what a new story
I love stories, I love the ways they are told and I love the ways they unfold. My friends and I always tell each other stories, original ones, and ones from our own lives, just juiced to the gills with artistic license. Well, I have two friends who want to tell stories, and I want to tell them too. The ways we tell stories is on film and on stage. But drama these days has an air of separation from real life, and a story is only good if it is really realistic. Ultimate realism was our goal, but how can you get ultimate realism when an actor on a screen is lying? There is no way to make an unforced performance, or completely original and spontaneous drama. Why would you want to imitate reality when you can just take real life it self and put that on a screen creating a new story and develop relationships with footage. So there we were, in Shaun’s apartment with an idea. We would bus around with sound equipment and cameras stashed inside of our clothes, strategically of course, in order to capture real life. We had a bag for our camera and a shotgun microphone down Keir’s pants. Into the verdant Wallingford morning, and onto a bus, any bus, no matter where or how, we will find this human story. It was our destiny of course.
Through Fremont, there was no one at all with what we were looking for. Sometimes you see someone who sits on the fence between convention and out there. I don’t mean people wearing big black pants boots and a dumb tee shirt that says something that used to be funny; I mean someone with the look, the Wei Doo, a term for Indonesian musicians who have the ear. Someone who burns so bright they are hard to look at, but at the same time, hard not to look at.
The day was getting late and sometimes you have to just pick someone in the name of getting things done. We picked a guy who looked crazy, he had a look, but it wasn’t the same kind of scary that we were looking for. He was full of twitches, which looked good on camera. We started filming him, talking to the bus driver. We were far away. We couldn’t get good sound levels it was aggravating me to the point of braiding my arms across my chest as tight as I could, and frowning like I was getting government money for it. Things started getting smoother though; he started having a very heated talk, with himself, about the predators and the prey, about subservience in the weakness. As time went on we were able to sit right next to him and get closer and closer. He got off the bus and we followed.
He walked down a street. We walked behind him, equipment splayed like feds in sunglasses. Of course we were wearing sunglasses we were no amateurs. We were in control from square one. Cold as ice as the euphemism goes, but we like all successful artists were getting sloppy, we didn’t cover our tracks like we should have, we got too close, and almost blew our cover. I could have sworn he was onto us, but he didn’t let on like he was. He got more and more agitated as we walked. He was sweating, and we could see it from our camera lens, so he was sweating more than was normal. We followed him around a corner, and he jumped out at us, with a knife in his hand. He grimaced like we were going to rob him, and swung it at us. It was a huge knife. It was the knife of a South East Asian pimp. Serrated and rusted, with a wobbling hilt and a tarnished blade. It was terrifying. He swung it at us again and he screamed with the agony of instability.
“You have been dragging my tail all day, and I wont let you, I wont let you!” he bellowed. “I can’t take your shit! You pip squeaks think you can run me down! I can run for years! Hell! I’ve been running for years!” With that last sentiment, several strands of sputum hit Keir’s glasses. Looking at the saliva on his glasses, I noticed his mouth was open, probably in fear. I took stock of my own state, my mouth was open too, and it gaped in animalistic fear. He was still screaming and waving his 13-inch knife.
“You’ve got the wrong idea man!” I said cutting him off red in the face. “We have no idea who you are! We are just making this film… for school, a school film and we were using some footage of you, because you have that look.” I stopped there, what could I say? What should I have said? What ever would have been better, didn’t matter any more; those words were out of my mouth. There was a silence for a moment until he broke it,
“Oh, I didn’t know it was like that.” He deadpanned. It was one of the fastest most natural mood shifts I had ever seen. Thank god the camera was rolling on him in Keir’s jacket. His change made me, for one, very nervous. “You guys are good guys right?” he asked, “Real sterling characters? Well, I know good people when I see them, I sure do, I know them like I know how to cook. Tell you guys what, since you are just doing schoolwork, let me take you back to my apartment and give you some grape soda. How about some nice refreshing grape soda? Hot day like this, sounds good doesn’t it?” What could we say but all right? We walked in silence down the alley, and he opened the door to a basement. We all walked inside. It felt wrong; it felt like we had made the wrong decision. We sat there shooting looks back and forth, back and forth while he made banging noises in the kitchen. Collectively we moved back towards the door, as quietly as we could. Shaun put his hand on the door knob and tried to turn it, but it was locked from the outside. Somewhere in the other room, a large pan was put on a stove and we heard the sounds of an oven being turned on. All of us slowly turned around to meet our fate.
Through Fremont, there was no one at all with what we were looking for. Sometimes you see someone who sits on the fence between convention and out there. I don’t mean people wearing big black pants boots and a dumb tee shirt that says something that used to be funny; I mean someone with the look, the Wei Doo, a term for Indonesian musicians who have the ear. Someone who burns so bright they are hard to look at, but at the same time, hard not to look at.
The day was getting late and sometimes you have to just pick someone in the name of getting things done. We picked a guy who looked crazy, he had a look, but it wasn’t the same kind of scary that we were looking for. He was full of twitches, which looked good on camera. We started filming him, talking to the bus driver. We were far away. We couldn’t get good sound levels it was aggravating me to the point of braiding my arms across my chest as tight as I could, and frowning like I was getting government money for it. Things started getting smoother though; he started having a very heated talk, with himself, about the predators and the prey, about subservience in the weakness. As time went on we were able to sit right next to him and get closer and closer. He got off the bus and we followed.
He walked down a street. We walked behind him, equipment splayed like feds in sunglasses. Of course we were wearing sunglasses we were no amateurs. We were in control from square one. Cold as ice as the euphemism goes, but we like all successful artists were getting sloppy, we didn’t cover our tracks like we should have, we got too close, and almost blew our cover. I could have sworn he was onto us, but he didn’t let on like he was. He got more and more agitated as we walked. He was sweating, and we could see it from our camera lens, so he was sweating more than was normal. We followed him around a corner, and he jumped out at us, with a knife in his hand. He grimaced like we were going to rob him, and swung it at us. It was a huge knife. It was the knife of a South East Asian pimp. Serrated and rusted, with a wobbling hilt and a tarnished blade. It was terrifying. He swung it at us again and he screamed with the agony of instability.
“You have been dragging my tail all day, and I wont let you, I wont let you!” he bellowed. “I can’t take your shit! You pip squeaks think you can run me down! I can run for years! Hell! I’ve been running for years!” With that last sentiment, several strands of sputum hit Keir’s glasses. Looking at the saliva on his glasses, I noticed his mouth was open, probably in fear. I took stock of my own state, my mouth was open too, and it gaped in animalistic fear. He was still screaming and waving his 13-inch knife.
“You’ve got the wrong idea man!” I said cutting him off red in the face. “We have no idea who you are! We are just making this film… for school, a school film and we were using some footage of you, because you have that look.” I stopped there, what could I say? What should I have said? What ever would have been better, didn’t matter any more; those words were out of my mouth. There was a silence for a moment until he broke it,
“Oh, I didn’t know it was like that.” He deadpanned. It was one of the fastest most natural mood shifts I had ever seen. Thank god the camera was rolling on him in Keir’s jacket. His change made me, for one, very nervous. “You guys are good guys right?” he asked, “Real sterling characters? Well, I know good people when I see them, I sure do, I know them like I know how to cook. Tell you guys what, since you are just doing schoolwork, let me take you back to my apartment and give you some grape soda. How about some nice refreshing grape soda? Hot day like this, sounds good doesn’t it?” What could we say but all right? We walked in silence down the alley, and he opened the door to a basement. We all walked inside. It felt wrong; it felt like we had made the wrong decision. We sat there shooting looks back and forth, back and forth while he made banging noises in the kitchen. Collectively we moved back towards the door, as quietly as we could. Shaun put his hand on the door knob and tried to turn it, but it was locked from the outside. Somewhere in the other room, a large pan was put on a stove and we heard the sounds of an oven being turned on. All of us slowly turned around to meet our fate.