Honolulu Lite
There's something about Maui that can bring a tear to the eye, and I'm not talking about burning sugar cane, although that'll do it, too. Teary return to Maui
The beauty of the sun setting behind Kahoolawe, the warmth of the local residents, learning you're being charged a $21 "portage fee" for a bellhop to transport a single suitcase to your hotel room and back ... all are calculated to choke you up.
But I was determined not to fall prey to such emotions on a trip to the Gold Coast of Wailea last weekend for the Maui Writers Conference. I was just going to have fun, something I had not been able to do last year.
Then I was a finalist in the conference's national screenplay competition. The awards for book and screenplay winners are given out on the last day of the conference, ratcheting up anxiety levels to an exhausting degree. One of the book winners last year nearly had a nervous breakdown and had to be carried off the stage. When they announced I had won the screenplay competition, I went the other way: grinning like an idiot and bouncing off the walls like a big old piece of haole Flubber.
This year I was just a big old piece of history, not even invited to the hospitality suites, which was fine. I was there mainly to enjoy myself, have a few cocktails, hang out with the family, have a few more cocktails, snorkel, cocktails, golf, cocktails, hike, cocktails, parasail, cocktails ... which might explain why I wasn't invited to the hospitality suites: They hate sportsmen.
I tried to get my wife and daughter to do the sunrise Haleakala bike ride, but they would not budge off the property. Which is just as well. When they later learned that someone had been killed biking down the volcano highway on the very day they would have gone, they began to regard me with some suspicion.
Most of the hundreds of conference attendees were wannabe book authors or screenplay writers trying to sell an idea to one of the celebrity agents, publishers and producers. To do this, they paid $40 for a 10-minute professional consultation where they made their "pitch."
Pitching is an art. In fact, there were two sessions where Hollywood producers explained how to do it. Basically, you take your long, complicated movie plot and break it down into a few sentences. A pitch for "Groundhog Day" would go like: "A detestable TV weatherman is forced to relive the same day over and over until he gets it right."
Hollywood types like short pitches so they can reject them quicker. The best pitch I heard all weekend was from the cabbie who took us to the airport. If he ever got a producer as a passenger, his pitch was going to be: "A cab driver kills a movie producer after he rejects the taxi driver's pitch for a screenplay." Perfect.
With no pressure to pitch or having to worry about awards, it was a great, unemotional weekend. At least until the end. My wife had bought a pair of sunglasses in a hotel store. When I went to pay our bill, I noticed that the sunglasses cost $300. It doesn't take much to make a grown man cry.
Alo-Ha! Friday compiles odd bits of news from Hawaii
and the world to get your weekend off to an entertaining start.
Charles Memminger also writes Honolulu Lite Mondays,
Wednesdays and Sundays. Send ideas to him at the
Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., Suite 7-210,
Honolulu 96813, phone 235-6490 or e-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com.
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