Josh Friedman is blogging again following his cancer surgery. The screenwriter (War of the Worlds, The Black Dahlia) has a great post up in which describes waking up the day he’s to go the hospital and musing on his mortality. Friedman’s thoughts on the finite-ness of it all remind me of the end of The Sheltering Sky, Bertolucci’s adaptation of Paul Bowles’s great novel, and then he slips in this contemplation on the act of writing:

At the end of the day, why do we write? We write to remember, we write to be remembered, we write to discover who we are, or determine it for others. Our words will always outlive us, immortalizing us if not always powerful enough to make us immortal. Although if we choose our words well, there will always be a way back to life, a way to and fro through time. Someone will always feel us like it was yesterday, someone will smell our skin again, if we choose our words well.

And then, truly embracing the paradox that is the life of the Hollywood screenwriter, he reveals yet another reason why New Line has a monster hit on its hands later this year. Read the post by clicking above to see what I’m talking about.

(Thanks to Green Cine for the link.)