It all began last year when I answered an ad soliciting new members for a screenwriting group. With nothing more than an email, I was admitted. No interview, no resume, no writing samples, nothing. I was in. I should have suspected something then.

Screenwriting groups in L.A. are formed by screenwriters for the purpose of giving notes — some verbal, some written — on each other's work so we can all get better. You need to get better because you want either to sell a good script or get hired to rewrite someone else's script. Bad screenwriters rarely get the chance to turn a good script into a bad movie. A chore that important is usually shared by producers and studio executives.

The point person for this group I joined, the one who welcomed me in by email without so much as a secret handshake, was Roberta Porter. The most I can say about Roberta is that she was so fiercely devoted to doing the right thing that she literally lost sleep over it. She was slender, probably in her late 40s, wore a leather biker jacket and faded tennis shoes. She kept her long straight hair in a ponytail. She also had this hurried walk that looked like it had once been ladylike before the stress demons kidnapped her. I couldn't tell if she walked the way she did because she was late for something or because she was upset about something. This could be because she usually arrived to the meetings late and upset. After showing up late to one meeting, she volunteered that, on the way there, she'd had to pull over to the side of the road and cry because she'd been so overburdened lately. Minutes later, when we needed someone to type up a new contact sheet with everyone's phone numbers, Roberta insisted on doing it, citing her ability to type 120 words a minute. Stuff like that explained why her hair was white. Not grey. White. All of it.

Her typing may have been unmatched, but her writing needed help. The first script of hers I read was over 160 pages, which is unconscionable. (It's common knowledge that anything over 110-120 pages gets round-filed unless you're some A-list writer who can break rules like script length.) The second one was a chaotic story featuring a female lead character brimming with anxiety who was angry at almost everyone around her. Can't possibly imagine what she drew on to create such a world.

I think she submitted such drafts because as long as she didn't put too much time and effort into her writing, the result would be so assailable that the humbling experience of constructive criticism wouldn't hurt her. Getting honest feedback on your script takes courage, less so when you're your script's biggest opponent. And it was the one thing she did graciously, except for the thing about the pencils. She would take out a sharp pencil, scribble notes as people delivered them, then put the pencil down and take out another sharp one a few minutes later. "I like them really sharp," she said.

The funny part, except for the fact that we'd be in a room with an overstressed woman who had a dozen sharp objects at her disposal, is that she didn't need any of us to tell her that her last opus was riddled with flaws. She said so herself. In an email she sent out before distributing her script, she apologized for it by stating she wrote it in about a week and that it was "ten notches worse than merely sucking." If she said such things in pitch meetings, it might explain her lofty success after years of screenwriting.

Even funnier: She spent six years teaching screenwriting. I'm surprised she lasted so long. Her notes were trenchant, but she surrounded them with so much crap that they were almost not worth getting. Before she gave a note, she qualified it by warning us that it may be stupid, redundant, off the mark, too small to be worth mentioning, or all of the above. She had this habit of raising the pitch of her voice and lingering on the last syllable of a clause, sometimes interjecting a nails-on-a-blackboard screeching when she was suppressing a laugh. And she did it really fast, like she wanted to get her long speech out before the men in white coats showed up to trim her fingernails.

"I have [voice arches up] somethiiing, and it may be really really [up again] stupiiid, and maybe you already know [up again] thiiis, and it may be [raises to nails-on-a-blackboard here] totally the opposite of what you were going for, [back to normal ditzy sing-song] and it might not even be worth [up again] mentioniiiing... ." And then she would tell you that a supporting character did something on page 23 that was inconsistent with what he said on page 67. And she didn't even need to say it. She'd already scribbled the note in the copy of the script you'd handed out, along with having proofread the entire thing.

She once prefaced a script note with this: "As many of you know, I have a relationship with a beautiful El Salvadorean man." I don't remember anything after that.

Roberta's neuroses were on shiniest display whenever someone slighted her. The smallest disrespect sent her into such a frenzy of hatred and vengeance that she was unable to confront the person, give or receive an apology, or do anything other than bitch about it behind the offendor's back and invest eternal excoriation in them. The first I saw of this was with a woman who was in the group but too busy to make the commitment of showing up regularly and reading the scripts. While the rest of us were in calm agreement that this woman had to go, Roberta had grown to hate her guts. I could never figure out why.

In the three months that followed, Roberta had two more run-ins with other members as they were out the door. But her biggest war came with a new member, Tricia. In fairness to Roberta, Tricia's behavior was bad form from the start. She missed her first two meetings and made little effort to give notes on the scripts she wasn't there to discuss in person. After she received Roberta's "ten notches worse than merely sucking" script, Tricia left a message on Roberta's answering machine telling her that it wasn't that bad, but that it was so rough that she wasn't sure what notes she could possibly give. Roberta explained all this to me in an email because I was now the coordinator. I was now the coordinator because no one else wanted the job.

The next day, Roberta emailed again: "You know, I made a cassette of her phone messages for you, and printed out a note on my thoughts, but decided you'd get angry if I mailed it (too pushy, overwhelming), but I think I'm going to send it." The next day, Roberta sent another email, telling me the cassette was in the mail along with a note explaining her take on Tricia. The next day, I got the cassette in the mail, along with a note explaining her take on Tricia. What does Roberta's beautiful El Salvadorean boyfriend do with all this?

Tricia left the group after attending one meeting. She sent out a farewell in which, among other things, she ripped Roberta a new one for being mean. Roberta did the same in her rebuttal email, except she didn't leave. And that was really all of it, except that before the next meeting, a 60-something biker dude in the group shook his head and muttered to me, "Chicks."

The climax of my fun relationship with Roberta came in September when I decided to quit the group. I'd simply had enough, a not uncommon sentiment after staying with a screenwriting group for any length of time. My biggest concern was how she'd react. Multiple phone calls? Showing up at my apartment? "I won't be ignored, Joe," I could hear her saying, as rabbit stew boiled over on my O'Keefe & Merritt.

I wasn't really afraid for my safety. Just afraid. I'm sure the question "How are we going to break the news to Roberta?" was a common one among her family members. Now it was my turn. Even though leaving was no crime, it was still bad news. No telling what she would do. We weren't having an affair or anything. We wouldn't even talk to each other outside of the group. But still, me leaving was exactly the kind of thing that, like all other events in life, Roberta wouldn't handle well.

I figured the best way to keep her replies short and sweet was to issue a short and sweet resignation — by email. The first member to reply to my farewell didn't help my anxiety any: "I hope you sent Roberta some medication before you sent this!"

Then Roberta chimed in the afternoon I sent the email. She wondered if my departure was caused by something she did, even though I said specifically in my farewell email that it wasn't because of anything anyone did.

Twenty minutes later, she sent another email, this time to the whole group, talking about how to go about picking a new coordinator and going over all the various little duties and issues. And she asked me to reconsider. Twice.

Eleven minutes later, I receive another email from her. She wanted to know if it's because I switched dates with her. She asked me if I was feeling down on my work.

She said my departure was "really threatening" to her. Now, what does that mean? Was I threatening her?

I wrote back reiterating my original resignation email, but shorter, assuring her that she'd done nothing wrong.

The next day, she sends out an email to the group, nominating a new coordinator — and begging me to reconsider. I don't respond.

The next day, she sends me another email. I figure this is the one where she snaps, where she announces her intention to do something drastic to keep me from leaving. Dorothy Parker did say that this is the only town where a person could die of encouragement. Was Roberta going to demonstrate?

The email read:

"I'm okay if you're burnt out on the group experience, but I'm not okay if you're burnt out on YOU [caps hers], your talent as a writer, your ambition, your career. You've got it, Joe, big time, and I bet you're tired of hearing all the praise, because it would be easier to think you're just average and then go to law school.

"Any time you want a script analyzed, don't hesitate to contact me.

Good luck!

Roberta"

I haven't heard from her since.


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