Art Imitates Life - Maybe...

This is interesting. A friend from screenwriting class sent me the following email.

"I’ve been thinking of you and your script as the Giants this season have had several personal scenarios similar to the one you have in your script: Barry bonds’ dad suffering from cancer; barry not hitting well because distracted by dad’s illness and dad not giving him hitting advice. Spooky close to your premise!"

I think my screenwriting friend was referring to the following article from SFGate.com, Re-living glory days Following famous dads offers perks, pressures.

Here's what the article said about Mr. Bonds.

"Barry Bonds, the most famous second-generation sports star in the Bay Area, declined to be interviewed for this story, saying after 18 years of baseball he's talked on this subject enough. But his father's influence on his baseball career is well-known.

Even as he battles cancer, Bobby Bonds has made two trips to Pac Bell Park this season to offer his son counsel and a few hitting tips. On the night following his dad's second trip, Barry Bonds broke out of a month-long hitting slump to homer twice against the Chicago Cubs on April 30."

This is so trippy to me, because one of the early criticisms of my screenplay was that a star baseball player's father would never give better advice than a hitting coach. When I heard that, I was like, why not? The father birthed the son, has seen the kid play from childhood on, and probably knows the star baseball player better than any hitting coach ever will.

So now I'm like relieved, because it's nice to know that my fictional story isn't that far off from what happens in real life.

I've always thought that real life is so much stranger than fiction. I mean who would've thought that we'd watching on TV, the LAPD chasing OJ and his friend on the freeway. If you were put that in a story, the critics would have a field day.

And what about 9/11? If a fiction writer were to write a story about jetliners crashing into the World Trade Centers, and then the buildings falling down, again the critics would have just laughed and said "NO EFFING WAY!". And yet it happened, didn't it?