Wednesday, April 14, 2004

April 14, 2004 - 5:52 p.m.

Thor is here on the couch goin through his treasures. He is goin, “OH YEAH! SWEET!” He just showed me a broken dragon fly necklace. It is way past bedtime. We finished reading a Roddy Doyle book from Nancy Murdock, “The Gigglers.” Do the quotes go outside the punctuation? I still don’t fuckin got that down!!! Will I ever? I’ve been explained it TOO many times, but my brain CANNOT hold it. Love might mean never having to say yer sorry but editors mean never having to learn where the period goes. So the Doyle story’s got a lot of poo in it so it worked. More for me then him tho. I get excited when someone is gonna step in poo. Like in this book. Ok, so now Thor is complaining about a dead watch. And he just sneezed, right after I did (copycat) and I said, God Bless You!” and said, “Why, thank you.” Funny fella. He is into his pookah shells, “I’ve got a lot of treasure!”

“Ya sure do buddy.” He’s got the shells around his neck. Some are tangled. He just said, “I’m not very happy about this.” He wants me to untangle them. Thass why I done nevah get writin’ done. Too busy untangling dang pookah shells.

Ok, he is in bed. My fingers can barely move from the pookah shell work. I finally have a skill!!! So, there is some exciting swell news I just got bout The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things film. And I can’t tell y’all. (ha,ha,ha)

I am not allowed to, or I will go to double triple top-secret hell. But it shalt be announced soon enough. Y’all can guess it tho, I reckin. No sin it that is thare? Here’s a hint. Elephant did rather well when it was a guest contestant there last year. It’s really a massive honor. We were all floored and just moved by the acceptance. Ya empathize with that Sally Field Oscar thing ya know?

So, I saw another cut recently… of the film I mean. And, and Lawd! It really… it’s a very powerful film. It uh, got me. It got me. It is incredible.

It is. And I will be honest. I watched it like a fuckin hawk. I gave notes all the time. And this time I watched it, (like a book, it gets tighter and tighter with each edit) and this time I felt it. I could not escape into the technical. I was in it. And I was very fucked up after. So there is my personal reaction and then the reaction to the art of it. Asia really did it. She did it. All the folks that worked on it, man… I am kinda tongue-tied… I guess now I know what folks mean when they have a hard time telling me what they thought of the book. Coz how can you say you dig it when it is so massively painful? But I do love it. The look of it, the acting – is dead on, the feel of it… the emotional timbre of it… Asia nailed Sarah. A very Mel Gibson way of putting it eh? But she did. There are movements she does that just made it hard for me to breathe. Her achievement on this film is just genius. There is not an acting misstep to her, and watched with all BS detectors full tilt. Could not help it. And she knew it. Coz I was cruel sometimes. Going over the script. If there was something I didn’t like, the Sarah in me just outted. I didn’t just say, “uh this doesn’t work…” I was very… I think I write about Sarah so much as a way of purging. The more I let her talk on paper, the less she pops out of my mouth to folks. Coz it scares the fuck outta me when she does. And other folks don’t seem too keen on it either. They don’t expect that outta me. But she is in there. Aren’t our mothers always? And the more damaging, the stronger their grip? Sometimes she comes in handy, like say, when I am on the phone to the electric company or something. But I digress…

I love Asia so intensely. This film is a gift. She always has said that. And she just.. did it. She did it. God, I love her. What she went through to make this film. I remember her sayin, she was gonna do it. And most folks thought, yeah, right. Silly kids. No one will doubt her now. And the performances… I gotta say, Mike Pitt rules. He plays Buddy. And man, he is so warm and funny.

I am doing a new project with Gus Van Sant, it is one that is gonna make Hollywood go, “WHAT THE FUCK?!” And pro’ly some of y’all go, ”SELL OUT!!!” Oh, I sure hope so! When you’ve sold yer body on

A street corner, being called a sell out and never having to leave yer house is a huge step up ya know?!!! Digression once again… so anyways, I wanna write for Pitt. He can be so sweetly funny and with a kid…! He is gentle and comically brilliant. Funny coz when Thor met him, he was 3 and was very jealous of Mike Pitt. Mike thought Thor did not like him. But Mike won him over. The crack he gave to Thor really helped. A tad bit of cliché humor… to child protective services… a mere trifle of tease. I am the only one that gives Thor crack. It’s neat-o how like there’s this extended family that are working on projects. Like how I worked with Gus on Elephant, and there are folks from that film in The Heart, and I met Mike Pitt through Gus, and we always talked bout him being in The Heart or Sarah and he is, and Asia will be with Pitt in the Gus’s next film and I am workin on this new thing with Gus… and y’all know how I crave and look to create family. You give me mound of ants and I am gonna be layin in the dirt showin what a first-rate team player I can be, move some pebbles, provide some crumbs…

John Robinson is very moving in the film as Aaron. He really did get hit, no stunt double. Fuck, everyone, everyone is. There ain’t one person where I was like, well… that person might wanna go back to Stanislavski Method 1A.

Anyways, for me the film is amazing. And scary as fuck. I really am very apprehensive bout the press round it. I went through all this already, ya know? I mean press, for the most part, do not ask about the creative aspects. I did my time of interviews as therapy sessions. Can’t do it again. I just won’t. I am thinking of moving to Mendocino. Astor and Speedie and Thor go up all the time. I just wanna be away for the storm. Asia and all them can handle it. I don’t think I can. Coz the film is hard enough. She stayed real real close to the book. And sometimes it is more then I can bear. But I want to watch it again and again, to work something out. Not like how I would cut away at my skin, but it has a tenor that is similar enough. I am not gonna play doctor in the press. Did it already. So let’s go back to, not existing… these books, they appeared, much like the book of Mormon. Heck they even will let you marry multiple truck drivers. The God’s honest truth is Billy Corgan wrote them. So go ask him bout it.

He is reading in SF and LA and I think other places in the fall for his book. I’ve been hearing it and it is really very majestically revealing listening to him read. It is poetry, like his songs are. And hearing the nakedness of his voice in speech, there is something so torn back, so exposed about it, without the sweep of his singing and orchestrated guitars, the raw power of what lays behind is somehow, in its straightforwardness, all the more palpably moving. Hopefully Dave Eggers is going to interview Corgan or something like that when he reads at City Light in SF in Oct. I asked Vendela (Dave’s very swell wife) if Dave would. Then I sweated her bout havin babies. I dig the Eggers clan and I crave more of them on the earth. I have this litmus test. Folks talk shit bout Eggers or Corgan… well, I just know they ain’t any kinda folk I wanna be havin no sit down with. You open a place for kids to learn to write, like Eggers has… oh, I aint gonna do too much soap box… too tired. Them pookah shells got the best of me.

Ok, just one thing I’ve been dyin to say. It is especially poignant after I go on a self-righteous tirade defending the honor of my heroes… so I gotta talk some hypocritical shit. But I don’t think it is hypocritical actually coz I am not saying not to talk smack… just not about folks that are really dang good folks, and yer talkin smack coz you know not what you do…

And maybe this is one of them cases too. I know not what I do. Like maybe the person I am about to talk shit about is really the second coming and ranks up there in all his deed with Mother Teresa and just sayin his name in a derogatory way is really now gonna send me without a doubt to massive Partially Hydrogenated Oils hell… but like, dude, I doubt it. Coz I do really think John Mayer is the anti-Christ.

Oh man I feel a lot better having said that… And I don’t know the guy. And I don’t want to.

Oh, boy, that is feels good. I am a new fella tonight! Whooweee!

Ok, what else is on my chest. Oh, and I’m not wearing any underwears. That is from The Heart. I love Jimmy Bennett. He says that line. To Peter Fonda. And y’all will love him too. He plays Jeremiah till age 7. He will break yer heart but when he laughs, it is like the sun hittin Noah’s deck… it makes you realize how absent it has been and that it still can be with such a heartbreaking sovereignty of joy communicates all the truth about kids that are hurt…

Ok, what else… Thistle is recording. Puttin together a band. Very kwool. Astor is workin NON-Stop and that’s just waitin on me and Speedie! He’s in the studio and he is dedicated to makin a fuckin sonically gorgeous record. I will write no lyrics proclaiming anybody’s body conjecture-land. Unless I can sell out for like a house? Then, folks, sorry but Mayer is my best fuckin buddy. Fuckin Anti-Christ I tell you! Just read the Lahaye books! It’s in there!!! John Mayer will be unleashed upon the earth!!! Oh I quiver…

Oh, hey I got a Game Boy! They gave me one!!! I am in swagvilles! So now I really got a reason never to write again! Pookah shells and Gamefella! just need a chocolate sponsor that can really keep up with my consumption. My habit is breakin the bank. It’s the financially equivalent of three packs a day of cigs.

I got a story comin out in the next issue of Zoetrope: All-Story, Francis Coppola's lit mag. It is a swell as heck mag and I really recommend y’all subscribing. I am not just a contributor, I read it too, gosh dang it!

http://www.all-story.com/

I am talkin to them bout teaching a class. I am excited bout the idea. It would be a good way to talk bout the ideas I have bout writing in a forum where no one can legally shoot me. I have a story in next Black Book mag

http://www.blackbookmag.com/

Oh what else… I think I am doin a very swell sounding project with actress Joy Bryant. I met her in NY. She was groovy, but she knocked me up and just will NOT admit it publicly. But I am a good sport and will still write for her, coz well, ya know. I dig her. I also really like her name.

I gotta write a different ending for the Harold’s End book that is out in Sept. It is gorgeous! I had a longer ending but Dave Eggers cut it back by like a page. And he was right. It got too melodramatic. But the ending was right for McSweeney’s but it still leaves me incomplete. I want it to finish less abruptly. It leaves me too hungry. Coz I know it goes on. And it just ain’t right to do this, not with the warmth of Cherry Hood’s paintings. Brusque is not right. So… I have a fine line to walk. To complete it but not go over the edge like Eggers busted me on and saved me from. It’s like when I finished Sarah. But I knew I had to go back in and write the Cheat Mountain bridge scene. I had to explain why Sarah kept coming back for him. I was so scared. I felt it was this edge I was on… just like the characters. I had to hit is just right. It was weaving a lot of strands… I dreaded doing it. But when it felt ready to be put in… when the organ arrived, I was ready for the insertion. It was a liver. It is one of my favorite parts of Sarah, I gotta say. So this is a new ending. Man, I am scared to attempt it. Worst comes to worst it will me a drama fest. I won’t have Eggers to save me from me. But Cherry will make up for it. She will cover for me.

http://www.cherryhood.com.au/ch_leroy.html

Ok, the what am I reading part of this thing… COLD MOUTAIN is

the book. And man oh man… what writing. Makes me want to hack off my fingers for ever thinking I could scribble. And afore that, I tortured myself worse with The Hours. That guy is fuckin surreal! The sentences I can’t even deconstruct! I just stare at them and just blink in pure awe.

I t’aint seen the films yet. But I will.

I read a lot of Junie B books. If you have a kid, you know what those are. I dig em too. Not quite The Hours, but it has its moments. Like when Junie B. starts talking bout her Grandfather’s gas issues… but I am partial to digestive themes as stated earlier.

Music, a lot of Thistle. Coz that is what is being recorded. And a lot of AC/DC coz Astor & Thor loves them. And Smashing Pumpkins coz Billy sent me a mess of vinyl and I am in wax heaven! I wrote the liner notes for the new ASH record. Fuckin swell record too! Listening to that. It was fun too coz we visited them down in the studio when they were doing it. That singer, that Tim guy. He knocked me up too. But I have to pay him off to shut up about it in public. Rockstars can be so uncouth. Lookin forward to the new Garbage record! And the new Earlimart!!! Hopefully I am writing the bios for both them releases. Otherwise I might have to sic my good buddy J. Mayer on em… oh the humor is rollin tonight. It’s coz I gorged on marshmallows. A 5oz package, which for marshmallows is like doing a gram of coke. Not that I ever ever ever ever… ya know. So these marshmallows? They are the ones where you could genuinely perceive the flavor of knuckles and snouts (gelatin). I don’t know why I ate them. I knew they would not fix me. But they were there. And I thought they might fix me. I had hope that they alone would take the pain away. Take John Mayer away. But they made my teeth hurt and my heart is pounding and I am left with the humor of Bill Murray in them SNL lounge skits.

I am very into wearing plaid flannel Joe Boxer uh loungewear from Kmart. I need to change them more them every 4 days though. Was a not so subtle suggestion from folks I live with. The plaid camouflages most stains. Most…

TV? Southpark is the Raison d'être for my life. Sopranos make me moan in the perfection that can be achieved on TV! I keep wanting to see Deadwood but my Tivo wont record it with a picture. It has decided to make it a radio show for me, but dang it, I want the set design and musty cowboy glory that HBO intended. My mind pictures are NOT to be trusted! I of course am addicted to Real World / Road Rules Challenge. I might be writing a Real World book for MTV books. I shure hope so coz I love Ruthie and then I can tell the world. Or at least them folks that actually buy MTV books. And of course there is my intellectual pursuits, SPONGE BOB! Oh what a fuckin swell show that is!!! I dig too Popular Mechanics for Kids. And you can bust them on their Canadian accents! I trained Thor on those magical sounds. Whoever claims it first wins the point. The winner get to control the Tivo. See, this is the inner workings of a house of artistic geniuses.

Ok, y’all, happy Passover. I got the lambs blood over my door. I am so into matzo balls I can not even begin to express it. I like em floaters and sinkers. I don’t care. It is my goal to have them all the time. And and and Dark Chocolate matzo!!!

Ok any dark dark chocolate Easter Eggs, like the gourmand Doves Diner type? Any of them pagan bunnies leave you any of this stuff, uh

just save them for me. Why rot yer teeth? I’ll gobble it for you. Coz I, ya know, care. My teeth will decay for your sins. Something like that.

Sincerely, JT