Words, Music & Pictures
What Was I Thinking?
About The Los Angeles Fires
I don’t like to get political on this site, but clearly the fires that have destroyed so much of the city in which I live are a massive failure on the part of city and state office holders. Public safety should be the number one job of the government. They obviously failed this in the most abject manner. But rather than try to affix blame for the Los Angeles fires (I'll leave that to others) I’ll just state a few issues that I think are important to consider. I’m no expert, these are simply observations I’ve made in living here and experiencing wildfires for over forty years. They’re also things you don’t hear on the news.
No Patrols: These fires always happen during the Santa Ana winds which are powerful, hot and dry winds coming off the deserts to the north of us during the winter. These winds are not unpredicted, we know about them days in advance. The fires most often start in the brush areas and the mountains that run next to civilized areas. Many times the fires are caused by arsonists. However, access to these forest areas are not patrolled by police or fire marshals during the Santa Anas. It defies logic that all roads leading to mountainous areas are not closed or highly monitored during Santa Anas. Griffith Park, the (nearby) LA Zoo, the Griffith Park Golf Courses should all be closed. The fire nearest our home this week – the Kenneth fire – was started by an arsonist simply walking up to the wild area of the Victory Trail and starting the fire. Why was no one there to stop him?
Power Lines: When these high winds blow, sometimes power lines blow down. When the power lines blow down, they start fires. However, there is no urgency whatsoever to bury ALL power lines in Southern California. There are power lines wherever you look. They are unsightly, of course, but they are also highly dangerous. With the strength of the Santa Ana winds it’s like having an open flame near a can of gas.
Not Enough Water: We’ve all read how the reservoir above Pacific Palisades was empty for repairs and therefore not of use to fight the fires. This is obviously a failure by the DWP to anticipate that the water might be needed during the Santa Anas. But the problem isn’t just this one reservoir. There has not been ONE new reservoir built in California in the last forty years, even though the population has more than doubled. We had record rainfall during the first quarter of 2024 – it was called an atmospheric river -- and none of this water was captured. It simply ran into the ocean. What’s worse, we’ve even had dams and reservoirs torn down in recent years to placate environmentalists eager to save a species of fish.
No Sprinklers: Every public building has overhead sprinklers that will turn on in the event of fire. Every golf course in the area has a sprinkler system to water the course during dry periods. Yet there are NO sprinklers in any of the wild forest areas that run throughout the Los Angeles area. The only way to fight fires in these areas is with water or flame retardant drops from planes and helicopters. Doesn’t it make sense to have a system of sprinklers in the wild areas – especially those that are near to homes and businesses? Some might say that installing a sprinkler system in the wilds would be a tremendous expense. I would suggest that such an expense is nothing compared to the cost of fighting the fires let alone the cost of rebuilding a city. 01.13.25
The Los Angeles Fires
About One of My Mentors: Jeri Taylor
Jeri Taylor, one of the people who literally changed my life, passed away this week. When I decided to transition from writing advertising to writing for film and television, my goal was to write for new show, Star Trek: The Next Generation. As Supervising Producer for the show, Jeri was the first person in “the business” to whom my writing partner Jean Matthias and I pitched stories. Our first pitches were, maybe good ideas, but way overwritten – perhaps tediously overwritten as she stopped us midway through each of them, asking what else we had. The art of pitching stories was something that none of my instructors at UCLA Extension Writers Program had taught. We walked out of our pitch session thinking our writing careers were over and were stunned when our agent called us the next day and said that Jeri had actually asked us back. Perhaps seeing our potential, Jeri was patient with us and instructed us in how to craft our ideas in the “broad brush strokes” of the concept – something I have passed along to my own writing students at UCLA after I became an instructor there. By our third pitch session, when we knew better how to present our stories, Jeri gave us our first produced credit on Star Trek with our episode “Imaginary Friend.” Many more episodes followed. Jeri was generous with her time in our story development sessions and helped me become a better writer than I could have become without her guidance. She was also a person who actually cared about the writers she hired – a rarity in the business. When our second episode "Schisms" was in process, the plan was that we would write both the story and teleplay (which is the actual script, and the preferred credit). Unfortunately, the network bumped the episode forward in the schedule which meant that we, being freelancers, couldn’t be trusted to turn in the teleplay on time for the production deadline, so we were taken off the assignment. Rather than just give us the bad news and expect us to deal with it (which is the way of Hollywood) Jeri gave us a big lead. She told us that Michael Piller (the showrunner, and her boss) had an idea that Captain Picard might have an inter-office romance. She said that nobody on their staff had any ideas on how to do it. She asked us to see if we could do something with it. Her door was always open to us. That opportunity became the episode “Lessons” which was the first time we wrote both story and teleplay. It was a fantastic experience. More on "Lessons" HERE. We continued to work with Jeri on The Next Generation as well as the subsequent series Star Trek: Voyager and were disappointed when, after a few years, she announced her retirement from that show. Pitching Trek wasn’t the same without her, so I moved on to another part of sci-fi universe writing for Stargate SG-1. Jeri was a wonderful, caring person whose wisdom was reflected in her story craft and the careers of the many writers with whom she developed brilliant stories. I will always be grateful for having the opportunity to work with one of my mentors, Jeri Taylor. 10.28.24
Star Trek Producers: Michael Piller, Rick Berman and Jeri Taylor
About Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
I watched this film once, and I was ready to write a negative review. But I‘ve so admired writer/director George Miller’s previous work in the Mad Max films that I didn’t want to criticize it unjustly. I felt, at first viewing, that I really didn’t understand a lot of what was going on in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. Since Furiosa is the prequel to Fury Road, I watched that film again the next night, and have to say that after that viewing, Furiosa came alive for me. I couldn’t wait to watch it again, which I did. To be fair, Fury Road was released nearly ten years ago, and there are many story and character details from that film that are needed to really appreciate what's going on in Furiosa. The big problem I had with the first viewing was structure. Miller has divided the film into five chapters that seemed, at first viewing to work against an overall story structure. In reality, each of these chapters is a complete story with a beginning, middle and end, connected by Furiosa (the character's) Inner Need of revenge which is established in the first chapter and carries across all the chapters. Considering that Furiosa (the film) didn’t do well at the box office, it might be that it tried to do too much for one film. Perhaps in this era of streaming, it would have made a better five-part limited series. The manner in which George Miller tells a story is truly his own, with an imaginative environment and characters, unbelievable camera work and VFX bordering on magical. There’s one action sequence (in the third chapter) that actually outdoes those road chases we had seen from Miller in The Road Warrior, Beyond Tunderdome and Fury Road (and that’s saying something!). It’s incredibly inventive and quite spectacular with camera work that, unlike that of so many other directors never intrudes on the story, but instead amplifies it. So, my advice to anyone with a fondness for the Mad Max films is to watch Fury Road again, then watch Furiosa. It’s well worth the ride. 08.18.24
Anya Taylor-Joy as the title character in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
About Working With James Doohan
In 1998 I was between writing gigs for Star Trek: The Next Generation and Voyager (Stargate SG-1 was two years off in my future) when I got a call from Alesis, the company founded by my old friend (and former boss at MXR Innovations) Keith Barr. Alesis, Keith's company, needed a presentation for the upcoming NAMM (National Association of Music Merchants) trade show in Anaheim, CA to announce their new ADAT digital recorder, and I needed a gig. Having spent many of the previous years working in advertising, this was not an unusual request, so I set to work on a video. In meetings for the assignment, Alesis kept stressing the engineering aspects of their technology, so I came up with the idea of doing a video presentation using the most famous engineer I could think of to make the announcement. That engineer was, of course, Montgomery Scott, “Scotty” from the starship Enterprise. Would James Doohan reprise his old role for this commercial gig? I figured that if I made it worth doing (something that would fit his personality and be entertaining) that he might agree. I came up with the idea that this “Famous Engineer from the future” (we obviously couldn’t call him Scotty) would time travel back to educate clueless present-day stoner musicians on the technological benefits of the new ADAT. I wrote the script, and it was enthusiastically approved by “the powers that be” at Alesis. Next was the tough part -- getting James Doohan. It had been six years since he had done “Relics” that great episode on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Was he still even working? I tracked down his agent, sent him the script, and, amazingly, in a few days, the deal was set. We flew James (“call me Jimmy” was how he introduced himself to me) down to Los Angeles from his home in Washington state and over the next few days, I had the most fun I’d ever had directing a commercial gig. I’ve written more about working with Jimmy Doohan in the Tributes section of this web site, (click here) but I will say here that he was a joy to work with and everybody on the production had a great and memorable time. The video (click here) was made to be shown in two parts, the first played on the outside of the Alesis booth on a video wall. This led to a second video (mostly tech talk) that played inside the booth auditorium. The Famous Engineer appears again at the end. This video hasn’t been shown in over twenty years. I’m happy to post it here. Enjoy! 04.11.24
James Doohan and Ron Wilkerson on the set of The Famous Engineer for Alesis ADAT Type II
About Diana, Dodi and Me
Like many writers in Hollywood, I’ve had my share of rejections. Some are more difficult to accept than others. Some are just freaky. In 1997 I wrote a screenplay for a futuristic action picture called The Metal Men, and my quick pitch was that it is Terminatormeets The Superbowl. My agent got it optioned by a by a production company I had never heard of, but he assured me that the principals had a lot of money. Cut to the other night when I was watching the final “Diana” episode of The Crown. In that episode (mild spoilers ahead) Diana rejected Dodi Fayed’s marriage proposal offer. That was no surprise, but what threw me was her line of dialogue in which she said something like “You don’t really want to marry me. Dodi, what you really want to do is go back to Los Angeles and make movies.” He nodded, implying that she was right. They then got into that limo and the rest is history. But what you probably already guessed is that the picture he would have made had their limo driver not been drunk was my project, The Metal Men. The project was in active development at Dodi’s company Allied Stars, and the rumor was that Dolph Lundgren was being cast as the lead in my film, Derek Wells. So it was certainly a surreal experience watching that episode of The Crown and feeling something like Rosencrantz or Guildenstern must have felt standing in the wings and overhearing the dialogue in Hamlet. Did that dialogue between Diana and Dodi really happen? Who knows? Needless to say, when Dodi passed, so did my project. It was definitely my strangest rejection. 01.25.24
Dodi Fayed (Khalid Abdalla) and Princess Diana (Elizabeth Debicki) in The Crown
About the WGA SAG-AFTRA Strike
It was "United We Trek" day outside the Paramount Pictures studio where writers, actors and others who had worked for Star Trek were invited to attend and protest the current state of affairs in Hollywood. I’ve never been much of a joiner, and though I have issues with both Paramount and the Writers’ Guild I decided to join the throng. No, I didn’t carry a picket sign, nor did I march the line. I mostly stayed in the shade of a friendly tree along the picket lines where I could greet others I knew from the show as well converse with some nice fans. One of my neighbors when we lived in the hills of Sherman Oaks was Harlan Ellison, who wrote one of the best episodes of the original series, “City on the Edge of Forever.” But in spite of his history as an honored writer on the show, he had no love for Star Trek (I'm not sure exactly what his issue was, but it was intense), and to say the least he wasn’t impressed when I told him I wrote for Star Trek: The Next Generation. He's gone now, but I thought of him today. I have my own issues with the show. Paramount took “Lower Decks” one of the episodes I wrote for Star Trek: The Next Generation and made a new series out of it without giving me a “created by” screen credit or even token royalties. There was an obscure paragraph in my (Writers Guild approved) contract that allowed them to do so. That’s show biz. So, I had every right to be bitter toward the show, as was Harlan Ellison. But I realized as I stood with the pickets today that many of those who had worked on Star Trek had also either been fired, or simply not rehired for the show as it moved on. They, too, had issues. And yet, there they were, marching down a hot sidewalk for the benefit of writers and actors on a show they had once loved, no matter how they themselves had been treated. I was glad to stand there with them, show my support, and at the very least honor Gene Roddenberry and the many artists and others who had followed his dream. 09.08.23
Star Trek writer Ron Wilkerson at United We Trek protest at Paramount Pictures