The Cemetery of Bad Ideas

I think it was Robert De Niro who said that talent is in the choices. I’ve made some bad choices.

Anytime you attempt to create things, you’re going to make mistakes. These are some examples of mine.

They say you learn from your failures, that the best thing you can do is fail. They never say how embarrassing it is.

MY CEMETERY OF BAD IDEAS:

SONG “SARA SHE DON’T”

This was one of many terrible songs I wrote as a teenager. And “songs” is a generous term. They were mostly lyrics, actual music an afterthought, maybe a few chords written in the margins. I grew up in New Jersey where Bruce Springsteen ruled, and like many adolescents back then I wanted to be him. This particular song was about Sara (a waitress?) and there were references to beating hearts, racing in the streets, and, of course, spirits in the night. What Sara didn’t do I can’t recall—dance? sex? dream? fall in love with lonely 14-year-olds writing drivel? Luckily, for Sara, we never met.

SCREENPLAY “KISS YOUR PILLOW”

This is the actual title of a screenplay I wrote. Which, at some point in my life, I thought was a good title. For a good screenplay, that people would line up for at the Cineplex and want to see. That critics, preferably New York Times critics, would praise, most of all, me in particular, the writer and director. A Quintin Tarantino-like Auteur. I have no idea what the title is in reference to. I re-read it a few years ago, pulling it from the closet where it was thankfully moldering, and I can honestly say I have no idea what it is about. The only thing more terrible about its existence is the thought I once believed this was a good concept, as if I had been the member of a cult and, after an intervention by my family and de-brainwashing at a high-end rehabilitation center somewhere in Montana that also doubled as a dude ranch, I can now see the errors of my ways, the shaved head and blind devotion to a bearded and beaded shoe salesman from Kalamazoo not seeming like such a great idea.

SHORT FILM “APPLES, CATS, AND CIGARETTES”

There’s the well-known adage, “steal like an artist” (see the Austin Kleon book). And it’s fine to steal. But don’t forget the artist part. This short black and white 16 mm film from my black and white film days was all about style—true to its title, it featured apples, cats, and a mysterious woman in a bathrobe and dark glasses smoking a cigarette. That was pretty much all to it. Pure style, trying to copy avant garde/nouvelle vague cinema, but with absolutely no substance or meaning. [Though I did make one good short from that period, “Raisin Bread from Hell”, where, using stop motion animation, I was attacked by a loaf of raisin bread. Maybe not good, but better.]