Marc Spitz

there are not nearly enough songs about fucking in elevators, esp. when you think about how many songs there are about fucking. there’s even an oasis song about fucking in the bushes. i used to play it before i Dj’d (that’s how like – ridiculous i used to be, knowing really well that oasis themselves played it before taking an arena stage… sometimes i’d play “trouble” by elvis from king creole). anyway, i was walking home from the L train the other night and i’d had a few drinks. have been working on a revision of a script that’s been optioned and for some reason i decided (the few drinks, maybe the heat too) that the climax of the script (a romantic comedy) needed an outburst, a moment of honestly and clarity and sexual intimacy in an elevator. so i wrote it. and i thought it was great. and read it yesterday and realized it sucked and was unnecessary and had i left it in would have ruined the movie. elevator scenes are hard: fatal attraction = good elevator scene, silence of the lambs = good elevator scene, you’ve got mail= bad script device elevator scene. mine was of the you’ve got mail variety. i took it out and the script healed like it had just sucked vampire blood.

i’m 40. i’ve written professionally for about a dozen years and i still don’t know how to write a script. i read books about how to write scripts. i can write a play that’s pretty perfect in structure and character and tone/timing (although there are nyc theater critics who might disagree) but for some reason i cannot crack act 2 of a proposed movie. i feel it but can’t write it or make anyone else (agents, managers, professional script readers) see it. the memoir i wrote (also pretty well structured, i must say) has a long segment about getting into a fight in the elevator of the chelsea hotel. it also covers my time in LA in the early 90s, trying to be a screenwriter. i had a partner, a good agent, a place to live in a hip part of hollywood, i had youth, but i know now why i never sold anything. it wasn’t the heroin. it was act 2. one day when i’ve started getting my scripts produced (it could happen, i mean i never t hought i’d get my books published and i’m on book six) i am going to write a good elevator scene. and an act 2 that makes you wish you still had popcorn in your tub. i will write it in a hotel with an actual elevator. maybe the chateau marmont. maybe i will write it in the elevator while reading variety on the wall.