fuck, i should really be asleep right now
I've been thinking, especially in light of the film I just watched.
Well, if you're still reading: you've been warned.
One of the most common elements of my storytelling is the relationship between the main character(s) and their fantasies, imagination, or dreams. It's in almost every thing I've written, dating back to the days of trying to write novels. In the past I tried to find a way of describing this and I often described it as a "missing center" to my stories, as in Joyriders, which on a level is about the mystery of Who Is The Man? But deeper than that, it's about Who Is The Man To Mills? What does he (and his distinct absence from the story) represent to Mills? The answer is, the man is a certain fantasy antagonist and Mills's actions are those of a man playing a role in his own fantasy.
In Amnesia Hotel, Michael's obviously weighing the import of a dream against the pull of his reality, ultimately choosing the ephemeral dream leap-of-faith over the obviously stable comfort of a real life love. (Ed in Ellipsis acts much like Michael, forsaking mundane reality for the dangerously finite adventure of what could be described as his fantasies come true.)
In the Keychain story (a big sprawly thing that exists in some amorphous novel/script limbo, and has for almost four years now), N is so obsessed with an internal fiction that he goes to increasingly dangerous and self-destructive lengths not only to chase windmills but to avoid bursting the bubble.
Even the Otherian story (a Gibson-esque sci-fi thing I devised back at PSU that was meant to be a novel and I've always harbored unspoken fantasies of turning into either a movie script or, more ambitiously, a TV miniseries) originates with characters learning the various natures of their fictionality and, in very different ways, coming to terms with that. They are in essence fantasies themselves, and they are progressively less successful the more substantial they try to be. (It's hard to explain. Maybe I should have called it Dickian more than Gibson-esque.)
Abe in Short Film is only happy because reality has been pushed to a safe distance, though he and AHot's Michael are the rare cases, characters who (apart from arguments with his friends) don't suffer for their rejection of reality over fantasy.
You could make the case that in Open, Will and Annie's primary tension comes from having tried to make real a sort of fantasy relationship only to find that things were better when the fantasy was just a fantasy. In a sense you could say it's the bitter second act to Michael and Audrey's story from Amnesia Hotel.
The World of Missing Persons and Minus both go farther, actually punishing every character who tries to reach out and contact their dreams or "materialize their fantasies." Victor's dreams prove shatteringly mundane; Tressa's dreams prove embarrassingly unrealistic; and in a more moralizing turn, Bea's attempts to connect with the dreamy man on the other side of the glass result in a man's murder.
And the new one, #6, Every Room is Empty, features two characters who in a sense can't agree on their fantasy version of events, but it has a more ambiguous and less dark ending, looping back on itself rather than resolving the futility of their attempts.
Žižek speaks a lot about the relationship between people and their fantasies and their realities. He sums Lost Highway up as a man who is so uncomfortable with his reality (that he has murdered his cheating, distant wife whom he loves) he actually breaks away and rearranges the entire world, casting himself as the young interloper and target of his wife's affections, and when that dream unravels, chaos ensues until he finds his way back to something like reality, only arguably worse. Basically, Žižek says, it begins as the story of a man who isn't strong enough for reality and must live inside a dream, and it ends as the story of a man who isn't strong enough for his dreams and must live inside reality. That's not so much a whole new way of looking at it as it is just a really exciting way of phrasing it, but the effect is the same on me: it's exciting.
My stories, to date, haven't been anything approaching Lynch's most pedestrian take on fantasy vs. reality, and maybe never will (the man has a gift), but recognizing this as a theme more explicitly than before -- not just "stories about dreamers" or "stories with holes in the center and heroes who obsess over filling or occupying that hole" (both of which I think are okay thematic approaches) -- but actually "stories about people chasing fantasies" ...well I just found it a new kind of anchor on my own storytelling push, I guess. And wanted to try and put words to my thoughts.
Don't get me wrong. I know a fair number of those stories didn't or don't work, at least not perfectly, and at least not as is (in the case of some of the unproduced/unfinished ones), but this isn't about the success rate of my films; it's about the recurring themes I unconsciously kept coming back to. Anyway I just thought it was interesting. To me.
If it wasn't twenty to five and I wasn't on my third night of less than six hours of sleep, I would go back through this post and try to make it mean something. I'd revise and rewrite it until it had at least something that looked like a conclusion, even if wasn't. But it is almost five, and I am tired, and my neck hurts and I actually do want to sleep.
So it remains as-is, pointless and indulgent. It is a summary of stories, and a summary of Lost Highway, as if me putting them all in similar terms means anything at all. Truth be told, I lost my train of thought a little by the end, and forgot why the Lost Highway summary was even specifically relevant.
So much for being a good writer.
Ah well.
You were warned not to bother. Don't blame me.
Well, if you're still reading: you've been warned.
One of the most common elements of my storytelling is the relationship between the main character(s) and their fantasies, imagination, or dreams. It's in almost every thing I've written, dating back to the days of trying to write novels. In the past I tried to find a way of describing this and I often described it as a "missing center" to my stories, as in Joyriders, which on a level is about the mystery of Who Is The Man? But deeper than that, it's about Who Is The Man To Mills? What does he (and his distinct absence from the story) represent to Mills? The answer is, the man is a certain fantasy antagonist and Mills's actions are those of a man playing a role in his own fantasy.
In Amnesia Hotel, Michael's obviously weighing the import of a dream against the pull of his reality, ultimately choosing the ephemeral dream leap-of-faith over the obviously stable comfort of a real life love. (Ed in Ellipsis acts much like Michael, forsaking mundane reality for the dangerously finite adventure of what could be described as his fantasies come true.)
In the Keychain story (a big sprawly thing that exists in some amorphous novel/script limbo, and has for almost four years now), N is so obsessed with an internal fiction that he goes to increasingly dangerous and self-destructive lengths not only to chase windmills but to avoid bursting the bubble.
Even the Otherian story (a Gibson-esque sci-fi thing I devised back at PSU that was meant to be a novel and I've always harbored unspoken fantasies of turning into either a movie script or, more ambitiously, a TV miniseries) originates with characters learning the various natures of their fictionality and, in very different ways, coming to terms with that. They are in essence fantasies themselves, and they are progressively less successful the more substantial they try to be. (It's hard to explain. Maybe I should have called it Dickian more than Gibson-esque.)
Abe in Short Film is only happy because reality has been pushed to a safe distance, though he and AHot's Michael are the rare cases, characters who (apart from arguments with his friends) don't suffer for their rejection of reality over fantasy.
You could make the case that in Open, Will and Annie's primary tension comes from having tried to make real a sort of fantasy relationship only to find that things were better when the fantasy was just a fantasy. In a sense you could say it's the bitter second act to Michael and Audrey's story from Amnesia Hotel.
The World of Missing Persons and Minus both go farther, actually punishing every character who tries to reach out and contact their dreams or "materialize their fantasies." Victor's dreams prove shatteringly mundane; Tressa's dreams prove embarrassingly unrealistic; and in a more moralizing turn, Bea's attempts to connect with the dreamy man on the other side of the glass result in a man's murder.
And the new one, #6, Every Room is Empty, features two characters who in a sense can't agree on their fantasy version of events, but it has a more ambiguous and less dark ending, looping back on itself rather than resolving the futility of their attempts.
Žižek speaks a lot about the relationship between people and their fantasies and their realities. He sums Lost Highway up as a man who is so uncomfortable with his reality (that he has murdered his cheating, distant wife whom he loves) he actually breaks away and rearranges the entire world, casting himself as the young interloper and target of his wife's affections, and when that dream unravels, chaos ensues until he finds his way back to something like reality, only arguably worse. Basically, Žižek says, it begins as the story of a man who isn't strong enough for reality and must live inside a dream, and it ends as the story of a man who isn't strong enough for his dreams and must live inside reality. That's not so much a whole new way of looking at it as it is just a really exciting way of phrasing it, but the effect is the same on me: it's exciting.
My stories, to date, haven't been anything approaching Lynch's most pedestrian take on fantasy vs. reality, and maybe never will (the man has a gift), but recognizing this as a theme more explicitly than before -- not just "stories about dreamers" or "stories with holes in the center and heroes who obsess over filling or occupying that hole" (both of which I think are okay thematic approaches) -- but actually "stories about people chasing fantasies" ...well I just found it a new kind of anchor on my own storytelling push, I guess. And wanted to try and put words to my thoughts.
Don't get me wrong. I know a fair number of those stories didn't or don't work, at least not perfectly, and at least not as is (in the case of some of the unproduced/unfinished ones), but this isn't about the success rate of my films; it's about the recurring themes I unconsciously kept coming back to. Anyway I just thought it was interesting. To me.
If it wasn't twenty to five and I wasn't on my third night of less than six hours of sleep, I would go back through this post and try to make it mean something. I'd revise and rewrite it until it had at least something that looked like a conclusion, even if wasn't. But it is almost five, and I am tired, and my neck hurts and I actually do want to sleep.
So it remains as-is, pointless and indulgent. It is a summary of stories, and a summary of Lost Highway, as if me putting them all in similar terms means anything at all. Truth be told, I lost my train of thought a little by the end, and forgot why the Lost Highway summary was even specifically relevant.
So much for being a good writer.
Ah well.
You were warned not to bother. Don't blame me.