I recently finished watching Season 3 of Mad Men (I know, I know, I’m was behind the times, but I’ve been watching DVD and am now all caught up).

As everyone who follows the show knows, the next to last episode of of that season deals with the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Having not been alive during that time, I was struck by the depiction of everyone’s response–glued to the TV, crying, a personal sense of devastation–and how the only event in my lifetime that ever generated a similar response was the 9/11 attacks (with Hurricane Katrina the only other event even in the ballpark).

Last summer, when Los Angeles water mains were “mysteriously” bursting almost every other day, my wife and I discussed the news and came to the conclusion that the water conservancy programs had to be at least somewhat, if not largely, to blame. It was immediately obvious to us that the extreme variations in pressure and temperature resulting from alternating restricted and intensified use were intense stresses that old pipes simply couldn’t handle.

Flash forward nearly one year and the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power has solved the riddle of the bursting water mains. Their answer?

Principal photography on Random Encounters wrapped Monday, May 10th. Besides writing the screenplay, I played the role of Nate.

Check out the website at RandomEncountersMovie.com

Imagination Pictures, which optioned my indie romantic-comedy screenplay Random Encounters at the beginning of the year, entered production on the feature film on Tuesday, April 20, 2010. You can learn more about the film here:

The Oscars are behind us, the awards season is for all intents and purposes over, and Hollywood can once again return to the business of making movies. Like all in the biz, I watched last night’s telecast intently; overall, I found it a relatively entertaining ceremony.

One of my favorite segments of the annual Academy Awards broadcast is the “In Memoriam” recognition of those notable members of the Hollywood community who passed away over the previous year. Last night was no exception, but what really stood out was the separate special tribute to director John Hughes. His sudden death was far more upsetting, far more meaningful to me than Michael Jackson’s was or ever could be. It still is stunning, all these months later.

Watching the Hughes tribute, I was left with the question: has any other director ever been the voice of a generation in the same manner and to the same extent that John Hughes was to the children of the 1980s?

I would venture to say not.

Although we frequently speak of musicians being the voice of a generation, that terminology is seldom directed to filmmakers in the same manner. Yet if you were in high school when Hughes’s films were released, his movies spoke to the reality of your circumstances in a way that no others did. If you were a few years younger, those same John Hughes movies were the blueprint of your high school years was to come.