Road to Awe

Been going through my script and making notes / changes, but the thing is, I'm thinking of massive story changes that I'm not 100% sure might work, which I plan on discussing next week. For example, my main character's girlfriend is pregnant - should I get rid of that and change part of the problem, or would that be too hard to tackle? I dunno. I'm still figuring it out. I have made some changes and realized some ways that can help explain his frustration with life in general at the beginning, like emphasizing the pressures that are placed on him by everyone around him -- "you should study this" "forget studying and do this" "I want you to do this" "why don't you..." etc.

I'm frustrated myself and pissed off at it. I kinda hate it right now, but if those big changes work, maybe I won't. I find that when I get this way, I keep thinking of new and different ideas for movies and think "Ooh! I should work on that instead! That's much more interesting!" But I can't, because this is Number One and what I have to deal with. Grumble.

Last night, I was incredibly ticked off at life in general, too. There's basically only a handful of people in the world that aren't pissing me off right now, and I want to do something different. So I decided at midnight that I would get up early and go down to Penn's Landing and watch the sunrise. When my alarm went off, I smacked it thinking, "What the fuck is this!? Why is my alarm going off?!" when I remembered "Oh yeah. I'm getting up in the dark because I decided it was a brilliant idea to watch the sunrise. Smart move."

It was. I met up with a friend and we took the El to 2nd and walked all the way to the amphitheater section of Penn's Landing and sat on a bench as close to the river as we could. The gulls circled above in a wonderful Hitchcockian manner and I asked, "I don't look enough like Tippi Hedren for the birds to attack us, do I?" The light wisps of clouds on the horizon scattered the light just enough and there was a lovely orange and pink glow amongst them. My friend pointed to the way the orange reflection mixed with the blues of the water and how it looked like a Monet. We nearly went blind staring into the sun as it began to break over the buildings of Camden. Not exactly the most beautiful skyline to watch, but it was far better than sitting in West Philadelphia and waiting for the sun to clear skyscraper after skyscraper.

When the sun had finally cleared the buildings and lit up the city, we went home, exhausted from getting up before the dawn, but better for the experience. I actually haven't intentionally watched the sunrise in almost four years, and it was well worth it. I came home, made blueberry muffins, drank Jasmine green tea, and found out my English class was cancelled.

It's gonna be a lovely day.

http://tinyurl.com/bealovelyday

Just a Thought

I've often been told I need to do more new things - really, see more new movies - and I agree. And I want to. I enjoy experiencing new things, new films, books, music, places, tastes, smells, textures, sensations, all of it.

But isn't there something truly amazing in revisiting the old and familiar, finding something that you never noticed before...and rediscovering why you fell in love with it in the first place?

Yes, I need to see more new films. Yes, they've been arriving via Netflix and theatre.

But I will never stop feeling the need to sing along with Victor Laszlo.

How It Ends

Since I'm taking the Writing the Personal Essay class which is essentially memoir writing, I've had to read examples of personal essays and excerpts of memoirs. One of the best things I have read so far is something that is not on our list. It's called Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure. Inspired by the legend of Hemingway's "For sale: baby shoes, never worn," this book contains hundreds of peoples' lives compressed into six words. They range from Stephen Colbert's "Well, I thought it was funny." to a nine-year-old girl's "Cursed with cancer. Blessed with friends." One of my favorites is "Cheese is the essence of life."

I enjoyed reading these, trying to imagine exactly why these people chose those specific six words to summarize their lives. Some obviously put a lot of thought into it, and others didn't seem to as much. I got ideas for stories and movies from these half sentences. This collection was a brilliant idea. For a while, I made myself write at least one six-word memoir per day, detailing something that had happened or that I thought during the course of the day. For example, the first time I had to answer phones at the Film Office, I summarized the experience as such: "Film Office. Who's this? Please hold." And when it seemed like it was going great, I wrote "This isn't so bad after all!" and then when I fucked up royally: "Shit shit shit shit shit shit."

But then I started to think of how I would summarize my life so far in a six-word memoir. How could I do such a thing? How could I consolidate 21 years into six words? Obviously other people had done it with far more years to consider, but what would I say? Was there an exact moment that defined my life, like the person who wrote, "I fell in love with Charlie"? Or could I sum it up in something silly, like "Happiness is a warm salami sandwich"?

I thought about all the different things I say and do in my life, how I never feel like or seem to be one thing. I'll do something that people expect of me, and then I'll throw them for a loop with something else...but the thing is, it's still me, and they all still realize that. I don't turn into a different person when I change out of my jeans that I have drawn all over and into a satiny cocktail dress. Someone who's only seen me in one of those outfits might not have expected the other, but once they've seen it, they expect anything and everything. And that's when it hit me.

I wouldn't want to sum up my life right now as only accounting for the past 21 years. I want to include past, present and the future. I want something that will last. I want something that will keep.

"One day, I'll really surprise you."

And you're not gonna be ready for it.

Devil's Dance Floor

BAM!

It's just after 3 and it's in!

I MEET DEADLINES!

There is soooooooooo much I need to fix. Like I've said before, I've focused on getting pages out and trying to incorporate certain new ideas into them, but I am looking forward to (1) not thinking about the script for a day, and (2) going back and completely ripping it to shreds to make it something much better.

I've only just realized that my lead is similar to a character I recently saw somewhere else. So what I'm going to do is watch this other character and see how he's been written and how the things in his life are played out. No, I'm not stealing - I want to see what made him successful as a character and how I can apply that to mine.

Oh man. This is amazing. I know the work has only just begun, but now that one -- albeit in desperate need of help -- first draft is done, I feel much better. So much better. It's in. It's done. On time. It's no masterpiece, but there it is. Ha. Done. On time. Boo yah.

Don't rain on my parade, I'm doing my victory dance.

I'll Be OK

It used to be that I'd always write scenes that were way too long and unnecessary. I always had to cut things down by a lot. Now, I feel like I'm getting control of that and getting everything out in scenes much quicker and in a more concise manner. Which means that my scenes are really short. And that means they take up less pages. Which means I need to write MORE scenes to fill the pages. Which really sucks. What also sucks is how little space action takes up on a page. So a moment that might actually last a whole 30 seconds in film isn't actually taking up half a page, but two sentences. So I could write five pages that actually take fifteen minutes, but I'll still be ten pages short. God damn it.

And even though I'm working on this and all, I am much more interested in the real-life drama around me than I am in fake drama on the page. That's another thing that's changing - usually, I'm so interested in my characters and what they're doing and these made up stories that I really don't care what's going on outside the screen. Now? Nope. Real things are ACTUALLY interesting and compelling. And I would much rather go live my own adventure than write one for an imaginary person.

I feel incredibly motivated and alive, and at the same time, ridiculously pissed off and angry at everything. I want all you people to talk to me, and then I want you to leave me alone.

"Everybody's crazy except you and me, and I'm not so sure about you."

Save Me

It's been a while since I blogged, I know, I know, my fault. I've been going crazy over break with everything I have to do between family stuff and my own drama and I haven't written as much as I should have. I'm working on it. It'll be ready by week 2, I know, because I make myself meet those deadlines. I'm still just focusing on cranking out the pages and reworking stuff later. What matters right now is that a draft gets done.

Ugh.

And while I'm not totally feeling this project right now, I just had a great screenwriting experience. I was asked to give advice on and then rewrite a film senior project script. I had three days to do it, and it seems to have turned out well. It was probably the biggest moment when I felt like a writer, that this is what I do. Writing the game simulation script was cool and I actually got paid, don't get me wrong, but reworking a story and putting someone's ideas on paper for them when they can't do it themselves is very rewarding. I felt wanted. I felt like what I did mattered. It needed to be done. It's crisis mode. It's going to be filmed. I know that within a relatively short amount of time, I can say "Yeah, see that? I helped write that."

At first, I did it because my friends asked me to and I wanted to do whatever I could to help them. But I should be thanking them instead, because this opportunity has shown me again how much I love what I do, even if stuff feels like crap from time to time. So Aly, if you're reading this, thank you! And I'll thank you in person, too.

Also going on at the moment: I just reached a critical moment in a certain chapter of my life. For a bit, life actually felt like a movie. I was half expecting to hear the soundtrack playing in the background. I thought -- and sincerely hoped -- that I had entered the last 10 pages in which I would have to get in a cab which would drive too slow so I'd have to get out and run and reach my destination before the stroke of midnight and all would be well. Instead, of course, I have just entered Act Three in which something horrible has happened and then it all has to magically get better before the credits roll. Yes, I'm in "martyr" mode, at my lowest point.

So in these final pages, final terms, final moments that we know that we'll have together...something good better happen. Or I'm going to be very angry. And lose faith in a lot of things. But you know, no biggie.