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The New York Times provides an excellent screenwriting lesson in its profile of Emilio Estevez's new Bobby Kennedy assassination movie Bobby, set entirely in the soon-to-be demolished Ambassador Hotel:

Mr. Estevez set about researching and writing, but bogged down after 30 pages. He carried that sheaf of paper around in a bag for a year, he said, until his brother urged him to hit the road for inspiration. So he drove up the coast to Pismo Beach, and checked into a seedy motel, where the desk clerk, a woman in her mid-50's, recognized him and asked why he was there.

"I said I was writing a film about the day Bobby Kennedy was shot," Mr. Estevez said. "And she stops cold, holds onto the desk, and says, 'I was there.' "

The woman said she had been a Kennedy volunteer and had heard the assassin's shots. "Her name was Diane," he said. "And she became the bleeding heart through which all the blood flowed to this piece."

Once word gets out of Estevez's miraculous discovery of an eye-witness-to-history muse who guided him through his seemingly insurmountable second act problems, we imagine the PCH will quickly become even more traffic clogged by the scores of frustrated screenwriters looking for their own Dianas to give their historical docudramas that little hemmoraging-internal-organ extra.