The Opening Scene

"Baby, Baby, I love the way you love me.
Your tongue on my skin drives me insane.
How I long for your candy kisses in the summer rain.
Your lips so tender, with me you lie.
The day you leave me is the day I die."

This poem opens my film, "The Screening Room." My first feature under my own direction and my own script, untouched by other producers.

The significance of this poem is that I blatantly ripped it off, okay -- freely adapted it from a girl who stood me up on Valentine's Day. Does she deserve this immortality. Of course not.

But those four days, prior to that loss, and it's my loss, not hers . . . get to that in a minute.

Those four days were filled with hope and excitement, such feelings I have never experienced before and haven't since. Sure, I've had love affairs since, but unheard melodies are sweeter and the possibility of what might have been, had I not f*cked it all up, is so much more exciting. After all, her POETRY OPENS THE FRICKIN' MOVIE.

How's that for impact! This "poet" (and I use the term loosely, she wasn't THAT good) didn't give two sh*ts about me, and probably has forgotten all about me by now, left me a poem that OPENS MY FRICKIN' MOVIE!!!

Still it is my adaptation and my own work based on hers. And I do feel loss on my part. After all, she inspired me with all of her stories of the club scene in Seattle and minor hints of love affairs too racy to include here. She is by definition my muse, or was my muse. And no one, not your muse, no one has the right to deny you the feelings you first felt upon meeting her.

And when it comes down to it. I didn't know this girl, this amateur poet. I fell in love with my image of who I believed she was. So in a very real sense, it's more my work than hers. I'm sure she'll never see it. Too bad. I feel too that this will be my loss. She was there at the beginning, the turning point of my professional career, and she will not be there to share in its rewards.

My loss.