Wednesday, May 14, 2008

The Hollywood Years

I love P.G Wodehouse. I love all the Jeeves and Wooster stuff. I love his towering metaphors and similies. I love his easy style.
Most of all I like his rabid social comment disguised as comedy. Some of my favourite stories are from his time as a screenwriter in Hollywood. If you want to know what's it's like to be a writer then read 'The Old Reliable' or 'Laughing Gas' because although they were written decades ago, not much has changed.

His description of the nodder in a studio meeting. Two steps below the yes man. The nodder has to wait for the yes man and the assistant yes man to say yes. Then he can nod. Classic. A producer with the brevet rank of brother in law? Pure Wodehouse.
Read him. You'll like him.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Must look up those stories.

Was the nodder the grandfather of the yuppie? All those Eighties guys who waited all through the big meeting just to agree with the boss, "Yup!"?

With a sharp nod on the "yup," of course.

Jaded and Cynical said...

You mentioned spending some time in LA before, ED.

Any more war stories?

Danny-K said...

J&Cynical, not sure if you are referring to the posts on LA by ED, or that he mentioned those posts in subsequent posts. Does that make sense?

Anyway, check-out Jan and Feb 2007 posts. There's three I think, (yeah three, I just checked and all have 'LA Stories' in the header), I remember the first because for some reason I posted that I found the fact that ED was room sharing with a Russian Army deserter hilarious. (You don't know what rock-bottom is until you room share with a Russian army deserter maybe?)

Is my memory good or what?

Robowolves said...

Hi nice reeading your post