Postcard #27 (A1A)

There’s something about this Sunday
It’s the most peculiar gray
Strolling down the avenue
Known as A1A
Jimmy Buffett
Trying to Reason With Hurricane Season

Last year I started this section about postcards from the road as a way to stay sane when I was traveling and still trying to keep up daily weekday posts. Two days ago I was driving on A1A in Ft. Lauderdale and kicking around ideas for a post and I took the above picture.

Then this afternoon after flying into Dallas—Ft. Worth from New York via Charlotte I stopped in at Half Price Books in Irvine. Turns out they not only had half price books, but also movies and music for sale. After my recent trip to Florida I had been thinking that the next time I see the Jimmy Buffett album A1A for sale I was going to buy it. There it was for $3.99. (Probably close to the original price when it was released in the mid ’7os.)

My newly found record album in Texas on its way to become wall art in my office

I realized when I took the record out of the sleeve that I hadn’t done that simple act in a long, long time. Then I realized that many who read this blog may have never even touch a record album. But I was a teenager in the 70s so I listened to a lot of records and actually miss the physical ritual of placing the record on the record player, and placing the needle on the record, and somehow having music magically appear through the speakers.

Official Coral Reefer Liner Notes
A1A is the beach access road that runs occasionally on and off U.S. 1 it can take you to some of the prettiest beaches in Florida East of Saint Augustine, right through the middle of “Wrinkle City” better known as Miami Beach and ending suddenly 90 miles north of Havana and four blocks from my house.

Peter Whorf came to Key West to talk about my ideas for the cover, after several hard skull sessions at Louie’s Backyard, we chose our name and started up A1A to Miami. So the cover was the trip and the trip was a cover, and there is also a record inside. I hope you like them both.
Jimmy Buffett
August ’74
Key West, Florida

No real movie connection here, just that the album A1A was listened to over and over by a kid who grew up on a dead-end street in Central Florida who would dream about living a great adventure and would some day write a blog called Screenwriting from Iowa…and other Unlikey Places.

If you’ve never had the opportunity to drive down A1A in Florida put it on your to do list. It’s one of America’s great roads. I have driven the entire section of it, but in chunks at a time. Because it goes through many towns—and a zillion stoplights—it would take you forever to try it on a short vacation. But here are some of my favorite sections to hit.

1) Key Largo to Key West. That’s 97.6 miles of magic. Water on both sides, but if you don’t like bridges you many want to pass this stretch. Highlights are John Pennekamp State park in Key Largo and the tradition of watching the sunset on Mallory Square in Key West. And Louie’s Backyard is still there and shouldn’t be missed.

2) St. Augustine to Daytona Beach. St. Augustine is a great little historical town that I never get tired of visiting. I love the architecture and food. As you head south from St. Augustine on  A1A there are actually some undeveloped areas, and the section between Flagler Beach and Ormond Beach reminds me of a mini Pacific Coast Highway in California. And while Daytona Beach is on the touristy side, the Chart House just west of A1A is located next to a marina and is a beautiful place to have a meal.

3) New Smyrna Beach to Sebastian Inlet State Park. Surf, sun, and space. (One overlooked place even by people living in Orlando is Playalinda Beach in Titusville. If you want to know what Florida looked like before condos, visit this beach. About the only modern development there is a road and some bathrooms. Playa Linda is Spanish for “pretty beach.”

4) Palm Beach to South Beach. As you get into the thick of South Florida condos and large homes tend to block a lot of your views of the ocean, and the traffic gets thicker. So there’s not much you can do but embrace it. If you’re into looking at beautiful homes, exotic cars, and interesting people than this part of A1A was built for you. A few places that give you the sense of the good ole days are The Breakers in Palm Beach and the Art Deco section of Miami Beach.

P.S. I learned on this recent trip to Florida that Jimmy Buffet’s daughter, Savannah Buffett, has a website and a clothing apparel company called…A1A.

Related Posts:
Jimmy Buffett in Iowa (Part 1)
Jimmy Buffett in Iowa (Part 2)

Scott W. Smith

Read Full Post »

Surfing in a Snowstorm

“Walking through the snow to get to the ocean is a first for me.”
Surfer Jamie Sterling (on surfing in Alaska)

“Everybody in the United States, and around the world, at some time at any age has seen a picture of people surfing and went, ‘Wow, I’d like to do that,’ but not everyone lives near the beach…that’s why [wakesurfing] is growing so rapidly.”
Jerry Price

When you think of surfing do you think of places like California and Hawaii or places like Alaska and Wyoming? Malibu or Munich? While not quite mainstream yet, surfing is popping up all over the world in unlikely places. And interesting things happening in unlikely places is definitely one of the themes of this blog. Life beyond the Santa Monica Pier.

The most pure surfer I personally know is my longtime friend Steve Trobaugh. I first met him 30 years ago when he gave me a photography job at Yary Photography in Southern California while I was still in film school. (Another Yary photographer at that time was Sean Collins who went on to start a company known to surfers around the world—Surfline. And yet another freelance shooter at Yary then was Peter Brouilllet who was also shooting for Surfer Magazine.)

Steve was surfing long before I met him and now at age 60 is still surfing. He lives in the San Diego area and has basically built his life around surfing. When I spoke with Steve on the phone the other day he’d just finished surfing Trestles at San Onofre State Beach. These days he also teaches surfing and paddleboarding at the Hotel del Coronado. (That hotel is where much of the classic film Some Like it Hot was filmed, and where guests over the years have included Charlie Chaplin, Greta Garbo, Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, Gloria Swanson, James Stewart and stars of today.)

After I graduated from film school I tried to emulate that beach life style. After my traveling adventure of driving around the country for a couple of months I landed in Seal Beach, California in a studio apartment 50 steps from the beach where all I owned was a box spring for a bed, some clothes, a Nikon camera, TV/VCR, a few books, and a surfboard. But that lifestyle didn’t last long, because my obsession with film was stronger than my obsession with surf.

I moved to Burbank and haven’t lived close to the beach since. (Though a summer stroll down Main Street in Cedar Falls, Iowa is actually closely akin to strolling down Main Street in Seal Beach.) And during that time I did get to have one memorable experience bodysurfing “The Wedge” in Newport Beach with 8-10 foot waves. (Without fins I could have landed on the rocks at the jetty, and probably ended up sleeping with the fishes.) It was the closest experience to flying, but it was just one day. But like skiing a perfect day on the Back Bowls at Vail, one day can last a long time in your memory bank.

If you ever wonder why you ride the carousel
You do it for the stories you can tell
John Sebastian/Stories We could Tell

But there’s always that’s unique pull to the beach and ocean, and I think that pull is universal—which explains why surfing is popping up in unusual places. You don’t even need sun or sand, just water.

Surfing in Alaska

Surfing on “The Other North Shore” (Lake Superior)
You don’t even need an ocean to surf some “double overhead waves.” Surfing Beaver Bay in Duluth, Minnesota up to Canada definitely puts the north in the other North Shore experience.

Surfing in Wyoming
You don’t even need an ocean. Just a board, a wet suit and the Snake River in Wyoming.

Glacier Surfing
Don’t try this at home…

Surfing in Iowa
Here’s an example of wakesurfing I found on You Tube that was shot not far from my office.

Surfing the Jungle
No sharks or jellyfish, but keep an eye out for crocodiles and piranha.

I believe the longest non-stop surfboard  ride is still British surfer Steve King who rode on the River Severn in the UK for 7.6 miles. There’s a river in Munich, Germany where this is also popular.

Texas Tanker Surfing
While singer/surfer Jimmy Buffett didn’t get a 7.6 mile ride tanker surfing off Galveston, Texas with tankersurfcharters, he did say his 4 minute 21 second ride was the longest he’d ever ridden.

Surfing in the Desert
Here’s a video of a wave pool in Dubai, Saudi Arabia.

Surfing in the Future

The movie The Endless Summer helped kickstart the modern-day surfing movement, now surf champ Kelly Slater and his company are working on the endless wave.

Ending Song
Breakdown by surfer Jack Johnson

P.S. The song from that very first video posted is Cry, Cry. Crow from the album Dark So Gold (2012) by the Minneapolis-based group the PINES. Here’s a link to the offical music video of that song.

Scott W. Smith

Read Full Post »

Peter Bogdanovich (Blogger)

Now on the day that John Wayne died
I found myself on the Continental Divide
Tell me where do I go from here?
Think I’ll ride into Leadville and have a few beers
Think of “Red River” or “Liberty Valance”
Can’t believe the old man’s gone
Incommunicado (written by Jimmy Buffett, Deborah McColl, M.L. Benoit)

Until I started this Peter Bogdanovich thread last week I knew him as a producer/director/writer/actor/film historian/book author, but I didn’t know he was a blogger. He started Blogdanovich in 2010 and it’s hosted through Indiewire. Here’s a sample from his post Red River & My Darling Clementine.

“It’s still impressive as hell when you realize Red River was Hawks’ first Western (out of only five), that it was the beautiful and breathtakingly fine actor Montgomery Clift’s first picture (though released second), and that it was the movie which made John Wayne a superstar, the single most defining role of his career.  As Tom Dunson, playing a character nearly twenty years his senior, Wayne went from an attractive and reliable, though mild, young leading man to the tough, no-nonsense, usually unyielding, gruffly laconic loner he was to play most memorably for the rest of his career.

John Ford, who had rescued Wayne from B-picture oblivion with the director’s first sound Western, Stagecoach(1939), and then used him on three or four pictures in the ‘40s, was amazed:  ’I didn’t know the big son-of-a-bitch could act,’ he said, and promptly cast Wayne in an even older role for She Wore A Yellow Ribbon.  In fact, Hawks told me, Wayne was always so identified with Ford, and Ford with Westerns, that people often thought Ford had directed Red River and would compliment Ford himself on the picture; and Ford, Hawks continued, always said, ‘Thank you very much.’  Yet when I asked Hawks if he’d been thinking of Ford while making the picture, he replied:  ’It’s hard not to think of Jack Ford when you’re making a Western.  Hard not to think of him when you’re making any picture.’”
Peter Bogdanovich

That gives you a glimpse why Orson Welles once told Bogdanovich when asked who his favorite directors were, “I prefer the old masters; by which I mean: John Ford, John Ford and John Ford.”

If you’re not up on film history, have never seen an Ernst Lubitsch movie, don’t see what the big deal is about John Wayne, or if you—to use Bogdanovich’s words— think film history began with Raging Bull, check out Blogdanovich:

The Birth of a Nation, City Lights, The Art of Buster Keaton, O Rare Ernst Lubitsch,The Grapes of Wrath, The Philadelphia Story,  The 400 Blows will give you a good start.

P.S. What’s great about all of this is it continues what started on this blog in January after I saw Hugo & The Artist. Here at Screenwriting from Iowa, 2012 has turned into the year of film history appreciation. And if film history doesn’t excite you, I understand, I dropped the first film history class I ever took at the University of Miami. It’s people like Bogdanovich who can connect the dots for you.

Related posts:
Writing “The Jazz Singer”
The Founder of Hollywood
The Father of Film (Part 1)
You Tube Film School (Early Film History)
Mr. Silent Films
For the Love of Movies
Stagecoach” Revisted

Scott W. Smith

Read Full Post »

Jimmy Buffett in Iowa (Part 3)

Reading departures signs in some big airport
Reminds me of the places I’ve been…
Jimmy Buffett
Changes in Lattitudes, Changes in Attitudes 

If you ever wonder why you ride the carousel,
You do it for the stories you can tell…
Jimmy Buffett
Stories You Can Tell 

Jimmy Buffett has said when he was a youth in Mobile, Alabama he once saw a live performance of the musical South Pacific and started to dream about far away lands. He learned how to play the guitar and tell stories and that was his ticket to far away places. Somewhere in my youth I picked up Jimmy Buffett’s albums and started to dream about far away lands. I learned how to use a camera and tell stories and that’s been my ticket.

Last night I listened to the Buffett concert in Des Moines over the live feed on Radio Margaritaville. Brought back a few memories from the far side of the world. Whenever I speak at colleges I show various shot from my adventures, I always tell them that when I graduated from high school I had only been to three states in my life—only if you count the Atlanta airport on my way from Florida to visit my grandma in Dayton, Ohio.

And Buffett himself has a line in one of his songs that goes, “Never been west of New Orleans, or east of Pensacola. My only contact with the outside world was an RCA Victorla.” So if you have a drop of wanderlust in your blood, and haven’t traveled as much as you’d like, memorize one of my favorite quotes:

“We tend to over estimate what we can do in one year, and underestimate what we can do in ten.”
Richard Foster

And if you need some musical inspiration for your dream, here’s Buffett’s song Some Day I Will.

Thanks to Jimmy Buffett for giving me a jump start to dream of far away places. And thanks to God for providing opportunities to work in this great big beautiful and mixed up world. BTW—If you have some stories you need to tell, contact me at RiverRun.tv (Have camera, will travel).

Best wishes on your own adventures—and send me a postcard. Here are some of mine from over the years:

Samaria, Russia

Kingston, Jamacia

Berlin, Germany

Cape Town, South Africa

Denali National Park, Alaska

Sea Plane in Brazil

A taste of Florida in Waterloo, Iowa
(Some adventures are close to home.)

 Scott W. Smith

Read Full Post »

Jimmy Buffett in Iowa (Part 2)

“His body was battered, his whole world was shattered
And all he could do was just cry…”
Jimmy Buffett
He Went to Paris

When you think of musician Jimmy Buffett in terms of geography you probably think of the south, but did you know part of his early performing roots were in the Midwest?

Buffett was born in Pascagoula, Mississippi and raised in Mobile, Alabama, graduated from college in Hattiesburg, MS (Southern Miss ’69, journalism degree), and started performing in public in Biloxi, MS and New Orleans, Louisiana, spent time in Nashville, Tennessee and broke through while living in Key West, Florida. So where exactly does the Midwest play into his success as a singer/songwriter/storyteller? I’ll let Buffett explain:

“Chicago is where I truly cut my teeth as a performer, working as the opening at the Quiet Knight. I opened for a variety of people from Neil Sedaka to Bob Marley, and when I got frustrated with the crowds, the old one-armed clean-up man with the big German shepherd always consoled me. It took me a few days of asking to find out that Eddie was more than a janitor. He was a gifted painter and a wonderful pianist. We would stay up after the club closed, and he would sing me songs from the Spanish Civil War where he had fought as a member of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade against the Fascists. Eddie Balchowsky was indeed an inspiration. He was larger than life, and as Mark Twain said, ‘he’d gone out into the territory.’ This song is a tribute to his spirit.”
Jimmy Buffett
Introduction to He Went to Paris
The Parrot Head Handbook from Boats, Beaches, Bars & Ballads

Here’s He Went to Paris in the form of a 1973 music video:

And another reason to love You Tube— below is a clip from a 1989 documentary that actually features an interview with none other than Eddie Balchowsky (including him playing the piano one-handed) just months before he died in an accident in Chicago.

To borrow from that Pat Conroy post a couple of days ago, writers do what Buffett did, they go do work to do a job and wait for the one-armed man to show up. That’s where stories come from. That’s how you “capture the magic” (to a use phrase Buffett spoke a few years ago on a 60 Minutes interview).

By the way, back in the folk music heyday, Chicago had a steady stream of artists playing there— Jim Croce,  John Prine and Steve Goodman to name a few. One of my favorite Buffett recordings was written by the Chicago-born Goodman, Banana Republic.

And just in case you’ve never heard of Steve Goodman, here’s a video of him singing his signature song that has been covered a few times since he wrote it:

Related Post:

Screenwriting the Chicago Way  (In this 2008 post, I said if Screenwriting from Iowa …and Other Unlikely Places had a theme song that City of New Orleans would be a fitting choice.)

The Bump In Factor (Post about meeting Dirck Halstead at NAB a couple of years ago. Dirck was a combat photographer for LIFE magazine and was working for UPI during the fall of Saigon. He now heads up TheDigitalJournalist.)

P.S. The Jimmy Buffett concert tonight (April 17,2012) in Des Moines will be broadcast on Radio Margaritaville at 9PM easten time.

Update: Found this article Painter, Poet Ed Balchowsky at the Chicago Tribune website.

Scott W. Smith

Read Full Post »

Jimmy Buffett in Iowa (Part 1)

As a dreamer of dreams and a travelin’ man
I have chalked up many a mile
Read dozens of books about heroes and crooks
And I learned much from both of their styles
Jimmy Buffett
Son of a Son of a Sailor 

Jimmy Buffett will be playing in Iowa Tuesday night. The Des Moines Register reported that it’s Buffett’s first concert in Des Moines since 1985.

Without Buffett there probably wouldn’t be a blog called Screenwriting from Iowa. No blog, no Emmy. No blog, no shout-out from Tom Cruise’s website, etc, etc.

Buffett’s first hit was Come Monday back in 1974. I was 13-years old— peak time for discovering music. By the time I was sixteen I was well versed in his albums A1A, Living & Dying in 3/4 Time, Havana Daydreamin’, and Changes in Attitudes, Changes in Latitudes. By the time I left the University of Miami for film school in California I was already indoctrinated into Son of a Son of  a Sailor, Volcano, and Coconut Telegraph and had already been to the Conch Republic and taken my first big road trip—to New Orleans for Mardi Gras.

I’m not sure the first time I saw Buffett in concert, but I dug up an old file over the weekend and the first ticket stub goes back to ’78 at the Tangerine Bowl in Orlando. Probably seen him in concert at least 15 times. I took the concert photos above my senior year of high school in 1980 when Buffett opened for the Eagles at Tampa Stadium. (Back when we both had more hair, as you can see what I looked like back in the day with my hat and Buffett t-shirt.)

Lots of memories from outdoor concerts in Colorado (Red Rocks), California (The Greek Theater), Hawaii (Waikiki Shell) , and the most unusual indoor venue—the Jai-Alai Fronton in Casselberry, Florida during his Coconut Telegraph tour in ’81.

While his concerts are known to be quite a party, it was always the lyrics that drew me to Buffett. The stories. The people. The places.

He went to Paris, looking for answers
To questions that bothered him so
He was impressive young and aggresive
Saving the world on his own
Jimmy Buffett
He went to Paris 

For a kid that grew up on a dead-end street in Central Florida, Buffett opened up a world of curiosity, travel and adventure.

A world of Tony Lama boots, Carmen Miranda hats, Hemingway, John D. MacDonald, Key West, Aspen, Livingston, Montana, expatriates, Patsy Cline, Steve Goodman, Irma Thomas, manatees, sailing, steel drums, Paris, the Cafe Du Monde, Austin City Limits and a quest for paradise.

And there’s that one particular harbour
Sheltered from the wind
Where the children play on the shore each day
And all are safe within
Jimmy Buffett (written with Bobby Holcomb)
One Particular Harbour 

If you only know of Buffett’s music by Margaritaville or It’s 5 O’Clock Somewhere, check out this song of his that Bob Dylan once said he liked (Highway 61 Meets A1A);

P.S. Did you know that there is actually a Key West, Iowa.

Related posts:

Sing Along with Mitch in Margaritaville

Euphoria (for 5 Minutes)

Days in the Sun

Writing Quote #31 (Hemingway)

Scott W. Smith

Read Full Post »

Writing Quote #31 (Hemingway)

“The book came to me in sort of a haze in Harry’s Bar in Venice.”
Ernest Hemingway speaking about writing In Harry’s Bar In Venice
(Not to be confused with the clip below from Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris)

When I was in high school I don’t think I really understood that Ernest Hemingway was a literary giant. But I knew Jimmy Buffett was fond of Hemingway and that was the only sign of approval I needed as a 17-year-old.

When I had to pick a book in my 11th grade American Literature class to do a report on, I naturally—in my youthful wisdom— outsmarted my teacher by picking the thinnest book on my teacher’s list—Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. I’ve been pals with Papa ever since.

When I graduated from film school in California I drove around the country for a couple of months and one of the books I took with me was Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. On that trip I went out of my way to drive through Ketchum, Idaho where Hemingway killed himself in 1961. While I lived in Florida I toured his Key West house that’s open to the public and where he wrote To Have and Have Not. (If I recall correctly, they said his custom in Key West was to swim early in the morning and write standing up from 8AM until noon.)

Once on a flight to London for a shoot I read Hemingway’s The Green Hills of Africa. And over the years as I found myself in Kansas City, Oak Park, Petoskey, Venice (including Harry’s Bar) and Paris I’ve always thought of Hemingway and his time spent in those places. Oh, and at the University of Miami I was in the film program with Hilary Hemingway (Ernest’s neice) .

Though I’ve never seen a bull-fight in Spain, caught a marlin off the waters of Cuba, or been on a safari in Africa—someday I will. I hope. Hemingway’s adventurous life has influenced me as much as his writings. Moving to Iowa in ’03 has just been another part of the adventure. So even this blog has a loose assoication to the Hemingway spirit. A couple of days ago I went down to the Cedar Falls Library and picked up a copy of Hemingway’s memoir A Moveable Feast that I’d never read.  It’s mostly his account of being young, poor, and unpublished while living in Paris in the 1920s.

“Sometimes when I was starting a new story and I could not get going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, ‘Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.’ So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go from there. It was easy then because there was always one true sentence that I knew or had seen or had heard someone say. “
Ernest Hemingway
A Moveable Feast

Looking for a little note of inspiration to stick above your computer? Hard to beat, “All you have to do is write one true sentence.”

P.S. One of the things I delight in when reading Hemingway’s letters is his creative ways of spelling. Hemingway could write, but he couldn’t spell. Nothing a little spell checker wouldn’t fix these days, but we all have our achilles heels don’t we? Hemingway was also no Mark Twain when it came to public speaking. “One of Ernest Hemingway’s deadliest enemies was The Micophone,” said A.E. Hotchner. Just listen to his talk on In Harry’s Bar in Venice or his Nobel Prize Acceptance speech to know what Hotchner meant.

For those that cling to the idea that great writers ideally make the best teachers, I think Hemingway is a pretty good example to the contrary. His writing can take you’re breath away, his speaking—not so much. And I’m sure rather than nurturing an up and coming writer Hemingway would rather have been hunting or drinking. But hanging out with him and his creative gang on the Left Bank in Paris in the 20s would have been quite a learning experience.

Scott W. Smith

Read Full Post »

Highway 61 Meets A1A

It’s full circle here today at Screenwriting from Iowa. Tonight I’m going to hear Bob Dylan live for the first time. Talk abut a slow training coming. But before I remember being drawn to Dylan’s music there was another up and coming fellow named Jimmy Buffett in the mid-70s that captured the attention of this 15-year-old growing up in Florida.

Only last night did I realize there really was a connection between Dylan and Buffett. The following exchange is from an interview of Dylan by Bill Flanagan, Bob Dylan Exclusive Interview: Reveals His Favorites Songwriters.

BF: Who are some of your favorite songwriters?

BD: Buffett I guess. Lightfoot. Warren Zevon. Randy. John Prine. Guy Clark. Those kinds of writers.

BF: What songs do you like of Buffett’s?

BD: “Death of an Unpopular Poet.” There’s another one called “He Went to Paris.”

Buffett who is a five years younger than Dylan would have been in college (Auburn and Southern Mississippi) and just developing his own music styles when Dylan was having a major influence in the 60s. At that time, while  Buffett was playing little dives in Hattiesburg, Mobile, Biloxi and New Orleans he was known to play Dylan’s songs like, “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “Don’t Think Twice it’s All Right (Number 9).” I’m sure he played a few off Dylan’s album Highway 61 Revisited.

Dylan recorded Blonde on Blonde in Nashville in 1966 when nobody outside of Nashville recorded there. Many make the connection between Dylan recording there with having a profound impact on the writing of Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson and Waylon Jennings. A few years later Buffett would land in Nashville for a spell trying to launch his musical career.

Dylan and Buffett were not only both under the influence of the bluesmen from the Mississippi Delta but by country legend Hank Williams from Mobile, Alabama. (Which happens to be Buffett’s hometown.)  In D.A. Pennebaker’s documentary Bob Dylan Don’t Look Back, Dylan breaks into a Hank Williams song and on Buffett’s Licence to Chill album he sings Williams’ classic Hey, Good Lookin.’

So while Dylan’s life started at the northern end of Highway 61 in northern Minnesota, Buffett was cutting his teeth at the southern end of the long highway 61 in New Orleans. Another road worth mentioning is State Road A1A in Florida which runs along the Atlantic Coast from Callahan, FL all the way down to Key West.  Jimmy Buffett territory. A-1-A also happens to be a 1974 Jimmy Buffett album that is considered one of his most highly regarded.

There is a song on the A-1-A album called A Pirate Looks at Forty that Dylan and Joan Baez covered at the Pasadena Peace Sunday back in 1982. So while technically Highway Highway 61 & A1A never cross in real life they do in the world of storytellers.

I know Dylan has 500 of his own songs but if he performs a Buffett song tonight I will know that at least for a few moments that all is right in the world.

Scott W. Smith

Read Full Post »

Creating Under the Influence

“Oh, I’ve stolen from the best… I mean I’m a shameless thief.”
Woody Allen

“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination.”
Jim Jarmusch

No, I’m not going to write about writers and artists who create while drinking. But if you read a few bios of writers and artists you’ll realize that more than a few (for whatever reason) have a fondness/weakness for drugs and alcohol. But that’s another post for another day.

I want to address creative influence.

Yesterday, I did a photo shoot and was told by one friend that one of my shots looked like one of the Star Trek movie character posters and other friend said George Hurrell would be proud. Not knowing what either meant I did a quick Google search and discovered that they were both correct. See if you agree.

The photo I took of Josh McCabe is one the left and the other is of actor Eric Bana as the Star Trek character Nero. I don’t recall ever seeing the Nero photo before, but the  similarities are obvious. Black & white photo of white males, dead center  composition with eyes looking up, lit with edge lights to the left and right. (If I shaved Josh’s head and Photoshopped some tattoos from his arm to his face it would be called a dead rip off.)

Now photographer George Hurrell‘s influence I will admit to. When I moved to LA as a 21-year-old there was a place on Hollywood Blvd. that was lined with photos of old movie stars— Errol Flynn, Joan Crawford, Jean Harlow and the like.  Lots of black and white shots from the 30s and 40s and I’ve always been drawn to that style. Hurrell was one of the best known photographers of movie stars in that era. Here’s one of his shots of Humphrey Bogart next to the photo I took. Again, there are similarities and I understand why the connection was made.

There’s nothing new under the sun. Isn’t Lady Gaga just an updated version of Madonna and Cher? And weren’t they updated versions of Carmen Miranda?

Well now she had a big hat, my it was high
Had bananas and mangos all piled to the sky
How she could balance it, I wouldn’t dare
But they don’t dance like Carmen nowhere
—Jimmy Buffett

From a screenwriting perspective, don’t be surprised (or offended) if someone reads your script and says, “It reminds me of….” Graphic designer Milton Glaser (most famous for his I Love New York design) says that all creativity is is just connecting influences. You have your influences when you create something and the viewer/reader of your work has their influences. Lines are being crossed and connected all the time.

George Lucas and Steven Spielberg have both talked about boyhood TV shows and movies that influenced the concepts behind Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark. Sometimes the connection is obvious and sometimes obscure. One of the screenplays kicking around my house is Body Heat written by Lawrence Kasden. The 1981 film has often been called a re-make of the 1944 Billy Wilder film Double Indemnity. You can find much online (here’s one) about the connection between the two, and I don’t know if Kasden ever saw Double Indemnity, but the script I have says “An original screenplay by Lawrence Kasden.”

Don’t analyze this stuff too much because it will stifle your creativity. Just keep creating, keep writing.

Scott W. Smith

Read Full Post »

Sing Along with Mitch in Margaritaville

“You’ve got to work out a gimmick that’ll get people’s attention and hold it.”
Mitch Miller
Time  magazine.

“You know what’s weird? As a kid I loved Mitch Miller…Loved those ‘Song Along with Mitch’ albums, maybe just because I loved to sing.”
Jimmy Buffett

When I was around 19-years-old I heard a radio interview with Jimmy Buffett where he said that one of his early influences was Mitch Miller and his popular TV show Sing Along with Mitch. That was before my time and also before the Internet so I didn’t pursue just how Miller had influenced him. I do recall Buffett say that Miller and gang just looked like they were having fun. All this came to mind yesterday when I learned that Miller died over the weekend.

I had no idea that Miller was still alive. He was 99. And so now in the age of the Internet I was able to plug into You Tube Sing Along with Mitch and see the man in all his glory. Having been to well over a dozen Buffett concerts I immediately see the connection between Buffett and Miller.

What I didn’t know about Miller is that he sold 17 million albums and is both credited and blamed with helping form pop music. Miller took up the oboe in junior high, and at 15 played for the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra before graduating from the Eastman School of Music. Over the year he either performed with or produced records with Charlie Parker, Johnny Mathis, Aretha Franklin, Doris Day and Frank Sinatra. In 1955, he had a No. 1 hit with “The Yellow Rose of Texas.” And in 2000, he won a lifetime achievement Grammy Award.

His TV show was cancelled in 1964 and he seemed to be caught between eras. The year 1964 just happened to be the year that the Beatles came to America. Musical tastes where changing. Miller was never a fan of Elvis and didn’t appreciate the voice of Bob Dylan. He once said, “Rock ‘n’ roll is musical baby food: it is the worship of mediocrity, brought about by a passion for conformity.”

It’s not find to critics of Miller’s musical style. But there was a reason he was a household name in the 60′s and it has to do with this anonymous quote I found on the internet; ”Mitch’s recordings and TV shows always made me happy, even if I had a bad day.”

That pretty much sums up Buffett’s fan base. So though I never bought a Mitch Miller album or every watched his TV show his influence filtered down to me via a troubadour from Mobile, Alabama who was tunning in to Sing Along with Mitch as a youth long before millions would be singing along with him on Margaritaville. And who knows how many current singer/songwriters/storytellers Buffett has influenced?

And perhaps in 20 years from now a youngster in Montana will come across an old Jimmy Buffett live CD recorded at Fenway Park, and think to themself, “This Buffett guy seemed to have fun.” And a new generation of singer/storyteller/entertainer will rise up with no idea of Mitch Miller or how a TV show called Sing Along with Mitch helped change the direction of his or her life.

Keep in mind that to whatever success you have a storyteller is temporal. For whatever mysterious reason the torch has been passed to you and eventually you will pass it on. So keep your ego in check, and help as many people as you can along your journey.

As a sidenote, if there are any older screenwriters out there who feel forgotten and unappreciated shoot me an email (info@scottwsmith.com) so I can interview you for Screenwriting from Iowa. You can pass on some of your knowledge and antidotes and it could lead to a documentary I’ve been thinking about.

Scott W. Smith

Read Full Post »