1. I’m a poet who spends a lot of time in Hollywood.  2. I write screenplays for movies that will never get made.  3. Through the screenwriter’s guild, I’ve earned a pension that will pay me nearly $3,000 a month when I retire from writing screenplays.  4. If my writing career goes to shit, I can certainly live well on my reservation for $3,000 a month.  5. Why does an Indian work in Hollywood? Who has done Indians more harm than white filmmakers?  6. For instance: during the making of a western, the Italian director looked at a group of Indians, pointed at one paler Sioux, and said, “Get him out of there. He’s not Indian enough.”  7. For instance: Dances  with  Wolves.  8. I rarely write screenplays about Indians. I have written screenplays about superheroes, smoke jumpers, pediatric surgeons, all-girl football teams, and gay soldiers.  9. I often dream of writing a B-movie about an Indian vigilante.  10. No, not a vigilante. That would be too logical. Who needs more logical violence? Who needs yet another just war?  11. Though I haven’t written a word of my B-movie screenplay, I have designed the movie poster: an Indian man, strong and impossibly handsome, glares at us, his audience. He’s bare-chested and holds a sledgehammer in one hand and a pistol in the other. The name of the movie: Johnny Fire. The tagline: “He’s just pissed.”  12. No logic. It will be the simple story of an Indian man who wakes one morning and decides to destroy everything in his life.  13. “Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.”  14. When I was seven, during a New Year’s Eve party at my house, I watched two Indian men fist fight on our front lawn. Then one of the Indians pulled a pistol and shot the other Indian in the stomach. As my mother rushed me back inside the house, I heard the wounded man ask, “Why does it hurt so much?”