Go after inspiration with a club and a plane ticket

I've been whining a lot about not writing. Hey, I'll call it what it is. I'll blame anything, too, from a gaggle of seven year olds to the felicitous and all consuming holiday season. But I was secretly hoping that if I'm meant to be a writer, if I will enjoy working in "the Industry," I'd have an enlightening experience at the silver screen Mecca.

We didn't do the Hollywood thing until our last day in LA. I was psyched. The only thing we had done remotely movie-like was drive Mulholland Drive. Which I found a little disturbing at first. Thanks, David Lynch.


Let me tell you, "Hollywood" isn't actually the nicest part of LA. But it is awesome. I could have walked up and down the star studded Walk of Fame again and again. I tiptoed through Grauman's Chinese Theatre forecourt as is on hallowed ground. From Cary Grant to Johnny Depp to Rita Hayworth. The Industry's greatest and most mythical. Waltzing through the Kodak Theatre's odd shopping mall area, the pillars decked out with each year and the film that won Best Picture.

It. Was. Awesome.


And it got me excited about writing again. I don't know. Maybe that's kind of kitschy because the likelihood of me getting anywhere near Kodak again is if I pay for the guided tour (which I so will at some point). I'm not a starry-eyed screenwriting starlet. But it wasn't so much about the fame of Hollywood as it was about the realization of the stories. I mean, you pound on your keyboard and daydream about stories and movies and slave jobs I will have in LA. It's nice to have something to remind you that all that isolation can translate into something tangible. Especially cool when I saw "Out of Africa" up there on the Kodak's pillar. Know who wrote that? Kurt Luedtke, Michigan grad.

A few days prior to this we had visited a cemetery where stars such as Marilyn Monroe and Farrah Fawcett are buried. Billy Wilder's grave was there also, with his infamous epitaph, "I'm a writer but then nobody's perfect."

Imperfection, here I come.