Matthias said yesterday, why don't you just do the first scene?
uh
DUH
yeah, that makes it not only easier, but POSSIBLE
thanks, I needed that.
So we'll do TOD in the cemetery at dawn, then over to The Bar for the fateful meeting with one Dorothy.
See ya there.
Yeehaw. Feels more and more real all the time; because it is, I guess.
About halfway through the script, hardest writing I ever did.
Have to get out to the cemetery before dawn, find a spot where the light is good that time of day. Death, aka Tod, will be resting with his back against a gravestone as the sun rises. He'll then walk away into the fate which my story has in store.
You can think that your inspiration is gone sometimes because part of you is fighting so hard to make something Not Happen. I smile softly feeling the desolation, knowing that the level of resistance is somehow tied to the potential of a project.
It's also interesting how these things kick in those middle-of-the-night thoughts that I usually assume everyone has but are so disturbing we don't want to talk about them, share them, look at them, accept them. I mean, it's disturbing to ask, what in thee hell (that's a kind of Southern Indiana "thee hell") is my life for? What has it all meant?
Maybe other people never wake up and wonder that, but I doubt it.
I have an ingrained sense of obligation that leads the question to a place many others say ain't no good, like, "What should I be doing?" It assumes a hierarchy, a system of posts and jobs and tasks like an army. I'm told that the should is my SuperEgo talking. Perhaps. I remain skeptical.
But I accept as possible something else that I've been told: our deepest desires reflect and manifest God's will. Yeah, possible, but there's so many layers on top of that "deepest" thing, and our minds are so devilishly clever in fooling themselves, arranging things the way we want them and saying, that's God's will (or the equivalent phraseology for the agnostic or non-theistic). I mean, there's a million people thinking that it's God's Will that they kill their neighbors and take their land, or kill gays, non-believers, or whatever. T'was Ever Thus. It's no kind of guideline at all. Sure, they would say as they light fire to a house, this is my deepest desire, and it's also God's will.
What are we left with when all our cogitations lead us to the same "this can not be known" area of town? We need another method of making decisions, coming to clarity, sensing things - other than that thinking process. I come from a family of lawyers, and I practiced holding forth about and arguing for things I didn't actually believe, just for the exercise. This kind of decision making just takes in, at one end of the mechanism (something like a large piece of farm equipment) our initial premises, and then goes on to spit out some kind of conclusion. But those premises are often unconscious, if not altogether specious. Something often masquerades as a premise, i.e. "I want to make the world a better place," while covering up some other agenda.
I can say this: regarding clarity, progress is slow. Just Keeeep Working. What else is there to do?
Obviously I'm talking about making a movie.
And if something never existed before, it can be hard to see.
We're also crunching the shooting time down. Good God, could we get this done by Christmas? And then take a break?
Not likely. At least not the "break" part.
In six months, we have a movie: a documentary about The New Death, and its fascinating CE. Chief Executrix, that is. Talkin' Dorothy Truth. My guess is we'll go for something 20-30 minutes long. Much constrained by lack of locations, actors, time, and money, and so on, we'll be trying all the guerilla video tricks in the book.
I would say roughly that the second half of the book will be the first part of the movie, and the second half of the movie will be devoted to Dorothy's reign as the new death, and what it all means and what it will be like to have a New Death, administered by a caring and hot (if you're over 70 years old) gal.
The movie I'm thinking of right now, for tonal qualities only, is parts of Being John Malkovich, the parts with the documentary feel, and the weird science parts. Will take a look at it tonight and see if there's anything in there to STEAL.
The expected post-partum feeling that came over me when I published the book is now gone, and we've got a new project on the line now. Pretty soon there will be scene notes, dialog ideas, notes, pix, and so on taped to the wall. This = FUN.
One of the keys to breaking open the idea has been getting ME out of the story. Distance, simplification, and fidelity to the real goal of the vid result. And I can do the VO and not get complications from referring to myself. I'm just a writer, man.
This is crucial, and involves much more than Hillman is talking about here, which is the proper interpretation, or use, of dreams.
No, this is about how we've taken several different worlds, or realms, or whatever you want to call them, and put them all together into one thing which we call the unconscious. But this is worse than, say, thinking that everything south of the Mexican border and on down to Tierra del Fuego is like Tijuana. No discrimination at all.
Now this wouldn't have interested me not too long ago, as it didn't seem to have any relevance to my life. But now things happen. Things that I cannot explain and can barely describe. They imply other realms. More than imply. But in my attempts to understand what happened, I came up against the situation that Hillman describes. What little I knew (and know) was nonetheless extremely confused since I was confusing different realms. Like getting a psychiatric evaluation when an engineering diagram is what is really needed.
We all use the tools we have in hand and are comfortable using, even if they aren't the right thing for the job. So it was—and is—with regard to my cross-realm adventures.
And then, walking home, there it was. A young woman who had been to one of the Death As A Salesman performances, walking down the street. She recognized my voice, I think, and asked, "hey, didn't you do that show?" She had emailed me to tell me how much she liked it. I remember things like that.
"That Death As A Salesman? Yeah, I did that."
Guess I'll be doing it again. As always, resistance is futile. We just like to think we have an option.
