If Man is Five

I've been reading Josh Friedman's screenwriting blog, I Find Your Lack of Faith Disturbing. It's quite something. That something may be vicious, hilarious, startling, or any of the various, not entirely consistent terms that must go under the rubric of morbid humor. Subjects range from the professional to the personal. And Friedman's dissections of the Hollywood filmmaking hierarchy are hilarious, though not quite as breathtaking as what he has to say about his run-in with cancer.

Friedman, who wrote the screenplay for War of the Worlds, is an atheist, as his blog's name suggests. One notes also that this science-fiction-loving materialist refers often to poop and matter. They are among his favorite words. And there is something Darwinian in the recurring metaphor of the infinite monkey. See his blog's a zoo and you get to look at his life, like that of a monkey in his cage, but, wait, Hollywood is also a zoo and the executives and operators and actresses are also zoo-animals or zoo-keepers. I have yet to parse the whole thing out, but what makes me stop short and worry about the durability of Friedman's faithlessness is instead the adjective he uses to dress up his main monkey metaphor: infinite.