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Archive for Friendship

Life and Death and the Whole Damn Thing…

“The dead dwell in the conditional tense of the unreal.”

You’ve probably never heard of David Siegel or Scott McGehee, but you will. They are business partners, screenwriters, directors, and filmmakers who’ve made eight feature films over the last 30 years—titles that include The Montana Story, What Maisie Knew, The Deep End, and Bee Season. All well worth seeing.

They make the kind of films I love—small, , thought provoking, literary, and independent. But I might never have heard of them either but for the fact that my friend, Dave Northfield, is one of Siegel’s best friends and the two of them stayed at my apartment in Berlin after graduating from UC Berkeley in the early 80s.  read more

The Bear vs. Bouchon…

Creating the perfect meal is nearly impossible. Like opera, the most complex of the arts, something almost always goes wrong. Carmy gets locked in the walk-in freezer on opening night. Richie dumps a plate of pasta on a celebrity guest. Donna Barzatto creeps out Natalie while she’s in labor with Danny’s baby. Everyone loves The Bear, the true-to-life fictional TV drama about creating a fine dining restaurant with all its loose ends and tangled relationships.

I know how hard it is to deliver the perfect meal. I’m no Carmy, but in the 80s and 90s I owned, managed and made all the pasta for Piccolo, our small Italian bistro in Sun Valley. I loved it. And, it’s enormously satisfying to feed people – especially people who love food – but with all the moving pieces it’s hard to pull off a superior dining experience with grace and style. read more

Do the Right Thing…

I haven’t been here – on the page – since early January. It’s the longest break I’ve taken in 15 years. There are several reasons. M and I sold our condo and moved from the edge of Lake Washington to an apartment overlooking Puget Sound. Moving is not for the lazy or the weak. 

The University of Washington has a life events scale that rates the impact and stress of certain changes—the death of a parent, sibling or spouse, a serious medical problem, etc. Moving, it turns out, is near the top of the scale. Now I know why.  read more

Capricious and Arbitrary…

Fifty-years ago I wrote a short story about a deceased bachelor lawyer in San Francisco who wrote fiction secretly for 40-years. When his townhouse was cleared following his death, the executor discovered the manuscripts neatly stacked in a closet and contacted a publisher to determine if they had literary worth. He said yes, and when published they were celebrated as a national literary event.

I’ve always been interested in the distinction between the creative process and its end product. My character was reclusive but felt compelled to write. He noted in his journal that with the volume of literature, mostly unread, filling library shelves was overwhelming and he had no interest in adding to it. read more

Commas and Semicolons…

I’ve never had a literary agent or an editor, but I developed a deep appreciation for the skill set after hearing Mary Norris, copy editor at the New Yorker, read from her book Between You and Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen several years ago. But there’s a film playing in theaters now that has expanded that appreciation exponentially.

Turn Every Page is a documentary that chronicles the fifty-year relationship of Robert Gottlieb, the editor-in-chief at Alfred A. Knopf Inc. and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Caro. The film is the result of a seven year-long project by Lizzie Gottlieb, Robert’s daughter and an accomplished film maker in her own right. read more