Latest
Update: February
14, 2001
VALENTINE'S
DAY, 10:28 AM ROOM 222 OF THE ECONO LODGE, CRESCENT CITY
It's
a nice winter day outside. The sun is out, the sky is blue, the
ocean is blue. Why am in my hotel room?
Just
had an IM session with Mr. Sacklunch and agreed to write
a story about fishing with Greg Noll.
I
wrote one about fishing the Klamath with him this summer that
ran in H20 Magazine, but I don't know if anyone saw it.
So,
I'll write it again.
That's
all going to start later today, I think. A little while ago I
got Laura Noll on the phone. She told me Greg is working
on his boat in Brookings, Oregon and then is going to head for
the Klamath later. I'm going to try to catch up with him this
afternoon.
Laura
said the Smith is just about perfect right now, which means I
made the right choice yesterday when I drove north instead of
south from the Sea Ranch. I spent two nights and a day with Alex
and Brooke Johnson and their family. They rented a nice house
on the Sea Ranch with a view and a Jacuzzi and so I mooched off
them for a day. I was hoping to go fishing on the Gualala, but
the weather was horrendous and the rivers were all muddy.
I
drove up Sunday night and it was raining and hailing like crazy,
so bad I couldn't see out of my windshield at one point. It snowed
hard in the local hills, and on the news we saw that Highway 17
to Santa Cruz was closed because of snow. Winter finally showed
up, with a vengeance.
Spent
Monday lollygagging around the house on the Sea Ranch. We drove
up to Point Arena and checked the surf and the rivers, then had
lunch in Gualala with a friend of Alex's. The Gualala River was
semi-full and muddy, so fishing was out of the question.
I've
been coming to the Gualala since I was a kid, first with mon and
dad on road and whale-watching trips up the coast, then later
to ride motorcycles with mom and Michael on the logging roads.
I really like the Gualala area. Never caught a fish in the river,
but what else is new?
Gualala
used to be just the Gualala Hotel and a food store, but it's being
developed and populated and has lost some of the old magic. Still
a nice place, just more people around.
Gualala
was an expedition when I was a kid and a semi-exotic place. Now
that I'm old and jaded, some of that magic is gone, but I appreciate
it in other ways. Just on the other side of Point Arena, the Garcia
River Valley is about the nicest patch of coastal pastureland
I've ever seen. And after driving to Alaska I've seen a lot. I
could live in the Garcia River Valley, back in the hills, a nice
house with a view, some horses, access to the river, etc.
No
problem.
Alex
and Brooke packed up the kids and left the Sea Ranch on Tuesday
morning, driving south.
I
had options. Eric Nelson and Curt Myers want me to help them put
together their next Mavericks video. I agreed to help out of lack
of anything better to do.
A Cresent City Beach.
I
was going to head that way, but drove north instead, waiting for
inspiration. Yesterday was a perfect Northern California winter
day. The storm was gone, the air was clear, the sky was blue and
the sun was blazing. The only unclear thing were all the rivers,
which were full and muddy, but starting to clear.
Just
before Point Arena there is a big-wave spot called Saunder's Reef.
Evan and Doc and others have surfed the place, despite the fact
that it emanates with the theme from Jaws.
On
one attempt, Evan and Doc were getting ready to paddle out when
some local blokes came by and told them a little story. The day
before, one of their dads was fishing around the reef in a little
aluminum boat when he was buzzed by a Great White Shark that was
bigger than the boat. Scared the shit out of the guy's dad, and
they recommended Evan and Doc not go out.
Pelican Bay. Abandon hope all ye who enter here.
They
didn't.
I
drove north past all the old familiar places: Point Arena, the
Garcia River, Alder Creek, the Navarro River, all the places I
went with my parents when I was a kid. I stopped in a place called
Elk and got coffee and a smoked salmon bagel and it felt like
Alaska again: me scruffy and eating bad food and drinking too
much coffee. Went through Mendocino and then on through Westport,
some of it looking like Big Sur.
I
like driving places when there's no one around. Makes me feel
special.
Past
Westport the road goes inland toward 101. I remember driving this
at night on the first day of my Alaska trip, listening to a good
radio station from somewhere. Yesterday I got that same radio
station. I think it's in Gualala. They play great music, kind
of like KPIG, but better.
I
also fired up my sketchy CD player. The Jimi Hendrix BBC sessions
CD was in the slot, so I listened to that. Either the disc is
faulty or the player or both, because every once in a while the
thing would go hay wire and start skip skip skipping and jump
jump jumping and every once in a while there would be a pretty
rocking variation on a Hendrix guitar solo. Had to be there, I
guess.
As
I started going inland from the coast to 101 I stopped for a minute
to decide what I was going to do. Crescent City was three hours
north, and Greg didn't really know I was coming. I was thinking
about turning back and staying at the KOA campground near Point
Arena and just fishing the local rivers.
But
then I got to thinking about a little prank I'm planning for the
near future and it got me laughing, thinking that Greg would appreciate
it and might be an accomplice. I also have some big-wave video
of Mavericks and the Cortes Bank he might want to see, although
he doesn't seem to be all that interested in surfing these days.
So I pushed on.
There
was a fair bit of snow at the top of this inland route and as
I got to the other side, I stopped on a bridge over a river and
got a little flash of the Cassiar Highway. This river was either
the Eel or a tributary of the Eel, and it was already clear along
the edges.
There
was a Cassiar-like traffic delay along Highway 101, too. I must
have stopped for at least half and hour as a road-crew worked
on a landslide.
It's
always a letdown going from the Coastal Soul Route to Highway
101. It bugged me as a kid and it bugs me now. Highway 101 is
head-on traffic and no ocean and the Eel River, which has always
struck me as on of the most fishless rivers in California. It
looks good, but I just don't think there are any fish in it.
At
some point I stopped at a cafÚ and bought some sugar snacks. Like
everywhere else in the Pacific Northwest, they were selling singing
fish. I'd already bought a singing bass and a singing lobster,
but I couldn't resist the singing Great White Shark, which plays
the Jaws theme and sings Mack the Knife. Don't know who I'll give
it to. Maybe I'll keep it.
Dun-duh. . . dun-duh. . . dun duh.
I
drove and drove and drove, detouring through Ferndale a little
bit and talking to some cows. I was going to find the mouth of
the Eel but it was too far off so I pushed on.
At
some point I called Greg and Laura and left a message I was coming.
In Eureka I found a Kinkos and plugged in the laptop to check
e-mail. The only surprise was an analysis of Water on the Brain
from some dingaling broad at Final Draft. I had entered the 213-page
script in their Big Break Screenwriter's competition, which included
professional ñcoverageî of every entered script.
I
didn't win, and this was my coverage.
EXPRESS.COM PRESENTS THE FINAL DRAFT INTERNATIONAL SCREENWRITING
COMPETITION ***********
TITLE:
"WATER ON THE BRAIN"
WRITTEN
BY: BEN MARCUS
ENTRY
# 1924 ANALYST: JODY R.
PREMISE:
THIS IS A 213 PAGE SCRIPT which details, among others, the adventures
of two young surfers, Gary "Bong" Ross, an Australian, and the
Hawaiian Clark Bigley, as they "make the scene" along the California
coast. We experience their hallucinations, their sexual encounters,
their music connections and their California experience, i.e.
San Francisco, Hearst Castle, etc. "Water on the Brain" culminates
with the character Chris Wilson wiping out on a big wave and hallucinating
that he's swimming with mermaids. As he's on the absolute brink
of drowning, he pulls out, surfaces, and is met on the shore by
the parachuting girl of his heart, Sky.
COMMENTS:
A caution to the writer: today's film market has little, if any,
room for a script that would end up as a film nearly four hours
long. The script is presented in a professional script format,
heavily detailed with music suggestions and stage directions --
but those are usually decided by the director; however, clearly
a dedicated work by the author.
E=Excellent
/ VG=VeryGood / G=Good / F=Fair / P=Poor
Premise:
F
Structure:
F
Dialogue:
G
Characters:
G
B/O
Potential: F
Dumb
broad. She didn't get it at all, although she is right, it does
need a rewrite.
Pushed
on from Eureka into a nice, winter, northern California evening.
I just like the northlands in winter. I like the cold, I like
the deep, blue sky, I like the ocean and the sunsets. I like the
way it looked and the way it feels. I like it all. No wonder I
went so nutty in Southern California. I'm a north guy.
I
pulled into Crescent City around 7:00 and got a plan. Instead
of rolling up to Greg's and bugging him, I got a $30 hotel room,
logged on for awhile and then went to the local bijou, intending
to see part of Traffic and all of Hannibal. I ended up seeing
all of Traffic and the last few minutes of Hannibal.
Drugs
and cannibalism. Great.
Then
I came back to the hotel room and started outlining a murder mystery
I want to try to write.
Working
title now is: Sometimes It's Hard to Be a Woman.
It's
about three women who meet on the Internet playing cribbage. They
chat and chat and chat and decide they all hate their husbands
and their lives. One of them, inspired by Hitchcock's ñTwo Strangers
on a Trainî suggests they all kill each other's husbands. There's
no way to connect the three, they don't even know each other.
Perfect crime and they all will be set free and set for life.
That's
the basic idea. I'm just outlining it.
So
now it's 11:09 and I'm watching a Chuck Norris movie and typing
this.
I'm
going to work on that murder mystery outline for a while, then
drive around a nice winter day, maybe jump in the briny or drive
out to the Klamath to find Greg.
Hopefully
I'll be fishing with Da Bull tonight or tomorrow, and maybe I'll
catch a fish.
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