There I was, "being" a hiker in a tent at the 10,000-foot level of Mt. Rainier, dying of script-imposed oxygen starvation — with a woman in the scene beating me with a leather boot and Tom Skerritt smacking my face and kicking me in the ribs. Ah, acting!
That was followed by (one year ago today) a good eight hours with sagely, soul-warming screenwriter Stewart Stern, who taught James Dean what reaching for a bottle of milk really means. (Great stories about Brando and Paul Newman too.)
