Am I blogging...or am I pitching my existence?
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| High Concept Am I blogging...or am I pitching my existence? |
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Thursday, September 04, 2003 The Pitch: It's like Jeepers Creepers meets How Stella Got Her Groove Back! Yes, I'm talking about Under The Tuscan Sun: The Motion Picture. It's one thing when the only SFSU writing teacher who I never took a class from had her memoir about fixing up a Tuscan villa turn into a huge hit. It was nice to see somebody from the S.F. State Writing Department hit it big (apart from Stan Rice, who headed up the department until right around the time I started and was fortunate enough to be married to you-know-who), and I got a laugh when I read an article where Ms. Mayes described her teaching situation as "living hell." (The sort of "boy, I dodged that bullet" kind of laugh, let me be clear.)I admit, though, to being a little uneasy reading about the sequel, about the "Tuscan Sun" tours where people could get a tour of the setting in Ms. Mayes' book. But it was nothing compared to the squirminess of seeing a trailer just now for UTS: The Movie. Diane Lane playing Frances Mayes? Wha? Buh? Guh? I don't know why it bugs me--it's probably just a squirmy offshoot of professional jealousy (well, if I was a professional). Maybe it's that the second most successful novel to come out of SFSU and its writing program belongs to a poetry teacher which somehow points to some deep ass-backwardness, or cosmic wrongness, or maybe just a sense that I, a guy who graduated from the writing program without taking a single poetry class, am screwed. S.F. State's writing program had a pretty good mortality rate while I was there. My advisor died not long after I graduated, and one of Patrick's teachers kicked off before. They were both horribly young, maybe in their early 40's. I wonder how often people think about them, or read their books. I know I think of them, from time to time. Maybe that's my problem with the movie. I tend to side with the losers, with the dead, and would feel comforted if perhaps one of their books had hit it big. But history, as they say, is written by the winners. And played by Diane Lane. I have no reason to be offended by such a proposition, but I am skeeved out nonetheless. I suspect that doesn't reflect very well on me, but it's true. posted by Jeff Lester | 5:58 PM | |
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