Caffeine permeates every page

Laptops litter the tables of nearly every cafe in Los Angeles. Intense men and women -- in slightly rumpled clothes, more often than not -- guzzle caffeinated drinks, mutter dialogue under their breath and stare into their screens at Final Draft.

It’s part of what defines this city and its public spaces -- the fact that on any given morning, at any coffee shop from Silver Lake to Santa Monica, screenwriters seem to outnumber the rest of us the way sheep outnumber people in New Zealand.

They choose their coffeehouse-cum-offices, they say, for convenience, atmosphere or electrical-outlet availability. Sometimes they’re looking for something more elusive, like inspiration or self-control.

On a recent Thursday afternoon at the Bourgeois Pig in Hollywood, Barry Levine, a freelance copywriter and “budding” screenwriter, taps away at his keyboard in the semi-darkness.

“I only write in coffee shops,” he says. “I can’t write at home. I have no discipline. Here you can’t leave your computer for very long, so you are glued to your seat.”

Levine estimates he spends four hours a day in coffee shops. (He used to drink seven cups of coffee daily. Now he drinks tea.) He circulates among assorted Starbucks, Psychobabble in Los Feliz and Insomnia in the Fairfax district. “Being in public gives you all sorts of stimulus,” he says, from people watching to eavesdropping.

Produced writer John Orloff now has an office, but until recently he headed to the cafe in the Hustler Hollywood store on Sunset Boulevard. It was, unexpectedly, an atmosphere free of distractions. “Another screenwriter suggested it to me because it was empty,” he says. “I would show up at 9 or 10 a.m. People don’t buy sex toys in the mornings.”

Many of the itinerant scribes are pecking away on scripts they hope will land them their first agent or option, but sprinkled among them are A-list writers. Levine used to see a certain woman every day at one of his favorite writing haunts, a Starbucks on La Brea Avenue. One day, a framed page from a magazine appeared on the wall. “Apparently she had written ‘Blue Crush,’ ” he said. “She signed it, ‘To Starbucks. Where I wrote it.’ ”

Matt Prager wrote the first screenplay he ever got paid for at a series of coffee shops, and they are still the only places he’ll write. Still, he needs an elaborate system of mental bribes to get himself working.

“My deal was that I would take my laptop but I wouldn’t take my AC adaptor, and I had to work until the battery ran out, although I usually only worked until it was 50% used, because I didn’t want to lose data.”

When he really needs a kick in the pants he goes to Starbucks, where the hard-backed “discipline chairs” force him to be efficient.

It was exactly these vicious chairs that pushed writer-director Aleks Horvat into business. Seeking to cash in on L.A.’s glut of coffeehouse scribes, Horvat conceived a by-the-hour workspace in Santa Monica called theOffice. It opens Monday.

Horvat wrote the movie “Sweethearts” at local coffeehouses and even set the story in one. But the cafe chairs left him with a sore back and hundreds of dollars in chiropractor bills.

“It got to the point where I had to bring a cushion,” Horvat says. “I was schlepping the cushion, the thesaurus, my computer. Before you know it you are schlepping your whole house.”

At theOffice, for $14, writers get two hours of ergonomically designed furniture in a space with good feng shui.

And, of course, a bottomless cup of coffee.

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Screenwriting for fun or profit

Where to learn it

Robert McKee: Story seminar, Loyola Marymount University, March 26-28. $325 or $545. mckeestory.com

Syd Field: “The Matrix of Character Preference,” Promenade Playhouse, 1404 Third Street Promenade, Santa Monica. April 2-4. $395. (310) 656-8070, Ext. 17, or www.sydfield.com.

John Truby: Story structure classes are held regularly in L.A. $295. (800) 338-7829 for dates or www.truby.com.

David S. Freeman: “Beyond Structure,” Los Angeles Film School, 6363 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood. March 13-14. $350. (310) 394-6556 or www.beyondstructure.com

Viki King: Learning Annex classes March 6 and April 3, 1-4 p.m. $59.99. (310) 478-6677 or www.vikiking.com

Where to do it

DuPar’s: Pie and WGA adjacent. Farmers Market, 6333 W. 3rd St., L.A. (323) 933-8446.

Jerry’s Famous Deli: Kvetch over

a Reuben. 10925 Weyburn Ave., Westwood. (310) 208-3354.

The Bourgeois Pig: Laptop-friendly lighting and WiFi. 5931 Franklin Ave., Hollywood. (323) 464-6008.

theOffice: Coffee plus feng shui. 256 26th St., Suite 101, Santa Monica. (310) 917-4455.

Psychobabble: Open early (7 a.m.) and a movie theater is nearby. 1866 N. Vermont Ave., Los Feliz. (323) 664-7500.

Insomnia: Bond with scribe brethren. 7286 Beverly Blvd., L.A. (323) 931-4943.

Hustler Hollywood Cafe: Empty in the morning. 8920 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood. (310) 860-9009.