It's One of Those Days...

It's one of those days that I wish I had a season pass to Six Flags Magic Mountain, and that Six Flags Magic Mountain was open today (It's on a winter schedule, which keeps it closed during the week). I got up at 10:29 this morning and found it warm enough to want to go there, with a jacket for the later hours of the day, ride Ninja a couple of times, and just walk through my favorite areas, including the greenery towering over the pathway to Rapids Camp Crossing, which is near the entrance to Tatsu. It's a rare feeling of nature in a valley not readily known for it.

It's one of those days in which I don't feel like working much on my book. I'm going to finish reading Killer Stuff and Tons of Money, and then see what pops out at me as I look at what I got in the mail this week and what's sitting on my former DVD shelves, which I'm using for those books I want to read almost immediately.

It's one of those days, actually the only day, in which complete peacefulness has settled on the Santa Clarita Valley. Nothing about it is annoying, nothing about it can make the day worse, because the day's already the best it can be.

It's one of those days that I'm glad I've never veered from a Monday-Friday feeling of the week that I've had from years of school, community college too, from Dad working as a teacher and Mom working in the school system as well, and it's what I'll continue to have hopefully as a full-time campus supervisor after we move to Henderson. I like how the weekend looms on Friday with bright flashing lights attached, promising great things to come. It doesn't always happen, but it feels good. I'm game for changes throughout my life, but I like having a vague structure in the background. This is it.

It's one of those days for this song!!! I'll never stop living in the '90s.

Back at a Favorite Place, But with a Major Problem

Before beginning tonight's musings, I need to correct part of yesterday's entry, in which I said that three days is way too long for me to read one book. I left out 800+-page biographies, such as the one I'm reading about FDR by Jean Edward Smith, and the new biography of Eisenhower, also by Smith, which is 766 pages up to the acknowledgements. I can get through over 200 pages in a day, if I really like the book, but 766 pages in three days is impossible for me.

I went to bed at 1:55 this morning, feeling more settled than I usually am when I go to bed, because I'm thinking of many things, mostly the book, such as interviews still to do, interviews I've done, thinking about the questions I still have for which I'm seeking answers (I keep having to remind myself to open up those files whenever I'm writing interview questions, since I watched all the Airport movies anew when I began this project and took notes during them), the book proposal I'll be writing, the query letters as well, and not so much near-panic now as it was when I wrote my share of What If They Lived?. It's more like mild concern. I'll get it all done. But it still takes me just a bit of time before I fully settle down before I go to sleep. This morning, I hadn't done as much work as in past days, so while I was thinking about some of the work, I simply stopped thinking about it and settled down and rested. Sleep came, along with quite possibly my most favorite place in dreams.

I've described this place before, but not as well as I believe I can. It is exactly as written in that link, such a calm presence. There's clusters of shops all around, like a shantytown, but not spreading out in every direction. There's space to walk past the shops, sometimes dirt roads, sometimes sidewalks. It's random. And it's all mine.

In the first dream I had which involved this wonderful place, I met a girl that I liked and she felt the same way about me. I showed her around this place, and after it got dark, we went to the convenience store near where I live here in Saugus, which also has a pizza takeout joint, and that's about all you'll find on this side of the street. The girl, whose name I didn't know, started becoming more and more overbearing. Nothing she suggested for the future, just her nature right there, demanding that we do this and that, and I couldn't take it. I had to get away from her. I sped up the hill to what I thought was my neighborhood, but it wasn't. That speed was incredible, faster than anyone could dash up that hill, with houses whooshing by me. I stood there after reaching the wrong neighborhood, looking at a house under construction right in front of me, trying to figure out what to do. Was she looking for me? Could I dash to the next entrance to other developments, hoping to find my neighborhood, without her finding me?

I woke up right when the phone rang. It was Meridith calling Mom to let her know that she and Dad arrived at work. That means it was 7:25. I had slept a little over five hours, but was still too tired to get up. I wanted to so I could force my body to adjust more, but I gave in, and fell asleep again.

This time, I was inside a casino with various sun designs. Sculptures, carpeting, paintings hanging on walls, suns painted right on walls. I encountered Al Pacino as Willy Bank from Ocean's Thirteen. Pacino wasn't playing the guy again, he was the guy. He owned this casino. But he was much more benevolent than he was in the movie, though he had the look of "Don't mess this up," and so did some of his associates. He was trying to come up with a name for this new casino, and I thought of "Million Suns Casino," (Because of all the sun design), or "Aztec Casino," because I think the Aztecs worshipped the sun.

Willy didn't think much of either name and continued walking around with his associates. Unlike the Chinese-themed casino he was so keen on in the movie, he seemed relaxed with this one, a project to be enjoyed and not to be used to lord over the other owners on the Las Vegas Strip. It looked like semi-retirement for him.

And then I woke up again, at 11:24. Better than 12:30, and I'll keep rolling it back. Tomorrow morning, I may have to force myself up whenever I wake up just to get myself back to where I want to be, but this was a really good sleep, the nicest I've had in months, even with the overbearing girl. I would like to go back to my favorite place, definitely without that girl. But this time, I'd like to actually go inside some of those shops. I don't want to try lucid dreaming, since I do enough work during the day, and would rather hand myself over to my subconscious so I can get to sleep. But I hope my subconscious is aware of my desire for deeper exploration and brings me there again someday.

I Feel Better

Yesterday was the last of it. I got up after 12:30, in time for breakfast to be lunch and to see if the mail came with more books for me. I found myself with the shortest hours I ever encountered. Not any change in the season or rotation in the earth causing it, but just the day moving faster and faster, and me doing very little. Six hours later, it was already dark. I couldn't call any of the agencies I need to in order to see if I can get any of the interviews I need by saying that I only need 10-15 minutes, which will be fine if I can get these particular people, including, hopefully, a producer of two of the Airport movies and the director of Airport '77. Also no response from the agency that handles actor David Warner, who played flight engineer Peter O'Neill in '79. But by the time I thought to make those calls, it was already past 4 p.m. Not that I called, but I know people are getting ready to go home by then. And I had only been up for four hours! This was ridiculous!

A schedule like this also didn't leave me much time to read. All my time was focused on this project, and when could I possibly open up a book either related to this project or one that I'm reading on the side? The one on the side didn't matter so much since it was Lost and Fondue by Avery Aames, the second of her Cheese Shop Mystery novels. The problems with this novel which have made me not want to read the next one, is that her characters are crushed together this time at a fundraiser to the extent that not only is it hard to extract them (It's not hard to tell who is who, but there's not enough room to know them again like it was in The Long Quiche Goodbye), but the mystery felt overdone. All this urgency for this? Yes, it was bad, but even though this appeared to be a functioning Ohio town, everything seemed to stop at the sight of murder. Again. To me, Aames doesn't have the ability to keep a town running even as the investigation goes on. It's like the old sitcom trope of wondering if some of the people you're watching have jobs, and how they're able to afford what's in their apartments. It's distracting.

So, with having done nothing to contribute to the progress of my book, I decided that getting up after noon wasn't worth it anymore. I needed more time, even if it's just to read a book not connected to my work. I went to bed a little after 2 a.m. instead of 3:30, and woke up a few minutes before 7. Nearly five hours, and I couldn't get back to sleep after Dad and Meridith left for work. Sleep wasn't going to come back just because I was trying to will it back, and it was clear that my body was adjusting to this new schedule, so I eventually got out of bed, at 8:24.

Mom was surprised. She thought I had a phone interview to do. I told her that I went to bed earlier, and then had breakfast. Breakfast at breakfast time. That was another part of the problem, eating for the first time a little after 12:30, and then having lunch around 2:20 or so. I needed to spread out that time, and spread out my day.

I couldn't get through the rest of Lost and Fondue. I stopped at page 151, with 141 pages to go, completely frustrated with the lack of further development of these characters. The well-researched cheese knowledge wasn't enough to keep me stuck to this novel. Saveur magazine occasionally has articles about cheese, and they're a lot easier to get through.

I put that in the Goodwill box, went to my room and picked up I Thought You Were Dead by Pete Nelson, which I had been eyeing all the time that I was reading Lost and Fondue. Three days. If I'm not entirely wrapped up in my work, three days is way too long for me to read a book. I wanted to read I Thought You Were Dead because it's about a writer dealing with so much in life, such as his father's stroke, with his dog Stella to keep him as steady as he can be even with hanging out at Bay State Bar often. The premise here is that Paul and Stella can actually speak to each other. Yes, Stella actually speaks. The author doesn't make such a big show of it. It happens. They're that connected, and that's what made me want to read it, because I'm that connected to my dogs, like they are to me. They don't speak like Stella, but I know them as if they could.

This is one reason I'm going to continue going to bed earlier: That book was 288 pages. I read it all today. I liked it that much, and it also felt so good to be reading like this, just sitting there, becoming absorbed in this story. I've missed that, and yet I seem to keep letting it slip away. It's part of being a writer, it's what I have to keep doing, and it's what I should keep doing. So there's a book to write! It can only get better if I keep reading while I write it. It's strange that I have to remind myself of this, but I think I also need to stop reading a book if it's not working for me. I shouldn't have stayed with Lost and Fondue that long. What I liked so much about the first novel in the series was so obviously gone from this second installment and that should have been enough to make me leave it before the first witness was interviewed. There's some writers who say that you should read everything, even junk, so you know what not to do. I don't agree with that, finite lifespan notwithstanding. Because if you read what you like, then you become inspired by it enough to study and take in what the writer has done, and filter it through your own work. That's how it's always worked for me. I don't want to suffer through a bad book just to see what not to do. I think that's already apparent in the first 20 pages I've crawled through in any bad book.

I felt tired while sitting on the couch in the late morning, but I shook it off with a snack and I was awake again. I was good for the rest of the day. And it felt like an actual day today with a lot of hours to do what I wanted to do and what I needed to do. In the summer 2004 issue of The Paris Review, Haruki Murakami said that he goes to bed at 9 p.m., getting up at 4 a.m. to write for five or six hours. I can't do as he does, and I certainly can't go to bed at that time. It's not how I work. But he has a routine about his day and I need to click into that again. I can't feel listless like I did yesterday. I need more of today.

And so I shall continue pursuing that, and within a few days, I'll have it down. My body and mind will be better for it. I felt it already today.

Ethereal Fascination at the Largest Flea Market in the United States

I just started reading Killer Stuff and Tons of Money by Maureen Stanton, which I've had in my stacks since it came out last June. Stanton examines the antiques trade through a dealer named Curt Avery (Names have been changed), and it's utterly fascinating.

Right now, she's at Brimfield, "the country's largest outdoor flea market and antiques show." She's helped Avery set up his space and people are walking through, looking for certain items, such as a one-legged man who, for thirty years at Brimfield, has asked for cast iron cookware. But I love this image the most in this chapter:

"A girl in her twenties breathlessly asks, "Musical instruments?" as she moves quickly from table to table. I hear her voice like a lyric, "Sir, do you have any musical instruments?" A polite, almost plaintive call that fades as she hurries along the rows."

Beautiful.

Outside, In My Head

Rolling the garbage and recycling bins back to the garage yesterday, after the recycling truck lumbered through the neighborhood, there was a slight wind, and I looked around, wondering if Southern California had been better before all this had been built, these houses, these streets, these street lights. Was there more of a sense of adventure on blank hillsides? It felt like the wind was a lament, missing that past, if there was such a past (and some history I've seen of the area suggests that), and mourning a future that can never be. A year after we moved to Southern California, when we were moving from Valencia to Saugus, Dad and I made multiple trips from our old apartment to our new house and back, hauling in boxes that didn't need to be packed in the moving truck. At the intersection before turning right to go up that hill and then back down to Copper Hill (or whatever the name is, since I've only paid attention to such things when I need to take the bus somewhere), I looked to the left and those mountainsides were completely empty. No lights. Then gradually, one housing development popped up, and then three, and then what looked like 40. It's prevalent throughout the region. Build and build some more and build again until you're absolutely sure you can't put another apartment complex in the parking lot of a 7-11. You'll find the past in books, but not in front of you. The museums are tucked away, hidden from view, where they belong.

I didn't begin to think about Las Vegas or Henderson after mulling over all that. In my mind, I went to Baker, to the true beginning of the desert in Southern California, to the Grewal Travel Center, with the gas station out front, the convenience store on one side on the inside, and the small food court on the other side. I thought about that night on the way to Henderson when we found that the food court was closed. Fortunately, we had eaten at Wienerschnitzel in Santa Clarita, and it's lucky we didn't wait until we got to Baker. I'd never seen the place like this, with the counter areas dark, the lighted signs and menu boards turned off. I stared longer than anyone probably should stare at A&W, TCBY, Pizza Hut and Subway signs. Actor/playwright/short story writer Sam Shepard, one of my heroes, has lived in the desert and has it so deeply ingrained in his soul that I thought about him as I looked around, and also thought about the distance outside this food court/convenience store. Who could live in Baker? Who could find enough in the businesses and the landscape to want to live here? This could be where one settles if there's nowhere else to go, but then it has to be a pretty desperate situation.

This is all that Baker is. The 2010 census pegged the population at 735. Those people may have their reasons, and I'd sure like to know what they are. But I never will because I don't think I could stay for that long. I need a library, I need things that I love surrounding me. I love desert landscapes, but give me something more to them. I'm not talking about the overgrowth that Southern California has experienced over the years. A desert town is fine with me if there's a connection there, reasons that a population has to keep its town vibrant. That may not be fair to Baker, because maybe it does have those things that I don't see since I don't hang around long enough. But middle of the evening at 9 p.m., getting out of the car and feeling that fierce chill, like opening a freezer door in the frozen food section at a supermarket and stepping inside, how could anything want to thrive there?

But I still feel something. I don't have the desert experience that Shepard has, that compelled him to also write three masterful short story collections that I go back and forth on buying for my permanent collection, but I want to try it. I want to write a play, and I want to set it in the Grewal Travel Center. I have one character sketched out, and three or four more I don't know well enough yet. You would think that it would be useful to take photos inside the Center, but I haven't for three reasons: One, when I looked around, I wasn't thinking in terms of a play, until I was back in our rented Kia Soul, writing furiously in my composition book. We had to get to Henderson, so I couldn't go back inside to take photos.

Second, Dad's reconsidering his strategies in looking for a job in Las Vegas and Henderson, which may include going back there for a few days while he and Meridith are off for spring break, so he can actually meet people, have them see him face-to-face, instead of seeing about jobs from a distance, which is the way it has to be for now since he's working here. I may get my chance to take photos.

And third, I have the full layout of the Grewal Travel Center in my head. I know where both claw machines are, I know where chips and candy are on the convenience store side, I know that there are two regular restroom stalls in the men's restroom and one handicap stall, and I know that on the food court side, A&W comes first on the far left, TCBY in the middle, Pizza Hut near the far right, and the restrooms are near Pizza Hut and to the left of Subway. I also know that there are those coin-operated machines with stickers and temporary tattoos and other cheap doodads, one next to the food court entrance in the back, facing A&W, and another directly across from A&W. I've not found any stickers I want from either of those, but I like seeing what there is every time.

When I began thinking about writing plays in 2008, I had so many fanciful ideas, and I filled up a folder on this computer with every idea I could think of in 37 Microsoft Word files, believing that one of them had to lead me to fame. They would be filled with such dramatic ideas, and monologues that had the power to keep audiences in rapt attention. I would be lauded for my artistic choices and wordplay that goes down so easy, yet gives audiences a lot to think about.

I was full of shit.

One thing I completely ignored back then was timing. No skilled actor could have memorized the monologues I wrote without fainting from exhaustion. An actor has to breathe and so does the audience, yet the audience still has to be engaged enough to want to know what happens next. There are fellow human beings performing in front of them, completely inhabiting their characters, and the audience needs to relate to them by some glance, some line that rings true, some action that might make them look inward, see themselves in any of the characters on stage. And if a character is pure evil or has bad intentions, there still has to be a glint of humanity there. They can't just be faceless like so many bad guys in an action movie. It works for an action movie. It doesn't work for a play.

After What If They Lived? was published, I took a break from my aspirations of playwriting fame to figure out what book I wanted to write next. With that figured out now, I calmly went back into that "Plays" folder and looked at what I had hurriedly written many times over. I couldn't be doing this because I wanted fame in some artform. It's nice, and so is money, of which I still hope to make a decent amount one day (decent, not obscene), but I have to want to write a play because it defines me, it helps me grow as a writer, and it makes the world seem new to me every day, with something different to explore.

Another idea I've had has been done once or twice before, but not how I've thought of it. I researched it and even bought one of the plays that takes place in the same setting as mine (Three one-act plays, actually, making up an evening of theater) to see how it was done. I wanted my play to be two one-acts, with two different sets of characters: A teenaged boy and girl, and a man and a woman. I wrestled with the timeline and originally decided that they'd be an hour and a half to two hours apart, which wouldn't seem to matter in a play, but where these characters are, it does, since one pair meets at 11 p.m., and another at 1:30 a.m., and the event they're at only happens once a year, and just once for the teenagers.

The major problem I had was my initial insistence that these characters be connected somehow, that the audience finds out through one pair that both pairs are related. I wanted to keep the conversation between one pair mysterious enough that when the other pair talks, the audience puts it together. I don't think there would be gasps throughout the theater. Just murmurs of understanding.

But at what expense to the characters? Would I be spending so much time trying to set up the slight puzzle that I ignore the traits to be established in each character to make the audience want to know more? Would the characters just be puppets to my intentions? That can't happen. If the audience doesn't connect with the characters, that's it. You close after one performance, if you're lucky.

Last week, I figured out what to do. I don't want to spend time creating this puzzle for the audience to gradually figure out. I want to spend time with my characters, getting to know who they are, what they believe, what they want, what they still hope for even as regrets pile up. So now there's only one pair. I won't say which pair because I'm still working this out. But I do know that the first act is set at one of my most favorite places in the world, and the second act is at a place that I don't have quite the huge love for that I do for that first place, but which I admire just the same because without it, that place I hugely love would not exist. Obviously, there won't be faithful sets of either one because that would be insanely expensive, but it will be described enough in the dialogue, and have a few props to represent it, that the audience will get a sense of where they are.

Even without characters fully created, I already have the title of this play. I worry about whether the first part of it sounds sarcastic, but I can only answer that once I start writing this play. I know that it works, though. It covers both acts, the crux of the plot, and even suggests hope where there wouldn't seem to be any in light of years that have passed and disappointments that have been experienced.

In my mind, as I watch the trees rustle from the wind, I'm at both settings for this play, and I'm also thinking about what I can look forward to: Months spent reading two-character plays. I love the thought of it, particularly because I bought a few when I had thought up this play in its previous form. I hadn't opened them then, just stored them away, but I had a good excuse since I was co-writing What If They Lived? at the time. Even while working on my second book, I want to start on this, and try simultaneous writing projects. I'd like to be surrounded by words all the time, and not just by reading.

So maybe Southern California preferring to ignore its past and make a future full of endless housing developments isn't so bad. Until I'm gone from here, it lets me dream widely just by spending a bit of time outside.

I Feel Like I Can Have the Entire Universe

The day began late, a little before 1 p.m. (I work further into the early morning hours than I should, so I end up going to bed by 3:30. I have to bring myself back to a more reasonable time soon), with an important e-mail in my inbox: "How about 4 pm today?"

I've been thinking about this conversation, ever since it was suggested. It was a conversation that could either be very beneficial for my book, or could make me move on to my next book because without what this person has, I don't have a great deal to go on for my book.

Chores for those three hours beforehand: Gathering the garbages from around the house, bathrooms too, taking that and the kitchen garbage out to the bin in the garage, putting the latest recyclables into that bin; sweeping the patio and collecting the dead pine needles and putting that bag into the garbage bin, rolling the bins to the curb for pickup tomorrow, and washing the dogs' tray, water dish, and food dishes.

During all this, I'm thinking about what's to come. I need to establish that if this is to go forth, I want to be sure that I'll get my share. But do I express that a few minutes into the conversation or see where this goes before I chime in about that? I'm protective of this idea. It took me months after What If They Lived? to figure out what I wanted to write next. And the one idea I came up with before this one didn't pan out because I let the books I purchased for it sit around for weeks. Clearly I wasn't as interested in that idea as I thought I was. This is the one that makes me get out of bed every morning and get to work. Would I still have that feeling after this conversation?

4 p.m. comes and I dial the number. Time to see what can be worked out. I hope for the best, but I still need to be cautious. I've been working on this for a few months and I'd like to see it through.

You know the Star Gate sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey? Imagine that for two-and-a-half hours. That's what this conversation felt like to me. I held on to what I want for my book and heard ideas that I hadn't even considered, ideas that could strengthen what I had already thought was pretty strong by the Airport series alone. What I learned lets me go deeper into memories that didn't mean as much before I talked to this person. I merely watched some of the TV movies that were named. It was part of being an aviation enthusiast in my teens. But to give them more attention? To show how Airport didn't just give birth to the disaster movie as we know it, but also what else it caused in the same style? That could really work!

I have to be this vague right now. I'm so excited about these new possibilities that I had to write something, but there's a lot of work ahead, a lot to arrange, a lot to plan, and an outline to hammer out. If any writer tells you that writing is easy, they're lying. But it is exhilarating when you're writing what makes you glow with pure happiness, and it makes the work a little less difficult. It's still a challenge, but it can be done!

This conversation made me feel that I can have the entire universe, and that I will write the other books I want to write. It'll still be quite a while before I can begin to write one of the chapters for this book, but as long as the research is there, it'll work. This is why I exist, and it's time to show it!

Death's a Bitch, But We've Got to Keep Living

George Furth, the playwright most well known for Company, who co-starred as art critic Gerald Lucas in Airport '77, died in August 2008 at 75 years old. No family.

Producer Ross Hunter, who found Airport to be the most satisfying experience of his career, had a life partner in set decorator/producer Jacques Mapes, a relationship that lasted 40 years. Mapes was an associate producer on Airport. Hunter died in 1996, Mapes in 2002. No family from either of them, and there couldn't have been anyway, not at that time. The DeGolyer Library at Southern Methodist University in Dallas has the Ronald Davis Oral History Collection, hundreds of interviews Professor Davis conducted with actors, directors, screenwriters, playwrights and others, of which Hunter was one and talks about Airport. The head of public services at that library is looking into it for me, and it's the only way I'll know directly about Hunter's involvement. Anything else I can find out about Hunter and Airport has to come from those still alive who were involved in the production, or biographies of those long gone, or their families, if they have any.

I've no complaints because this is the biggest puzzle I've ever had to put together, and I love it. I love figuring out the chronology of the making of each movie, and which insights will fit where.

But it's sobering. I called the phone number of Michael D. Moore, the second unit director on Airport '77. I spoke to a very old man who I couldn't understand very well. Age is catching up rapidly. Here's a man who was the second unit director on Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and Ghostbusters II, among such a long, long list of credits, and who knows how much longer he'll be here? I could only gather that he can't do an interview with me. He didn't sound well, and I wasn't going to press for another time. He's entitled to whatever dignity remains.

I know it happens to all of us. One day, we simply won't be here anymore. When I found out that George Furth left behind no family, it felt like I was looking into a gaping black hole that absolutely could not be illuminated. Nothing could be made clear. This was it. What Furth was is what he left behind in his plays and in his acting career. There's nothing else but that to glean from him.

But when I got off the phone after talking to Moore and trying to understand what he was saying, I was shaken. How much longer will he be here? It doesn't sound very long. What haunts me more is that the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress chooses 25 films each year to be preserved forever, yet there's nothing like that for people like Moore. The films will remain, and Raiders of the Lost Ark is in that registry, but what about Moore? Couldn't someone or some ambitious group, for the sake of history, have interviewed him about his career, learn about his part in the films he contributed to? Raiders was Spielberg and George Lucas, and also screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan, and the cast, and director of photography Douglas Slocombe, and the editors and the casting people and the special effects artists and the set designers and the carpenters and so many others.

This is where it gets into murky territory, because different films are important to different people. But I mean Hollywood entirely. There should be more of an effort made not only to preserve the movies themselves, but also the history behind those movies and other movies too. There are many great historians making exactly that kind of effort, but thinking about people like Moore, it feels like it's not enough.

The Academy of TV Arts and Sciences seems to be doing this for their industry through the Archive of American Television. And maybe there is a concerted effort brewing to do the same for the movie industry that I don't know about.

I don't know. Maybe I'm overreacting. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has the Margaret Herrick Library after all, without which I would not have been able to make great progress from the start on research for Mayday! Mayday!: The Making of the Airport Movies. But on the Archive of American Television website, I'm looking at a list of professions that include designers, directors, sound professionals, stylists, on-set/location professionals, film and video post-production professionals, and many others. Movie history should be as accessible as this, especially as technology becomes more advanced. But then, those resources are reserved strictly for researchers such as myself. Not the public at large. There's also audio commentaries, but those are selective, depending on how a studio feels about a certain movie, how likely a hit it will be, and other factors.

Ironically, I can't do what I'm calling for. None of the books I want to write after this one are about movies. I was toying with the idea of a biography about a charismatic actor who's not one of my favorites, but who I admire, but I don't think I want to pursue that right after this book.

I know that most people aren't as interested as I am in this history. They go to the movies, they have favorite movies, but they don't dig into them like I do. They don't have an obsession with a movie series they've watched since they were 11 that's led them to write a book about the making of those movies.

I'll do my part, though. I'll dig through the history I can find of the Airport movies through books I've read and still have to read, interviews I've conducted and still have to do (I got a few e-mails today from people who worked on Airport and people who worked on Airport '77 who agreed to interviews), files I've looked through and still have to look through, and newspaper articles I've read and still have to read, and work my hardest to make sure these stories are known. Those who worked on these movies, who are long gone, should live on. This is my attempt at that, besides all the other reasons I've previously mentioned for writing this book.