Sunday, September 23, 2007

Chronicles 52 - Life in the fast lane


The multi-tasking continues. I've been working my butt off with the day job battling with new technology, wrestling with Beta code to prepare for a training I have to deliver in the US. Because it's so intense I'm having to get the bulk of my writing in on weekends but yesterday I took the day off and chilled, just couldn't face the keyboard anymore.

Positive developments: The actors gave the thumbs up to my play and after getting together for a play reading I just need to do a polish and we can start rehearsing in October. Seems that the play reading where we read a 3 minute extract of the play to a live audience went down very well and we've already got a mention in the press so that was a positive omen.

So now I'm back to the script assignment. I have to polish the character breakdowns for the producer and then rewrite the 2nd draft of the treatment once that's out of the way I should have a good solid foundation to write the first draft.

Now that play is done the trick now will be to juggle 2 scripts and the day job so my fiendish plan is that in the time period where I'm waiting for feedback on the assignment I work on the script for the New York producer.

In the meantime, parallel to all this I'm producing my rom-com, spinning all sorts of plates in the air. Essentially all the ducks are lined up in a row, I have a New York financier who can invest up to 85% of the budget, I have a US producer with a great track record, a respected director, a casting director ready to go out with offers and, via the director, an agent at one of the 'big three' agencies ready to help package the project.

It all hinges on two equity funds I'm waiting back on who could potentially fund 30-50% of the project but they've gone into radio silence. The exec producer was waiting to hear back last week but it's been all very quiet. Nothing new there, huh? A rush of excitement and endomorphins and moments where the fog clears and you see the vision, you can even, well almost, reach out and touch it and you get that feeling in your bones that, "Yes, this is finally going to happen", AND THEN this is followed by...silence, a state of absolute zero where even time and entropy go into 'dark side of the moon' mode... and then you think to yourself, will this EVER happen?

I sometimes feel like I'm on an asymptote. Yeah right, what the hell is that? It's a curve that curves towards a vertical axis and extends upwards (or downwards) but no matter how close it gets to the vertical axis it never touches it, it just keep on going onto infinity without ever making contact. That's what independent film making feels like to me sometimes, it's like living the Tantalus myth, you know the guy who is doomed for the rest of eternity to be tantalised by luscious fruits above him and pure water beneath him but when he reaches for either they recede.

Of course the solution to this is to apply more Eastern philiosophical techniques as espoused in the Upanishads, Puranas, the Bhagavad Geeta, Advaita Vendata, Zen etc...

In the Bhagavad Gita Krishna says to Arjuna "Your commitment is to action alone, not to the fruits of action. That must never be: you must not be motivated by the fruits of your actions. Yet you must not become attached to inaction".

Easier said than done of course :-)

I bought myself a whole bunch of classic films lately and I'm half way through A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE right now. Isn't that an AMAZING title? Wow. I also love the way Williams weaves it into the script and how the title is SO connected to the theme. Also love this interchange:

Blanche: What you are talking about is desire - just brutal Desire! The name of that rattle-trap streetcar that bangs through the Quarter, up one old narrow street and down another.
Stella: Haven't you ever ridden on that streetcar?
Blanche: It brought me here. Where I'm not wanted and where I'm ashamed to be.

Maybe Blanche should have read the words of the Buddha:

The Second Noble Truth - "Samudaya" - The arising of suffering caused by craving and DESIRE; desire for impermanent things to be permanent.

Ciow for now.

SWU