Stories

My sleep schedule is messed up, to put it mildly.  At any rate, I fell asleep early, then woke up some time during the 1 o'clock hour and decided I needed to re-read the screenplay, and also, try to format it to fit on fewer pages, so that I could print it and make notes on it.  That took until after 4 am, and I fell back asleep and then woke up from a dream ("Thelma and Louise" was somehow entwined in the dream) and sat straight up and said, "Oh, God, it's almost 8."  I was supposed to be somewhere at 8:30.  I did make it.  More of the interview project I'm working on, and I had to be on camera today, so I felt like I wanted to wash my hair.  It went well.  At least one person I wanted to keep interviewing, on tangential subjects, but didn't have the time.

This project is more targeted than the one I still want: I want to hear about people's lives, oral histories while they are still alive.  All of which stems from going to a lot of memorial services and realizing how little we really know the people in our lives.  How we only know them at the stage of life where we interact, but they have this whole other history that made them who they are.  Part of it is that I feel we are all so quick to judge one another, especially people we've never met, as if we have some authority, and we know so little about anyone.  But knowing someone takes effort.  Putting a label on someone, or a whole group of someones, is easier, because then we have a box where we "understand" and can move onto the next thing.  I get it, we're busy, have other things to do.  But we're also complicated, we want someone to be all bad or all good, but none of us are that.  Anyway, I''m not asking those questions (much) right now, I'm supposed to be following a script (for editing purposes), but some people want to go off script, and some people I want to go off-script with.  And it all might be cut, but at least I got to have the conversation with them once.  (I'm conducting the interviews, for most of it.)

As far as the screenplay goes, I am liking the story more.  And since I had the option to choose, I chose Thelma because she's the one I'd be least likely to be cast as, so it's more of a challenge.  I think we all have the seeds of the characters within us, it's a matter of accessing it.  And what I have of her in me, is repressed, so...it'll be a challenge.  I like the characters, it's just the whole "women have to be saints, or sinners" thing, that they had to die to win.  I do get why that happens in the story.  For Thelma, once she was "free" going back to her old life wasn't an option.  It was more of the larger options for women that bothered me.

I've also heard that the original ending didn't have them die, but at some point in the process it was decided that that was the ending that was called for.  And escape doesn't make sense, not in the context of the rest of the story.

Anyway, got a lot of work to do.  And I need to read another play, and deal with groceries/cooking.  And god, is it gorgeous out today.  (I can take ol' Bill to the park, but I'm waiting for laundry.)

Another rainy Saturday and now I'm hibernating

The rain is pounding on the roof again.  Dodging obligations, watching movies on YouTube.  Went to a show at On the Boards last night, "Predator Songstress" by Degenerate Art Ensemble.  As someone else pointed out, it was a performance with a narrative, I guess I'm not the only one that notices.  A dystopian fairy tale, of a totalitarian world where all words are controlled (by a group of men), and individuality (voice) is removed (mostly from women) like dust, bottled and sealed up for some future use, probably by the State.  A woman wanders collecting stories and songs, she is arrested, tried, sentenced, and silenced.  She escapes and joins a rebellion, her brother is captured by the State and sentenced to die for aiding her.  She gets her voice back in screams.  There were only six performers on stage, two dancers, and four musicians.  All the other characters and imprisonment were projected on a screen at the back of the stage and on panels.  Stories were gathered from audience members and included in song and projection after the intermission.  It was good.  I'm not sure what I have to say about it, I'm running on fumes at the moment, except that here again is the idea of "who controls the narrative?"  Who shapes the conversation?  Who ultimately decides the future course by how they frame the message, how much fear (or not) is doled out on the masses?  Who won here in the end?  She got her voice back, but did the rebellion conquer the State or was it a momentary victory in a longer battle?  The narrative ended there, so it's in our imagination to decide.

Anyway, didn't get much sleep.  Got up early to meet a friend (and another of her friends) to work on a screenplay for a short film.  Was there until almost 1 pm, by which point I was running solely on caffeine and a donut, as I hadn't eaten since 6 pm last night, and that wasn't much.  I finally left to run an errand, a gift for a baby shower (for the parents.)  It was cold.  And pouring.  Cold in the coffee shop, colder outside.  On the bus, a woman sitting slightly above me, in a side-facing seat, crunched on something just above my head.  It was slightly louder than the raindrops hitting the roof; I kept wondering if crumbs would cover my head in the end.  Never did figure out what she was eating.

At the market, hardly anyone shopped, it was close to closing.  The odd deluge from the tents poured down one after another as I walked down between the vendors.  I bought some bread and asked about whether the vendor would have any stollen next week, he explained he would be on vacation for the next three weeks.  As I started to walk away (I didn't have any cash) he stopped me and handed me a loaf (for free.)  I was trying to stuff it down my jacket to keep it dry and another vendor waved me under their tent and out of the rain.  Got soaked (and really cold feet) walking home.  I could pretty much see through my jacket.  I guess I hadn't expected it to rain so much, it wasn't raining when I left my house.  The streets near my house have turned into ponds, waves wash over the sidewalks and back onto the pavement with every passing car.  Soon ducks will be swimming there.

I tried to warm up with a shower, but the hot water made one of my feet start to burn unbearably, so that was as non-starter.  Guess it was cold.  Walked down to do laundry, dressed enough for housemates, not enough for guests, and ran into my landlord, who told me a new person was moving in.  I swear there is some trickster element in my relations with him. (I also recently sent him an inappropriate text on accident late at night, when I read it after I was appalled.  Somehow the word "physical" got into a text about a smoke detector, I have no idea how), and now I'm running into him half-dressed, although, in my defense, it is my house, and he's supposed to give fair warning.  But still, chalk it up to another clown moment.

I hope the concept for the film works.  There were a couple moments in the middle we hadn't quite worked out.