The Goddess and I watched Almodovar’s Volver this weekend.
How does he do it? How does he take material that would be passe even for daytime soap and make it utterly compelling drama?
Some research is in order.
Volver was courtesy of the D-Man who, with Ex-Pat Stephen, introduced us to Sarah Blasko (whose What The Sea Wants, The Sea Will Have has been on the stereo almost exclusively this weekend).
Yes, I’ve been making the odd incursion but time’s been precious lately. Another week and a bit to go.
But because I am a caring pusher, this week I give you a recent Pitch Engine article.
It began, like most of my life-lessons and -events, with the heedless question, How hard could it be?
In 2006, keen to market myself without actually, y’know, marketing myself, I decided to set up a website. Cribbing shamelessly off the websites of John August and Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio, I’d have areas for works in progress, works completed, contact details, and a blog. The first three were easy; it was the blog that had me stumped.
Initially called Rants, I was going to use the blog to tear new sphincters in everyone who’d crossed me, starting with Joseph the Tokelauan classmate at Sacred Heart Primary who dobbed me in to Sister Margerite for being a Methodist. With my keyboard and modem as scalpels of Truth and Justice, I was going to right past wrongs. I was also going to tell anyone and everyone why I was their man for their next project, how I was going to make them filthy rich, and how I could track them down by their IP-addresses if they visited without employing me.
Heady planning days, indeed.
When rational thought eventually returned, I realised that the blog was going to be my public face. As much as I wanted a pound of Joseph the Tokelauan’s flesh, a), it wasn’t relevant to screenwriting, and b), once I’d worked through my shit-list, my career would be over.
A new direction was needed. In a screenwriting blogosphere where professional screenwriters rubbed shoulders with up-and-comers, critics, academics and fans, how could I differentiate myself?
I wasn’t ballsy enough to tell people how to write. I didn’t want to bore people with the finer details - and anyway, who was I to talk? I just wanted… to share. That was it: I would write about what it was like to be a professional but unproduced screenwriter in New Zealand. I called it Indelible Freckles in an absurd reference to my Samoan roots.
How often would I post? A lot of my favourite blogs posted two to three times a week. Most of those people were single, childless, or could afford professional childcare; I was none of the above, so I decided that posting once a week would be a good start. Armed with an internet connection and good intentions, I began blogging.
Eighteen months on, the website ticks along with updates and tweaks as necessary. It’s a no-pressure zone for prospective collaborators and employers to check out my fledgling oeuvre.
As for the blog, the weekly deadline is much shorter than I first thought. Sometimes it has been easier to blog rather than write, justifying to myself that although I’m avoiding work, I’m still writing. And a few times it has been a place to run to and draft missives vowing vengeance aplenty - and, having let it all out, posting a painful but humorous anecdote of Life in the Biz.
The blog is fun. It requires work and commitment. And it’s rewarding, sometimes in ways I never expected.
Just like screenwriting.
Every time I sit down to work on my current project, its deadline bansheeing towards me, I find myself tempted bombarded with just, like, brilliant ideas for another script that I not only can see and hear, but virtually taste, too.
The past few weeks have been, in a word, difficult.
The Universe - ah, The Universe - has kindly pointed out that I am not alone in having this particular weakness: Mr August says You will always want to be writing something else.
Damn.
Okay, the short didn’t make it into the local festival but - half a kilo of Whittakers‘ finest later - life. Goes. On.
Mm. This week, for your infotainment:
Encouraged by Mr Reid’s remarks, The Goddess and I watched the second and third episodes of The Sarah Connor Chronicles the other week. The promising story threads - like the possibility of Summer Glau’s cyborg growing a heart a la T2, and the ticking clock of Sarah Connor’s terminal cancer - were a little undone by small details regarding the ‘mystery’ terminator: if it’s putting itself together Iron Giant-style, how the hell does it ’see’ to find its missing head? and what happened to the “only living flesh can be temporally displaced” rule, hm?
After the second ep:
After the third ep:
Now, with the fourth and fifth eps under my belt, I have these to say about the series:
It’s not appointment television but I’ll hang in there. Maybe my expectations of a television spin-off of a (two-thirds) great film franchise are a bit high. But if John goes off the reservation one more time, the Connors are on their own.
Having whinnied about keeping track of script ingredients, I read that Mr Tripuraneni was using Celtx on his current project. It rang a faint bell - and lo:
This, my friends, is A Sign.
Watching Sports Night with The Goddess followed Cameron’s Logarithmic Curve. We started back in February, watching about an ep a week. March was the same. April was a wash-out. But as we entered May and The Goddess got to know the characters - in particular their relationships - as an ep’s end credits rolled, I would hear a Little Voice beside me: Can we watch another one?
Such requests are unheard of in the Mamea household.
In between, amongst others, Desperate Housewives, Lewis and Build A New Life in the Country, an evening with Dan, Casey, et al, became two-ep affairs. Then last week, on a couple of nights, we watched three eps in a row. And only two nights ago, we watched five.
Then I had to explain to The Goddess why there were no more eps to watch.
In the after-match debrief - and also while we worked our way through the DVD set - it’s the little details that stand out. How less is more - where what’s not said can define a relationship far better than declarations of loyalty or bemoanings of betrayal. How a certain behaviour can really be mere displacement. How expectations of standard TV drama situations and relationships were not met because they were handled with wit, intelligence and compassion. It’s safe to say that for all the verbosity, wit and good intentions of the characters, they’re as inhibited, neurotic and selfish as anyone in the real world.
I could go on and on about Sports Night but others have said it better in the nine years since it was first aired. As sad as it was that it got canned after only two seasons, it ended as well as it started, and you can’t say that of many television series.
POSTSCRIPT: The Goddess is quite reluctant to try Mr Sorkin’s West Wing because, for all my arguments that politics is merely behaviour and relationships on a different scale and plane, it’s about politics.
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