I’m trying something a little different this year. I’m starting my year off with a blog post that I’ll occasionally add to as the year goes on. My Playwright’s Journal 2026 is going to be a place where I’ll muse about various things such as plays and movies and writing and any other subject I want to talk about. Like butter tarts or the meaning of life. It might have lots of entries or only a few. Time will tell.
Rich Little – Imposter Syndrome – March 5, 2026
Do people even know who Rich Little is anymore?
Well a few do.
Those that find my joke funny do.
But those who don’t would probably say, “Who’s Rich Little?”
Well, Rich Little could have been one of the stars of Orson Welles last movie – The Other Side of the Wind. Welles began production on The Other Side of the Wind in 1970 but the film was left unfinished after Welles died in 1985.
Rich Little left the production and a substantial portion of the film had to be reshot and his part was recast using Peter Bogdanovich. Ironically the part was originally based on Bogdanovich so having him in the film makes a lot more sense. After decades of legal and financial problems getting the film finished, Bogdanovich actually helped complete the film in 2018 and it’s available to watch on Netflix. Bogdanovich is probably best known as the writer and director of The Last Picture Show and was considered a bit of a Welles protégé and a close personal friend of the director.
The fabulous John Huston, who was a friend of Welles, and an iconic Hollywood director best known for adapting and directing the Maltese Falcon, starring Humphrey Bogart, plays an old Hollywood director by the name of Jake Hannaford, and we learn about him and his life in one alcohol fueled night of birthday celebrations.
It’s a film within a film.
Worth checking out if you like Welles, or Huston, or Bogdanovich.
Oh, and Rich Little is an impressionist and voice actor. He was a household name at one time. But his fame has faded. And the people he imitated are mostly forgotten. But you can still catch him in Vegas.
When you look back at all the iconic actors that Little used to imitate they all had really distinct voices and mannerisms. Humphrey Bogart, Jack Benny, George Burns, W.C. Field, Peter Lorre.
Each of these actors was unique and memorable.
We’ve traded the unique for the uniform.
We are living in the age of the Veneer. So many of today’s actors look like they came out of the same mold with a perfect nose and blindingly white teeth, a perfect jaw line, and a six pack.
They feel unrelatable to me.
They certainly don’t feel human.
They have so little body fat their face looks skeletal and can’t convey any emotion beyond a pearly white smile. Most of their acting they try to do with their eyes because their face is frozen in place. Botox and plastic surgery and extreme weight loss are the enemies of microexpressions.
I think that’s the Hollywood machine imposing its standards of beauty and masculinity.
So, I understand. Hollywood treats these actors as a product. Something to be packaged and sold. It’s one side of the business.
It just feels weird to me.
On the other hand, there are still a lot of actors who feel human. Paul Giamatti, Olivia Colman, Jesse Plemons, Morgan Freeman, Anthony Hopkins, Maggie Smith, Frances McDormand, and Jessie Buckley. To name a few.
I very much admire people who embrace their wrinkles. It seems to me that such people offer a positive role model to the rest of the world. We all grow old. We should embrace it.
Playwright’s Journal – Day 64 of 365
Train Dreams – February 22, 2026
The more I watch Train Dreams the more I like it. It’s a beautiful film. Simple. And honest.
Like the movie Perfect Days, it’s a simple film about an average man that provides us with a deep exploration of life.
It’s a quest.
A decades long journey that tries to make sense of life.
It’s shot simply. The music is gentle. The story is told with a sense of realism that gives it more weight.
Here is a simple man. Here is this man’s life.
I don’t want to say much because I don’t want to give away any spoilers as I think there are many profound moments in this film – many of them passing by without us realizing the connection between that moment and the sense of connection we feel between the story of Robert Grainier and our own life.
And maybe that’s it. The reason I can watch this film over and over is because as we experience Robert Grainer’s life it is much as we experience our own life and place in the world and our attempts to make sense of what it all means.
The movie is based on the book of the same name by Denis Johnson. It’s a novella. Originally published in 2011. Johnson died in 2017 at the age of 67 from cancer. That’s a shame because of course that means he didn’t live long enough to see this beautiful film based on his original work.
I have the novel on hold at the library. Both the physical book and the audio book. I want to listen to the audio book because the film narrator is the same person that did the audio book – Will Patton – and his voice – is so perfect and so gentle and filled with such wisdom.
Funny enough, I looked up Will Patton and discovered he is in the Apple TV science fiction series SILO. How do I know…I recognized his voice – after three episodes and looked it up on Google. Never noticed this guy before and then there he is the narrator of this wonderful film and one of the main actors in season one of SILO. My son Graham and I started watching SILO a few weeks ago and we’re halfway through season one and really enjoying it. I love Rebecca Ferguson. She’s terrific.
Anyway, I would highly recommend Train Dreams if you enjoy movies like Perfect Days or Past Lives or Tender Mercies. These are all gentle films that explore life’s mystery.
***
Train Dreams stars Joel Edgerton as Rober Grainer, Felicity Jones as Gladys Grainer, William H. Macy as Arn Peeples, and Nathaniel Arcand as Ignatius Jack. Directed by Clint Bentley and adapted for the screen by Clint Bentley, Greg Kwedar, and Denis Johnson with cinematography by Adolpho Veloso and music composed by Bryce Dessner.
***
I had thought of making this my last update for a few months, but that turned out to be a momentary feeling of disengagement. Although, I do find myself often feeling disengaged with the world these days. Do you ever feel like that? Which I suppose just shows you how life can take us in strange directions.
There are a couple plays coming up I’m looking forward to seeing including The Verdict at Vertigo Theatre. I love the film version starring Paul Newman and I recently managed to source a copy of the original novel by Barry Reed and gave that a read. It’s definately a product of it’s time but I’m very curious to see how the story is adapted for the stage. That will demand a blog post. I’ll definately have some thoughts about the play and the novel and the movie and the production.
Speaking of blog posts, I’m not sure how many more blog posts I’m going to write. I’m not sure how many more years I’m going to keep this website. Last summer I renewed the hosting package for another three years but it left me thinking about the day I won’t renew. The day this webiste disappears and everything on it. It’s almost like death. It was here and now it’s gone. Traces of it remain but the original is no more.
In additon to seeing some theatre, I’m hoping to get back to doing some writing. I have been distracted. Worried. Unable to focus. But I’ve decided maybe I still need a bit of writing time every day in order to maintain some level of engagement with the world. Even if it’s my inner world.
A year or two ago I began to narrow down what I wanted to write because I know I don’t have enough time to write everything I’ve started or even not started and want to write. Of course one never knows – instead of finishing the story I’m currently working on I could be seized by a new idea for a story that demands my attention – demands to be finished – demands that I drop everything I’m working on and concentrate on it.
Perhaps our stories even have personalities – I’ve been thinking.
Some are easy to get along with and a joy to work on and others are a pain in the ass and difficult to deal with.
Right now I have four writing projects that I’d like to finish before I die. Last year it was five. Last year one of those five was a new story that came to me and demanded my time and attention. I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever written and this year I’m introducing that story to the world and – I guess – we’ll see what happens. Of course, if I finish all four of my priority projects and I’m still here, there are a great many more unfinished and unstarted stories left to work on.
As far as reading goes I’ve got Train Dreams on hold at the library and I’m looking forward to reading it. In the meantime, I’m currently reading The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit by Sloan Wilson and I’m about to start A Feast for Crows by George R.R. Martin.
Plus, I just figured out that: This is the bad place. And I’m going to need some time to process that information.
Playwright’s Journal – Day 53 of 2026
YouTube Channel Recommendations – February 20, 2026
So, these days people continue to make movie and book recommendations, but I was thinking I spend a lot of time watching YouTube and there are several channels I subscribe to on YouTube that I really enjoy and so I thought why not recommend them on occasion. And so here in no particular order is my first YouTube channels recommendation.
Dami Lee Architecture @DamiLeeArch.
Dami Lee is a licensed Architect and owner of Nollistudio which creates videos whose goal it is according to her website “to help people develop a general appreciation and understanding of our built environment, its impact on society and culture, and the hidden beauty beyond what the eyes can see.
Dami launched her channel on May 16, 2020, and has 2.25 million subscribers and has created 306 videos that have generated 289,316,417 views.
Check out Dami Lee’s recent video from January 29, 2026, where she explores a new theory about how the pyramids were built which currently has 6.6 million views. And no, it wasn’t aliens.
It never was aliens.
It’s never been aliens.
In fact, I would go so far as to say that no aliens have ever visited our fair solar system as the astronomical distances, fuel requirements, self repairing technology, and odds of them and us being alive at the same time and within discovery distance is so unlikely that it makes any such flight highly improbable.
I mean right now it would take Voyager the fastest man-made object ever around 75,000 years at it’s current speed to reach Alpha centari which is the closest star to us.
And so, this video provides a very interesting and logical explanation as to how the construction of the pyramids might have been accomplished.
Oh, and also. No slaves. This was a public works project – like building a Cathedral in the Middle Ages.
Smart people those Egyptians.
Playwright’s Journal Day – Day 50 of 2026
Inpirational Quotes – February 6, 2026
The world is filled with inspirational quotes about going after your dream or never giving up, but dreams don’t always work out and sometimes if you don’t give up it can cost you your physical and mental health, your relatiohnships, and your financial well being. Of course, it depends on what your dream is. I think peace of mind is worth pursuing. Fame not so much.
I myself have a new work that came into existence last Janaury and I spent much of last year working on it and now I am introducing it to the world. The first great challenge, of course, is finishing something. Be it a book. A painting. A poem. So, we shall see what happens. I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever written. What life it has beyond the hard drive on my computer is a journey that I am less master of and more passenger.
And speaking of writing and dreams and never giving up, I did write a play called – Never Give Up – Every mother thinks their kids got talent. It’s the story of Nigel Davenport who despite behing an awful playwright is determined to one day win the Short Cuts Playwriting Festival and make his mother proud.
Never Give Up – Every mother thinks their kid’s got talent.
Nigel Davenport is a playwright who has been entering the Short Cuts Playwriting Festival for years. He’s never won, in spite of submitting hundreds of plays. When Nigel gets a call from Artistic Director Todd Sparks, he thinks his luck has finally changed, until he meets with Todd and Todd tells him that they’d like him to stop submitting to the Festival because he’s a terrible playwright. In fact, three members of this year’s reading committee resigned, two were treated for depression and one committed suicide all because of Nigel’s plays. But instead of giving up this only inspires Nigel to try harder and figure out how to write an award-winning play that will win the festival.
10 Minute Comedy – 2M, or 1M & 1 W, single setting
DOWNLOAD NEVER GIVE UP
Do you ever think of giving up? Sometimes it’s the right thing to do. In fact, Seth Godin wrote a terrific little book called The Dip which is about the importance of knowing when to quit something or when to stick with something. He argues that successful people quit things all the time. Godin says that every new project or job starts out fun and then things get hard and you reach a Dip – which is a temporary setback that can stop you unless you push through. However there are times when the best choice is not to push through but to quit and start something else. It’s a fun little book with some great advice.
And speaking of advice I think it’s time for me to quit writing this blog post and time for me to get back to get back to work on my time machine. Today’s task is sourcing some plutonium for the time drive. How hard can that be?
And speaking about time travel check out my time travelling comedy which started out as a play and I adapted into a short story that you can read right here on my website: Elvis is Dead – Saving the world takes time.
Playwright’s Journal – Day 37 of 2026
2026 Oscar Nominations – January 22, 2026
Well, another year, and another snub from the Oscars! I never get nominated. What am I doing wrong?
Speaking of Oscar nominations, does anyone even care anymore about who wins an Oscar? Having said that, I hope Jessie Buckley wins for Hamnet. Hamnet is the story about about the death of Shakespeare’s son and is based on the novel by Maggie O’Farrell.
Jessie Buckley gives amazing performance after amazing performance after amazing performance. Grounded and real and emotionally centered. So, other than her winning an Oscar I don’t really care who else wins. So, best of luck to all the nominees and who knows, maybe next year, I’ll get a nomination.
Hamnet stars Jessie Buckley as Agness, Paul Mescal as Will, and Jacobi Jupe as Hamnet. Directed by Chloé Zhao and adapted for the screen by Chloé Zhao and Maggie O’Farrell with cinematography by Łukasz Żal and music composed by Max Richter.
Playwright’s Journal – Day 22 of 2026
2026 Reading Challenge – January 10, 2026
Good news. I completed my 2026 Reading Challenge. I’ve read one book of my goal to read one book. At this rate I might even have enough time to read another one.
I read Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Have you read it? It’s considered one of the cornerstones of dystopian science fiction.
It was written in 1933 and caused quite a stir when it was first published. In contrast to 1984 by George Orwell where violence, punishment, and fear are used to control the population – Brave New World is about a society that uses pleasure as the key method of control. People are happy. They get drugs to make them happy, and they no longer have the responsibilities of raising children, family, or long-term relationships and are encouraged to enjoy a sexually promiscuous life free from guilt and shame.
You know one of the most charming things about the book is the fact that in the future – the very distant future – elevators still have elevator operators. That’s how you discover a book is always in some manner attached to the time it was written.
In 1933 elevators were still mostly run with an elevator operator. Elevators could be automated, but people were uncomfortable with the idea of an elevator operating without a human at the helm. What changed? The 1945 New York City elevator strike changed things. The operators went on strike, and they proved themselves obsolete because many of the buildings simply started using the already installed automated elevator systems, they had available.
I’ve heard the transition to automatic elevators compared to our transition to self-driving cars today. They are coming. In fact, they are here. And the freedom they offer is incredible. Plus, studies show that 94% of fatal car accidents are caused by human error. If you can eliminate human error you’ll save millions of lives. Just as computers are now better than us at chess it seems computers are also better than us at driving cars when using LiDAR.
And just think, as our population ages, how many seniors would love to have the freedom of jumping in their car and having it drive them to the market or the doctors or to lunch with their friends or to their grandchild’s birthday party.
Plus, my own personal preference would be to have every self-driving car outfitted with an ejection seat like the ones they have on fighter jets. How could that go wrong?
Anyway, I like the ideas in Brave New World a lot more than how the story was told. One of the strengths of 1984 is that the story is told through a more personal account focused on Winston Smith’s view and experience of the world and that immerses us in the story. Whereas in Brave New World we never get that more direct personal perspective and so we often feel outside the story and more like we’re being told what’s happening. There’s a lot of explaining about how the society works which means it’s more tell than show.
I would love to see Brave New World told from a first-person viewpoint. Perhaps several viewpoints. Much like how George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones is told. That’s why I think 1984 is a better known and more influential work. It’s all in how the story is told. Which I suppose suggests that making the story personal and immersive makes it resonate more with your readers.
Playwright’s Journal – Day 10 of 2026
Norah Jones – Come Away With Me – January 5, 2026
Now that we’re a few days into 2026 I’m planning on taking a bit of a break. I’m going to keep a low profile. Focus on my writing. Go for walks. Get my life in order. But first, I wanted to share one of my favourite songs with you from Norah Jones that captures a bit of how I’m feeling at the moment. I never grow tired of listening to this song. There’s just something so hypnotic, deeply satisfying, and peaceful about it.
Come Away With Me
by Norah Jones
Come away with me, in the night
Come away with me
And I will write you a song
Come away with me, on a bus
Come away where they can’t tempt us
With their lies
And I wanna walk with you
On a cloudy day
In fields where the yellow grass grows knee-high
So won’t you try to come
Come away with me, and we’ll kiss
On a mountain top
Come away with me, and I’ll never stop loving you
And I wanna wake up with the rain
Falling on a tin roof
While I’m safe there in your arms
So all I ask is for you
To come away with me, in the night
Come away with me
Playwright’s Journal – Day 5 of 2026
New Year’s Resolutions – January 1, 2026
So, a new year. Do you make New Year’s Resolutions? I don’t think there’s anything wrong with taking some time to think about the coming year and how you’d like to spend your time. After all, if you spend an hour a day scrolling through social media or exercising or walking – at the end of the year that’s 365 hours. You can accomplish a lot in 365 hours. You can transform your health. You can read a lot of books. You can have a lot of family dinners. You can watch a lot of YouTube videos.
365 hours is equal to about 46 eight-hour workdays. That’s equal to nine work weeks. That’s a significant amount of time and all it takes is a daily practice. That’s why the momentum of a daily practice builds over time. Whether you’re meditating or learning how to play the guitar you’ll be transformed after a year. And if you miss a day don’t let that defeat you. If you miss a week don’t let that defeat you. Just start again. Life happens and sometimes our plans go sideways.
Last year I decided I was going to write for a minimum of two hours a day every day for the year. Did I do that? No. But I did write for 240 days and logged more than 900 hours at my desk working on my blogs, plays, short stories, and novels. Of course that doesn’t include the thinking time which would easily more than double that number. And of course none of that work would have existed if I hadn’t made the commitment at the start of 2025 to write every day. You see an amazing thing happens. If you put in the time the work arrives. That’s the one thing I’ve learned about writing. The blank page gets filled by just making the time to fill it.
So, whether or not you want to write a novel or learn to play the piano or spend more time with your children or learn to be a better cook or renovate your home or work in the garden – make the time to do the things you love – the things that make your life worth living.
Playwright’s Journal – Day 1 of 2026
