In the spring of 2004, I was living on Bath Street and it was long enough ago that I had a landline. It rang one afternoon when I happened to be home and Michelle Drown, then managing editor of the Independent, was on the other end.
I was teaching in the Writing Program at UCSB and had written a few art reviews for the News-Press. One of the stories I had pitched but failed to place was about a cool short film by Santa Barbara filmmaker Russ Spencer. Despite the fact that the pitch went nowhere, he must have appreciated the effort because Russ had given Michelle my number.
She explained that the Independent was looking for a writer/editor to cover the arts, and I agreed to come in and meet with her and Marianne Partridge. At that point I had been in town long enough to know that the Independent had the best holiday party, and I had never been invited, so I agreed to the interview.
I still occasionally trot out this story about Russ when I’m consoling someone who’s dealing with rejection. “It was on the recommendation of a guy who I failed to help,” I say, “and on the basis of a story that never happened that I got the chance that would change my life.” Most of the time it doesn’t help, but I tell the story anyway.
Marianne could not have been more charming, and she described the job in a way that was hard to resist: “Find people making good art and give them the attention they deserve.” If I got some attention out of it in the meantime, she added, that was fine, but that was not the point.
Beyond the serendipity of reviewing lay the more substantial burden of the cover story. These longer features brought Independent writers firmly into the spotlight of Marianne’s full attention.
A couple of months after I started, Taylor Hackford came to town with his wife, Helen Mirren, to screen a new film, Ray, a biopic about the great Ray Charles. Hackford was a local boy, Santa Barbara High class of ’63, and Marianne was determined that this story would reflect well on the paper. It was also, for some reason I have forgotten, a rush job.
Marianne spotted me on the street outside the office and explained the situation. I would need to see the film that night, Hackford would be there, and I could talk to him after the screening. I interviewed Hackford at 11 p.m. in the front row of the empty theater as Dame Helen Mirren sat by patiently. Now all I had to do was write it.
One thing stood in my way. I had also recently accepted a position teaching English at the Laguna Blanca School, and I was scheduled to lead a 50-student overnight trip to Pasadena that would occupy the entire two-day period in which I had to write the Hackford story. I had never been responsible for anything quite like the field trip or the cover story before, and by the time we boarded the Amtrak Surfliner for the return trip to Santa Barbara, I had not written a word.
Isolating myself as best I could, I pulled out a notebook and wrote the intro longhand. Halfway through the third paragraph, a conductor tapped me on the shoulder. Could I help him with something? Sure.
As we walked back to the car immediately behind the one in which I was sitting, I saw students in the aisle, clearly delighted by something in the overhead luggage rack. It was a student, a young man and not small, lying comfortably in the rack with his arms folded across his chest, nestled snug among the backpacks and suspended over the heads of his fellow passengers.
Get down from there.
Further hijinks ensued, tapering gradually as we approached Santa Barbara station. When the last parent pickup left the parking lot, I drove home and typed up what I had managed to write in those stolen moments on the train. I woke up early to check the copy, emailed the draft, and headed off to teach.
Oddly, these dueling worlds became a good fit, at least for a time. There would be stories and there would be students, and I would keep shuttling between the two. Two trains running on that line.
As the Santa Barbara Independent celebrates its 40th anniversary in 2026, our staff is sharing their “Indy Origin” stories and other memories. See more of them at independent.com/40.
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