Lambchop in La La Land

Investigating what it might take to succeed as a scenariste, I came across the following analysis of the role of the artist and the producer in David Mamet's Bambi vs. Godzilla: On the Nature, Purpose and Practice of the Movie business

"The artist is, in effect, a sort of gangster. He hitches up his trousers and goes into the guarded bank of the unconscious in an attempt to steal the gold of inspiration. The producer is like the getaway driver who sells the getaway car and waits outside the bank grinning about the deal he's made."

Artists, craftspeople and directors

CV: Experience as a ne'er do well

Medical history: Preferably Asperger's Syndrome. Surprisingly, Mamet fails to mention the inherent potential of manic depressive, obsessive compulsive and insomniac diagnoses

Motivation: Pleasure in creating something, doing the job well. Like a terrier gnawing on a bone, it's fundamentally what you do, an expression of who you are; you wouldn't be happy doing anything else.

Mythological archetype: The Trickster -- "characters who express or intuit the propensity to upset and so reorder the world on a different level of abstraction"

Paid your dues: "i.e.been seduced and abandoned sufficiently to tire of it"

Producers

Education: "The American educational system prepares those with second-rate intellects to thrive in a bureaucratic environment...the bureaucratic rigors of the studio system probe the neophyte's threshold for boredom, repetition, sychophancy and nonsense."

Origin/Family Values: "So let us assume someone's brother-in-law showed up in the palmy presound days of Hollywood, and his brother-in-law, a power on the lot or on the set, hoping to avoid a "touch," said "People, this is Bob and he is a producer." Bob was then, entitled, under the family flag, to all the sex, drugs and fun he could wrangle and to whatever he could hypothecate. Time went by and Bob stayed on. He, or another of his ilk, caught, stole, or otherwise achieved power in some niche of the industry and, having learned a good trick, one day appointed footmen of his own."

Modus Operandi: "This power exists, and can exist, only in potential--for should the committee ever come to conclusions, its task and so its operation as a bureaucratic fiefdom, would cease."

Growing Savvy: learning that success comes not from pleasing the audience, but from placating one's superiors, until such time as it is expedient to betray them.

Pinnacle of Success: getting rid of the artists and craftspeople; achieving the "art of producing nothing at all."

Nostalgia..."It is not that the fox has taken over the henhouse but, if I may, that the doorman has taken over the bordello. In the golden days of the madam (Harry Cohn et al.), the lives of the girls may not have been better, but the lives of the customers were. Why? Because the owner-proprietor knew that her job was simply and finally to please the customer. "

Behold! The Crepe Maker Cometh.

As part of the health section of my third grade daughter's IB unit of inquiry, her teacher sent out a request to parents to help with a French-themed breakfast. It seemed a simple enough request. Bring in crepe batter. Come into class and make them.

How could I go wrong? I had fond memories of gorging myself on sugar-filled crepes that my French-raised grandmother would make for Mardi Gras. My mother was a chef. I remember her riding the subway to work, her army-issue carrying case filled with cooking knives jauntily swinging from her shoulder. Surely such can-do spirit might have rubbed off on me.

One reason for doing this was the extra brownie points needed to redeem myself from the "What do people do for a living?" unit. I had signed up for the "Creative" section, on the heels of so-and-so's gastroenterologist mother who came into class to talk about how the digestive systems works. In contrast, my presentation would be something along the lines of

"Hello, boys and girls. My name is Nathalie Mason-Fleury and I make things up for a living. That's actually a figure of speech because, so far, nobody pays me to do this. Today my colleague and I researched how to fake your own death. I don't have any medical, forensic or criminology degrees, but it only took me a few minutes to look this up on the Internet. Why would I bother with professional references when I read the National Inquirer? Look at how long it took Lacy Peterson's body to come floating back up. And they knew exactly where to look.

Things started to go wrong from the very beginning:

1) I doubled the batter proportions. However this caused the batter to overflow in the Cuisinart as the liquid level went higher than the middle blade attachment.

2) I then decided to guesstimate how much of the milk and water to replace, but probably didn't add enough flour, which made the batter a little runny.

3) Worse, we had to cook on these horrible plug in electric eye units that were underpowered and didn't heat enough. A Bunsen burner would have been better, as at least I'd have gotten some heat. It took an average of five minutes per side for each crepe to cook and I know that's not normal.

This confirmed what I had always suspected, that I would rather stand for eight hours at a software trade show with cheap carpeting in three inch heels, than deal with a class of cynical nine year olds.

"You're not very good at this are you?" "I'm a picky eater, I don't want the broken ones" "My dad is a great crepe maker," "how come they keep falling apart" "When is this going to be ready?" and proceeded to literally go down the toilet, as two of them starting singing: "Bob Marley, Jim Dandy, R. Poopy..."

The veteran teacher gave me some advice and consolation: "Next time, make them all ahead of time and bring some token batter. Send them off on some distracting activity. Then, 15 minutes later: Voila! 30 perfectly formed TurboCrepes. But don't worry, it's the weekend. That way if they get sick it will be at home with their parents and we won't have to deal with it."

I appreciated his wisdom and told him that if, one day, the teaching thing didn't pan out, he really should consider putting on software demos.