I told you earlier tonight that I was having some trouble with this Film Fight – that I was having some trouble finding the fight in me. I think I just found it. With all this poetry talk, I got to thinking about Bukowski – and I hate thinking about Bukowski. But the cult of Bukowski has everything to do with what I hate about junkie movies. I hate – and jaysus, there’s a lot of hate going around (just wait until tomorrow, it’ll be nothing but sunshine and blue skies and mash notes to our favorite writers, I swear it) – I hate junkie movies because, by and large, even as they’re gumming at the scummiest parts of man, they’re romanticizing them, too.

“Writing and writer’s block are very particular kinds of experiences, and not necessarily ones that translate to the human experience.” I’d actually argue that being at a loss for words is a far more universal experience than losing your life to the monkey on your back. But I do agree that the writers-in-movies genre is an inherently clubby one. So I guess what I’m saying is, if you’re going to devote an entire movie to the ins and outs and the insularness of the writer and his process, then for goodness sake, make it funny. Or make it scary. (I’m speaking of course of The Shining, but I know you haven’t seen it, and honestly, it’s nearing the witching hour and simply typing the words has guaranteed that tonight I will sleep with the lights on. So let’s move on.) Right, so if you’re gonna make a whole movie about how fucked up writers are, then at least make us laugh. Block is bad, but it can comically bad. Heroin is just bad bad, and tedious to watch. We are all, as you say, grasping blindly for something to give our lives a little meaning, a little hope, a little poetry. But poetry in a bottle is obvious. Now, poetry in physics-defying communion with one’s own literary creation (Stranger Than Fiction)? Poetry in confronting one’s own personal and professional burnout in a pink fuzzy bathrobe while carting around the upstart writer who's gonna knock you off your throne (Wonder Boys)? That is something unexpected and harder-earned – and infinitely more rewarding for the viewer. At least a viewer like me.

... before I head off to play basketball: Kim Jones just admitted that she'd rather watch Funny Farm than a film by Billy Wilder.

Film incentives are rightfully the buzz around Texas right now with the next session of the Legislature just around the corner. But they're also getting some national attention, including as a "pork" addition to the government bailout of the mortgage biz. It seems a national fix for film incentives, primarily aimed at equalizing the playing field with Canada, made it into the bill's language: According to Broadcasting & Cable magazine, it will "extend and modify temporary expensing rules (they were to expire at the end of this year) that are meant to discourage the flight of TV and film production to Canada and elsewhere by expanding the number and type of deductions that can be taken in the year of production.

I've already resorted to numbering. Bad sign. 1) I didn't say that junkies make less meaningful characters – merely less interesting characters. Sure, there are variations from character to character – in what drove him to drink or to drugs, in what prize possession of his mother's he'll hock for that next fix – but the frame of the addict-writer-narrative-arc is depressingly monotonous.

It's a Seventies/Eighties flashback in Lakeway where the independent comedy Code Enforcer is in the middle of a 21-day shoot with Erin Moran and Eddie Mekka starring. You remember Joanie "Shortcake" Cunningham, Ritchie's lil sis on Happy Days, but may have a harder time recalling Mekka, who was Carmine "The Big Ragu" Ragusa, the singer/dancer on Laverne & Shirley. Greg Dorchak and Steve Cauley started writing Code Enforcer, a tale of a homeowners' association gone wrong, while working on another film. Since both writers live in subdivisions with home owners' association, they had plenty of experience to draw on. "There are a lot of new subdivisions going up all across the country – and most of those are governed by HOAs of some sort. Some lines in the script were taken directly from real situations," Dorchak says. "It was impossible to put everything I wanted into this story; it would have been 300 pages long." Steve Cauley and Greg Dorchak are the co-writers and producers, with Cauley directing and Dorchak performing.

Point two: not all addicts are junkies. Take Paul Giamatti’s character in Sideways. He’s a classic failed-writer-with-an-addictive-personality. Unlike heroin users, however, all of his habits are legal, socially acceptable, and even expected from a single, middle-aged man whose life has fallen apart. There’s nothing a junkie can say to someone that justifies his/her addiction to heroin, no explanation beyond the main one: that heroin is their lifeblood. But what makes Miles so brilliant is his literary ability to justify his addictions and paint them not as outgrowths of his failure as a writer but as minor, even poetic, indulgences of the intellectual class. He deflects questions about his alcoholism by assuming the role of the pompous wine connoisseur; he justifies his self-obsession by painting himself as a grand, tragic figure in the Hemingway mold (even going so far as to crib Hemingway’s words when describing himself); he sees his romantic failures not as a manifestation of his fear and self-loathing but as cruel punishment administered by fickle Gods out to destroy him.

Dear Kim, These one-month intervals are killing me. Raised from a pup to be contentious, I never know what to do with myself when you and I aren’t fighting online. Actually, I do: fight with you offline. If any readers out there are skeptical that the Film Fight format is just a gimmick – an artificial disputatious environment between two otherwise agreeable souls – you’ll be happy to know that Kim and I spent a good chunk of last week railing at each other at birthday parties and other social functions. I don’t know if we were just getting ourselves back into the holiday spirit, or if we actually disagree that strongly about the value of a clean house or the relative virtues of my romantic philosophy, but few punches were pulled and fewer apologies were offered. (Though I have to say that Kim, in the spirit of Yom Kippur, the just-passed Jewish day of atonement, did offer one. Being Jewish myself, and having suffered through endless hours reciting the Kol Nidre over the course of my life, I know that asking for forgiveness during the High Holidays gets you precisely nowhere, so I didn’t take the bait. Still I thought it was a sweet gesture. And one she’ll regret very soon.) No, you can rest easy knowing that we don’t just play Film Fighters on TV. Witness, for example how quickly Kim went for the jugular this time around. No pleasantries, no niceties, no build-up. Just straight to Permanent Midnight. What kind of friend would force a friend to defend Ben Stiller first thing in the morning? No friend at all. And I won’t do it.

In addition to the spectacularly blocked Bart, Barton Fink also features an addict writer who can't write, John Mahoney's Bill Mayhew (a composite of Fitzgerald and Faulkner). Here Barton is arguing with Tony Shalhoub's producer character, Ben Geisler, about Mayhew. It's a funny exchange, but also, I think goes to the heart of my argument – that block can be creatively freeing (à la "I'm going to write myself into the script I'm adapting!"), while addiction is a creative dead-end – the writer as defined by addiction alone. Ben: I thought you were going to consult another writer on this.
Barton: I've talked with Bill Mayhew.
Ben: Bill Mayhew? Some help. He's a souse!
Barton: He's a great writer.
Ben: A great souse.
Barton: You don't understand–
Ben: Souse!
Barton: –his pain because he can't write–
Ben: Souse! Souse!