Targeting Netflix

Before the Storm Hits

Screenwriting as respite. Planning because suffering is not an option. I learned at an early age to use my imagination and concentration to escape the Cold War HR R&D community my parents unwittingly (hopefully) turned their children over to.

I owe my survival to the MIC (Military Industrial Complex) and my older siblings who left books all over the house in the estuary, where I found sanctuary in Bradbury, Tolkien, Kesey, Steinbach…Too many to list, you get the gist.

The Better Duck Inn exists only in my imagination, as does the assembled group of creatives participating in this act of rebellion, down river from Netflix’s new New Jersey production facility, on the very same bit of real estate where the mob, military, and money intersected perfectly for more than a century; the MIC that made me, and not just me, not by a long shot…I could go on.

I can imagine penetration, of course I can, of Netflix operations. I spent half a century doing such things. Getting in and out again without raising a single hair on the neck of the beast doing the gatekeeping, was what the MIC extruded me from the Cold War R&D HR pipeline to achieve for them, without me ever knowing anything. Call it the home team advantage. Call it cruel and unusual. Call it brilliant or call it evil. I called it Raytheon5 in one of many unpublished projects. Ray was Ray Pinnox, a legend in the in and out business, who mentored me for a decade.

So, none of the last paragraph is about screenplay writing, but since there is a storm coming in this screenplay, I thought it necessary to let go of a few salvos. Just to keep the crew at the big Better Duck Inn writer’s table on mission.

Ray The One, Pinnox…Is no longer with us, his story has never been written. Netflix is where there is no longer the PX where Ray got his daily bottle of rum for less than he could outside the Fort Monmouth main gate. Before I even met Ray, the first thing he ever said to me was, “you know what? I drink a whole bottle of rum every day.” What was I supposed to say?

I now say Netflix needs to be penetrated. There is a storm coming, already written in the script. I would prefer to be up front with them, but that is not who I am, by design. The best I can do is write them in, so here we are…a project, a program, a movie in the making, all in my imagination. Respite, and some. Creatives welcome.

The Essex and Sussex at dawn in front of which on the beach were filmed scenes from Ragtime. I played mother’s younger brother many times, in my own mind.