Chapters

Photo by Sonja Punz on Unsplash

A year or so after I moved to Los Angeles, I stumbled into Sacred Fools Theater Company in Hollywood. It was a company filled with energetic actors & artists looking to make cool stuff. I ended up writing on and off there for nearly 20 years - mostly insane late night serials and 24-hour theater. It was a membership company, and my wife and I were invited to join a while back. We made a lot of friends and a lot of art.

During the pandemic shut-down, Sacred Fools closed the membership portion of their company. The how and why are better left to spirited debates at our favorite theatre bar. The company still exists, making cool theater, but nearly a hundred of us are no longer members. We essentially lost our creative home. This was an upsetting development for more than a few of my friends.

I feel like I’ve handled it okay, mainly because I’m at the age where I can look at that portion of my life and see it for what it was:

An amazing chapter that came to an end.

Life is full of chapters. Most people measure them in normal ways. High school. College. Career. Marriage. Kids. Then their kids’ chapters.

I have landmark life stuff too, but when I look at my chapters, I see creative endeavors, partnerships, eras.

In college and the years after, I made short films with my buddies Ken & Greg. We won some awards, had a ton of fun. Tried to get a couple features made. Eventually, life took us in separate directions, mine being a move to LA. We’re still buds and reunited a few years ago at Greg’s newest chapter as the proprietor of Sanford, Florida’s first (and finest) microbrewery Wop’s Hops. My chapter making indie movies with Ken & Greg overlapped with another chapter:

Ten years with my sketch & improv comedy troupe THEM. We did weekly shows, toured the Canadian Fringe circuit, and booked some crazy corporate gigs. After we all moved to LA, we did monthly shows for a year or so before taking a break. We never performed as a troupe again. My THEM chapter is over, but it was hugely influential for me, and those guys are still my brothers. One of them, Rob, recently asked me to do a 2-man improv storyteller show with him for a fantastic charity event that his wife Jenni helps run. Now we put on goofy costumes a couple times a year and make some deserving kids smile. We look like this:

My first chapter in Hollywood was marked by a nearly 10-year collaboration with my first manager CP. We made two movies together, and I learned so much about storytelling and surviving in this crazy business. But that chapter ended and we no longer work together.

My chapter as a TV writer was short. One season on White Collar. A few pilots, lots of meetings. But that chapter ended fast.

Then there was the chapter that inspired this substack, the chapter where I didn’t work for six years. Well, I worked, but no one paid me for that work. It was awful. One of the things that got me out of that funk was my current chapter:

Making stuff with my friend Ben Rock. In addition to all the crazy theater we did together at Sacred Fools, we also made an award-winning web-series and co-wrote (and Ben directed) two audio dramas (one for SHUDDER, another for Audible). We’re in negotiations now to co-write a third audio drama so hopefully this chapter still has a ways to go.

In addition to this impending audio gig, I also have two feature scripts in active development and a novel out there, too.

Maybe this is the chapter where I balance writing movies, audio, and fiction.

And if so, then maybe this chapter’s just getting started. But that’s the tricky thing about chapters. It’s hard to know when you’re in one and it’s impossible to know how long they’ll last. And you’ll never know what they really mean to you until you have some distance from them.

I find comfort in looking at my life in chapters. It helps lessen the sadness and nostalgia of great times gone by. I will never forget the summer I spent driving across Canada in a barely-working van doing comedy with my best friends. I also know that chapter is way over. I will not be sleeping on a stranger’s floor anytime soon after knocking out a sketch show for beer money. But I’m glad I can look back on that chapter with fondness. All of the chapters bring comfort, even the tough ones. I know I can dig my career out of a pit because I did it once before. I hope to never have to do that again, but we’ll see.

Which brings me to the world as a whole right now. We’re living through a political nightmare. A lot of people I care about are really scared. The dangers of climate change hit harder every year. Then there’s AI, tech oligarchs, and whatever crypto-bullshit that’s getting sold this week. It’s all too much.

It’s a chapter we’re all living through together.

I hope there’s a time in the not-too distant future when we look back and see this as a moment when fear and greed seemed to be winning. A moment that turned, like a page, to a new chapter where we reconnect as a world with our compassion and common-sense. It’s easy for me to say this, I know. Some people don’t have that much time. They may not get to see a better chapter. And that’s one of the toughest things about life:

We don’t know how much time we have.

So it’s important to live now. To connect now. Make art now.

My wife’s currently in a show at the Hollywood Fringe, a month-long theater festival with hundreds of shows, much of it set around the Broadwater Theater (our old Sacred Fools home). I’ve been down there a decent amount, seeing shows, reconnecting with old friends. It’s giving me that theater itch. It’s been years since I wrote anything new for the stage. Maybe it’s time to reconnect with that part of myself. My chapter as a member of Sacred Fools may be over.

But my chapter as a writer who makes cool shit with my friends is ongoing.

And I have to admit, it’s nice seeing a Fringe show and then coming home to sleep in a big bed instead of on someone’s floor.

Some chapters (or at least parts of them) are best left in the past.