It was when I was welcomed into AEP, the Cumru Elementary gifted program, as child #1. That’ll certainly fuck with you. You might as well have said, “throw out that encyclopedia, sire. You have all the answers already.”

Now I had it on institutional authority that any confidence I had was well-founded. And I had lots of confidence. And I dissected those owl turds with panache.

I’ll tell you one thing that was not on my agenda: asking for help. That would be admitting I didn’t have the answer. But even when I didn’t know the answer, I thought, “well, maybe I don’t have it now, but I’ll definitely have it soon.” Spoiler alert: I did not.

This pattern followed me into my thirties — doing good enough things on my own that could have been great if I’d just asked for help. Sketches, plays, tree-based social media channels. I would send out drafts of movies or tv shows for notes, then not incorporate them because it was too emotionally difficult or my inner argumentarian was too fucking loud. A variety of gestures toward collaboration but no real commitment.

Cut to June, 2025. I’m finishing up a draft of new film project — one that excites me, that seems a way to bring together all the narrative threads that had been sticking out in my creative life over the past decade. But then I melted my computer with an upside water bottle in my backpack and—this is what they tell me was the final nail in the coffin—I tried to recharge it to make it turn on.

This project could have perished right there. But, for the first time, I felt an attachment to something that I had written that was quite personal. It involved trees and romance, and I didn’t want it to die the same death as a thousand other things I’d written but had been too much of a coward to devote myself to.

Ok, time for a disclaimer: most coaches are full of shit. It’s an exploding industry, which obviously makes it ground zero for hacks and con men (duh) and they prey on people who compulsively need direction. So make your own goal before you decide to hire someone so that they can supply you with the three things you actually need: resources, confidence, and accountability.

I hired my old friend Izzy Stevens whose company, IndieSpunk, specializes in helping take film ideas from conception to production without letting you wriggle your way out on the way there. And boy, did she not: we drafted and drafted and drafted and drafted then got our asses kicked from external notes then redrafted then built a deck then figured out how to reach out to potential collaborators.

I’m not sure where along the line it would have happened, but I’m confident this project would have died without Izzy.

But every time my arrogance reared its head and said, “no one will like this” or “it’s too hard to do a page-one rewrite” or even “nah, I don’t want to bother them”, Izzy said, “why do you think you know better?” It was too involving to relate the story about AEP, so I just told her, “you’re right,” and I did what she told me. I know those sentiments sound like insecurity, but, for me, they’re actually rooted in ego. How crazy it was to find out that, actually, I don’t know better.

Izzy and I wrapped our working relationship last week because I don’t need her help anymore. I know the path to make my movie now. I know what my arrogance sounds like in my head, and I know when to ignore it.

Realizing I didn’t know better was the key to so many things, but above all, it was the key to understanding that “yes” is a real possibility.

Thanks, Izz.

(If you have a film project that you care enough about not to let it die, Izzy’s at indiespunk.com or @indiepsunk on instagram)

The first stems from 2023, when I wrote the following on page 32 of my book Must Love Trees in the section titled “My Full List of Plots on Prospective Tree Films”:

Tree People—A Christopher Guest-style mockumentary in which we follow six eccentric tree obsessives competing for the title of “Most Woody” at the twenty-fifth annual Tree and Wood Show.

This was a one-off for a silly section of the book (they are all silly, and some are very silly).

But then the book basically tanked. I don’t mean that in the sense that nobody bought it, but rather that it came and went and everything kind of stayed the same. Zero afterlife after the initial couple weeks of release. The equivalent of a sending a huge, long email laying out your hopes and dreams and getting back, “Received! Thanks!” I got pretty sour on it for some time afterward, and—to be honest—everything in it.

But then, in the fall of 2024, I was reading my then-three year-old daughter some of the very silly parts of the book, and I came to the plot of Tree People.

“Most Woody?!” she said. “Yes,” I said, tickled by my writing for the first time since I’d written it a couple years earlier. Then I thought: hey I’d met a ton of interesting, introverted, and bizarre people in the world of trees, this is actually something I could do. And I realized that the only person that could do it was me. So I did it.

Which led to the second hinge-point in May 2025. I had put together a short film using some of my pals from acting class, where I played an organizer named Sonny Hafetz who is hosting a major upcoming bonsai competition. In the nine-minute short (which I called Make Like a Tree), we meet a bunch of competitors and bear witness to their quirks (one violently styles his trees to cope with a lost love, and so on and so forth).

I think it was pretty funny, so I showed it to my acting class.

A deadly silence filled the air as the credits rolled. Then came the first question from my acting teacher, legend Lesly Kahn: “So, what exactly is this supposed to be?” It made me frustrated and angry—why doesn’t everyone see that combining these ingredients (beautiful growing things plus characters) makes something entertaining?

And that’s when I realized that ingredients alone do not a film make. Of any length. So I said, ok, what’s the story in this world that people will care about? And who can write it? And once again, the only answer was me. So I identified a central love story, changed the genre to Romantic Comedy, and wrote the feature-length script while concentrating on the relationship between two central characters. (I also completely melted my lap-top in this step, but we will ignore that.)

The third hinge-point happened in February 2026. I had drafted, re-drafted, gotten chewed out by an Golden Globe-nominated screenwriter, redrafted, gotten chewed out by my Aunt Emily, re-drafted, re-drafted, and created a pitch deck with the help of my friend and coach Izzy Stevens even though I’m a complete idiot with Canva. So my materials were ready to present to…

…who? Honestly, who? I think this was the stage—where I had done all I could as a writer—where I felt most disheartened. I felt insane—the story was rattling around inside my head and laptop for a year and a half now with no other collaborators. And I didn’t know any directors who would be interested in my hyper-fixated, nature-oriented brand of storytelling. I didn’t even know if they existed. Who in God’s name would want to direct this film about love and bonsai? One that takes place in a niche world that has virtually no precedent in film besides set dressing, so I can’t even show you any comps to gauge your interest in creating it?

Well, no one else was going to do it. I would have to attach the director. So I did. I found Drew Denny through the internet where I left her an goofy audio dm, we met amongst the Redwoods in Griffith Park where we talked over the project, traded emails and pitches and notes on the script for about a month, then met at the Huntington Garden Bonsai Court where we agreed to work with each other.

So, for those following, I adapted a piece of writing, fleshed out the story, and attached the director. But the final hinge-point wasn’t until May, 2025.

That was when, on the eve of our first table read, Drew and I had a meeting with a prospective collaborator that was, in essence, straight-up punishment for me. I found myself explaining every character, theme, and plot-point as if the script hadn’t been read at all, as if I wasn’t even capable of writing. Soundbites of the meeting still live rent-free in my brain. Suffice to say, it was not a good time. As the writer, it was my job to defend my script, my characters, and my choices, but I felt beat down. After the meeting, I found myself repeating the same points of doubt about the story to myself and considered canceling the table read out of embarrassment.

I expressed this disillusionment to my wife that night, and she looked at me and said, “It sounds like they didn’t want to like it.” And it hit me—it was my job to commandeer the meeting like a fucking pirate and save this person from their bad taste.

And that’s when I resolved not just to defend the story, the writing, the vision, and everyone involved, but also aggressively argue for all of those things. Because the difference between those two modes—defending your story and advocating for your story—is the difference between the status quo and actually making the damned thing. It’s the difference between being a writer/actor and a producer.

No longer would I let someone walk rough-shod over my movie about trees and time and control and love while I flop around like a bluefin tuna saying “please sir, don’t fillet me.”

Love? Bonsai? Pinecone self-stimulation? That is my shit. And you will sit down. We could all die tomorrow. Do you really think I will stop you from letting me make my bonsai romance movie?

These have become my everyday thoughts, and that is how I know I am a producer now.

Usually, when I tell a film industry person that I wrote a movie about rival lovers set in the world of competitive bonsai trees that I’m going to act in, they look at me like a bug and go, “Oh that’s…wow…that’s really neat.” Then they panic inside and think, Jesus, I can’t believe we’re still on the chips and guac.

But when I give the same pitch to someone who loves trees and plants and the living world, they look at me like a bug and go, “Oh that’s…wow…that’s really cool!” And they mean it.

(I am a bug).

Well guess what, industry assholes? Sorry, *ahem*, future colleagues and collaborators— now we’re making the movie. It’s called Make Like a Tree. And you aren’t allowed to work with us unless you also believe that ritual care for growing things is a primordial desire that can constitute the visual language of a movie about passion, longing and connection. Simple as that.

That’s how I found Drew Denny, our director. With her, I could skip over all the reasons that nature is inherently dramatic and cinematic because Drew knows it already. And she believes in it. As a matter of fact, she has lived it all over the world.

She was just at SXSW touring her documentary Second Nature: Gender & Sexuality in the Animal World, narrated by Elliot Page and produced by Megan Ellison. It is beautiful and eye-opening. She also just locked picture on a comedy feature, Love & Chaos, starring Christine Taylor, Anna Akana, Lux Pascal, and Bebe Wood.

Here’s a thing she wrote about our movie:

“One of the many reasons I love Make Like A Tree is the film’s deeply loving exploration of our desperate struggle to control the uncontrollable, whether that’s by reducing a towering Redwood to a five gallon pot or by ignoring your heart’s desire for the match who might very well make or end you…

…by diving into this niche, miniaturized world on the big screen, I want our audience to walk away smiling with the satisfaction of a romance worth rooting for while quietly questioning what wild, untamed parts of themselves they have been trying to wire down.”

Someone ever say what you’re trying to say way better than you can? Dust in my eye, much, ouchy?

See, here’s the thing, about 1/3 of millennials and gen-z consider themselves plant parents. That means that about fifty million people in this country know that care is an identity. It shapes their life. But why has a film never endeavored to harness this drive for care, connection, and control that countless millions feel and make it into a story about longing and passion, bridging that gap between our love for nature and our love for each other? I’ll tell you why: because I’m my own special brand of lunatic, and I’m only getting to it now.

What lies ahead is the much-trodden path of investor fundraising, casting, and Ocean’s 11-like montage of assembling our team. I’d like you to come with us and check out some of the visual language of the film, so please follow @makelikeatreemovie on instagram as soon as you possibly can, and follow Drew (@dangitdrewdenny) as well.

I hope you’ll join us for updates, announcements, additions to our team, casting updates, and general exultation of pathetic fallacy, because that’s our lives are made of. I also hope you’ll tell people about it and direct them to the instagram page. Here we go!

1. Supporting a National Strike of a week or more.

   I became convinced of the efficacy of this after listening to Scott Galloway on Pivot this morning. The gist is that this administration only cowers when they’re threatened by economic ruin. Protests generate a sense of community and are vital for the vote, but they won’t make this administration change course. This administration reacts to markets and the economy—which is currently buoyed by a finite number of AI companies. To this end, Galloway makes the further suggestion for an organized dumping of Chat GPT and other AI accounts to cower tech elites who, of course, fellate and support the administration. But I think a serious National Strike is a great idea, and I would happily participate in one to the extent that I could.

2. Increasing My Run Load to 35-40 Miles/Week.

   This is a personal one. Running helps me regulate intrusive thoughts, spiraling, and health-related anxiety that I’ve had my whole life. Times like this make more of those things. Keeping my sympathetic nervous system in check simply helps me make decisions, and faster, without ruminating on them.

3. Continuing to Pressure the Senate to reject ICE funding for the Department of Homeland Security.

   I’ve sung the praises of Ben Sheehan’s work in explaining politics for a few years now, and he’s one of the most committed voices to explaining what the hell is going on without telling you exactly what you should do. His article above lays out the stakes with the current bill, what the risks of not funding it are, etc. But personally I am calling senators in my home state of Pennsylvania and telling them not to support it.

4. Continuing to write and act on a schedule amidst times of stress.

   Heightened cortisol is the enemy of creative work. It steals our concentration and keeps us desperate for external input. My worst days are the ones I have free when I neither write nor act because I give in to these desires. The world is hard enough without throwing self-loathing into the mix. Do your creative work on a schedule that you make at the beginning of the day. 2-5. Work on Script Edits. Just do it. It’s why you’re alive. Find your space and be yourself. No one else will.

5. Staying in touch with my friends and family who are in the cities swarming with government agents.

   Feels simple, and it is. My friend Eli over at Here’s Something is one of the most purely good people I know, and he lives in Portland, ME. He has a new baby girl and everything. Eli is so good and inherently, enviably decent that I sometimes worry his heart will explode when it’s asked to carry so much. I called him yesterday because I miss him and I worry about him.

6. Bonsai

   This isn’t me being facetious or on-brand or whatever, even though it’s incredibly on-brand. There’s just nothing better than solving a creative puzzle made out of a small tree. It’s immersive and meaningful, and whenever I delight in my freedom to do it in the open air, I think about a particular story from a Japanese Internment Camp where a prisoner crawled through barbed wire and escaped, dug up a Creosote Bush from the ground that he thought would make a great bonsai, and brought it back into the camp with him. Though the idea of control might be illusory, that doesn’t change its effectiveness for us.

The day started with so much promise.

Imagine the thrill I had on Saturday, January 20th, 2001, when I found that my best shirt—a blue short-sleeve plaid buttondown from L.L. Bean—was clean. This is the shirt in which I would french and feel boobs for the first time.

The schedule of events had been arranged in the beginning of January, on a mediated phone call with my intended’s best friend, while my lovely presumably sat to the side and nodded her head out of exhaustion.

I had spent two weeks preparing for this day. Twelve guests, one basement, the aforementioned garment in addition to a Hanes undershirt, and an ironed pair of khakis from Structure. Who could resist this splendid young man, freshly bar mitzvahed and armed to the teeth with a raft of facts concerning various natural disasters?

They began arriving. I remember looking out my basement window to see her walking daintily over the frozen rain that made the driveway hazardous. I glowed with visions of our imminent sequestration in the unfinished water heater room, my hands placed centrally and our mouths locked above.

I was so in love I could barely contain myself.

I knew something was up when she wouldn’t make eye contact. I can’t recall our exact greeting, but I know that the next hour consisted of seeing her curled up—visibly uncomfortable—aside a female confidant on the couch while the rest of the party engaged in table tennis and other trifles.

She went to the bathroom upstairs. I demanded to know the truth from her friend, who repeatedly demurred. I persisted. She caved—

She was planning on telling me tomorrow. I remember all eyes darting to me at this moment. I ran to the water heater to be alone, the light pouring in from the reflected ice outside the back door. Tears streamed down my face as my two best friends buttressed me from behind, a flaccid comfort in this most wretched of moments.

The party ended early. This time it was I who could not make eye contact as she said goodbye.

I have scattered memories from the rest of the day: throwing a paddle in anger at a friend (causing a dent which is presumably still there), screaming at my mother after she repeatedly questioned my state of mind, snippets of the inauguration on ABC World News Tonight as mom made me Salmon Cakes in the freezing darkness.

But this remains the most acute example of self-reproach in my life despite other obvious contenders. I could not shake the feeling that, had I not built myself this palace of straw, I would not have tumbled down in front of everyone. For the first time in my life, heartbreak and humiliation had arrived hand-in-hand.

There would be no frenching. There would be no boobs. Just Peter Jennings, George Bush, and me.

Rob Reiner’s “The American President”(1995) provokes some intense reactions, which is understandable. It is, perhaps, even more of a bygone liberal fantasy than “The West Wing,” and the specific politics at play in Aaron Sorkin’s openly cracked-out script are inconceivable at best (“I’m gonna get the guns”--wild stuff). This, along with the archaic assertion that the nation would be so uniform in its puritanical morality as to sink a widowed president’s approval rating 25 points in six weeks for casual dating—especially after what we’ve seen in recent years—makes it a dated work of fiction, to say the least.

But I worship this film. I have for twenty years. Because I adore sweeping romance and Annette Bening (as Sydney Ellen Wade) being extremely seductive wearing only a man’s dress shirt. Sometimes I will place my bent finger in front of my forehead, and have it bob up and down while saying “he bought me a ham!” to imitate Sydney’s singular sentient hairstyle in this film, and other times I’ll just simply say the words, “Sydney Ellen Wade,” in the growl of Michael Douglas to myself for no other reason than that it’s really fun to say.

But, to the point: the movie’s key tension, and the reason it works comedically, is because you’re constantly feeling the strain of Andrew Shepherd’s desperation to be a regular joe asking a girl for a date before he’s inevitably sabotaged in his efforts by a helicopter picking him up or something like that. And look, Bening and Douglas do their thing and it’s glorious.

But — and this is where Rob Reiner comes in, and this is where the director’s job of making Image A plus Image B equals Thought C equals Emotion D comes in, and this is where filmmaking actually happens — there is a tiny moment during Sydney Ellen Wade and Andrew Shepherd’s very officious, very diagetically scored first dance at a state dinner when Rob Reiner makes the whole movie work on an emotional level, and it doesn’t involve Michael Douglas or Annette Bening at all.

Martin Sheen and Gail Strickland, who play Chief of Staff MacInerney and his wife Esther, sit watching this spectacle, and, as written in Sorkin’s typographic ode to cocaine, they’re “holding hands smiling as they watch their old friend.” But in the film, Strickland and Sheen’s eyes are locked on Shepherd, and Strickland crawls her hand up Sheen’s back and rests it on his shoulder. It is, in a movie of manners, a oddly intimate moment between spouses that is tonally out of place.

But it communicates a whole history—a friendship stretching back thirty years or more "(“you were the best man at my wedding, for crying out loud!”), a harrowing loss (“I’ve loved two women in my life…I lost the first one to cancer”), and, of course, the possibility of connection again. It does more to humanize the character of Andrew Shepherd, from an outside perspective, than do any folksy attempts at courtship (“Wanna grab a doughnut?”) or self-aware Sorkinisms (“She threatened me and I patronized her and we didn’t have anything to eat, but I thought there was a connection.”)

It’s the moment that makes the audience see Andrew Shepherd as normal guy that you can root for as opposed to a politician—a lonely person still reeling from losing his spouse finding love again. Needless to say, it’s all Reiner.

Anyway, it’s been a horrible week, and I’m pretty late with this post, but I just wanted to say how much I love his movies and how much I enjoy thinking about them and watching them, and how his huge stories often turn on tiny moments to get their point across. I love these small miracles in the midst of overwhelming spectacle, and they’re the reason I come back to his movies and the reason I continue to light the candles even after unspeakable tragedy, because it’s the small miracles that help me to remember.

Happy Chanukah—

Tobin

Look, we’re friends, right? Eighteen, nineteen years now? But we’ve never had a real fight. After all, I’ve always said that’s the measure of a real friendship— getting through your first fight. Man, I’ve had blowouts with some of my closest friends, and I know that those friendships are full and complete and trusting. I could probably sit in a car with those people for six, seven hours, not saying a thing. Just us two, silent after the conversation ran out, and feeling good about it. But if you and I were sitting in the same car, the silence would feel untested— a noisy silence. Because the friendship isn’t real yet.

Like that video you reposted of two hot people simultaneously appearing in the other’s dream. Now that’s a lovely concept, that prompt— lucid dreaming as a device meant to identify soulmates within the larger context of a piece of fiction (I have no idea if that’s what you meant, but I think that’s the deeper meaning, here). But when I watch that, and I see those characters, I can’t help but think you have resentment towards people like me, who pretend to be characters professionally. Like the AI video is a solution to the problem of my passion and labor. A creative workaround for the very thing that is my principle gesture as a person.

But I want to assure you— I’m not angry with you. I’m not even disappointed in you. I simply think less of you. When you show the world that you don’t need my hard work and training and human fault and labor and backstory and self-doubt — because you think that you can do it better — it leads me to believe you’re not so smart. “Oh,” I think, “perhaps you have always been this way when consuming movies or TV, novels or poetry—you simply never thought about the idea that labor gives it meaning and profundity, which is obvious to me.” We’re just very unalike, you see.

So I don’t think we need to have that crucial fight anymore. Because I don’t know if I could ever be real friends with you at this point. I don’t need to sit in a car in silence with you, and simply trust your presence, because I know I can’t. Once again, I am not angry with you. In fact, it seems like you saved me some trouble— I’ll never have to keep you around, wondering if, one day, you could be a valuable part of my life. I simply think less of you, my old friend. In fact, I’m thinking less and less of you as I write this. And, at the close of this sentence, I doubt I’ll even think of you at all, like you don’t think of me.

Most people remember 9/11 as the defining event of 9/11. Not me. Because that was the day I started dating Andrea Sarota (name changed).

Whenever we have to do the where-were-you of it all, most people begin their narrative with “I had just” or “I was going”, but not me. Given, I usually politely change my preferred narrative to something like, “I was just walking up the eighth-science hall corridor at Governor Mifflin Middle School—”, but the real version is, “I was holding my black trapper-keeper with the ends of my fingers finger at my side, my History of the United States secured tightly with the rest of palms, talking with my friend Aaron Ruth about Intergalactic Planetary and whether ‘Body Movin’’ was actually the best track for practicing a six-step, when Lacey Schachman yelled, ‘Tobin! Andrea said, “Yes!”’

Most people watched in terror and shock and hands to their mouth as the towers came down, but not me. I was horrified, of course, but I had competing thoughts— “Would Andrea, with whom I had spent serendipitous time after our parents were late to pick us up after high school football game the previous Friday, 9/7, allowing the yellow of the field lights to illuminate her partially braided brown hair and maroon hoodie, be down to French? And would the birthday party that weekend, on Friday, 9/15, in Erin Whitmoyer’s basement, be the time to do it? Should I instead call it a ‘Freedom Kiss?’ My god, would I finally have my first Freedom Kiss?”

Most people remember their perambulations of the day in haze, consumed with fright and tears, mournful phone calls with loved ones, etc. Not me. My thoughts became more hesitant, more practical. I knew that the longest I had dated anyone up until that point was twelve days, and that the very nature of dating was fragile, like a castle made of Hershey’s squares in the sun at Ken-Grille Pool. I knew this. So as kids were called to the office from seventh period for the sole reason that their parents commuted to the tri-state area for work and no one had a cell phone, so then the kids could spend some time trying to reach their parents with the office phone, I bit my lip and knew that Andrea and I would, in all likelihood, end our union in a mediated conversation, like all other romances of the era.

Most people spent their evenings in solemn conversations, uttering phrases like “it’s a new world,” and “what can we can do,” and then googling Nostradamus, and finding implications in his prophecies about signs and brothers and flaming mountains. I also did this, mostly the last part, and had an idiopathic anxiety attack resulting from my conviction that this was the first step toward inevitable nuclear war, causing me to panic every time I saw a common con-trail in the sky for a year, and spurring an obsession and dread with nuclear weapons and apocalyptic story-telling that resulting in scoring an A+ in “Weapons of Mass Destruction”, a course I took my junior year at Columbia. But I also fell asleep in my Pennsylvania farmhouse the evening of 9/11 dreaming about frenching—what it would feel like, would I be good at it, and whether it would actually happen that weekend in Erin Whitmoyer’s basement.

I was behind after all—at fourteen, most had frenched. Freedom kissed. And I felt myself falling further and further behind the achievements of others.

But that Friday, 9/15, I frenched for the first time. Not with Andrea. Andrea and I broke up on Thursday, 9/14. I frenched someone else, a young woman who delighted in her ability to give me my first French. As her tongue swirled around mine, in a beautiful saliva typhoon that I never could have predicted, and have not experienced since, I remember eyeing the TV in Erin Whitmoyer’s basement, where they were showing live shots of the rubble.

Understudying for CTG’s Hamlet at the Mark Taper Forum

I’ve been lucky enough to be auditioning a lot (this is the primary goal, here, folks— just being real with you), and I booked an understudy role at the Center Theatre Group’s production of Hamlet at the Mark Taper Forum, starring the amazing Patrick Ball—who just wrapped an astonishing first season of the Pitt (please watch it, it’s breathtaking)—as Hamlet and adapted and directed by the legendary Robert O’Hara. I’ll be covering the incredible Danny Zuhlke, who plays Guildenstern, and the spectacular Jaime Lincoln Smith, who plays an incredibly juicy version of the First Player.

“But Tobin, will you get to perform and can I see you?” I’ll send out an edition of this newsletter to inform you all should that come to pass. It may be only an hour beforehand, but “thems the breaks,” as the bard says. You can subscribe to this newsletter at the link in the bio. Previews start May 28th, we open June 4th, and we run until July 6th, tickets here. Wait, no here.

Casey Clapp, my dearly beloved tree, soul, and actual brother (by acclamation), has a tree ID book coming out that you should all pre-order

After years of trial and toil, my friend and co-host of Completely Arbortrary, Casey Clapp, finally has his tree ID book coming out on October 1st. You can all pre-order it here. (That’s the Amazon link because it matters for pre-orders, but it’s also available all the other places as well). Needless to say, I’m extremely proud of Casey and all of his insanely hard work to make this happen, and I’ve already ordered like 15.

I’m working on a Feature Comedy Film called “Make Like a Tree”

As many of you know, I’ve long loved Christopher Guest and the films that he made in the 1990s and early 2000s which dove into niche worlds in order to give us grounded comedy from completely ungrounded characters. Movies like “Best in Show,” “Waiting for Guffman,” and “A Mighty Wind,” specifically, have informed my sense of what is entertaining and interesting in comedy, and, for the past three months, I’ve been working on creating one about the world of professional bonsai—a world that is rich with people who believe in it, who are unique and sometimes bizarre (I count myself among you all), and who dedicate a huge portion of their lives to the care of living art.

Mine is called “Make Like a Tree.” While the feature film will be a documentary-style rom-com about two sworn bonsai rivals developing an attraction to each other in the days leading up to the biggest competition in the cutthroat world of professional bonsai—and, no, I don’t worry about someone stealing this idea, because nobody could do it better than me, and also no one would want to do this, but, on the other hand, if they try, now you know where they stole their dumb idea from—I made a proof of concept, or “short”, if you will, over a few weekends in March with some very talented actors that gives a little bit of the taste of the world. You can watch it here. It’s about seven minutes long, and features myself, Reina Guthrie, Sarah Dooley, Jessica Kinsella, Christopher Ferro, Marika Engelhardt. Jessica Kinsella, Alan Trinca, Stephanie Carrie, Rory Kulz, and Amanda Stoffel helped out in other lovely creative capacities as well.

Ok, lovely to see you, talk soon,

Tobin

I suspect many of you have been having a rough week or two. I certainly have. And I’ve been coping with it by absorbing as many quotes about hope as I possibly can. But after I read enough of them, I thought, “well this doesn’t seem very difficult.”

And, to quote the great Paul Newman, why go out for hamburgers (googled hope quotes) when you can have steak (your very own hope quotes) at home?

So I crafted a few. My hope(!) for these quotes is that they’ll be shared far and wide. And maybe, just maybe, we can come to an understanding that hope is truly a delicate fig, and not at all what we presume it to be. Here we go:

“Hope is not something breezy and wistful, such as a fragile creme brulee or a passing drop of creme de violette on the tongue. In fact, hope is not a creme of any kind. Hope lives far outside the creme family, as a matter of fact. Hope is a burnt marshmallow. Hope is an Austrian sausage with those off-putting gelatinous cubes inside it. Hope is always there, sustaining and lipid-rich, yet rarely appetizing. Internalize this.”

“The world is against us and its degradations are legion. But we must not lose hope.

Oh— hold up. Uh-oh. Oh, nevermind, here it is! Oh, uh, wait, nevermind again, that’s just one of those Chagall scarfs from the Met. Yes, it does seem as though I have lost hope. If you find it, feel free to reach out to my business manager. SERIOUS INQUIRIES ONLY.”

“People seem to think that hope is lovely. That she is beautiful. That she is immaculate. No. Hope has scars. Hope has smudged lipstick. Hope has a tattoo of Dane Cook under her left breast that she got removed then redone when ticket prices came down. Hope currently has a terrible case of necrotizing fasciitus from a bar-fight laceration on her scalp that threatens to gangrenize unless someone can convince her that dermatologists don’t ‘have it in for her.’”

“Hope is a gigantic Golden Retriever with a big sloppy tongue and the zoomies!!”

“Hope? *takes drag of cigarette* Now that’s a name I haven’t heard in years…”

“Hope is an optimistic state of mind that is based on an expectation of positive outcomes with respect to events and circumstances in one's life or the world at large.”1

I learn most about who I am from the comments section of my tree videos. For instance, I had no idea that I was an Anti-Israel Zionist Coward until this past year, and I thank you all for this label. I now use it to introduce myself, and I think it lends me an air of mystery at PTA meetings.

So that’s how I gather information about myself. But when I want to know about the world, I leave the old smart phone in the glove compartment and set out to find the answers in the wilderness. And it usually doesn’t work.

But this time it did.

I was at a crossroads. I had no idea who to vote for in the upcoming presidential election. And as an eighth-generation Pennsylvanian with a modest social media following, I knew everyone from the “keystone” swing-state would be looking to me for my endorsement. Both choices seemed really, really good. It was almost like when you complain about having both chocolate and vanilla in an ice cream sundae and you say, “I have a problem,” but then your friends say, “no, that’s a good problem to have!” So, I guess having this problem was good.

See, I really like this Donald Trump guy. Everything he says, wow, I just laugh and laugh. And I’d like to keep laughing, so I want to keep him out of prison and in a joking mood. And I figure the best way to do that is by re-electing him as president so he can avoid incarceration. But I also really like this Kamala Harris lady. She’s not as funny, but she does a lot of the laughing. And I like seeing people laugh. And I figure the best way to keep watching her laugh is by making her the president. (I’d be happy, too!)

So I set out on a mission. I went to the President Tree — named after Warren G. Harding (“Old Incorruptible”) — in Sequoia National Park to ask to ask its opinion of the matter. For those of you who don’t know about the President Tree, it’s the second largest tree in the world by volume, second only to the General Sherman tree, which is about a quarter-mile away. Everyone goes to see Sherman, and everyone ignores the President Tree.

Not me. In solitude, I approached the President, placed my face against its soft bark, clasped its 27-foot wide trunk with my insignificant digitae and gently whispered my conundrum: “President Tree, I’m torn between the Laugher and the Laugh-ee. Who deserves to run this great country of ours? Speak wisely, oh, spirit of old!”

I closed my eyes and waited for an answer. Then, like a wooden spectre, a voice sounded out from within, echoing through 3,240 individual growth rings, each lending it an amplified strength of ages, bounding into my ear like a chorus of the Gaiac divine:

“Are you a fucking idiot, dude.”

A riddle. I had heard of nature speaking in riddles before, but I had never been on the receiving end. I chose to answer the cryptic question with a cryptic question of my own:

“Would it be right to recognize myself as such?”

Then a quick reply:

“Stop. Fucking stop talking like that. Harris. The answer is Kamala Harris. Now get the hell out of here, man, Jesus.”

I was stunned. I was prepared for more riddles, but the President Tree seemed to be done speaking.

I went around to every other tree in the Giant Forest, repeating my query, and received variations of the same riddle from each:

“Holy shit, are you for real.” “Can you get your ignorant fucking fingers off me.” “Are you able to tie your own shoes, you goddamn toddler.”

All followed by an affirmative for Harris.

A bewitching, bewildering, puzzling day. But I couldn’t help shaking the idea that the trees seemed to prefer one candidate over the other.

So I will act upon their most subtle intimations, and vote for Harris.

The voices of the trees are subtle, but we must strive to listen. I feel I have done so.

Harris/Walz 2024.

Apologies for my internet inactivity, but I’ve been immersed in a project that—as unlikely as it is to ultimately attain its full form on the silver screen—I can’t seem to quit.

Suddenly, I find myself on draft three of a horror screenplay set in the Redwoods of Northern California. I also have a short film currently on draft two that I’m terribly excited to fund, location scout, cast, and direct. That one, I know, will see the light of day.

I’ll give you the bare bones of the full movie— a young scion of a storied Redwood logging company accepts a challenge from an environmental activist, and they both wind up in the company’s original lumber ghost town in order to showcase the company’s newfound environmental modernity. But the past won’t stay buried, and they soon encounter a sinister, brutal force from the days of the first falling Redwoods. Will they escape with their lives?

But, ok, why am I approaching the Redwoods—an unrivaled landscape of inspirational beauty and ego-annihilating goodness—with an eye toward horror and death?

Well, first off, it’s a matter of logistics. I am at heart (and in acting class every week), an actor whose life’s work is to make stuff that entertains and diverts people. But as a content creator and writer who has gained a modest following in the past three years, I desperately want to incorporate nature and it’s purest expression—trees—into my storytelling. I think that’s my main job now.

Trees belong in mainstream entertainment as powerful mediators of human beings’ experiences with each other. We strap ourselves to them in protest, we kiss (and do other stuff) under them and on them and in them, we cut them to gain superiority over others in profit, we grow them in memory of the dead and hope for the living, we visit them alone as refuge from the noise. They are inherently dramatic in form, but we also make them more so and always have.

So you can understand why it’s important to me to somehow grapefruit face mash them into dramatic storytelling—I believe their place there is as at least as thematically relevant as the mafia or monsters or politics.

But, again, logistically, that’s a hard lift and “read my tree screenplay” isn’t the sexiest pitch. So what I’ve decided to do is take one of my favorite genres—horror—and combine it with something visually arresting and, as I perceive it, nightmarish in its history and lore—the Redwoods.

Here are some nightmarish things about the Redwoods (by the way, I’m discussing Coast Redwoods, Sequoia sempervirens, not the Giant Sequoia, Sequoiadendron giganteum, though there’s plenty about their own history that’s disturbing as well):

• The indigenous Yurok peoples of Northern California had and have deep spiritual ties to Redwood trees. Historically, they allow Redwood trees to fall naturally before utilizing them for their materials. In their lore, Redwoods represented great “spiritual guardians or warriors”(p.46) And they fell together in the second half of the 19th century—the Yurok from genocide and disease and the Redwoods from logging and exploitation. I think this parallel is haunting. (Their renaissance and that of the Redwoods is, I think, similarly powerful).

• There was a particular tree in Yurok lore that “held up the world”(p. 46). And was then promptly logged by settlers. That idea scares the shit out of me.

• This insane quote from a Del Norte county capitalist marketing pamphlet from 1881 by some dude named A.J. Bledsoe,: “when all the forests shall resound to the hum and buzz of the saw-mill; when columns of smoke, rising from the Low Divide, shall proclaim the existence of smelting furnaces and reduction works; when hydraulics shall strip the hills of their surface, laying bare rich seams of precious gold; when town and county shall throw off the rust of idle years, and come forth into the bright, new existence of a better day; then can we look forward to hopeful prospects, and can truly say, ‘the night has passed, joy cometh with the morn.’”(p. 176)

• This quote from The Beaumont Journal in 1905 (Beaumont, Texas, obviously. But typical of enormous logging operations, where the death rate hung around 1 in 150—the most dangerous profession in America at the time): “When a big gang saw breaks up, it often succeeds in cutting a half dozen men in two before it is stopped...”

The truth is that the Redwoods—the 5% still standing and the 95% cut from the face of the earth—are dark symbols whose past has not been proportionately illuminated. They are perfect symbols of exploitation and elimination—of resources, of people, of our connection to the earth. They are a perfect intersection for our competing instincts of worship and domination.

When I am among the Redwoods, I now see it as a frightening and mesmerizing experience that I can’t tear myself away from, like envisioning standing amongst the ruins of Rome, even though the remains are spectacular, too. I think it’s ripe for a big goddamn, terrifying story, and I’m excited to pitch it around town, soon, even amidst the Hollywood squalor.

It is tragic that beauty and brutality have a natural attraction to each other, but I think it’s on us to explain why. I think the Redwoods are a good place to start.

Donald Sutherland died yesterday, and I wanted to explore, from an actor’s perspective, what he does in what I perceive to be his greatest scene. (No I haven’t seen everything he’s ever done. Yes I am still confident of this.)

I’ve spent a lot of time with Pride and Prejudice in my life—I’ve read it many times and watched the many adaptations, yes even this one, many, many times. But despite the liberties taken with Joe Wright’s 2005 film version, written by Deborah Moggach, I still find it to be the most affecting. And, when it comes down to it, I think it’s because of Donald Sutherland’s portrayal of Mr. Bennett in his final scene with Keira Knightly. For context, Lizzie is seeking consent from her father for her marriage to Mr. Darcy. Watch it here.

Now let’s go back and see what this scene looks like in Jane Austen’s novel:

“Have you any other objection,” said Elizabeth, “than your belief of my indifference?”

“None at all. We all know him to be a proud, unpleasant sort of man; but this would be nothing if you really liked him.”

“I do, I do like him,” she replied, with tears in her eyes; “I love him. Indeed he has no improper pride. He is perfectly amiable. You do not know what he really is; then pray do not pain me by speaking of him in such terms.”

“Lizzy,” said her father, “I have given him my consent. He is the kind of man, indeed, to whom I should never dare refuse anything, which he condescended to ask. I now give it to you, if you are resolved on having him. But let me advise you to think better of it. I know your disposition, Lizzy. I know that you could be neither happy nor respectable, unless you truly esteemed your husband, unless you looked up to him as a superior. Your lively talents would place you in the greatest danger in an unequal marriage. You could scarcely escape discredit and misery. My child, let me not have the grief of seeing you unable to respect your partner in life. You know not what you are about.”

Elizabeth, still more affected, was earnest and solemn in her reply; and, at length, by repeated assurances that Mr. Darcy was really the object of her choice, by explaining the gradual change which her estimation of him had undergone, relating her absolute certainty that his affection was not the work of a day, but had stood the test of many months’ suspense, and enumerating with energy all his good qualities, she did conquer her father’s incredulity, and reconcile him to the match.

“Well, my dear,” said he, when she ceased speaking, “I have no more to say. If this be the case, he deserves you. I could not have parted with you, my Lizzy, to anyone less worthy.”

The scene in the book is mainly remarkable for her father’s subtle admittance of the unsatisfactory nature of his own marriage, which Austen bears out in detail earlier in the novel. But it’s mostly about Lizzie’s powers of persuasion in argument with her father—her intellectual equal.

Enter Deborah Moggach, who, in keeping with cinematic tradition, changes the primary communication of the scene from hearing to seeing:

But there’s nothing here about steadily breaking down, laughing and crying at the same time, with one’s hand over his mouth.

I have no idea what Donald Sutherland’s process acting is, but, as I am myself a father of two young daughters who falls to pieces when my three-year-old says things like, “I should be kind, because then Daisy will want to be kind, too,” it seems clear to me that it’s an overwhelming experience to see your own child express such deep self-knowledge. And, on top of this, she acquired this self-knowledge through the transformational act of falling in love—a blessing he could have never even dreamed for his five daughters, given their primary goals for a financially beneficial match since none could inherit his estate by law.

What a scene he gives us: a cynical old man reawakened to a wonder he had long since written off as impossible. A joy he felt he had to right to feel surprising him and scooping him up and making him laugh like an idiot while blubbering like a baby.

What a beautiful scene. What an amazing actor. Here, watch it again.

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It’s that time of year when the severe weather reports come rolling in, and, with them, reports of “record-size hail”. Every year there is record-size hail, it seems, and a new outlandish comparison to a known object’s size.

But this year takes the cake. According to the Washington Post, last week the National Weather Service reported its first-ever warning of “DVD-size hail” in West Texas. Sir, if I flip the hail over, will there be bonus features and an interview with the director? Included in the headline for the article, hail was also compared to “melons” (what kind?) and bricks (what era?) Hold on while I take a sip from my water-shaped drink and put on a person-sized t-shirt.

But the wildest comparison of this thunderstorm season—which has barely even started, god bless us—has got to be this, from a Fox News headline: “Hail the size of energy drink”.

A once-in-a-lifetime atmospheric phenomenon roughly the size of “energy drink.” And here I thought this was just some typical Fox News bullshit until I read the article and found that this analogy from hell was straight from the NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center itself. That’s right, a “16 oz Monster nitro energy drink”

Who is the hopped-up broseph in the Storm Prediction Lab who thought the three day-old, half-drunk can on his bite-size Milky Way wrapper-covered desk would be a suitable comparison for biblical-level precipitation? Also, the official inclusion of “nitro”? What about “Monster Zero Sugar” or “Monster ThE dOcToR”? All the same size! How about “tall boy”? Or “16-oz Fanta?” Don’t we want to bring in the Williamsburg set? Or are we simply to believe that “16 oz Monster nitro energy drink” is the official drink of the National Weather Service now?

“I’m Jim Cantore, and when I need to wrestle the wind, I always have my 16 oz Monster nitro energy drink can.”

We need to find this rogue employee. Find him and tell him what he’s done.

Here’s the official NOAA hail size comparisons:

• Pea = 1/4 inch diameter

• Mothball = 1/2 inch diameter

• Penny = 3/4 inch diameter

• Nickel = 7/8 inch

• Quarter = 1 inch — hail quarter size or larger is considered severe

• Ping-Pong Ball = 1 1/2 inch

• Golf Ball = 1 3/4 inches

• Tennis Ball = 2 1/2 inches

• Baseball = 2 3/4 inches

• Tea cup = 3 inches

• Softball = 4 inches

• Grapefruit = 4 1/2 inches

Now I know not everyone is a 75 year-old fruit-loving athlete, and therefore may find it hard to visualize some of these hail sizes, but at least there was someone conscious behind the wheel when they were making them up (with the exception of “mothball”. I assume “blueberry” was already taken by the grooming products lobby).

So, as we continue on this road to the hailpocalypse, I better not see any “laserdisc-size hail”, “Subway sandwich-size hail,” or, God help me, “Half-Price Large Cherry Slush for a Limited Time only at Sonic-size hail”, or goddamnit I will flip my container-sized lid.

That being said, I think part of the reason my recent sketches have been doing well despite the broader downturn for creators is that they take place in a specific world: a world where trees are human characters representative of their species. More specifically, where trees are teenage human characters representative of their species. As we all know, this heightens their emotionality and need to understand themselves. There’s been a few suggestions of what to call this world, but, for the time being, let's just call this the “Tree-nager Approach.” It’s basically what I did for 100 North American trees in my book, Must Love Trees: An Unconventional Guide, but here, it’s in dramatic (comedic) form. Which, let’s face it, is a lot more fun.

(These are really just “mapping exercises,” in Upright Citizens Brigade parlance. Mapping is finding an analogous joke in a new context. For example, if you were trying to find a food analogy for bunch of lions out to dinner, the waiter might say the special is “Zebra tartare.” Thus one “maps” our reality upon another reality.)

I try to pair these tree-nagers with a slightly cliched scenario from our favorite teen dramas in order to foreground the characters, relationships, and biological lesson, if any. So here’s four recent “Tree-nager” sketches that have done well on Instagram or Tiktok, contextualized.

1. Tree Catches Son Self-Pollinating

   Context: A play on the classic American Pie-esque, “dad catches kid jerkin’ it.” Our characters here are conifers, and the son is caught “self-pollinating,” which, as the father is quick to tell him, is “just as good” as the other way for conifers. Conifers self-pollinate all the time. For example, in pines, the wind often blows the pollen from the male-coded pollen cones on the lower part of the tree up to the female-coded seed cones on the top.

2. Understory Tree Bullied and Rescued

   Context: My mother Gail joined me on this dramatic explanation of the interdependency of canopy and understory trees as a bad girl with a heart of gold (Sycamore), who comes to the aid of Dogwood as he encounters bad news Sweetgum and Hickory. The alley is mine. the performance of a lifetime is my mother’s.

   3. Trees Passing Notes Through Mycorrhizal Fungi

   Context: Most of us fondly remember the esoteric methods of note-folding that dominated our intermediate school years. I’m not sure anyone ever checked “Yes” for me, but a starry-eyed Douglas-Fir gets lucky with dreamy Birch here, as we witness two trees exchanging carbon through underground fungi in the Pacific Northwest Rain Forest. It was a singular pleasure to portray the stern yet benevolent teacher, who is unnamed, but who I like to think of as “Mr. Nature”.

4. Redwood Kid Can’t Measure Up to His Father’s Expectations

   You know the scene: the Dad doesn’t get the kid and tells him he’s a good-for-nothing so-and-so. The kid fights back. The dad kicks him out. But now picture the kid literally trying to live up to the expectations of being the tallest tree in the world. Lotta pressure there. Rebel Without a Cause meets Fern Gully.

   Actually all of these are [insert movie] meets Fern Gully.

Housekeeping: I’m doing a butt ton of writing right now (who’s ready for a “nature slasher”!?) and the newsletter will appear once a week instead of twice.

Well! Picture me just doing the rounds through my blooming garden before mother’s day, doing some plant inventory. It’s never been more beautiful, as we’re finally seeing the fruits of a bunch of native (and not native, and occasionally non-native invasive—I’m not the smartest!) plants that we’ve planted. I’m using a plant guide, but also a couple plant finding apps when I get lazy. Full disclosure: I can identify pretty much every tree in California by sight but I’m next to useless when it comes to wildflowers.

I’m having a great time IDing salvias and daisies, fleabanes and mallows, and really think that I’m starting to get the hang of this whole “small plant” thing.” But then I get an ID for something that certainly has that wild, not-quite-beautiful-but-definitely-authentic vibe, like the Gary Oldman of flowers. Here, I will show you a picture of it:

It comes up on the app as “White Snakeroot (Ageratina altissima). “Huh, cool and scary name,” I think. “Let me just google th—OH MY GOD.”

From Wikipedia: “Milk sickness, also known as tremetol vomiting or, in animals, as trembles, is a kind of poisoning, characterized by trembling, vomiting, and severe intestinal pain, that affects individuals who ingest milk, other dairy products, or meat from a cow that has fed on white snakeroot plant, which contains the poison tremetol.”

I go on to learn that Milk sickness was one of the most common and deadly diseases of the American frontier, and that an untold numbers of settlers died from it before snakeroot was discovered as its cause by Dr. Anna Pierce Hobbs Bixby in the mid-nineteenth century (she was introduced to the plant by a medicine woman of the Shawnee tribe) and that it likely killed Abraham Lincoln’s mother.

Also, Tremetol is not affected by pasteurization. (The presence of Tremetol has basically been eradicated from modern milk, but still! Scary!)

All in my front yard! Just hanging out! Doesn’t grow naturally here (native to the mid-west) so that means some cool dude planted it here! Excellent! The more you know.

Anyway, did some further research, and it appears that you don’t want this plant growing anywhere near children or dogs. I have both. So, as much as it pains me to say, I will be tearing this goddamned Snakeroot up by its roots this afternoon.

Though I’ll lose an entry in “Mitnicke’s ye Olde Flower Guide for Repose and Chillinge”, I think it’s for a good cause…

…Life.

We know mothers. They can be quite self-effacing when it comes to their Mother’s Day plans. “Oh, honey, anything where we’re together!” A bit more prodding might result in, “Okay, maybe some flowers, but that’s all!”

Cram it, lady. I heard you remark upon those Cherry Blossoms last month. I saw you pick up that multi-colored maple leaf in October. Woman, you love trees. And trees you will get. Here are ten tree-sperience ideas for your Mother Tree this Mother’s Day:

1. You take Mom to your local garden

I’m sure you already had this one on the “maybe” list, but if Mama is so inclined, allow her to smell the roses then take to find the more interesting fare. Of course, the best local garden in Los Angeles is Huntington Gardens, but I’m sure you know your local spot.

2. You take Mom to the arboretum

If Mama is a taxonomist at heart and loves identifying and exploring trees the world-over in a confined area where they can’t escape her suffocating embrace, take her to your local arboretum, latin for “Tree Zoo”. Again, my local is the fab LA Arboretum, and, again, I’m sure this is already on your list.

3. You take Mom on an Old Tree Hike

Identify an old tree in your area, then take Mama on a drive or short hike to see it, then picnic the shit out of that shit. Mama loves trees, and Mama loves picnics. Smash ‘em together? Oh, mama! For me, this would be anywhere in Angeles National Forest.

4. You present Mom with a copy of Finding the Mother Tree

Dr. Suzanne Simard’s memoir of scientific discovery from 2021 never gets old. Pitch mama thus: “Mom, I think you’ll like this. It’s about a woman who discovers the interconnectedness of earth’s greatest creatures, then brings in the experiences of her life in order to help her explain it to others. Kinda like you.”

5. You take Mom to a native plant nursery, pick out a native tree, then plant it together.

To quote Stefon, this idea has everything: Quality time, ecosystem awareness, fingernail dirt, reminiscences of people and times gone by, and spritzers on the porch afterward. My favorite native plant nursery is the Theodore Payne Foundation and I lean towards a blue oak, but do some quick googling for “native plant nursery” and you’re money.

6. You and Mom take a bonsai class together

A new skill? Mama love. A new skill that involves tiny trees? Mama love more. Again, consult your local google.

7. You frame a leaf from the tree in your childhood home’s backyard

A simple elevation of the common can yield remarkable waterworks.

8. You and Mom do spa day, but make it trees

“Mom, did you know Eucalyptus was originally thought to be a promising lumber material in California in the late 19th century, but then came to overwhelm the state?” “While we’re enjoying the purifying effects of this palo santo and the lack of demons in this sauna, let’s applaud the Ecuadorian government for its reforestation efforts involving this tree.”

9. You take Mom to see the most environmentalist play of the 19th century, “Uncle Vanya”, at Lincoln Center

My guy Anton Chekhov, tree lover. Currently starring Steve Carrell and on until June 2nd. Am I the only one who believes Yelena gets the hots for Astrov by the way he says, “Look, I’m not against cutting wood, but why destroy the forests?”

10. You put Mom in your content

Refer a friend

I’ve recently become entranced by the dangerous, tragic, and sometimes attractive world of Old-Growth Redwood logging in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The dangerous and tragic elements are self-evident in the loss of life and limb—both that of people and trees. But the attraction, for me, comes from the oddly utopian and pastoral aims of a few lumber factory towns, many of which were abandoned as ghost towns after the downturn of the depression, mechanization of logging, and federal protection of Redwood forests in the mid-twentieth century. Of course, this did not stop 95% of Old Growth from being felled so that the state of California could be built with slightly more rot-resistant wood. But these frozen-in-time snapshots of communities like Falk, CA (that flourished for nearly fifty years) are nevertheless compelling to me.

I’ve recently come across some remarkable terminology in my reading (most of the following comes from Falk’s Claim: The Life and Death of a Redwood Lumber Town) that relates to the felling of giant old growth redwoods, and I wanted to share it with you in a way that you could actually use: archaic insults directed toward your friends.

Feller: any workers involved specifically with bringing the giant trees down by hand (also known as a Chopper).

“We’ve no need for a union! Most of my men out there are just a collection of thick-headed fellers who wouldn’t know collective action if it fell atop them!”

Ringer: The axe man who chops the branches from the fallen tree to prepare it for sectioning.

“Damn you, sir, you’ve trimmed my hair too close! What are you, some kind of ringer?!”

Peeler: The axe man who peels the foot-thick bark from the fallen tree.

“Maddie! I’ve got a hundred lumberjacks in this dining hall to feed and these lettuce heads have been pruned til Kingdom Come! Why don’t you join the peelers outside…I’m tired of spending eight cents an hour on ‘ye!”

Bucker: The axe man who sections the falling tree.

“After that bandsaw accident the doctor took my leg off like a common bucker!”

Swamper: The man who clears the brush for a Redwood log to slide down a hill towards the transport locomotives.

“What? No moonshine left in the entire jug? You’re greedier for whisky than a swamper for sticks!”

Waterslinger: The man who wet the path under the sliding log.

“He’ll pass himself off as a great Casanova, but I’ve heard he’s actually clumsier than a waterslinger at midnight.

Zoogler: The man who maintained contact and tension between logs traveling downhill.

“Look at you, like a petty zoogler, trying to keep it together while telling me I now have to provide workmen’s compensation in agreement with the Boynton Act of 1913. Just say it, boyo, and get the hell out of my office! I’ve got trees to cut!”

Steam Donkey: A steam-powered engine that pulled the giant logs from place-to-place.

“Ever since the dam broke, lumber baron life is meaningless to me. I barely get any satisfaction from firing loggers or suppressing news of sawmill worker deaths, which number one per 150 men. I just go to-and-fro, to-and-fro, like a bloody steam donkey.”

Great Jewish movie star Kirk Douglas, born Issur Danielovitch, lol, was a stand-up fella. Great filmography. Incredible dimple. And the one in his chin ain’t bad either, eh? Wait, what? Yes, I’m talking about his butt [citation needed].

But there’s one movie that Kirk made on his way up in 1952 that is not so great. It’s a film called “The Big Trees”, and it has since entered the public domain, allowing you to watch it here.

Here are the broad strokes, and I want you to note how insane each one of them is, and I haven’t even gotten to the insane clip that is now one of my favorite scenes in any movie, tree-related or not.

• Kirk Douglas plays an early 20th century lumber baron in Northern California named, I shit you not, “Jimmy Fallon”.

• I want you to guess who’s trees he’s trying to exploit. Because if you guessed the trees of the Yurok tribe or another Indigenous people, akin to actual history, you would be wrong! Because in the movie, it’s a peaceful band of tree-worshipping Quakers! American Indians? Never even mentioned.

• The terms “Redwood,” “Big Sequoia Redwood,” “Sequoia,” “Giant Redwoods”, “Giant Sequoias,” and “Redwood Sequoia” are all used to describe the trees, which are supposed to be Coast Redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens, the tall ones). Giant Sequoias live 300 miles Southwest and are an entirely different species, (Sequoiadendron giganteum, the wide ones).

But the real humdinger of the film is a two-minute scene that begins at about 56:20. See, Elder Bixby (Charles Meredith), the quaker/mormon/druid who leads the religious homies and also has a smokin’ hot daughter Alicia (Eve Miller), who Jimmy Fallon heartily digs, finds out that his house (which he is inside of) is in the direct “line of fall” for a tree that Jimmy’s men are cutting. Note: the men seem completely unable to cut the tree down in any other direction, despite the fact that there are roughly 357 degrees to choose from.

“Come out of there, you fools, you’re in the line of fall,” the jerk tree-feller shouts. Then a Sneaky Pete who wants to usurp Jimmy Fallon’s boss-man power has this exact interchange with the tree-feller:

Sneaky Pete: They wanna go down with the ship? It’s their hard luck!

Tree-feller: It’s murder!

Sneaky Pete: It’s Fallon’s company. He gets life for murder. We get the company.

That’s right. This man is exploiting pre-Square Deal workplace safety liability laws using premeditated tree-fall murder in order to ascend the lumber baron hierarchy. Now that’s a great villain.

Anywho, while Alicia urges him to leave the house, which would be very easy, Elder Bixby gets that martyr-y look in his eye and utters the following, “The years that grew into these trees make them long and tedious to saw. It’s time to get our friends, Judge Crenshaw and the Marshal. Hurry!” Alicia bolts.

Five seconds later, Jimmy Fallon rides up to the men and excoriates them, “what’s the matter with you, men?! You aren’t to cut that tree, you’ll hit the cabin!” Sneaky Pete then retorts, “That’s right!” Then, of course, smokin’ Alicia arrives with the Judge and the Marshal, and, uh-oh, the tree begins to fall…extremely slowly!

I timed it, and the tree spends exactly thirty seconds in free fall. This is enough time for Jimmy Fallon to ask where Alicia and her father are, for the Sneaky Pete to proclaim, “how should I know!”, then for Jimmy Fallon to tell Alicia that the house is probably caput, then for Alicia to tell him that her father is inside, then for Jimmy Fallon to run about two hundred feet to the cabin door, then glance at the tree, then decide he doesn’t have enough time, then run away, and then the tree falls directly on the house, turning it to dust, exactly like the Sneaky Pete planned it. Then Kirk Douglas is promptly arrested by the Marshal.

What. A. Movie. Please watch.

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There was once a time when trees meant something in America. Canopy domineers like Hickory taught us that it is individual effort and talent alone that allow us to gobble up sunlight. Holly trees took up their rightful places according to biological sex—men stayed outside to fight hungry squirrels while women adorned the fire place with their very pretty and very feminine red berries. Finally, masculine sprawlers like the White Oak and the Giant Sequoia taught us that man-spreading is actually a good thing.

But this way of life is under threat from a new barrage of trees who call themselves American. So let’s do ourselves a favor and cancel them, just like we did the American Chestnut—what with its socialism-adjacent handouts of endless, delicious chestnuts for whatever lazy bottom-feeder wants them.

These trees are hereby cancelled:

Rainbow Eucalyptus: Need we say more? Cancelled.

Bristlecone Pine: Can live up to 5000 years. Able to tell us what really happened in history. No, thank you! Cancelled.

Weeping Willow: No snowflakes allowed! Cancelled.

All Pine Trees: Both male and female sexual organs on the same tree. Uh, grooming much? Cancelled.

Eastern Hemlock: Currently suffering from woolly adelgid invasion. No vulnerability allowed! Cancelled.

Common Paw-paw: Depends on diversity—including the Oak and Hickory trees above it that shield it from too much sun—to survive. Cancelled.

Incense-Cedar: Used to make pencils. Cancelled.

Black Ironwood: So incredibly dense it destroyed my table saw, proving that it hates manly activities. Cancelled.

Subalpine fir: No skinny soy-boiz allowed; chunkers only. Cancelled.

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