Loss and Regret Most Likely

I saw Million Dollar Baby last night. Spectacular, truly, in most every way. I was similarly moved a couple years ago when I read FX Toole’s Rope Burns (his words have been deftly adapted). The performances are subtle, nuanced—perfected. The score is slight and haunting. Simplicity was never so complex.

On the subject, I am convinced I will someday pen the ultimate script. It will be about loss and regret most likely. There will be booze and women and books and music and heartache. My script will be the bastard stepchild of Charles Bukowski, Sam Shepherd, Raymond Carver, Ernest Hemingway, Larry Brown, Harry Crews, William Matthews, Barry Hannah, Lucinda Williams, Wislawa Szymborska, and all the other brilliant people who are sleeping or dead. (Chekhov, Spalding Gray, Eudora Welty). It will make you feel. It will make me feel.

There will be awards. At the biggest afterparty, the Hoodoo Gurus will frenzy my crowd of friends with an updated version of What’s My Scene? And Sam Cooke will smooth on down from his mansion in the clouds and serenade us with Bring it on Home. And the North Mississippi Allstars will back up Mickey Newbury who will Just Drop in. And the night will end and recommence with pipers easing into and out of Amazing Grace.

And when the party is done and the royalty checks begin, I will have a home in Santa Barbara; and with a cup of black coffee I’ll watch the sunrise, a Chocolate Lab running his owner down the beach, just West of my vision; and I’ll have a home in Islamorada—my jewel—where I’ll spend my days fishing and my nights embracing a sunset that makes me weep with its perfection. I will bathe in its glow.

But until then, I’ll go see Million Dollar Baby; I’ll rent Raging Bull; I’ll think about The Apartment and Philadelphia Story and Harvey and Breakfast at Tiffany’s. And I will love them each for being unique and special, pilfering just as much as I need to sire that ultimate script. The one that will secure my happiness.

Cut to black.