The rains are back and I am back to revising “Liability Insurance”, a screenplay I originally wrote in 1999.

Like “It’s Always 9/11” , “Liability Insurance'“ deals with technocratic intrusion. And like “It’s Always 9/11”. way too much has eerily become true. Since I wrote the draft I’m working from 22 years ago, much of the speculative fiction of the screenplay has become basic underpinnings of our society. Other aspects could readily become a potential reality, if, as the ghost of Christmas past says in Dicken’s A Christmas Carol ,“if these shadows remain unaltered by the future”. So it’s going to be a careful dance to incorporate the themes of technological intrusion, technological alienation and environmental disaster—more valid and powerful than ever— without losing their speculative edge.

One theme of Liability Insurance resonates especially in this present moment. That’s the tug of war between safety—or perceived safety—and freedom. I’ve dealt with this in both Wrong Highway (on a personal, one might say selfish level) and It’s Always 9/11. (on both a personal and societal level) How powerful is that craving for freedom? What are my protagonists willing to risk for it? But its even more central in Liability Insurance, where safety is the organizing principle of existence.

Why am I so obsessed with this? Why, whatever I write, the theme ultimately comes down to freedom versus the illusion of safety, in varied manifestations? I guess its because it goes so much to the heart of who I am , and what I’m compelled to explore. And personal freedom is so at risk in our current moment, under attack by the left as much as the right. Freedom is a facet of character more than ideology. Freedom cannot thrive where opinions come as package deals and any deviation from the orthodoxy is a violation of the culture wars, rendering the person who expresses these views, as not only “wrong” intellectually, but a bad person. In other words, guilty of thought crimes. Freedom is an open mind. Freedom is a willingness to think critically, to voice your opinions even if they are unpopular, and to act when necessary. Freedom can be dangerous.

So it’s back to the blank page with another alienated woman and mom. I’ll keep you posted.