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“In the comic, not military, sense of the term – he killed...”
Can the skill of hunting for and recognizing a good story be taught? I have always been skeptical that any part of writing can be subject to instruction. So it was with a certain ungracious wariness, later in my career, that I allowed myself to be drafted by my friend from Lou Grant, Allan Burns, into participating as a mentor in a weekend workshop on writing for former and current members of our armed forces.
Yes, I had taught for a bit in the past, before I’d locked into writing as a full-time profession, but it had been years since I had been put in charge of a classroom. And how was I supposed to teach people how to tell a story? I had reservations that any real learning could come out of this exercise.
The good news was that they assigned me to a very interesting group. The five aspiring writers were from all branches of the service, and they managed to comprise, within that tiny random sample, a quintessentially American cross-section of ethnicity, gender, and even age. Eddie was 23, in his last weeks in the service. Michael was 74, a former Korean war paratrooper. His son had served in the military, and a granddaughter was on her way to Afghanistan. What quickly became obvious was that the quality of men and women who serve in our armed forces these days is exceptionally high.
I also lucked out big time in the other professional writer with whom I was paired. Ben Garant is a co-creator of television’s Reno 911 and a co-writer of Night at the Museum, an entertaining movie with a very smart script. He is intelligent, funny and generous with his knowledge and insights.
Although Ben and I had never met before the workshop, and although we had worked in different genres, we immediately discovered that we shared the same basic approach to the craft of writing. One of the first points Ben made, which I enthusiastically seconded, was that it was important for writers to finish things. If you are writing a screenplay, Ben told the group, get to the end of it, then write another one, then finish a third – then go back and revisit the first one. You will see it with new eyes and heightened skill.
Most of the participants in the group came with stories (or at least what they thought were stories) that they wanted to tell. In most cases the subject matter was unrelated to their military experience. We thought it would be helpful to the entire group to create, for the two days of the workshop, our own “writers room.” This is a uniquely Hollywood phenomenon, most often a part of the process in developing scripts for television series, where writers collaborate and help each other with their scripts.
Within about ten minutes, our group felt like a team. The military training probably contributed to the ability of a handful of strangers to blend into a cohesive unit, but it is also true, I believe, that when we are at our best, this knack of being able to come together with a unity of purpose is a distinctly American talent.
The short stories, novels and movie scripts the participants were working on are proprietary, including the screenplay and TV series pitch former Army Staff Sgt. Thom Tran was developing. But I want to share some of Thom’s own story, an experience, unfortunately, like that of many soldiers, because he was able to find in it the real story he wanted, and needed, to tell.
In the first few days of his posting to Iraq, Thom’s best friend was killed. Within the first week, Thom was shot through the head. Through the head. Thom had a camera with him on patrol the day he was wounded in Iraq. The video has footage of the vehicle in front which halts as it starts to take fire. You hear the sound of gunfire, then the shouts when Thom gets hit. Then the camera is turned, and you see the moment when Thom discovers that the back of his head is covered in blood.
For a year he didn’t smile. He wanted to return to the front, but the doctors wouldn’t okay it. Before he left for Iraq, Thom had been an upbeat person, with ambitions to write, act, and to do stand-up comedy. But now he was going through a very black time. In the miserable year that followed Thom’s being wounded, he searched less for a story to tell than a way out of deep depression. He discovered both together, more by chance than design. His mother and his sister had refused to watch the video of their loved one being grievously injured, but Thom’s father, a former soldier, felt compelled to show that he could handle it with a warrior’s stiff upper lip and straight spine. Thom and his dad watched the entire sequence in tense silence, with Thom very unsure how the older man would react. When the video clip ended and Thom shut off the TV, his father quietly told him, “You are going to get so laid.”
Thom knew a good comedy punch line when he heard one. In that instant he recognized the story he had to tell and that in telling it with humor, he would also begin his long, difficult climb out of the darkness.
On Memorial Day weekend (appropriately enough), my family and I went to the Improv on Melrose Avenue in Hollywood where Thom was doing his new stand-up routine. Szymon from the workshop attended as well. Thom used a clip of the Iraq shooting video in his sketch. The audience was riveted, then, as Thom sprung on them the surprise of his dad’s unexpected comment, they gave him the biggest laugh of the night. In the comic, not military, sense of the term – he killed.
Service in the armed forces can involve taking risks. Writing, at its most interesting, is also about taking risks, and Michael, Eddie, Thom, Szymon and Becky had the courage to face both kinds of risks. Thom, in discovering the story within a sequence of events, had transformed a wrenching military experience into, of all things, stand-up comedy.
When I was asked to write about the development of my craft and to share some Hollywood experiences, I knew that my career had been an interesting adventure: sometimes enjoyable, sometimes disheartening, ultimately full and rewarding. However, I didn’t know if I had a story worth telling until it occurred to me that perhaps the most important story to share was at the very core of my craft — how writers search for their stories.
