(4/4/06) subject of a screenplay

(Entered in paper journal at 6:12 PM at Starbucks on 43rd Street and 3rd Avenue.)

Dream 1

There was a short man standing by a door. He was hemming and hawing over some man who hadn't yet come into the room. The man by the  door was some kind of screenplay writer or novelist. The man who hadn't entered yet was the subject of the play the man was writing or getting ready to write. The screenwriter wanted to make sure the man didn't feel offended by anything he wrote.

The "subject" now entered. He was enormous -- he almost didn't fit in through the door, and he had to duck to get in. He spoke with a thick accent. He was white, with short, messy hair, and a tan corduroy jacket lined with sheepskin.

The screenwriter set the man down at a table and spoke with him, asking him things about the to-be-written screenplay, trying to prove to him he was smart enough to be consulted about his own character.

I was now the writer. I looked down at a form as I spoke with the actor. There was a space to be filled out below a paragraph of information. I was writing, according to this sheet, a small work to go in the middle of a work by a more famous director. There were a number of themes and a setting I had to stick with. The setting was Eastern Europe. One theme was breaking the law. Another was either carbonated beverages or soda machines.

I kept asking the man what ideas came to his mind when he thought of those themes, especially since he came from Eastern Europe. But at the same time I didn't want him to think that I, by associating him with the setting of Eastern Europe, associated him with another theme, i.e. breaking the law, and thus insinuated that he was a criminal.