A recently successful Hollywood director, said that his inspiration for writing a screenplay, later turned into a film, came from meeting his sister’s boyfriend. “We just hated him on the sight,” he said. The maligned couple lasted four years and then broke up. The sister was apparently relieved and the screenwriter later plowed his hate towards creative and financially rewarding career ends.
Hollywood is like that. You take a negative (abusive parents, bad marriage, a drug problem) and you create a TV series, or a film or a video game. In ten years, I have met many people here in Los Angeles and almost none of them are really true friends, except for one or maybe two. Meanwhile, every year I create another “enemy” or someone whom I mistake for a friend when they are merely a passing alliance at a studio or production company. Sometimes those enemies become my friend again when they are out of work, or the stupid joke I played on them is forgotten.
But hating and despising people even when it is justified, is a self-destructive act. It eats away at the fiber of our soul. There may be self-interest at work in heeding Christ’s call to “love thy neighbor as thyself”. But Christ himself is the star of a book with many tales of killing, betrayal and lying. It makes for some fantastic reading.
The problem is that mere love without revenge makes for very bad storytelling. Hate makes Hollywood run.
Here in Van Nuys 