Then I saw Maggie Gyllenhaal's The Bride. The irony of a dead author becoming the bride of her own male protagonist, post-mortem, was sheer brilliance. Identity doesn't just transfer. It mutates.

For thirty years, I called San Francisco home. Then I discovered San Miguel de Allende. Returning now, amid talk of San Francisco’s “decline,” I found a city alive with motion, appetite, and possibility — and a reminder of why I once belonged here.

One week into the new year and I’m thrilled to be starting with a bit of good news (for me). I just got word that San Miguel ExMas MixUp has advanced to the Quarterfinals in this year’s ISA Emerging Screenwriters Competition. There are still 540 writers in the running (by my estimate), which is both humbling and oddly encouraging. It’s a reminder of just how many screenwriters are out there hoping for that ray of light that says: someone read it, someone responded. Somebody

I’ve been revisiting a script I wrote twenty-five years ago. Not polishing it so much as listening to it, the way you listen to an old record and hear more than the music. You remember a time, a place, who you were with. The script is Postcard From Italy . It was sparked by my travels there. Lazy afternoons. Surprising rain showers. Water taxis. Train platforms. Espresso taken standing up like a local. That particular European suspension of time where nobody seems in a hurry