If you could host a dinner and anyone you invite was sure to come, who would you invite?
I want to meet Ryan Reynolds so much, because I love the Deadpool script. Based on that one thing, I think we’d have a great time. We’re writers who both struggle with anxiety, and if we are talented alone, we’d be hysterical together. If it was cool, I’d like to go to his house, because he has a brick pizza oven and I don’t. I know this because he invited Dave Letterman and that’s the only thing I remember. Ryan can make pizza. So, my perfect picture of a dinner party with Ryan is a large conference table decked out with food we made so that Blake Lively can eat with us before we throw down. My anxiety doesn’t help me write jokes that often, and being with other people helps tamp it down enough to get over myself. I’m really quite tired of me some days, and Ryan would relate. I know it. I can see it, feel it. There is a silent connection because he is my brother in arms, because it’s a huge fucking war.
We’d start with an MiB script because I love documentaries. 😉 If you don’t get that joke, it’s because I think MiB is a satirical look at CIA and MI-6. The Starbucks in the middle of Langley is my space port Burger King. Hot Sheets are PDBs. They’re arranged in a British hierarchy where Z = C, etc. Even K is a thing, although the rank above M hasn’t been in use since WWII. Since spycraft is built on deception, the rest of the world….. the ones that DON’T work for Mossad, we are all but citizens of Locker C (ADULT ENTERTAINMENT IN THE BACK). It’s all a send up, but if you’re looking for it, everything is there. Everything.
There’s also a *little bit* of FBI in there, because as Ken Taylor (Canadian Iranian Ambassador) points out in Argo, “I was expecting more of a G-man look.” Speaking of which, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are invited as well, because it would be the most idiotic move ever not to invite them. Matt Damon is one of my favorite writers, and Ben Affleck drove Argo like he stole it. Just holy shit. It’s fantastic. Remember yesterday I was talking about meeting creatives? Matt has been on my mind since Good Will Hunting, because he’s the one with serious chops. Good Will Hunting didn’t start out as a movie script. It was a play Matt wrote for a college class. A COLLEGE CLASS. In college, I had some home training, but not as famous as Marshall (or Kendrick, for that matter).
I would also invite Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, and Snoop Dogg. This is because people don’t think of this when it comes to rap, but it’s my next favorite genre behind classical…. because they tell stories just. like. me.
There is no justice in this world because I can’t invite Tupac Shakur. If you had anything to do with ANY OF THAT, I think I can say for all of us that we will never forgive you. Ever. There will never be another “Brenda Had a Baby.”
Oh my God. I just realized it’s hilarious that Ryan Reynolds’ first break was “Two Guys, a Girl, and a Pizza Place.” It makes me fall over with laughter thinking that he has a pizza oven now because he was a method actor back then.
I would be remiss not to invite my PVA friends, like Justin Furstenfeld, Mireille Enos, Jason Moran, Robert Glasper, et al. This is because I’d only want to invite the people I’d already met, because I am the type person that needs to have at least one person there that already knows me because I will stick to them like glue in order to feel safe.
Bryn is invited because we don’t have a relationship in which I wouldn’t, and not because she’s my friend. She deserves a seat at that particular table, because sometimes she’s funnier than me. I’m not being a jackass, it’s that we’re a tennis match. We trade laughs like stock.
I also have someone in mind that would go apeshit to be in that room, but she is not invited just so that I can watch her spiral out. It’s mean and it’s really fucking funny. I have a reader that will just die when they get to this part, and it’s not her. The only thing better would be popping popcorn and watching that level of crazy for free.
If I were to branch out on PVA alone, Justin Simian is also invited. I’m not sure there’s a funnier show on Netflix than Dear White People. His takedown of Scandal was just brilliant. I’m inviting writers and directors to get Mireille in something because watching her on screen is one of my great joys in life. I’m not hot for her, though I should be. It’s more than that. I love her to bits because she smiled at me on the first day of ninth grade, and I’ve never forgotten it because she was a senior when I was a freshman. That’s just not done, and she broke protocol.
I am glad that we’ve never taken a picture together, because that look? It’s just for me.
My friend Karen is also invited, because before she retired she was a kindergarten teacher and someone needs to keep me in line. I feel her professional skills would help her in that respect.
It would be a mix of people, but the writers are the most important. I don’t want to know them because they’re famous and I’m not. They don’t have anything I don’t, they’ve just hit big and I haven’t. I know because I went to High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. I am capable of being as good as they are now, because even they weren’t that good when they started.
It’s not the fame I’m after. It’s being able to workshop ideas.
It’s a working lunch….. with pizza.
Stories That Are All True 