Mad Atoms

I go to my dentist the other day and while he’s at work inside my face with a metal scraper and sharp silver hook, he asks me a strange question. Instead of, “Does it hurt when I stab you in the exposed nerve with this needle?” he goes for something slightly less obvious. “So, what did you think of that Spielberg deal?” It’s the opening gambit in a long, one-sided conversation about the movie business, agents, managers and other stuff I don’t know much about that I can already see is just a preamble for a request. He’s sawing away at my molars later when he gets to the big question – whether I’ll read his script. “So, do you do a lot of that?” he asks. “Reading screenplays?”

I do, I try to tell him, but he has the unnerving habit of asking questions while he has three fingers and what feels like a javelin in my mouth, so the answer comes out as, “ahn ha nyah nuh.” There are a lot of stereotypes about Hollywood I wish weren’t true, but his line of questions pertains to one of the biggest – that everybody, from the garbage man to the dude who fills your tits with silicone, has a screenplay they are sure could be a great film. And here’s the painful thing: They all have about an equal shot as you of getting it made. None.

I’m not sure what to say to the dentist because, truthfully, though I go to school for this stuff I apparently blow at it.

At an internship recently, I read a pilot for a detective show I decided was awful. Rancid. Insulting. “Rubbish,” read my summary. “If you spend 30 minutes rubbing your eyes withsandpaper, you’re better off than if you’d watched this show.” A show, I found out, had already been picked up by HBO and had a star attached.

But my dentist doesn’t know this, so while he merrily slices into my gums with a fishhook he announces that, brace yourself for it – he’s a bit of a writer himself. “It’s about this dentist…”