largest Ikea in the country, but apparently, the parking lot can only be accessed by a single side street. On an average day, it will probably never matter. But during that opening weekend, people were really freaking out.

Memorial Day
Santa Monica Beach


All the Things She Said
tATu

Hailey's Novel Diary – 6/16/17

Writing, writing and more writing. At this point, I'm concentrating on three characters, but there are more that come and go. Someone somewhere is bound to complain.

Who is the main character? Does there have to be one?

I'm hardly an expert on writing, or much of anything, for that matter, but I know one of the cardinal rules of doing anything artistic. Someone somewhere is going to complain no matter what you do. Sometimes, that is how you know you have succeeded.

I have also introduced the members of a new, completely fictional, band. Their names are Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy. Beth plays keyboards, of course. I'm a little worried about those names, for obvious reasons. I don't think it's particularly clever, but they are minor characters. They are women, though I never mention their heights. They have to be called something.

Palos Verdes, California


Queen Bitch
David Bowie

Hailey's Novel Diary – 6/15/17

I did a local TV commercial when I was in high school. It's not on my resume because it's stupid. And it was a long time ago.

I have used that experience for a scene in this book. Everything is different, from the ages of the people involved, to the product being advertised, but that tedious feeling of shooting a TV commercial is there. The end result might be 30 seconds of non-stop shaky cam and jump cuts, but it takes days of sitting around and waiting for a lot of people to get those 30 seconds.

Someone once asked a filmmaker who just made a movie about making movies, it might have been Robert Altman and The Player, why they did not show what it was realistically like to make a movie. Altman, or whoever it was, answered that it would bore the hell out of the audience. From the actor's point of view, most of the time on set is downtime. Being in front of a camera is anything but glamorous. Hopefully, I have shown some of that effectively.

Hailey's Novel Diary – 6/14/17

The next chapter starts out with a story that is based entirely too much on a story a friend told me after an unsuccessful audition several years ago. It's kind of a funny story after time passes and you can laugh about rejection. But I have to change it because it's too close to the truth.

What is wrong with the truth? Absolutely nothing. But it's someone else's story. I don't have the right to tell it. If I want to write something autobiographical, that's ok because those are my stories. If I want to write fiction, that's ok, too. As long as those are also my stories. It's not a copyright issue. It's common courtesy.

Remember Dreamgirls, the movie and musical? Diana Ross is still upset about that. And with good reason. If she ever wants to tell her life story, everyone will accuse her of ripping off Dreamgirls.



And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going
Jennifer Holliday



I'm Coming Out
Diana Ross