[Note: This will be the last Sneak Peek from the Deatn and Saxophones book. It is the Introduction from the published book. Enjoy! P.W.]
I have been pleasantly surprised, over the years, at how many readers my Simple Displeasures blog has found. Blogs, In general, are hardly at the center of the current zeitgeist the way, say, TikTok dance videos are. This blog, though, has played an important role in my own sense of well-being, and the fact that it finds a few thousand readers each month is a happy bonus.
I have not included every post. The previous collection, Funny Sexy Nanobots – and other improvements, included posts through the end of 2016 (plus previously written short things, and a 20-page short story titled, The Salvador Deli – just in case you needed motivation to take a look at that book). In the six or seven years since, I admit that I have often used the blog to post ‘sneak peeks’ of other upcoming projects. But I always find that I have a desire to get back to writing pithy little humor pieces. I have not included any of the sneak peeks in this collection...only the pithy little humor pieces...
This book also includes one of my earliest comedy screenplays.
In my 20s, while traveling around from my home base of Seattle, performing standup comedy at various comedy clubs around the country, I had this idea that I should eventually make movies. This is a very dangerous idea to get into your head. Movies are expensive to make. Standup comedy only requires that you show up and get the audience laughing. Books only require that you actually WRITE them. Movies – even low budget independent movies – require a nightmare-ish level of organizing, money, good collaborators, and luck.
The idea was in my head, though, and nothing was going to get it out of there. So I wrote a few screenplays. The one included here, Death and Saxophones, is from 1991, or is it 1992? I think I rewrote it in ’92. I sent it to a few Hollywood people at the time. I remember getting one response back from someone. The memory is vague. Anyway, as so often happens with Hollywood, even if there was ‘interest,’ it never went anywhere.
I lived in Hollywood from mid-1993 to mid-1995, but I was mostly there as an actor, and had moved on from Death and Saxophones. I had begun writing an early version of something else, something that did eventually turn into my ACTUAL first independent film (Long Strange Trip – Or The Writer, The Naked Girl, and The Guy with a Hole in His Head – yes, all of that is the title, and as of this writing, you can stream it on Amazon).
Why have I included Death and Saxophones in this collection? Well, maybe part of me plans to always use these once-every-half-dozen-years blog collections to un-earth something old and previously unseen (I have a lot of them). Maybe it is because I had nearly forgotten about the script, and when I re-discovered it recently, it made me laugh. Is it perfect? No. Maybe it even makes for a funnier screenplay than it would an actual movie.
It is important to remember, while reading it, that it is from the early 1990s. It has a reference to Ronald and Nancy Reagan. More than a reference, actually. Ron and Nancy actually show up at a Hollywood party. In 1991, Ronald Reagan was still alive as the recent ex-President. We did not know at the time that he was suffering from Alzheimer’s. After considerable thought, I have decided to leave the scene, rather than cut it. I trust you, the reader, to be able to navigate a 1991 sarcastic moment in its original context.
One last note about Death and Saxophones – A central joke in the story is that a standup comedian is booked by his agent to perform, not at a comedy club, not at any kind of actual comedy show, but at a funeral. It was purely a joke, a joke that allowed other absurd things to happen in the story. Many years later, this turned into a major irony in my life. My dear mother passed away in February 2020. As my siblings and I (there are five of us) emailed each other as a group preparing for the funeral, I shared an old college-newspaper humor column I had once written, about my mother being a master comedienne. The next thing I knew, my sister – who was planning for each of us to say something at the funeral – asked if I would read this funny little thing. I got up at the funeral, started reading, luckily found the right balance between humor and the solemness of the moment, and found myself playing the crowd a little bit. It got laughs. So...yes, many years after this script, I sort of did a little bit of standup comedy at my own mother’s funeral. Fortunately, thankfully, people appreciated it. It could have gone badly. It went well. Strange...but that is all true. That old college piece – A Great Comedienne’s Not So Great Son – is in this collection, because the day after the funeral was blog-post day, and I had nothing to write that day. I posted the old piece that I had read live at the funeral.
Thanks to you the reader, for checking out this collection. As I said, with everything else I do with my creative life, the blog, and the number of readers it has, is a happy bonus. Enjoy!
Peter Wick
June 14, 2024
