Julie Gray

Avi stares at the ceiling. He is thinking about the question I just asked him: Why do the Arab nations seem to hate Israel so much? What is the fundamental problem?

It's another hot, humid, lazy day in Tel Aviv. The curtains I brought from America move in the breeze...

It's a crazy idea. For many, it is an unthinkable one, this moving from Hollywood to the Middle East. I'm going in the opposite direction, people say.

My friends and acquaintances are alternately excited and terrified for me. Mostly, people scratch their heads -- how does this make sense?...

My ancestors arrived on these shores almost 400 years ago, long before the U.S. was even close to the country we see today. I am a Mayflower descendant, and also a descendant of Irish, Scottish, English and German immigrants who farmed tobacco and sheep and called dirt floor shacks their...

A laptop computer
An iPhone
A Nano
20 books
Knitting needles and yarn
Cosmetics/toiletries
Clothes/shoes
A menorah
Three purses
A bed, one set of linens and pillows
Two scented candles
Some incense
Two lamps
One medium box...

Paper Moon, House of Games, The Grifters, The Sting; these are some of my favorite movies. All about the art of the con.

Con men in the movies are actually a bit likeable and cool. With a sleight of hand and the wink of an eye, they merrily take...

I grew up during the '70s in a small town with huge spiritual significance to the New Age inclined. Mount Shasta is said to be inhabited by aliens, Atlanteans, Sasquatch, panthers that morph into saints and more. My parents were tuned in, dropped out, building their...

Like millions of parents across America this fall, my kid has gone off to college.

I'm happy for her.

So happy.

My heart feels like a lump of clay.

A week before my daughter left, we went to Target together. She perused the aisles quickly, expertly...

I hear it a thousand times a day. I used to say it as often:

I'm so stressed out

or

I'm so busy

or

I'm so tired

It has become a badge of belonging here in Los Angeles, and, I suspect, across much of America as well. How often...

As I write this on the May 13th, it's been exactly 365 days since my brother Peter ended his life. That's 8,760 hours. I would have spoken to him at least 20 times. I would have seen him at Christmas. I'd see him at my daughter's graduation in two weeks....

That's right. I don't. I quit watching about two years ago. I was a lifelong viewer, too. I remember the STREAKER behind David Niven, that's how very old I am. I watched Roberto Benigni annoy everyone by jumping all over the seats to get to the podium. I watched Rob...

It has been nine months, seven days and 18 hours since my brother Pete killed himself. My smart type still wants to put his full name. It just popped up. Pete Batchelder. Over time, that will stop happening.

They say it gets easier, and that's a lie. It's just...

The spate of teen suicides lately, and specifically suicides resulting from teens being teased or bullied about being gay, is heartbreaking in the extreme. Teens are sensitive and lacking perspective in general, and the "It Gets Better" phenom has been a touching response for teens who feel lost...

You read about people scattering ashes, you see it in movies, but to really do it, to really handle them and toss them into the sea -- what is that really like? Will the music swell into an emotional crescendo? Will there be a wind beneath my wings? Will I...

I sit in the lobby of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem near two diplomats discussing the current round of peace talks. My first thought is this is an amazing experience -- these older white men of indeterminate European descent are discussing the U.N., the Security Council, Abbas, Hilary Clinton...

Standing up and apparently eating an apple

FIRE followed by that bone throw thing from 2001: A Space Odyssey

Pyramids built by aliens

Cave art of animals and aliens

Effing up the Neanderthals. Karma: frozen to death on mountaintops

Domesticating animals, having like huts, learning how to farm

GODS, sacrifice...

This is the new, improved, always evolving GASP list -- the list of movies that you should have seen if you want to work (produce, write, direct, act) in the entertainment industry.

If you haven't seen them and/or you don't work in the entertainment industry, this is a fun...

Last I wrote it was four weeks since my brother ended his life. I say that now instead of "suicide" because I've decided that word is too ugly. Suicide brings up images of Billy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Of blood, of nakedness, of drowning in the river...

I converted to Judaism 25 years ago. Under a Sukkah, as I recall, because it was -- wait for it -- Sukkot. For you gentiles, that's a Jewish autumnal harvest celebration. It's kinda cool.

A day earlier I had been rolled around in the surf near Santa Barbara (where...

There are many aspiring screenwriters who take this whole writing thing a bit seriously. Not that there's anything wrong with that. They know their Kurosawa, Hitchcock and Fellini. They can compare and contrast early Polanski, analyzing whether Knife in the Water was reflective of cinema...

In the past few years, the ratio of mediocre to good films released by Hollywood has been incredibly high. Forgettable movies are being released in a wave of gooey, sticky stupidness that dulls the senses and make the heart ache for what we've lost.

It's Complicated? No, not really. It's...