T A B L E_T A L K I got off the road and stopped at ... Finish the story in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk R E C E N T L Y Letter from Jakarta: After the sky falls By Jeff Pulice When expats flee, foreign guys become very attractive -- and other bits of wisdom (06/11/98) Are we the world? By Andrew O'Hehir Despite our uneasy place on Planet Soccer, the United States will be one of 32 nations vying for glory as the globe's most passionately watched sporting event begins (06/10/98) The Internet comes to the Outback By Simon Winchester A 7-year-old boy's life changes forever (06/09/98) Mondo Weirdo Slow boat to Thailand Temptations and tribulations on the Mekong River (06/08/98) Ramadan By Mona Simpson Taking a lover: An erotic journey from Cairo to Alexandria (06/05/98) Browse the Wanderlust Feature archives		BY HAL LACROIX | Coincidence? Or Life-Changing Omen? I saw the newspaper ad pointing me toward the Second Annual, Famous-Since-1996 Nantucket Film Festival on the same day I opened a blue form letter from one Vince Ducette, J.D., Director of Operations, The Film/Publishing Group of 11684 Ventura Blvd., Studio City, Calif. It read: "Our sincere, abashed apologies for our response delay to your query regarding representation of your literary work. By sheer happenstance I found your letter today behind a moved file cabinet!" Abashed Vince christened my movie synopsis, which fell behind his file cabinet during the Bush administration, "viable for sale in today's growing market for this genre story." Then there was the matter of the $90 reading fee. Well, Momma did, in fact, raise a fool. And I was born at night, maybe even last night -- but I ain't plug dumb enough for that dodge. Still, I liked the shameless hucksterism of the appeal -- what twist of fate induces a man, even an agent, to mass mail the sheer-happenstance-behind-the-file-cabinet letter? -- and in a peculiar way it nudged me, more than the prospect of sand and celluloid and intellectual babes, aboard the ferry to Nantucket, where I started building a new set of dreams custom-made for shattering. It was exactly one year ago. Think of one of those old-movie calendars with the months flying off like leaves in a high October wind. The three-hour ferry ride to Nantucket -- the slow, crowded ride for yokels; the rich and/or celebrated take the jet foil -- is a beautiful, journeying kind of thing. A lot of people sit up top, breathing the salt air, staring overboard. There's nothing much to do. The sky's big, it's sunny. Your nervous system throttles down to island speed. Maybe when you disembark you won't vibrate like a city rat. You may even pause on the dock and look around. I had a screenplay -- a sci-fi romance -- in my backpack. You never know. A previous script, the one that fell behind the file cabinet, made the rounds years ago, but, truth be told, it was pretty lousy and my putz-agent insisted on changes that made it worse. This one, though, was a property. Mean and lean. Maybe a bit pricey, all those special effects, but I had other ideas, too. Like this bit of dialogue I heard in a North Carolina convenience store: "C'mon, Wayne, let's burn one." One clerk said it to another clerk, the aforementioned Wayne. She wanted to smoke a cigarette, and her dadgum gusto, "Let's burn one," has stuck with me. I see the lady clerk murdered, a grisly business, and Wayne, well, his character arc is a beautiful parabola; he's a mysterious figure, maybe ex-hit man/ex-altar boy, that type. What's more, I've got a comedy brewing about this 500-square-mile fungus under Michigan's Upper Peninsula. It's the largest living organism on the planet, no fooling. Hi-jinks ensue when "Fungy" communicates with folks via our appendixes. And we thought they were useless. Also: "Jesus, the Early Years." Befuddled boy-savior hits road, identity crisis in tow. Greece, Rome, Turkish dens of iniquity. No one's even thought to do it. "You see, there's a bottleneck." That was the word according to James F. Robinson, writer/producer/director of the independent film "Still Breathing," much acclaimed at the 'Tucket Festival. Sitting on a panel of made-its during a "Morning Coffee With ..." session at the Cambridge Street Restaurant, Robinson documented said bottleneck to a throng of good-natured wannabes -- fringe actors, clueless screenwriters, mellow souls who fashioned themselves, I suppose, associate producers. Sponsored by Bank Boston. Coffee provided by Chock Full o' Nuts. Bagels, the Einstein Brothers. It was a small joint, so some people didn't get in. They loitered outside. One thin upper-crusty fellow who should have been sailing, the kind of guy who uses moisturizer on his eyelids and wears faded Izod tennis shirts and sports a $50 haircut, each follicle clipped solo with just-sharpened scissors, this Brent Jr. crouched awkwardly and listened with his ear jammed to the screen door. So many talented people with great ideas, Robinson said, but only a little bit of opportunity. A bottleneck. OK, sure, and yet I wanted to gently inquire: Yo, Jimbo, what the hell is getting through? The good stuff by the smart people? Really? So why are so many movies so bad? So chase-scene, so weak dialogue, so TV-mediocre? Why aren't movies wildly good and wildly bad at the same time -- and hey, Mr. Robinson, aren't you just another schmuck-schmoozer who does not know? I mean, it's true, isn't it, when it comes to making movies and knowing the next big thing, nobody, like they say, knows anything? The festival ran for six days. I came for less than two. I packed in food and slummed at the hostel on the lee side of the island and still managed to blow 150 bucks. But in that short time I connected. I networked and heard buzzwords and bizwords brushing from my lips. I made friends, sorta, with actresses and producers and writers, and I had weirdly animated conversations with my future collaborators. Oh, won't we laugh about this some day! One brassy, middle-aged Brit stomped like a horse on the cobblestones of old Nantucket Town as she described her latest script: "Ghost" meets "Indiana Jones." I made the scene. It felt swishy. N E X T+P A G E | Lying to a babe actress