movies that will never get made. 3. Through the Screenwriter’s Guild, I’ve earned
a pension that will pay me nearly $3,000 a month when I retire from writing
screenplays. 4. If my writing career goes to shit, I can certainly live well on my
reservation for $3,000 a month. 5. Why does an Indian work in Hollywood? Who
has done Indians more harm than white filmmakers? 6. For instance: During the
making of a Western, the Italian director looked at a group of Indians, pointed at
one paler Sioux, and said, “Get him out of here. He’s not Indian enough.” 7. For
instance: Dances With Wolves. 8. I rarely write screenplays about Indians. I have
written screenplays about superheroes, smoke jumpers, pediatric surgeons, all-girl
football teams, and gay soldiers. 9. I often dream of writing a B-movie about an
Indian vigilante. 10. No, not a vigilante. That would be too logical. Who needs
more logical violence? Who needs yet another just war? 11. Though I haven’t
written a word of my B-movie screenplay, I have designed the poster: An Indian
man, impossibly strong and impossibly handsome, glares at us, his audience. He’s
bare-chested and holds a sledgehammer in one hand and a pistol in the other.
The name of the movie: Johnny Fire. The tagline: “He’s just pissed.” 12. No
logic. It will be the simple story of an Indian man who wakes one morning
and decides to destroy everything in his life. 13. “Rage, rage, against the
dying of the light.” 14. When I was seven, during a New Year’s Eve party at
my house, I watched two Indian men fistfight on our front lawn. Then one of
the Indians pulled a pistol and shot the other Indian in the stomach. As my
mother rushed me back inside the house, I heard the wounded man ask, “Why
does it hurt so much?”
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