CBS Drops Dakota Fanning’s Variety Show

The Dental Network immediately picks up Dakota Fanning’s Teeth World for the fall television season

BRENTWOOD, CALIF. – AUG. 1, 2008 – The variety show created around Dakota Fanning’s teeth problems has been dropped by CBS but was picked up by the popular cable television channel The Dental Network (TDN). CBS cited the results of market surveys along with a decrease in budget as reasons for backing out of the deal to produce Dakota Fanning’s Teeth World.

“We believe Teeth World can be successful, and we wish Dakota and her family all the luck in the world,” CBS said in a statement Friday. “They have a talented group of actors and writers and, of course, Dakota will be an immediately huge draw.”

TDN vice president of programming Loraine Schmidt said the network, which began broadcasting in April of 2006, is looking forward to working with the Fannings and hopes to “liven up” a program schedule that consists mainly of news and information shows about tooth and gum care, dental surgery basics and reports on new consumer products for the teeth and mouth.

“This is the first time we’ve attempted a show of this magnitude,” Schmidt said Friday from her Culver City office. “Everything we do is basically handled by orthodontists or others in the dental field. Here we’re going to have a bright young girl who’s connected to dentistry only because she’s had problems with every tooth she ever had. We expect outstanding ratings and a huge success.”

Dakota Fanning’s Teeth World will feature song-and-dance numbers, comedy sketches, jokes and live dental surgery performed on the set. All the routines, except for the surgeries, will center on Dakota’s teeth issues, which began when she 6. From that time until she was 13, she has endured extractions, braces, retainers, fillings, headgear and the gradual extraction by chain of a tooth that had been growing under her left cheekbone. Many episodes will include Dakota’s actual former teeth, all of which were pulled.

Dakota and family okay with the new deal

In Brentwood Friday evening, Dakota put the move to TDN into perspective.

“Me and Nan (Slater, Dakota’s agent) and Harvey (Winklemeier, one of Dakota’s attorneys) went down there and met with CBS this morning, and I think the decision to drop Teeth World was based totally on money,” said Dakota, who arrived home Thursday from the National Scrabble Championship in Orlando, Fla., which she won. “We were pretty forceful in negotiating the price, and I think it just got to the point that CBS didn’t think they could make a profit on it.”

“It was an amicable split,” Dakota’s mother, Joy, said. “We understand that this would have been a risky move for a network with the reputation of CBS. In the long run, I believe it’ll be better for everybody to go with The Dental Network.”

“We’re taking a huge cut,” Dakota said. “CBS was about ready to pay us a million-five per year, and now we’re down to about half of that.”

Elle walked in the living room with the Fannings’ German shepherd attack dog, Jock, and plopped down in a soft chair with a book. Jock sat beside her.

“It doesn’t matter what they pay us,” Elle said. “We’re never going to see any of it.”

“I thought we solved the money problem on the yacht,” Joy said to her.

“Yeah, dad bought me some mints from that machine.”

“What are you reading?”

Elle turned the cover of the book toward her mother.

“Jaws?”

“It’s about this shark that gets all mad and starts–”

“I know what it’s about,” Joy said. “Why are you reading that?”

Elle shrugged.

“She doesn’t know why she does half the stuff she does,” Dakota said. “Anyway, one really cool thing about the show is that we’ve already lined up the first five weeks’ worth of dentists who are going to do surgeries and what-not right there on the stage. And because it’s not CBS, they’re going to be allowed to charge a nominal fee.”

“They’ll have a sliding-fee scale so those who really need the work can get it at a price they can afford,” Joy said.

“They should be glad they’re not me,” Dakota said. “You could probably produce that show for a whole year with what I’ve spent on dental work since I was a kid.”

Joy patted Dakota’s head. “Has it been hard for you all these years, having to do without because we spent all that money?”

“More than I can express,” Dakota said and pushed back her hair.

“Having to eat Spam sandwiches? Only getting one Christmas present every year? Not being able to ride your bike half the time because we can’t afford a patch to fix the flats?”

“Yes, Mom, it’s been a strain.” Dakota went over and sat on the arm of Elle’s chair. “And speaking of money, I remember you saying that I was going to get fifty dollars out of my Scrabble winnings – which was actually more than twenty-five thousand, because I got two high game scores, so that’s forty dollars more.”

“I’ve got your money,” Joy said.

“Well, you having my money and me having my money are two different things.”

“Do you want it right now?”

“Yeah, if it’s not too much trouble.”

Joy walked over to her purse on a hook inside the kitchen, pulled out a fifty dollar bill and brought it to Dakota.

“Wow!” Elle said, lighting up when she saw the bill.

“Double-wow!” Dakota said, holding the bill up to the light to inspect it.

“You got fifty bucks!” Elle said.

“I know. I never had this much money at one time in my whole life!”

“What are you going to do with it?”

“I don’t know. I gotta think on it.”

“Can I hold it?” Elle said.

“Yeah, but be careful with it – money doesn’t grow on trees. At least not around here.”

Elle took the bill and sniffed it. Then she rubbed it on her cheek. Then she held it in front of her and stared at it. “I wish I had fifty dollars.”

Dakota took the bill back. “Do something like winning the Scrabble championship, and maybe you will.”

“But I don’t have any talents for anything other than acting,” Elle said.

Dakota said, “Mom, is there something Elle can do to earn fifty dollars so she won’t pester me about wanting to look at mine all the time?”

“Mmm,” Joy said. “I’ll tell you what, Elle – if you mow the grass, clean the windows, vacuum all the carpets – upstairs and downstairs, clean your room, polish the banisters, help Dad re-organize the garage, help me paint the pool house, water all the roses and cook your own breakfast, I’ll see if I can get you your own fifty dollar bill.”

“Clean my room?” Elle bolted out of the chair. “No, I think I’ll just talk to Dakota about her fifty dollar bill and wait till I’m old enough so that someday, somewhere somebody’s going to start writing checks that have my name on them.”

Rehearsals for Dakota Fanning’s Teeth World are scheduled to begin Aug. 11. The show premiers Thursday, Sept. 4, the day before the premier of Dakota’s film Hounddog.

Interview With Sarah

SCRABBLE TOURNAMENT PART 10 – EPILOGUE

Sarah talks about Dakota and Elle and how the Scrabble tournament story series developed

Celebrity interviewer Stu Wellington talks for the first time with the girl known only as “Sarah” about Dakota Fanning’s thrilling victory at the 2008 National Scrabble Championship and how Sarah came up with the idea. They also touch on Dakota’s war with Abigail Breslin and Sarah’s feelings about the Little Miss Sunshine star.

MALIBU, CALIF., JULY 30, 2008

STU: Tell me about the Scrabble story idea. I know it’s been in the works for a long time.

SARAH: It started months ago with the story where Dakota was planning to be in the tournament. At the time, I wasn’t sure what would happen down the line. That story was written in early May, like two and a half months before the tournament in Orlando.

STU: But you knew you were going to go on and do the tournament series.

SARAH: It was weird. I really wasn’t thinking about the tournament, but then after Dakota said she’s going to be in it, I said, Ah-oh, now that I’ve done this, I’m going to have to take her to the tournament in July. So I stressed over that for weeks. Even after their first night in Orlando, I still didn’t know what was going to happen. I just kind of winged it, as they say.

STU: Did you expect to get nine stories out of it?

SARAH: I was thinking five or six. It sort of took on a life of its own.

STU: Do you think it makes sense for Dakota to be so “wordy” and be so good at the game of Scrabble?

SARAH: I think it does. It’s believable, anyway. All you have to do is listen to her talk, and you can tell she’s a pretty smart girl. Whether she could actually become a Scrabble champion at that level, I seriously doubt it. But then I doubt Elle could be possessed by the devil and have an actual exorcism rite performed in her home. The key is getting readers to suspend disbelief long enough to believe it. I think that was accomplished.

STU: In both series?

SARAH: Well, in the Scrabble series. People are still trying to digest the exorcism.

STU: If I can diverge for a moment – where was the motivation to do the exorcism stories? I mean, sweet little Elle, of all people. You caught a bunch of hell for that, pardon the pun.

SARAH: No shit. But as to the motivation, if you’ve followed all the Dakota and Elle stories, you’ll remember little bits and pieces thrown in regularly about Elle’s . . . weirdness, I guess you could call it. I love her a lot, but I think she’s an odd girl in her real life. Then I came across that picture of her and Dakota, where they’re drinking out of water bottles and Elle’s got this really screwy look on her face. That was the basis for the story where Elle is accused of being part of a Satanic cult. After that, it just got out of control. Then the Amish story, where she supposedly makes her head go around in a circle. That’s when I knew we had to get her some help. (Laughs.) After doing all those stories, I was the one who needed help.

STU: Back to Scrabble. The Orlando stories covered more than just the tournament itself – Elle getting her toe stuck in the bathtub drain, you and her clowning around in her room and busting the table, the Fannings on a yacht, talking about money. How did those ideas originate?

SARAH: I knew I wanted to fill up their lives beyond just Dakota playing in the matches. These are real people, and they’re going to do things during their eight days out there that involve more than just Scrabble. The central plots of the bathtub and yacht stories came from two old episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show. The one where Elle and I pretend to be cowgirls, I don’t know where that came from. I don’t know where most of them come from. They just come.

STU: Why did you decide in the second story to have the press barred from the Pacifica Ballroom during Dakota’s matches?

SARAH: Because I had no idea what would actually be happening in there, and it would have been too hard to create it all. And like I said before, I didn’t want to make all the stories focus on Scrabble. I always keep in mind that my readers are Dakota and Elle fans first, not necessarily fans of whatever I’ve got the girls doing.

STU: You said you got a lot of e-mails throughout the tournament asking if Dakota was going to win.

SARAH: I got a ton of mail asking that question. I just wrote back and said you’ll have to wait right along with the rest of us to find out.

STU: Did you know whether or not Dakota would win?

SARAH: At the outset, I was going to have her lose. Then when the stories started coming, I was sort of on the fence, very undecided. And that made it a lot more exciting for me. It’s like I was living it right along with her, day by day.

STU: What changed your mind about her losing?

SARAH: It was at the end of the yacht story, when Dakota goes up to the bridge, and it says, and I quote:

“But none of those things mattered at the moment. At the moment, she wanted just one thing. She wanted to be named National Scrabble Champion tomorrow night at 8:30 in the Pacifica Ballroom back at the hotel. That was her goal. And something in her sophisticated yet still basically innocent heart told her that, baring all natural disasters and acts of God, it was a goal she was going to achieve.”

When I saw how she felt and how determined she was, and when I realized everything that she’d done to prepare for this, I knew I couldn’t let her lose. Plus with all the mail I was getting, I knew it would piss a lot of people off if she lost.

STU: But you don’t usually write to please readers.

SARAH: No, but in this case, I would have been pissed off, too, if she lost.

STU: Was the huge loss to Abigail Breslin a few weeks before a factor in that decision?

SARAH: It was a big factor. And there’s another case where I didn’t know the outcome until right near the end. But with Orlando, I got to thinking that I can’t have Dakota suffer two huge disappointments back-to-back. I thought it was horrible the way she lost the fight in L.A., and I felt so sorry for her. I didn’t want to hurt her again.

STU: Are we going to see more between Dakota and Abigail? Are they going to fight again?

SARAH: Dakota has said she wants to, I don’t really know at this time. I don’t know how she’s going to feel as the days and weeks go on, and neither does she. She thinks she does, but she doesn’t. She’s still getting her nose healed, so it’s going to be awhile if anything does happen.

STU: Dakota’s little speech when she was running around the conference room at the lunch break on the last day of the tournament was pretty intense.

SARAH: It was intense for me, too. I knew what she must be feeling. If you’ve read all the stories, you know that even though she hides it fairly well, she’s a very obsessive, high-strung personality, and my guess is that’s about how she is in her real life. Put her in a situation where she’s neck-and-neck with her competitors with only three games to go and don’t let her know the point differential, and hell, the story nearly writes itself.

STU: What was the most difficult among the Orlando stories to put together?

SARAH: Well, in terms of time, it was the yacht story, which is part seven. That’s because trying to interpret the dialog from the TV show script and make it fit the Fannings just took a lot of time. The first story – the bathtub story – was also hard, because I’m not really that good at doing action scenes, and there was a lot of physical action in that one. Same with when me and Elle danced around on the table.

STU: How did you feel Tuesday night when Dakota’s name was announced as the winner?

SARAH: I was right there with her, and it was really exciting. I actually got a little teary. To me, it represented the end of a very long and hard road. Remember that she’s totally out of her element there. It’s not a movie – it’s real life, and she’s competing against the best Scrabble players in the world. So for her to win, it just made me very happy and emotional. And Elle’s reaction really affected me, too, the way she was standing there in the aisle and crying, and her great speech up on the stage.

STU: Is Nigel Richards a real person?

SARAH: Yep, he came in as the reigning World Scrabble Champion.

STU: Did he win the actual tournament in Orlando?

SARAH: As a matter of fact, he did. And I’ll tell you something that totally blew my mind. The awards ceremony story was created throughout the day yesterday, Tuesday, and I posted it last night at about 9 p.m. Florida time, when the ceremony was actually taking place out there. I didn’t check the National Scrabble Association website until this morning, before you and I talked. Well, get this . . . this is so spooky: in the story, Dakota asks Nigel what his final point differential was – they call it “spread” in Scrabble. He tells her it was 1,340.

STU: Did you keep his and Dakota’s scores throughout the tournament?

SARAH: I kept hers, not his. I had to, because I knew that point differentials are how won/loss-record ties are broken. So arbitrarily, I “kept score” of all Dakota’s matches, and I ended up with her having a point differential of 1,345. I didn’t know if that was way high or way low for a typical winner. Okay, good enough. Then Nigel told her during the ceremony that his differential was 1,340, which meant she beat him by five points. Are you following all this?

STU: Every word.

SARAH: Well, I went to the Scrabble site a few hours ago to see what the real results were, and sure enough, Nigel won it – with a point differential of EXACTLY 1,340! I still have goosebumps from that.

STU: That’s pretty goddamn weird.

SARAH: It’s fucking nuts. I still haven’t absorbed it. It may take me weeks. Do you know what the odds of that happening are? Probably like in the millions.

STU: At any point were you thinking of having Dakota play a game with Nigel and beat him?

SARAH: I wasn’t even thinking of having her play him. That was a last-minute thing. And, no, there’s no way I would let her beat him. There’s a credibility line I try not to cross with the stories – as hard as that may be to believe – and having a fourteen-year-old girl beat the best player in the world would definitely have crossed it.

STU: So what’s next for Dakota?

SARAH: Honestly, I don’t know. Like with any long series I do on any of the blogs, when it’s done, the other two blogs are always in dire need of some new content, so I may hang out with Mary-Kate and Ashley for awhile and see if Mary-Kate wants to delve into more about her weird visit to Covina – maybe even go back there. I’m playing with a series idea for that. And then poor Avril, who I love so much, but who just can’t seem to get a break. She just had a pretty passionate little affair with a guy she met behind a 7-Eleven in Illinois, and now she’s full speed ahead on the North American leg of her tour. I need to do something with her.

STU: Do you have a favorite among the three blogs you manage?

SARAH: Absolutely not. But each one does something different to me. The Dakota and Elle stories touch my heart. The Mary-Kate and Ashley stories touch my mind. The Avril stories make me laugh the hardest. But I don’t have a favorite.

STU: Which site gets the most traffic?

SARAH: Dakota and Elle’s.

STU: Which of all the stories on all the sites has generated the most hits?

SARAH: The one that’s an interview with a woman who worked at Cirque Lodge, which is where Mary-Kate did rehab in 2004 for drugs and anorexia. Second is Dakota’s story about her Vanity Fair photo shoot.

STU: So you’ve got the three blogs going. What about other celebrities? Any chance of starting up some sites with other lead characters?

SARAH: No, because the five people I’m covering right now are the only ones I really care that much about. They keep me busy.

STU: What about Abigail Breslin?

SARAH: She’s the last person I would waste my time writing a site about.

STU: You don’t like her?

SARAH: I think she’s a terrible actress, and I think she’s fat and she doesn’t know how to talk, and I think she’s basically everything Dakota said about her.

STU: Is it possible you feel that way because you’re such a huge Dakota fan?

SARAH: No, I feel that way because Abigail has no business being a celebrity or a professional actress. Community theater would be a much more appropriate place for her. It upsets me when people compare her with Dakota. My favorite response for that is, comparing Abigail to Dakota is like comparing aspirin to heroin.

STU: (Laughs.)

SARAH: (Laughs at her silly self.) It’s a comparison of degrees, not substances, obviously.

STU: Have you ever tried heroin?

SARAH: No, but I’ve tried aspirin.

STU: What about Miley Cyrus, then?

SARAH: Okay, let me adjust what I said a minute ago: Abigail is the second to last person I’d write a site about. Miley Cyrus is a plastic token of celebrity. She’s in it for the money, and nothing else. Anything she has that resembles talent is just a product of her handlers. She’s riding on her old man’s name.

STU: And Dakota and Elle are different from all that.

SARAH: Dakota Fanning is the most amazing actress in Hollywood. She can compete with any actress at any level. And Elle is only a few steps behind her. There’s something very special about those two girls, and I feel wonderful that I can use my imagination to dig into just what it is and share it with the whole world.

Scrabble Tournament Awards Ceremony

SCRABBLE TOURNAMENT – PART 9

ORLANDO, FLA., JULY 29, 2008 – At 6:40 p.m., Dakota Fanning walked out of the Pacifica Ballroom after the final round was played in the 2008 National Scrabble Championship, said nothing to the large contingent of reporters waiting for her, and started toward the elevators. Sweater tied around her waist, hair damp with sweat, lips pressed together, she moved swiftly, grasping her mother, Joy’s, hand.

“Dakota – can you at least tell us if there’s still a tie,” a reporter called after her.

Dakota said nothing. Joy held up four fingers and kept walking. Everyone guessed it was like Dakota had said earlier: if she had nothing new to report, she probably wouldn’t say anything. If that was the case, it meant there was still a four-way tie.

Inside the Pacifica Ballroom

An hour and a half later, the entire back wall of the Pacifica Ballroom is packed with newspaper reporters and magazine writers, many of whom hadn’t been here during the tournament. In front of them, seated, are the family and friends of the 914 contestants. At the front of the room, the contestants themselves laugh and joke with one another. None of them knows the names of the winners in the six divisions, but most know it’s not them.

Dakota Fanning, just 14 and clearly the darling of the tournament – if not the underdog, until she swept her first 11 games and woke people up – is sitting between two men in the third row. Nigel Richards, the current World Scrabble Champion, is in the front row, two seats from the aisle.

National Scrabble Association chairman Bert Harding walks up the green carpeted steps and onto a stage with seven pots of red carnations, a shiny black podium, a gigantic replica of a Scrabble board hanging at the rear and a table with six trophies. The audience applauds loudly.

“What a crowd!” says Harding, who is well over six and a half feet tall. “I see a lot of familiar faces, and a lot of unfamiliar faces that I hope will become familiar in the years to come. I guess you know why we’re here – we’re about to crown the 2008 National Scrabble Champion!”

Another round of applause as Harding shifts through some notes.

“This is my third year doing this, and I have to tell you, it gets more exciting every year. Before we get to the awards, I want to thank our extremely generous sponsors.”

Elle wants to send a few good vibes

In the 40th row, Elle Fanning, Dakota’s 10-year-old sister, pulls a small green crystal out of her tiny black Dolce and Gabbana purse. Because she is so short, she can’t see her older sister down near the front, so she will send her some positive energy the best way she knows how.

Her mother, Joy, whispers, “Didn’t we talk about that?”

Elle whispers, “I didn’t do it during the tournament. It’s over now. I only want Dakota to feel good.”

Joy whispers, “Dakota feels good enough,” and holds out her hand for the crystal.

Elle gives it to her. And she was telling her mother the truth: throughout the entire tournament, not once did she engage in a single transference of energy to Dakota, and she never once allowed herself a single negative though about any of her sister’s competitors. Her mother doesn’t understand. Nobody does. Elle folds her hands in her lap and listens to Harding drone on about the sponsors. When he’s done, she claps with the rest of the audience.

Harding yawns and pretends to be tired. “Well, that was pretty exciting. What do you say we all go home now?”

Boos and whistles fill the room, giving way to a thunderous ovation that lasts for nearly a minute.

“Then let’s move along. This year’s Division I competition was as tight as in any years I can remember. Not only did we have some outstanding returning players, such as our World Champion Nigel Richards . . .” He waits while the audience applauds for Richards. “But we also had a definite first – and I hope it won’t be a last. Actress Dakota Fanning competed in the top division, and from what I’ve heard from the scorers and judges, she definitely gave old Nigel and his lot a run for their money.” He motioned with his hand toward Dakota, and the audience cheered for her.

Elle stood up so she could see her sister. Dakota turned in her seat and waved, but she didn’t stand up.

The day ended with four equal won-loss records

“And interestingly, Nigel and Dakota, along with Rob Hammer and Chelsea Bodine, finished the tournament with identical won-loss records of twenty four and four. Before announcing the winner, based on point differential, I want to thank you four – Nigel, Dakota, Rob and Chelsea, for being here with us this year and working so hard to accomplish something very few people can say they’ve ever accomplished. Let’s give them all a big hand!”

The applause is loud and spirited as many in the audience stand up. Harding motions for the four Division I finalists to stand, which they do, and now the rest of the room gets up.

“Yes, these four – and really, every one of you who participated – have achieved a remarkable goal,” Harding says as the crowd gradually sits back down. “But one of you has accomplished something that only seventeen others have since the Scrabble Championship as we know it began in 1978. The first champion, David Prinz, won $1,500 at the tournament in New York, which had a total field of just 65 players. The prize money has grown through the years, and so have the number of contestants. This year, we drew nine hundred and fourteen players, easily surpassing the 2004 record of eight thirty-seven.”

The audience claps. Elle wiggles in her seat. Joy and husband, Steve, hold hands. Elle gets up on her knees in her chair, and Joy doesn’t say anything.

“And this year, the first prize is $25,000,” Harding says and pauses a few seconds to look at notes in front of him. “With an official tournament score of twenty-four wins against just four losses, and with a point differential of 1,345, our 2008 National Scrabble Champion is . . .” He looks toward Dakota’s section of the third row, where a single scream pierces the air. “Dakota Fanning!”

Elle screams, too, and climbs up on her chair and starts jumping up and down and screaming some more. Everybody else is on their feet, so she can’t see anything, and that just isn’t going to work. She jumps down and streaks out to the aisle before her mother can grab her and runs as fast as she can to the front. Dakota is engulfed in a sea of congratulators, people she doesn’t even know, but when she sees Elle, who she knows better than anybody, she squeezes past people to get to the aisle. She and Elle collide in a fierce hug.

The sisters hold each other tight, saying nothing, just holding. Flashbulbs are so constant they make the room twice as light as it was before. “I love you, Dakota!” Elle finally says.

“I love you, too, Elle,” Dakota says and breaks away. “I gotta go up there. I won, can you believe it!”

“I know – I heard that guy say it!”

Elle has always been proud of Dakota

Elle watches her very famous older sister, with her face a mess and her makeup runny from tears, lift a side of her midnight-blue evening gown and ascend the steps, where Harding and all kinds of other important-looking people are waiting for her. Elle is so proud of Dakota she doesn’t even have words to describe it. So she just stands there in the aisle and cries.

A man in a tuxedo carries a huge cardboard check out onto the stage. The check says “Pay to the Order of 2008 Division I Winner,” and there’s a big $25,000 in the amount space. Elle is pretty sure the check is not negotiatable, or whatever they call it. The fact that it’s so big means nothing: she’s seen checks to her and Dakota for ten times that amount, and they were on little pieces of paper. But they cashed. Or so she and Dakota have been told.

Now Dakota is at the microphone with Harding. “Congratulations, Dakota,” Harding says, bending over and grasping Dakota’s right hand. Dakota is crying too hard to speak, so Harding looks at the audience and smiles. “She’s a little emotional right now, I think,” he says, “and who can blame her?” Dakota wipes tears off her face, pushes back her hair and keeps on crying.

Harding motions for the crowd to quiet down and take their seats. Everyone sits, except for Elle, who’s still standing in the aisle like a little lost girl.

“Hi,” Harding says to her, because it’s clear he’s not going to get anything out of Dakota for a few minutes.

Elle waves and wipes her eyes as her sister had.

“You want to come join your sister?”

Elle starts for the steps. People start clapping for her.

“This is Dakota’s sister, Elle Fanning, who many of you may already know,” Harding says and shakes Elle’s hand. “Dakota?”

Dakota doesn’t answer. She just moves over to Elle and hugs her again as the audience erupts with more applause.

Finally Dakota is ready to talk. She nods at Harding.

“When you arrived here, tell me the truth – were you expecting all this?” he asks her.

“No . . . I mean, I was hoping I would win, but I never thought it would feel like this. This is the most special thing that’s ever happened to me. I’m just . . . I don’t even know what to say.”

Elle does

Elle taps Harding’s arm, and he transfers the microphone to her. “Dakota knew she could win, and she worked harder than you can ever imagine. I’m so amazed by her, by the way she concentrates on a goal and won’t let anything get in her way.”

Dakota similes through her tears as Elle, usually the more reticent of the two in public, goes on. “She’s had a lot to deal with during all the time she was preparing for this,” Elle says, sniffing. “She had to turn down a movie role and go through all the stuff you have to do when you do that, she’s done all kinds of personal appearances and some traveling, and that took her away from her practice. And then last month there was all that stuff with me, and she completely gave up Scrabble to make sure I was safe and back to full health. Then she had to go through the war with that actress who I won’t even name and who isn’t even an actress, as far as I’m concerned . . . then the fight between them on the thirteenth, and the broken nose and the infection. But you know what? When my sister says she’s going to do something, she does it. And it don’t matter what stands in the way. My sister can do anything!”

More cheers, and Dakota and Elle hug again.

“Dakota, your parents are here somewhere around here, aren’t they?” Harding says.

Dakota points to the rear of the ballroom.

“Steve? Joy? Can you join us for the presentation of the trophy and the check?”

Steve and Joy walk down the aisle as the crowd cheers, because the crowd is simply in a cheering mood by now. They join their daughters on the stage, and another round of hugs ensues.

“Dakota, on behalf of the National Scrabble Association, I’m very proud to present to you with this check for twenty-five thousand dollars as the 2008 National Scrabble Champion.” Harding hands the large cardboard replica to Dakota, who holds it up for a few seconds. Cameras across the ballroom sparkle with light. Dakota gives the check to her father, and Harding hands her the silver first-place trophy. She raises it high in the air, kisses it then gives it to her mother. She takes the microphone from Harding, and the place grows instantly quiet.

“Of course I had no speech prepared, and I’m glad,” she says. “This isn’t one of my movie things, one of my Hollywood things. This is a place where there are average, everyday, super people, so all I want to do is say thank you for the best time I’ve ever had in my life. I met some of the greatest people I could ever hope to meet, and I competed against so many players who are here because they’re the best in the world. And I competed against the best player in the world – Nigel Richards – and he beat me soundly.”

From his seat, Richards says, “You’re the best, Dakota!” and another crackle of applause fills the room.

“That’s very nice of you to say, Nigel,” Dakota says. “And thank you, but I couldn’t beat you on my best day, and you know it. What was your point differential? Can you tell me now?”

“Thirteen forty,” Richards says.

“Oh, my God – I beat you by five points!”

The audience laughs.

“Next year, kiddo,” Richards says.

“If I can schedule it next year, I’ll be here,” Dakota says. “Well, I know there are other awards and checks and all that to present, so I’m going to get off this stage. Thank you again for making a dream of mine come true. I hope every one of you find ways to realize your own dreams, because no matter how old you are, dreams are all you have. Thank you!”

THE END

BONUS! Read an interview with Sarah about the Scrabble stories

Dakota Fanning Talks To Reporters During Lunch Break On Day 4

SCRABBLE TOURNAMENT – PART 8

Too wound to eat, she tells of morning’s stressful events and four-way tie

ORLANDO, FLA. – JULY 29, 2008 – At lunch time on the fourth and final day of the National Scrabble Championship, Dakota Fanning left the Pacifica Ballroom in a fluster, said, “I can’t eat, I gotta talk,” and instead of turning right toward the elevators to go to her room, she veered left and headed to a conference room. Her mother, Joy, her sister, Elle, two ever-present but relatively inconspicuous bodyguards, and about 60 reporters and photographers followed her.

“I lost my first game – my fourth, overall – I thought I was going to have a stroke,” Dakota said, pacing the front of the room, yelling because she couldn’t stand still long enough to use the microphone at the podium. “Then right before lunch, Nigel (Richards) lost his fourth game. We both won the rest of our games. I don’t know his point differential, because he wouldn’t tell me, and nobody’ll tell anybody any of the point differentials. I’m doing well, but I don’t know. I’m confident, but I don’t know anything right now. I’m not doing too good at the moment.”

Joy whispered to one of the bodyguards, and he left the room.

Dakota undid the top two buttons of her charcoal Diane von Furstenberg sweater and bent over and grasped her ankles. “I’m okay, I just gotta breathe,” she said. When she raised back up, her face was flushed. “Now I’ve got an hour and a half to try not to over-think this. Does anybody have any water?”

Ten or twelve reporters offered her unopened bottles of Evian, because it had already been made clear to them that Dakota would drink water like a fish, but not out of bottles with the broken seals.

“Just put them on that table,” Dakota said. “Thank you.” She opened one of the bottles and drank a fourth of it. “So now it’s down to three games. And possibly not just with me and Nigel. For those of you who don’t know, even though you should by now, Nigel Richards is the World Scrabble Champion and the person everybody thought from the beginning is going to win the tournament. So me and Nigel are tied by the record, but I don’t know the scores of his matches. He was sitting too far away from me, so I couldn’t hear or see anything. But it’s not just Nigel now. Two of the people who were one win behind us yesterday won all four of their games so far today, so now, at this moment, even as we stand here, there are four of us who are tied. Technically.”

The bodyguard who had left returned with a big bottle of green juice. He gave the bottle to Joy, who took it over to Dakota.

“I’ll throw up,” Dakota said to her mother.

“Can’t you take a few sips?” Joy said. “There’s electrolytes and vita–”

“Mom, I’ll throw up, and there are a million cameras in here!”

Joy returned to the side of the room and gave the bottle of juice to Elle. Elle unscrewed the cap and drank hungrily, since it appeared she might miss her lunch, too.

“I did my best to relax throughout this whole thing,” Dakota said, pacing again, “but there’s no way I can do that anymore. My entire life revolves around three o’clock to six-thirty. That’s my life. You guys got your stories and your deadlines and your families and your mortgages – I got three o’clock to six-thirty. Three more games. And I have no idea about the point differentials. So the only thing I can focus on is winning three games with as big of scores as humanely possible, because Nigel is capable of stringing words in a way that’s unknown to mortal man, and he can turn six hundred, eight hundred, a thousand points in a game faster than you can say . . . whatever you can say fast.”

She took a breath and drank water.

Joy said, “It was a very exciting four rounds.”

Dakota said, “They know that, Mom. Of course, it was exciting. Four people’s lives are at stake, and I’m one of those people.” She paused and stared at her sister. “Elle, what are you doing?”

“Drinking,” Elle said from a mouth painted green with juice.

“You got that stuff all over your face.”

Elle wiped her mouth with the sleeve of her white Ralph Lauren polo shirt.

“Now you look like you just walked in off the street. Anyway, if you guys have any questions, I’ll try to answer them.” Dakota started pacing again.

“Ten minutes,” Joy said, “then we’re going upstairs.”

“Mom!”

“Ten minutes.”

A reporter said, “What’s your current point differential?”

“Eleven hundred and seven,” Dakota said.

“What was the score of the game you lost?” another reporter asked.

“Two seventy-eight to three twenty-one. It only threw me back forty-three points, but that’s a whole game with a negative score that can never get made up. It’s not good.”

Now, instead of just pacing the front of the room, Dakota began walking its perimeter. The reporters turned to follow her with their heads, like radars.

“What’s your high game so far today?” a reporter asked.

“Four sixty-five. That one could have been way higher, but the tiles were cursed. All kinds of times I had like five vowels on my rack. Fortunately I got the Q and the Z and was able to get good strings with them on the big spaces. If it wasn’t for that, I could have easily lost that game, too, in which case I would be in serious trouble.”

“What’s the general mood inside the room?”

“Tense. Well, tense for those of us who can actually win.” A chair was blocking her path; she stepped up on it and over it rather than going around it. “I think for the majority of the players, it’s more of a fun, easygoing day, because they know they can’t win, and they’re just having fun. Winning’s not about fun.”

“What’s winning about?”

“Winning.”

“Are you going to try to relax and eat anything before you start up again?”

“As you heard, my mom’s forcing me to go back to my room,” Dakota said, “so I’ll just walk circles up there. Walking and moving is the only way I can even get close to relaxing at a time like this, but nobody understands that. They say, ‘Oh, honey, sit down and be calm like the rest of us,’ and ‘Oh, honey, have a burrito.’ Ha! If I sat down right now – like, let’s say you strapped me to a chair so I couldn’t get up – I would literally self-destruct and implode. I’d be like the wicked witch in The Wizard of Oz. I’d melt and turn into smoke, or whatever she turned into.”

“Smoke,” Elle said.

Most of the reporters chuckled at Elle’s clarification.

“Don’t laugh!” Dakota said. “That’s how I am – I implode!” She passed by Elle, who had finished most of the juice and had covered her lips and mouth with a good part of it.

“My sister the clown,” Dakota said and walked on.

“Don’t call me a clown!” Elle said.

“I meant because of the green all over your mouth – don’t make me explain things right now – I’m not in the mood. Anyway, I don’t know what’s going to happen at six-thirty. I know the matches will be over, but they’re not going to tell us who won until the awards ceremony, so I don’t know what I’m going to feel like saying at that time. I just hope I can focus on my games and do well.”

Joy went over and put an arm around Dakota, stopping her forward motion. “They’re going to let all you guys into the ceremony,” Joy said to the reporters, “so you can just get there a little before eight-thirty and get set up. If Dakota doesn’t want to talk to you right after the last game, please don’t pester her.”

Dakota took a deep breath. “I want to thank all of you for following me around these last four days. I know I haven’t been easy, but I think you understand the gravity of the situation. Assuming things this afternoon go about like things went this morning, I’m probably not going to want to talk, because I won’t know any more than I do now.”

Dakota left the conference room, walking between her mother and Elle, holding onto both of them. The two big bodyguards fell in behind them, glancing in three directions, watching as always for anybody or anything that could prevent Dakota from achieving whatever goal she was heading toward at the moment.

READ PART 9!

BONUS! Read an interview with Sarah about the Scrabble stories

The Fannings Take A Yacht Excursion

SCRABBLE TOURNAMENT – PART 7

Money becomes the main topic of the voyage, but Dakota has other concerns

PORT ST. JOHN, FLA. – JULY 28, 2008 – Steve and Joy Fanning treated their famous actress daughters Monday night to a fully staffed yacht cruise out of Port St. John on the Florida coast. Dakota and Elle Fanning were fascinated with the size and speed of the 74-foot Viking yacht, which featured DVD and telephone systems, luxurious sleeping quarters for guests and crew, and a spiral staircase leading up to a covered bridge. The girls were even more fascinated that their parents shelled out $4,825 for the experience.

“You said the twenty dollars I won today for the high game score could go toward the cost of this cruise, but now I’m wondering if the whole tab’s going to come out of the twenty-five thousand if I win tomorrow,” Dakota said as the family sat on the rear deck, watching white sprays of water paint the air in the vessel’s wake.

“If you win the Scrabble tournament, that’s all going to be your own money,” Joy said.

“You mean mine as in I can actually spend it?”

“No, yours as in you can actually put it in your trust fund . . . minus fifty that you can do anything you want with.”

“Lovely,” Dakota said and sipped from a can of 7-Up. “So how are we paying for this yacht?”

“It came out of our own money,” Steve said.

“It’s a gift to you – and to Elle,” Joy said. “It’s our way of saying we love you and we’re very proud of you.”

“Hear, hear,” Steve said and toasted the girls with a can of Coors beer.

“You guys got five thousand dollars laying around to spend on yachts?” Elle said as she tried to untangle fishing line she had tangled around a reel. “How come me and Dakota never have any money?”

“You both have all the money you’ll ever need,” Steve said. “In trust funds, where it’s safe and earning interest.”

“It would earn my interest a lot more if I had some of it in my hands,” Elle said.

How would Dakota and Elle spend millions?

“What would you do with all your money if you could have every bit of it, right now, in cash?” Joy said asked both girls.

“Man, the first thing I’d do is by me a new CD player,” Elle said.

Dakota rolled her eyes, “Yeah, that would put a massive dent in it. You know what I would do? I’d buy an island. I’d call it ‘Dakota Isle,’ and I’d build a big brick house and horse stables and a ballet studio, and a movie studio . . . and I’d hire people to cut the grass and clean the rooms and cook the food and drive me back and forth to town . . . and I’d build a little town with a bank and a post office and a dry cleaner and a hair and nail salon. Dakota Isle.”

“Don’t you think you’re a little young to have your own island city?” Joy said.

Dakota laughed. “Yeah, but I really would like to have my own hair salon so we wouldn’t have to drive clear to Studio City every week.”

“Why don’t you just buy Studio City?” Elle said and put down the reel, still tangled.

Dakota gave her a look. “Because I don’t have enough money yet.”

Joy wants to settle a debt

“Speaking of money, honey,” Joy said. “You remember before we left, you said you absolutely had to have that wool sweater from Macy’s to take to 105-degree Orlando, and you needed that extra twenty-five from me? Remember you said you’d pay me back as soon as we got here and you sorted through your travel-expense money? Well, here we are, and I still haven’t seen the twenty-five dollars.”

“You know, Mom, you are so right! How thoughtless of me.” Dakota got two tens and a five from her $1,500 Louis Vuitton clutch and gave the bills to her mother.

“Thank you,” Joy said. “But I just remembered – I owe you a dollar from this morning at the vending machines. Do you have change for this five?”

Dakota re-opened her clutch. “I only have three ones.”

“You have twenty-eight dollars?” Elle said. “Man!”

“Then here,” Joy said, giving Dakota the five back and taking the three singles. “Now you owe me a dollar.”

“But I’ve owed you since before we left – I don’t want to owe you anymore.”

Steve popped open another beer.

Elle pulled a crumpled dollar out of her pants pocket and gave it to Dakota. “I’ll lend you this, and you can pay off Mom with it.”

“No, because then I’ll owe you, and you’ll never get off my back about it,” Dakota said. She gave the dollar back to Elle. “Mom, take your five back, and give me the three ones. Now, Elle, you lend Mom that dollar.” Elle gave the dollar to Joy. “Now, Mom, you give me a dollar, and you and me are square. And you owe Elle a dollar. I think.”

Joy looked at the money in her hand. Then she looked at Steve. “You trained them,” Steve said and drank some beer.

“Wait a minute,” Elle said. “Now I don’t got no money, and I want to get some mints out of that machine back at the hotel!”

“I don’t have any money,” Joy corrected her.

“Heck if you don’t,” Elle said. “You got all that money Dakota just gave you!”

“Elle, look – take a dollar from me, then you can just owe me a buck,” Dakota said and gave a dollar to Elle.

“No – I don’t want to owe you any money, either,” Elle said. “I just want my dollar.”

“I’m giving you a dollar – who cares whose dollar it is?”

“What difference does it make who owes who what?” Joy said. “Here, take the five,” she said and gave the bill to Dakota. “And I’ll take back the three.”

“But I don’t want to owe you, Mom!” Dakota said. “I already explained that.”

“Does the machine you want the mints from at the hotel take ten dollar bills?” Steve asked Elle.

“I think so,” Elle said, on the verge of tears and confused by all the money-talk.

Steve took out his wallet and looked through it. “All I have is a twenty.” He handed it to Dakota. “Give me two tens for this, and I’ll give one of the tens to Elle, and she can owe me.”

Becoming flustered, Dakota said, “Dad – I don’t have two tens! I just gave them to Mom! Didn’t you just sit right there and watch me do that?” She stuck out her hand. “Mom, give me back the tens.” Joy gave them to her. Dakota turned to Elle. “Give me a ten.”

“I don’t have any money!” Elle yelled. “That’s what I keep trying to tell you guys!”

Joy gave three dollars to Elle. “Here’s three, honey, and I owe you seventeen.”

Elle started to cry.

“Okay, I think we’re getting a little carried away here,” Steve said. “I’ll solve the problem for everybody. When we get back to shore, I’ll go to an ATM machine and withdraw three hundred thousand dollars in small bills.”

“Good,” Dakota said. “And buy a box of Kleenex for the crybaby over there.”

“I’m not a crybaby,” Elle said, crying pitifully. “I’m just not good with money like the rest of you are.”

“Who said I’m any good with money?” Dakota said. “I never even see any of it!”

Joy tries to bring a little perspective to the situation

“Doesn’t it seem a little weird,” Joy said, “that we’re sailing out of beautiful Port St. John on a yacht that costs almost five thousand dollars a day, we’re eating lobster thermadore and drinking . . .” She looked at Steve. “Coors beer.” He raised his can high. “And we’re staying in hotel rooms that cost four or five hundred dollars a day, and Dakota’s playing in a tournament that could earn her twenty-five thousand dollars, and you two lucky ladies together earn more than five million dollars a film, and together you’ve got six of those films in post-production, and we’re sitting here arguing over twenties, tens, fives, ones and mints from a hotel vending machine? Doesn’t that strike anybody as a little odd?”

“It would strike me as odd if it was any family other than ours,” Dakota said.

“No – it’s odd for our family, too,” Joy said. “You realize that we’re acting like a bunch of ungrateful . . . what’s the word, honey?” she asked Steve.

“Ingrates?” Steve said.

“Like a bunch of ingrates,” Joy said. “I think we’ve let money become a little too important in our lives, and we need to get our priorities straightened out.”

“You’re the one who brought up the twenty-five dollars I owed you for the sweater,” Dakota said. “I would have been happy to just sit here and look at the seagulls and watch Dad drink beer.”

“Well, you don’t owe me anymore,” Joy said.

Dakota has more important things to think about

“Well, no, not now – I just paid you!” Dakota rose and finished her 7-Up. “I’m going to the bridge and talk to the captain. I’ll let you guys figure out how much money I have that I won’t ever see and who owes who what and who needs a dollar for mints that’ll give her indigestion all night long.”

Dakota left her family and climbed the stairs to the bridge. But she didn’t go see the captain. She had no intention of seeing the captain. She just wanted to stand and watch the sun set over the lovely Florida coast and think about her immediate future. Sure, she had a ton of great things in her life – a loving family, a perfect career, a beautiful home, more clothes than she could ever wear, explosive fame, a bloated trust fund, and a mind that was sharp and tight and creative.

But none of those things mattered at the moment. At the moment, she wanted just one thing. She wanted to be named National Scrabble Champion tomorrow night at 8:30 in the Pacifica Ballroom back at the hotel. That was her goal. And something in her sophisticated yet still basically innocent heart told her that, baring all natural disasters and acts of God, it was a goal she was going to achieve.

(Editor’s note: When I steal an idea for a plot, I don’t usually reveal the source, but this time I will. The money argument came from a scene from The Dick Van Dyke Show. Here it is, if you’re interested. The specific scene starts at about 2:15.)

READ PART 8!

BONUS! Read an interview with Sarah about the Scrabble stories

Dakota Goes 6 and 1 On Monday And Is Gloriously Happy

SCRABBLE TOURNAMENT – PART 6

Her primary competitor, Nigel Richardson, loses 3 matches; Dakota takes the lead in point differential

ORLANDO, FLA. – JULY 28, 2008 – Dakota Fanning didn’t say anything to reporters Monday morning when she arrived at the Pacifica Ballroom in the Royal Pacific Resort hotel for the third day of the National Scrabble Championship. But all who saw her agreed she looked much improved from the teaful and angry waif who streaked out of the ballroom the night before and went directly to her room. At the lunch break, she looked even better, although she still refused to talk to the press, which has become her custom.

At 6:28 p.m., the wide double doors that protect the contestants from the rest of the world swung open, and Dakota just stood there smiling.

“Uh . . . did you have a good day?” a reporter asked her.

“Oh, I had a good day, all right,” she said, raking an elastic out of her hair and shaking it around. “I had a good day in so many ways!” She turned and looked back into the room, stepping aside so several players could pass by. “You guys – come on!” she yelled, and presently she was joined by her parents, Steve and Joy, and her 10-year-old sister, Elle.

Dakota led the contingent of reporters not to a conference room, as she had Saturday night, but down a long corridor, past a banquet room where a party was in full swing, out a set of double doors, over some steps and along a winding path until they emerged onto a sandy beach surrounded by lush green foliage and swaying palms.

“Are we going swimming?” a reporter asked her.

“We are, as soon as we get done here,” Dakota said. “We rented a boat – a yacht, if you can believe it – to take us on a little excursion out of Port St. John, and we’re going to play in the water and pretend we’re mermaids.”

“Pirates,” Elle said.

“Elle’s going to be a pirate and try to pillage our ship. Anyway, the hotel was too stuffy, so I wanted to come out here. I won six of my seven games today, but the big news is, Nigel Richards lost three games!”

Richards, the reigning Scrabble World Champion, defeated Dakota in game 7 the previous day. He had been undefeated through 14 rounds of play.

“Did you beat him?” a reporter asked.

“No, I didn’t beat him, but three other people did, so that means both our records are 18-3. Which means we’re tied going into the final seven rounds tomorrow.”

“What about the point differential?” someone asked.

Dakota pulled a folded sheet of paper from the pocket of her striped Tommy Girl blouse. “That’s where it’s even better. Mine is nine thirty-eight, Nigel’s is seven thirty-three. He’s two hundred and five points behind! And I’m a fourteen-year-old kid!”

The reporters clapped and made a big deal out of Dakota for several minutes. Dakota smiled and clapped along with them.

“Everybody was packed around the scoring tables afterwards to find out their differentials,” she said. “That’s what’s on everybody’s mind now as we go into the last day. Oh – plus I got the high score of the day today – six hundred and eighteen – so I get twenty bucks for that.” She turned to her mother. “Make sure they pay me.”

“You got it,” Joy said and laughed. “It can go toward the cost of the yacht.”

“Yeah, it might just cover the case of Coors for Dad, with the prices they charge for everything around here.”

A reporter asked her what she did to recover from her horrendous day yesterday.

“Well, I went up to my room and paced around and cried and yelled at my parents for like half an hour, then they told me to stop acting like a baby and stop feeling sorry for myself. That’s the standard routine – I just have to get it all out of my system, and they let me do it until it starts grating on their nerves and Mom starts heading toward a panic attack. Then we ate leftover fatback and chicken, because restaurants cost and my parents have all the money. Then I called Axl Rose and told him what happened, and he helped me put it in perspective.”

A reporter wondered how the notorious Axl Rose, vocalist for the notorious Guns ‘N Roses heavy metal band, could help Dakota put anything into perspective.

“Axl has been through a lot in his forty-six years,” Dakota said. “The other guys in the band put him through untold woe since the day it started back in the eighties. Especially Slash. Axl learned how to detach through Hindu breathing methods, and he taught me some of them. So we were on the phone, and we breathed together. It was really enlightening. Almost sexy.”

“Uh, then we took her down to the pool,” Joy said. “She and Elle and their father played Marco-Polo.”

“I won,” Elle said.

“Because you’re little,” Dakota said.

“No, because I know how to disappear.”

“Anyway,” Joy said, “by the time we got back to Dakota’s room, she was re-charged and fired-up and ready to go out and kick butt today, which she did.”

“I lost one game, the sixth one, because my opponent was unbelievably sharp,” Dakota said. “He was even older than my dad, but he was still able to see things that I couldn’t, and he kept stringing all these words. I knew I was going to lose by the time we got half-way finished. He was having a real good day, but he already lost five games, so I’m not too worried about him.”

Joy said that only Dakota and Richards have records of 18-3. Four other players have records of 17-4, and a six are tied at 16-5.

A reporter asked Dakota if she would be playing Richards in any of the games tomorrow. Dakota said she would not. The reporter asked if she spoke to Richards today.

“Actually we did talk for a couple minutes during one of the breaks,” Dakota said. “He had just had a really bad loss, his second of the day, and you can’t believe how good he was taking it. He’s a very polite man and not in any way mean or nasty toward his competition. Really he doesn’t have any competition. When you’re as good as him, your only competition is yourself.”

Someone suggested that it appeard as if Dakota was his competition.

“I meant aside from me,” she said with a laugh. “Anybody who goes against me for anything, I’m competition for them, because I don’t give up, and I don’t like to lose.”

A reporter asked if she has any specific strategies for tomorrow.

“No, just the same strategy I came here with. Yesterday was traumatic and disheartening for me, but overall I’m doing well. I’m tied with the world champion, so I must be doing something right. Tonight, after we take our boat ride, I’m going to study a little and maybe beat my parents and Elle in a quick game, but nothing serious. I need to let all the words that are flying around in my head just rest a little and be ready for me tomorrow.”

The matches begin Tuesday at 9:15 a.m. Round 28 concludes at 6:30, followed by the awards ceremony at 8:30, during which the winners will be officially announced.

DAKOTA’S SCORES ON MONDAY

1 – 354-299
2 – 618-363
3 – 430-420
4 – 406-329
5 – 378-292
6 – 385-478
7 – 440-403

3,011 – 2,584

Won/loss: 18-3
Point differential: +938

READ PART 7!

BONUS! Read an interview with Sarah about the Scrabble stories

Dakota Fanning Devastated By Two Scrabble Losses

SCRABBLE TOURNAMENT – PART 5

Enraged and embarrassed, she refuses to speak with reporters; Joy Fanning relays events of the day

ORLANDO, FLA. – JULY 27, 2008 – As she did yesterday at lunch time, Dakota Fanning on Sunday walked right past reporters gathered outside the Pacifica Ballroom in the Royal Pacific Resort hotel, and she wouldn’t talk to them when she returned for the afternoon session of Scrabble tournament matches. Unlike yesterday, she left the ballroom in tears at 6:20 p.m., after her last match of the day, and ran straight to the elevators leading to her room.

Just before seven, her mother, Joy Fanning, came downstairs to let the press know what had happened.

“During her fifth-round match, she challenged a word her opponent played,” Joy said. “There are challenges going on all the time, so I didn’t think that much about it. But I guess what happened – according to the referee – was that Dakota took too long to challenge, or to say ‘hold,’ which is how you challenge, and they allowed her opponent’s word to stand. That word swung the game. It gave the lady – her opponent – a hundred and ten points. A huge word.”

The word Dakota challenged was “desicate,” a misspelling of ‘desiccate.’

“Dakota said she wasn’t paying close enough attention, so she didn’t even realize what had happened until her opponent reached for new tiles,” Joy said. “Once a player picks up tiles, the other player can’t make a challenge. Well, Dakota swears she yelled ‘hold’ before the lady’s finger’s touched her tiles. The referee got involved, and it got a little nasty. Dakota was so upset. She jumped out of her chair and went right up to the referee, insisting that she’d called the challenge before the woman touched her tiles. The woman said she most definitely had a tile in her hand before Dakota’s challenge. I couldn’t see much from where they make us sit around the perimeter, but I believe Dakota.”

The referee believed Dakota’s opponent. He allowed the word to stand and issued Dakota a conduct warning.

“Dakota knows how to spell that word,” Joy said, “and having her challenge denied just deflated her. She was embarrassed and enraged. Her first four games of the day, she won, but they were difficult, and she was stressing constantly. When she lost that fifth game, all the energy went out of her. If you don’t know Dakota, you don’t know that look, but I can tell: it’s like she just droops – everything, her face, her shoulders, her spirit. Just gone, vanished.”

Dakota re-grouped for game six, handily beating her opponent 420-305. However any momentum she may have regained was quickly lost in game seven, when she faced Nigel Richards, the current World Scrabble Champion and the top-ranked player at the 2008 National Scrabble Championship. Richards won handily, 428-330.

“I’m not taking anything away from Nigel,” Joy said, “because he’s a true master of words and a master of this game. But Dakota wasn’t in her usual focused state, and Nigel got some absolute gifts from the tile pool. I’m sure even he would tell you that.”

Nigel did, later that evening over a friendly game of Scrabble with relatives who had flown in from his home town of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

“Sometimes you just can’t lose with the tiles,” Richards said. “Could I have beaten her without the ‘gifts,’ as her mother calls them? Absolutely. But it would have been tougher. Dakota is a phenomenal young player, and if it weren’t for her movie career, she could someday be one of the best players in the world. I hope she sticks with movies, though. It pays a lot better.”

Joy said Dakota will take it easy tonight and be ready to compete at her best tomorrow morning.

“Dakota’s a fighter – don’t let her gentle persona fool you,” Joy said. “She knows what she wants, and she goes for it a million percent. Her string is tight, and that’s why it’s so easy for her to get emotionally ravaged by things. But she comes back. You watch. She’ll come back strong tomorrow.”

With a win/loss record of 12-2, Dakota is still ahead of most of the Division I players. Nigel Richards is currently the only undefeated participant, at 14-0. After 28 rounds, the player with the best win/loss record is named champion. In the case of a tie, the winner is determined by the widest total-points differential.

DAKOTA’S SCORES ON SUNDAY

1 – 410-369
2 – 404-380
3 – 455-412
4 – 402-387
5 – 359-486
6 – 420-305
7 – 330-428

Won/loss: 12-2

READ PART 6!

BONUS! Read an interview with Sarah about the Scrabble stories

Dakota Fanning Completes Day One Of The Tournament

SCRABBLE TOURNAMENT – PART 4

At a small press conference afterward, she gives reporters the re-cap

ORLANDO, FLA. – JULY 26, 2008 – Dakota Fanning would not talk with reporters during the lunch break at the National Scrabble Championship Saturday – huddled between her mother and father she ignored a barrage of questions and went directly to her room on the 12th floor of the Royal Pacific Resort hotel. She was likewise silent when she returned to the Pacifica Ballroom at 2:30 p.m. for the afternoon session. This created myriad speculation: had she performed badly in the opening four rounds? Had she performed abysmally? Had she succumbed to the pressure and withdrawn into her shell, as she has done in the past when faced with bitter disappointment?

All the speculations were proven wrong shortly after 6 that evening. She was the first contestant out of the ballroom, gloriously happy, exploding with energy, ready to talk. Wearing a lime-green Ralph Lauren warm-up suit with a silver cross necklace and a single emerald ring on her left ring finger, Dakota literally ran down the hall and around a corner to a conference room. Reporters literally ran to keep up with her.

“You guys have to leave me alone during the lunch break,” the 14-year-old full-time actress and part-time Scrabble player said to about 50 reporters. “I can’t be talking to you when I have to think where I’ve been and where I’m going . . . and what I’m going to have for lunch . . . and beating my opponents!” She let out a shriek. “I won every game! All seven rounds!”

A burst of applause filled the room. Camera lights sparkled from wall to wall.

“That’s right,” Dakota said, nearly in tears and hopping around behind the podium the way she hopped around everywhere when she was younger. “I made my plan to do this five months ago, and I’m doing it, just like I said. Seven rounds down, twenty-one to go!”

Flanked by her parents, Steve and Joy, and her 10-year-old sister, Elle, Dakota smiled a smile that looked like it could last forever as photographers repeatedly captured the moment of a girl doing something no one her age has ever done before.

“I wish all of you could have been in there, because I’m too hyped up to give you a good story, but I’ll try to give you something to work with. You could feel the energy and the intelligence floating through the air. Mostly everybody was real serious, because for a lot of them, it’s their livelihood. But even though it’s not my livelihood, I was really serious, too.”

She paused and took a breath and drank greedily from a liter-bottle of water as if she hadn’t drank for three days. Many watching her laughed conspiratorially at one girl’s brilliant, unabashed happiness. Elle leaned around her mother and whispered something to Dakota, who nodded back.

“Okay, well, before lunch I played four games, which they call ‘rounds,’” Dakota said. “I barely even remember my opponents – it’s not like it’s a social event. It’s kind of like you guys are enemies when you sit down across the board from each other. Well, those first four games were super close, like in the mid-four hundreds. I was panicking all the way through, and in two games I was sure I was going to get beat. But in the afternoon, for those three games, I just demolished my opponents.”

Elle whispered to Dakota again, and Dakota said, “Yes, I know. Well, before Elle has an Elle-spell, she wants me to tell you that in her opinion, the reason I did so good in the afternoon was because of a special lunch she made for me that totally opened my brain and let all my natural smartness come flowing out.” She turned to Elle. “Why don’t you tell them? I gotta go pee.”

Joy’s eyes flew open, and the room busted up laughing.

“Sorry,” Dakota said, “I’m just so excited. Be right back!” She ran out of the conference room.

Elle got in front of the microphone. The reporters applauded. “You don’t have to do that,” she said. “I didn’t even want to talk, but Dakota’s not in the frame of mind to remember exactly what happened at lunch. Okay. So I knew she needed perfect mental energy, so I made her fried chicken, fatback, hominy grits, collard greens and strawberry shortcake.”

A reporter asked, “How did you come up with that menu?”

Elle said, “I got the idea late last night, when I was using my oui–” and before she could finish, Joy kicked her gently in the ankle. “I mean when we – when weeee – like in my family – when we were talking about what kind of food we ought to feed Dakota to help her win. My dad went to the store and got all the ingredients, but I cooked everything by myself.”

Another reporter wondered what fatback was.

“It’s like from a pig. It’s the fat part that goes along the top of it’s back. What you do is, you take the little pig into the slaughter house and you tie it up, and you take this big old knife and you–”

Joy bent over in front of the microphone. “Fatback has been a part of Southern cuisine since the Great Depression, and it’s also a traditional part of soul-food dishes.”

Elle said, “I was just telling them how fatback starts on the pig and ends up on our table.”

“I know, honey, but they already know all that,” Joy said.

The reporters laughed.

Dakota returned, slightly more settled but still pretty wound. “Did Elle tell you guys what she made me?” she asked the reporters, and they nodded and laughed. “Since you’re all still here, I take it she didn’t elaborate on the slaughter-house ritual.” She turned to Elle. “I told you Mom wasn’t going to let you go into all that.”

Elle stuck out her tongue at Dakota.

“Anyway,” Dakota said, “it was a great day, and everybody had a lot of fun. There was one other person – only one – who won all seven of their games. But there were a bunch of people who won six, so it’s not like I got this thing in the bag, as they say.”

Joy said something that sounded like “Wrap it up.”

Dakota said, “I’ll answer some questions now, if anybody has any.”

A reporter in back of the room said, “Hounddog was originally scheduled for release Friday. Were you having any mental reactions to that as you prepared for the tournament?”

“You mean reactions to the fact it got pushed up, or to Hounddog in general?”

“Either/or.”

“I don’t have any kind of mental reactions to Hounddog. I’m glad it got re-scheduled, for a lot of reasons, and I never had a problem with the movie, like I said many times. The only people who have problems with it are right-wing nutcases who think I was psychologically damaged because of it and who think my parents should have gone to jail.” She pointed at a raised hand.

“Have you been able to speak with any of the other players – I mean away from the table?”

“I talked with some of them at the dinner they threw for us last night. Everybody was so nice to me, and a lot of them were giving me tips. Most of these guys – and girls – have been playing Scrabble longer than I’ve been alive, so I listened carefully. A lot of them are real superstitious and can’t play unless they sit facing a certain direction. Some of them carry good-luck charms. They’re very intense. It’s a good atmosphere for me.”

“Are you superstitious?”

“Not about Scrabble.”

“Do you get nervous during the games?”

“I get a little nervous between games, but not during them. During the games I just kind of zone out into the dictionary in my head, which is how I’ve always played. I constantly scan every letter on the board and where the tiles are in relation to the large-score spaces. I’m pretty good at focusing.”

“You’ve said your parents are very supportive of your quest here in Orlando. How have they shown their support?”

“Oh, they are so supportive – but they’re that way with everything I do. Almost every night at home – and here, too – we play the game, and I beat them, and they’re really okay with that. They test me on words, mainly on spellings, and they buy me all these books and things to read that contain a lot of large, unusual words. The trick to Scrabble, as I know you know, comes down to how many words you have mental access to, because it gives you more options.”

“Has all the preparation and preoccupation affected your acting career?”

“Not at all. I read a few scripts lately that my agent sent to me, but nothing looks that good right now. Which is normal. I go to the usual meetings with business managers, publicists, that sort of thing. I think it’s good that I’m playing in this tournament, because it makes people realize that I’m not just an actress. I never was just an actress. Me and Elle both – we do all sorts of things that aren’t related to the industry. I think directors and producers appreciate having somebody to work with who’s more of a complete person. It helps me to get excellent roles, rather than roles designed for an actor who can’t really do anything else in her life, and barely can even act. Like the ‘Olive’ role in Little Miss Sunshine, to name one that comes off the top of my head.”

“Have you spoken to Abigail Breslin since the fight?”

“No.”

“Do you think the two of you will ever be friends again?”

“We were never friends in the first place. We were acquaintances. I did a movie with her brother. I know she wanted everybody to think we were friends, but that’s just another Hollywood rumor designed to further one career and bring down another.”

“You’ve said – or you’ve indicated – in interviews that you want to fight her again.”

“I do, and I will, if she’s willing to put everything she has on the line. That’s the only way I’ll do it.”

“Which means what?”

“You’ll just have to wait and see.”

“How’s your nose?”

“It’s a lot better. I still have to wear this brace, because it could get re-injured pretty easily.”

“How are you adjusting your lifestyle to keep that from happening?”

“Well, obviously I have to watch what I do, and I don’t get too rambunctious. And I trained Elle to never lock the bathroom door when she’s taking a bath and to never stick her stupid toe in a drain, because any time anything happens to her, it’s me she calls, not my parents, and I’m in no condition to go breaking down doors.”

Rounds 8-14 of the National Scrabble Championship take place Sunday, rounds 15-21 on Monday, and the final rounds, 22-28, will be played on Tuesday. The awards ceremony is scheduled for 8:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Royal Pacific Resort’s Pacifica Ballroom.

DAKOTA’S SCORES ON SATURDAY

1 – 466-440
2 – 421-416
3 – 390-376
4 – 458-450
5 – 427-319
6 – 474-286
7 – 415-266

Won/loss: 7-0

READ PART 5!

BONUS! Read an interview with Sarah about the Scrabble stories

Dakota Registers For The Scrabble Tournament, Elle Makes A New Friend

SCRABBLE TOURNAMENT – PART 3

While sister’s away, the cowgirls will play . . .

ORLANDO, FLA. – JULY 25, 2008 – From the moment Dakota Fanning and her family checked into the Royal Pacific Resort hotel Monday, the front desk has been besieged with phone calls asking the usual questions: When can I meet Dakota? What room is Dakota staying in? How can I get Dakota’s autograph? Are you accepting any job applications for temp positions through Tuesday?

When the Fannings appeared in the hotel lobby Friday morning on their way to register Dakota for the National Scrabble Tournament, which is taking place at the hotel, more than 200 of the actress’s fans were waiting for her.

Lowering her head and shielding her eyes, Dakota, 14, hurried off in the opposite direction with her father, Steve, leaving her mother, Joy, and 10-year-old sister, Elle, to deal with the crowd. Not surprisingly, Elle was instantly recognized.

Everybody loves Elle Fanning

“Oh, my God, it’s Elle Fanning!” a young girl screamed, and the pack of fans, mostly teen and pre-teen girls, surrounded Elle and Joy.

“You guys – I appreciate you coming down here and everything,” Joy said, “but Dakota’s very busy right now getting ready for the tournament.”

“That’s okay,” a fan said. “Can Elle sign autographs for us?” Another said, “We love Dakota and Elle!”

Joy looked at her watch and whispered something to Elle, who was standing quietly in a navy-blue sailor dress with a bright red cross-tie. Elle whispered something back and Joy said, “There are hundreds of you guys, so we have to shave that down a little. What I’m going to do is say a girl’s name, and all of you who have that name can come with me and Elle to a conference room, or wherever we can find some space, and we’ll visit while Dakota and her father take care of their business. The rest of you should go out of the hotel so you don’t upset the management. Okay?”

A girl yelled, “Choose my name!”

Joy said, “Okay, the name is . . . Sarah.”

A collective disgruntled sigh rose from the crowd. One girl stepped forward. She was very short and breathtakingly beautiful, with long, white-blonde hair and lovely blue eyes the color of the ocean. Her skin was perfectly tanned, and she had on black jeans and a pretty blue top with puffy sleeves.

“Are you the only Sarah in the bunch?” Joy said.

Sarah said, “The one and only.”

Before turning the crowd away, Elle spent twenty minutes signing notebooks, scraps of paper, arms, shirts and blank guest checks that somebody had swiped from the registration desk. When only Sarah was left, Joy and Elle started toward the elevator.

“Since there’s only one Sarah, we can just go up to Elle’s room,” Joy said.

“Where do you live?” Elle asked Sarah as they stepped into the elevator.

“Malibu.”

“Malibu?” Elle’s eyes got big. “And your name’s Sarah? Are you the same Sarah who posts all those stories about me and Dakota?”

“Yeah, that’s me,” Sarah said.

“Man!” Elle said.

“You like the stories?”

“Oh, my God!” Elle said.

“Don’t say God that way,” Joy said.

“Oh, my gosh! I love the stories. You’re so awesome!”

“We really do like reading them,” Joy said. “It comforting to know that somebody else understands our craziness.”

“Thanks,” Sarah said. “Aside from the fact that WordPress sucks and everybody at Hannah’s Board thinks I hate you guys, it’s a great experience for me.”

“How old are you?” Elle said.

“Sixteen.”

“Man, you’re pretty smart for being just sixteen. You’re probably almost as smart as my sister.”

Sarah laughed. “I doubt that.”

“How tall are you?”

“Five feet,” Sarah said.

The bell clanged, the elevator doors opened and the three walked out into the hallway.

“And how much do you weigh?” Elle said. “You’re so thin.”

“Elle, knock it off,” Joy said. “Give her a chance to breathe.”

“It’s okay,” Sarah said. “I weigh eighty-five pounds.”

“Man!” Elle said. “I’m almost as big as you, and I’m only ten.”

Joy said, “Elle, please stop starting every sentence with ‘man.’ You sound like a hillbilly.”

“Well, heck fire, Ma, I was fixin’ to say wellllll doggies, but I figgerd y’all’d rather me say ‘man.’”

Elle and Sarah are going to get along real well

They went into Elle’s suite, which had been Elle and Dakota’s suite until Dakota decided she needed her own room. The beautiful maroon carpet was littered with clothes and hangers and books and makeup and hair accessories and food remnants – Hershey’s and Milky Way candy bars, Frito’s packages, empty Pepsi cans and wadded-up McDonald’s bags. Incredibly, in one corner sat a chainsaw that Elle had conned the maintenance men into letting her borrow, because she was fascinated by the little rubber nub you had to press to prime the engine.

“Excuse the mess,” Joy said, “but Elle lives here.”

“Very funny, Mom,” Elle said, kicking junk out of the way so Sarah could get over to the living room area without falling and breaking her neck. “Mom, since it’s just Sarah, would it be okay if we kind of hung out by ourselves till Dakota and Dad are finished?”

Joy looked at Sarah. “Can you endure her for that long?”

“I sure can,” Sarah said. “I never thought I’d even meet Elle, much less have a chance to actually talk to her and hang out with her.”

“Joe and Hank are right out there in the hallway, if you need anything,” Joy said and left the room.

“Who’s Joe and Hank?” Sarah said and moved a Batman cape out of a cushioned armchair so she could sit in it.

“My bodyguards,” Elle said. “So, wow. You also post stories about Mary-Kate and Ashley, huh.”

“And Avril Lavigne.”

“That’s so cool. Dakota loves Avril Lavigne. Did you grow up in Malibu?”

“Yeah, and I love it there. The city depresses me sometimes.”

“Tell me about it,” Elle said and plopped down in a chair across from Sarah. “Brentwood’s not exactly the city, but it might as well be.”

“So are you excited about Dakota being in the Scrabble tournament?”

“It’s okay. I’m mainly excited about coming to Orlando and doing something different where I can spend a lot of money and nobody worries about it.”

“But you make all kinds of money,” Sarah said. “It must be so cool to make millions of dollars for every film you’re in.”

“Ha! I don’t even get an allowance. Dakota just started getting one after she turned fourteen, but I don’t get jack.”

Sarah laughed.

“I mean I don’t get nothing.”

Sarah laughed some more. “You’re sounding like a hillbilly again.”

Now Elle laughed. “Let’s play hillbillies! Let’s pretend we’re hillbillies!”

“How do we do that?”

Just a couple of redneck girls at heart

Elle ran to one of her seven suitcases and pulled out two straw hats, two pairs of overalls and four small cowboy boots. She tossed one hat, two boots and one of the overalls to Sarah. “You’re about my size, so all that should fit. Let’s pretend we’re hillbillies at a hoedown.”

“You gotta have music for a hoedown,” Sarah said.

“Oh, man, I got all kinds of music. I rented a bunch of CDs from the entertainment department downstairs, or whatever they call it. I already lost like six of them.”

Elle and Sarah threw on the overalls over their clothes and put on their hats and boots. Elle found a red permanent marker and drew freckles on both her and Sarah’s faces, much to Sarah’s delight. She dashed over to a basket of plastic flowers and withdrew two long plastic twigs, put one of them in her mouth and gave the other one to Sarah. Then she started shuffling through a stack of CDs until she found the one she wanted. She put the disc in the player, and a staccato guitar filled the room.

“‘Redneck Girl’ – I love this song!” Sarah said.

“Wow – I thought only people as old as my dad knew that song,” Elle said. “Let’s dance!”

The girls began line-dancing through the junk on the floor, laughing and yee-hawing and singing along with the song.

“Livin’ for Friday afternoon,” they sang. “She’s gonna show one old boy that we can move.”

The music was very loud, and it inspired Elle to further lose herself in the role. She tied one of her belts around one of her purses and started slinging it around her head like a lasso.

Sarah came up behind Elle, held her by the waist, and together they line-danced around the room as Elle kept slinging the lasso. Then the purse flew off the belt and crashed into a large punch bowl on the counter by the sink, shattering the bowl into a million pieces.

“Ooops,” Elle said then started singing again: “And I pray that someday I will find me a redneck girl!”

They danced some more, then Sarah said, “Let’s get on the stage.”

“We ain’t got no stage, Sarah-Lu,” Elle said in a pretty convincing southern accent.

“Sho ‘nuff do, too, Ellie Mae – lookie yonder.” Sarah pointed at the dining table.

“My mammy said I ain’t s’possed to get up on no furniture cause I was raised in a Georgia mud hole and don’t know no better.”

Sarah laughed. “Okay, we can just dance on the floor.”

“But my mammy ain’t here, so let’s do it!” Elle swept all the junk off the table and onto the floor then ran over and re-tied her purse to her belt.

“Redneck girl got her name on the back of her belt,” the girls sang as they climbed on chairs then up on the table. “She got a kiss on her lips for her man and no one else.”

The table was big, and the girls were small, so they were able to line-dance effectively around its perimeter.

“A coyote’s howling out on the prairie,” they sang. “First comes love, then comes marriage.”

Elle howled “Ooh-la-la!” at the idea of love before marriage and slung the purse-lasso around her head. The pins holding the leaf in the table broke, the table began to buckle, Elle let go of her lasso, sending both purse and belt crashing through a closed window, and the table gave way with a loud crack. Both girls slammed together and fell, tumbling onto a pair of open suitcases. The table lay in two pieces.

Dakota and Steve walked in the door.

“Elle Fanning!” Dakota shrieked.

Elle looked up from the ground, from under Sarah, because Sarah had fallen on her. “Y’all ain’t s’possed to be back this early!” she said.

“What the heck are you doing?” Steve said. “And who’s that? And what happened to the table? And why is that music so loud?”

Elle said, “Dancing and being redneck girls, Sarah who does the website about me and Dakota, because we broke it dancing on it, and because we like loud music.”

Dakota went over and turned off the stereo. “Are you really the Sarah from DakotaFanningNews? My mom said you were up here enduring Elle.”

“Yeah,” Sarah said, getting off Elle and standing up. “It’s really nice to meet you.”

“And what happened to the window?” Steve said. “I hope you weren’t dancing on that.”

“No, the crows were,” Elle said, getting up herself.

“Don’t be smart. Where’s your mother? She just swung by the registration room and took off.”

“I think she went on a cattle drive.”

“Yeah, and I need to be going on my own cattle drive,” Sarah said and started getting out of her overalls and boots. “My mom’s basically a socialite, and we’re down here visiting some of her socialite friends, but I wanted to see if I could meet you guys, so I had her drop me off here.”

“Because you knew where we were and what we were doing,” Dakota said.

“I know everything,” Sarah said.

“I bet you don’t know a seven-letter word that means an irrigation canal.”

“Acequia,” Sarah said.

“Oh, my God, you do know everything. Can you stay with me till the tournament’s over? I’ll get you your own suite. I’ll make them put a computer in it, if you need one.”

Sarah couldn’t stay, but she wished Dakota luck in the tournament and gave both girls a big hug, then Elle and Dakota both signed 8-by-10 photographs for her. After Sarah left, Dakota told Steve that she and Elle needed to be alone, so Steve went off to locate his wife.

Dakota is a little worried about Elle these days

“You’re getting destructive, the older you get,” Dakota said.

“Me? You’re the one that demolished the bathroom door the other night.”

In a serious tone, Dakota said, “Is everything all right? Are you doing okay since we’ve been here?”

“Yeah, I’m having fun. I wish you were with me at all the different places they’re taking me, but I’m okay. Have you and Axl been practicing the rhythm method?”

“Breathing method, dummy.”

“Right, breathing method.”

“Yeah, he taught me all kinds of ways to breathe. You’d think there’s only one way to do it, but there are probably millions.”

Elle opened the refrigerator and got a Milky Way. “You want one? I got three left.”

“No, we had chocolate cake down there.”

“You had chocolate cake? Man!”

Dakota giggled at Elle in her cowgirl getup. “You look like a total hillbilly with that hat and those boots – and the freckles.”

“Shucks,” Elle said.

Dakota began cleaning up the fragments of the punch bowl. “Did you and Sarah have a fun time?

“Man, did we! She’s a really cool girl, even though she’s sixteen and could have an attitude but doesn’t. How did registration go? I can’t believe you got chocolate cake an hour after breakfast.”

“Registration was great. I’m so pumped!”

“Me, too. I’m way pumped.”

Dakota dumped the former punch bowl into the wastebasket and considered trying to clean up the rest of the room, but the mere thought of it exhausted her, so she decided to get out of it instead.

“Why don’t you use your pump to straighten out this place before Mom gets back from the cattle drive and throws you in the pokey for being a slob?” Dakota said.

Elle said, “Why don’t you just focus on all your study books and learning new seven-letter words and let me do my own thing?”

“I will, and I just came up with the perfect seven-letter word for you.”

“Which is what?”

“F-I-L-T-H-I-E,” Dakota said and walked out of the room.

(Editor’s note: Okay, I know it was a vain move putting myself in the story, but you gotta be a little vain every once in awhile. Plus I was in Orlando and really wanted to meet Elle, so it worked out great. And the photo of the blonde girl – that’s the actress Sara Paxton, who I used to look exactly like when she and I were 11 and 12 years old. She’s older than me, and she’s older than 16 in this pic, but we still look a lot alike.)

READ PART 4!

BONUS! Read an interview with Sarah about the Scrabble stories

Press Is Barred From Dakota Fanning’s Scrabble Matches

SCRABBLE TOURNAMENT – PART 2

Tournament officials say reporters and photographers would be too distracting to other players

ORLANDO, FLA. – JULY 24, 2008 – Dakota Fanning met with National Scrabble Association officials Thursday to discuss schedules and stipulations for the 2008 National Scrabble Tournament, which kicks off Friday at the Royal Pacific Resort in Orlando. Because Dakota has entered the tournament in the new category of “celebrity guest,” officials wanted to make sure she and her family understood the standard rules as well as the ones created because of her participation.

“We’re very pleased to have Dakota Fanning competing with the other dedicated Scrabble players,” said tournament director Harry Long. “It’s the first time we’ve had a celebrity of her stature involved, so we wanted to sit down with the Fannings and explain some of the particulars. We went over everything, and the Fannings were very happy to comply. They are respectful people and only want the best for the tournament as a whole and, of course, for their daughter.”

The most important rule was that no reporters or photographers would be admitted to the hotel’s Pacifica Ballroom while matches take place Saturday through Tuesday. Long said he envisioned “all sorts of objections” from the other players if they had to be part of a “paparazzi blitz.”

“There are official reporters connected with the (Scrabble) association who, naturally, will be allowed in,” Long said. “But it would be inappropriate and unfair to the other competitors if we were to allow the large number of media people who we know are down here only because Dakota is.”

Dakota wins again

Players in the tournament compete in six divisions, based on their rankings. While Dakota appears to be a strong player, she has never held an official ranking nor has she ever competed in a sanctioned Scrabble match. On Tuesday, Long and two associates played a game with Dakota in order to determine which category to place her in.

“It was pretty bad,” said Long, who won national Scrabble titles in 1990, 1992 and 1993. “Here we are, all highly ranked players, playing against a 14-year-old girl who has never played Scrabble with anybody except her family and a few friends, and she destroyed us. Her vocabulary is astounding. Her ability to concentrate and block out distractions is almost frightening. Her understanding of strategy is other-worldly.”

Long decided to place Dakota in the first division, where the best players compete for a top prize of $25,000.

“Of course the prize money is immaterial to her,” Long said. “She even told us that if she wins, she’ll donate the money to charity. What’s important to her is personal achievement. She wants to win because she’s a winner.”

Asked if Dakota has any chance of placing in the money, Long said, “You have to remember that even though Dakota beat us, none of us are at the top of our games. The players she’ll be playing against are the best in the world. They’re highly educated, obsessive wordsmiths. Many of them make all or a good portion of their living by competing in Scrabble tournaments all over the world. To answer your question, I think Dakota will have a good time here, but I can’t see her actually winning any money, unless it’s for the high play of the day or something like that, which would only be twenty dollars.”

Dakota isn’t worried

Word of Long’s prediction got back to Dakota Thursday afternoon in her private suite at the Royal Pacific, where she has spent most of her time since arriving in Orlando on Monday working on her preparation strategy: reading the dictionary, doing crossword puzzles, talking on the phone with Guns ‘N Roses vocalist Axl Rose and listening to Avril Lavigne CDs. Dakota laughs when she is told that Long doesn’t think she has a chance.

“Never count me out,” she says. “I’m glad he doesn’t think I can win, that way there’s no pressure. I put enough pressure on myself.”

Dakota says it’s not important to have press coverage during her matches. She’ll be available after the games each day to fill the world in on her progress.

“I like talking to reporters, even though everybody thinks I don’t,” Dakota says. “But I totally understand them not wanting to turn the matches into something that resembles a magazine photo shoot or a movie premier. Based on how many reporters are here already, I’m sure that’s what it would be if they let them all in.”

The phone rings. She runs over and picks it up. “Uh . . . fureurs – f-u-r-e-u-r-s. Uh-huh. Okay, perfuse – p-e-r-f-u-s-e. Thanks, Elle.” She hangs up the phone. “That was Elle calling from Universal Studios, where my parents are trying to keep her occupied. All three of them call me all the time to test me on spelling these obscure seven-letter words. But winning at Scrabble isn’t just about knowing a bunch of words, although you do have to know a bunch of words. I mean, you can’t be retarded or genetically slow like Abigail Breslin and hope to do well at this game.”

Dakota believes strategy, which includes being able to “read” what other players are thinking, is just as important as word-knowledge.

“Every game has a flow,” she says. “Each player contributes to that flow. If you’re intuitive, you can sort of tell the emotions and ideas of the other players. It’s not really reading their mind, which I can’t do – which Elle can, but she doesn’t have the focus and staying-power to play Scrabble well – but it’s more like feeling their vibes. I don’t know how to describe it. I just do it.”

The phone rings again. “Hello? Oh, hi. Nothing, I have a reporter here . . . yes, he’s in my room all alone with me!” She laughs loudly. “Right, right, let me call you back, because we need to finish talking about those breathing methods.” She hangs up the phone. “That was Axl. Me and him are going to go over all these obscure Hindu breathing methods that will supposedly help me relax during the games.”

Still wearing her cumbersome nose brace, she walks over to the table in the kitchen area of her spacious $404-per-day suite and drinks from a glass of pomegranate juice and Greek honey. “See all these things?” she says and points to stacks of newspaper crossword puzzles, word-search books, dictionaries and 18th-century novels. “This is a lot of work. This is why I got my own room here, because I love Elle, but I can’t take being around her all the time right now. I have to prepare. I have to be the best.”

While Dakota has been preparing, her parents, Joy and Steve, have been carting Elle all over Orlando to keep her occupied and out of Dakota’s hair.

“They went to this pirate restaurant last night, where they actually eat on fake little ships and watch a show with pirates, where they do all the things pirates supposedly used to do,” Dakota says. “Elle loved it, of course, because it had to do with pillage and evil. Then yesterday they went to SeaWorld, and Elle said she had a nice long conversation with a dolphin.” Dakota makes a circular motion with her finger beside her head. “So that was all good. Then they go shopping and buy thousands of dollars worth of stuff Elle can’t use and has no place to put, so her junkyard room back home is going to be even worse once we get back.”

Players will register on Friday then begin opening rounds Saturday at 9:15 a.m. Twenty-eight rounds will be played through Tuesday, and the awards ceremony will take place that evening at 8:30 in the Pacifica Ballroom.

READ PART 3!

BONUS! Read an interview with Sarah about the Scrabble stories