May 2005

Gregg Araki is George Bush’s worst nightmare. In Araki’s parallel cinematic universes, the mainstream is subverted, what the right wing would label “deviant” is normalized, and outcasts and outsiders dominate, calling the shots from the center. His films’ usual thematic mix includes teenagers coming of age, gay sex, violence, drugs, and space aliens.

Sometimes my friend Laura Donovan will call me out of the blue and just say these two words: “Macaw! Macaw!” Circa 1997, Laura told me about a small “independent” film called Bottle Rocket (An “independent” film?

“A hybrid of a hippie commune and capitalism,” is how revered indie film producer Effie Brown describes the goal of her new production company, Duly Noted. “A safe place where filmmakers will be able to go and create, know they’re not going to get screwed over, and at the end of the day be prosperous.”

You have become the thing that you have mocked. That’s a paraphrase of a famous Shakespeare line, and it’s also a line that often popped into my head after I became a script and story analyst. By choosing to work on the development side of film, I had allied myself with the “thing” most screenwriters mock: the dreaded development executive.