By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com
The half-and-half of human kindness: on screenwriting in LA cafs
Lisa Rosen goes gonzo java in her contemplation of LA coffeehouses and public screenwriters in Written By: “There are so many coffeehouses in Los Angeles… it’s hardly believable that they could each garner enough customers to stay in business. Until you figure in the equally astonishing numbers of screenwriters in Los Angeles… While many of those laptop-toters may be screenwriters in the way the barristas serving them are actors, a surprising number are making a living at it, are even household names, at least in the households where screenwriters have names. Some of them even have offices of their own. So why seek out the noise and disruption and human population that’s found in a café? … Ed Solomon has been writing in coffee shops since before the café era. “Chris [Matheson] and I wrote Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure almost entirely in coffee shops. Our primary one was Ships, in Westwood. There was Norms in Santa Monica. Dolores’, we got kicked out of there.”… He often leaves his office on Montana Avenue to write at Café Dana around the corner. “But I especially like to go down to Koreatown and sit somewhere where there’s no English spoken or written anywhere. I feel like being in a different place gives me a clearer perspective.” … “A lot of people ask me how I can write in coffee shops, it’s so noisy, there are people working,” says [writer Dan] Wilson. “But in a way, especially when you’re working on something solo, there’s a lot of energy involved in coffee shops. It excites me. It makes me want to work too.” Another screenwriter observes this at a Westside Starbucks: “[A famous writer still] brings his little notebook, no laptop, sits there, and sort of stares somewhat angrily at the wall for about a half hour, then gets up and leaves. I think, So it’s still tough, huh. It’s good; it gives you hope.”
