Magic and Myth

Happy Christmas? Got an Oscar Wilde action figure. You? Plans for New Years? 80s-themed night at the local with my bro and sis. You?

Awkward small talk regarding the holidays sorted. Good.

A long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away (or my last blog post), I wrote a scene about a crazy girl in a bar and didn't really know what to do with it. Well.

I've been thinking about a story for a while that's sort of a martial arts/samurai version of this story from ancient Greek myth. Well, I've had the idea since I watched Kill Bill and wanted to imitate Tarantino probably (keep you posted on my superhero idea clearly only inspired by Scott Pilgrim Vs The World). Wasn't it Oscar Wilde who said 'good writers borrow, great writers steal?' Or was it Pablo Picasso who said 'good artists borrow, great artists steal?' Or was it T.S. Eliot who said 'immature poets borrow, mature poets steal?' No matter. They were awesome and condoned creative theft. Hmmm. Seems wrong somehow.

I digress. So the myth goes something like this; Daedalus, master craftsman and constructor of the labyrinth, is pretty sure he's the business at crafting shit. Until his sister's kid comes along. His name is Perdix and Perdix is super good at building stuff and this makes Daedalus well jealous. So one day while they're walking along some cliffs, hanging and chilling, Daedalus decides to push Perdix off one. A cliff, that is. In the myth I read the kid just plain died and Daedalus was banished, which is how he wound up building the labyrinth. But in the one I just looked up (cough, on Wikipedia, cough), the goddess Athena turned the kid into a bird before he hit the ground. This is supposedly the origin of the Partridge. The bird, not the family of musicians from the 70s.

How are these things related, you might ask? Well. I think the girl has the makings of being a Perdix character, looking for her Daedalus. I wanted to do a story about an assassin who kills one of his students because she's clearly going to be better than him. She survives and begins picking off the members of his organisation before killing him. The cliff stuff is genius, because the scene I've written already has that. In the myth, Daedalus is branded with the image of Perdix as punishment and I thought maybe this could be her mark? He pushes her off a cliff, she somehow survives, and exacts her revenge. There's a definite fight/flight motif running through this story (thank you, friend who talked about the fight or flight urge and how you can have one more than the other), and it can be seen in the original scene I wrote. And it's explicit in the one I'm about to share with you.

So this story is shaping up first of all to be about art, how we validate ourselves through our work and what it means when someone does better what we thought was ours alone, but also about our instincts; that constant tension between fight and flight that we live through every day and how others force us to enact those struggles every day. Please to enjoy the next scene I haves written!

An explanatory note (well, another one): I haven't written it as a scene in a film. I've written it as a monologue, then added directions. It's more notes on how to write the scene more than anything. Please to enjoy! Again!

It's the flight or fight complex. That survival instinct that kicks in when you know that if you walk into this territory you'll end up with a gun to your head or a knife to your throat.

What I've figured out is that no one has both. Oh, they'll try to tell you it's a constant struggle between the two, but that's bullshit. BULLSHIT.

See, to me, the real struggle comes from the realisation that in the moment flight or fight comes upon you, you're not who you thought you were.

When I was a kid, I had the drunken arsehole of a father who would start shit when he got home from the pub. I would stand up to him while my brother went and hid in his closet. That's how I learned that while my brother's instinct was flight, mine was to fight.

And that's why I'm so good at what we do. I know who is flight, and who is fight. And I know when someone realises that when they thought they'd be fight, they're actually flight. And you my dear, I'm afraid I know exactly what you are. You're flight.

This is dialogue, delivered direct address-style to the camera. It's our opening scene, our opening shot. In CU we see a middle-aged man. He looks tough. Battle-weary. Street-smart.

We pull back to an MCU and we see the landscape for the first time. It has large rocky mountaintops and cliffs filled with sharp points like raised daggers covering its surface. It is beautiful but treacherous. We CUT TO the person he has been talking to.

It's the girl from the bar with the wild red hair. Blue eyes like a cold flame. Now, though, she looks as though every inch of her is vibrating with fear.

He pushes her off the cliff.

And now I need to know where to go from here. Yay!

One of these days I'm gonna get organizized

So I made a tentative hair schedule for 2011 (it's not lame...is it? No. Couldn't be. It's not like I have celeb hair pics stored in my phone...anymore...), and I do believe it brings me that much closer to organising the rest of my life. No New Years Resolutions, because they suck, and no one ever keeps them.

So because they're not quite formed thoughts, yet, here is a list/notes to myself:

1. Enrol in WEA Spanish for Beginners course (just need funds in back account).
2. Research: Critical analysis at UNSW (contact postgrad coordinator and hope she forgets she taught me in Honours and I wrote a really crap essay for her seminar)
3. Research: practice-led research at Macquarie?
4. Ideas: study of morality and pursuit of pleasure in film with particular reference to a story set in Sydney; study of relationship between screen and spectator - practice-based or critical analysis; study of genre and masculinity - script about human vs zombies team.
5. Work my way back to directing this year? Maybe even ask to direct Christmas Dinner?
6. Ask about comps or funding or stuff to get scripts some recognition or money or something?

Ok, good. Now I can lelaxxxxx.

Wild in the Streets, Barely Alive

So I often have ideas swimming around in my head for ages and get really lazy about getting them down on paper. But recently I had some time to kill for writing, and because I was trying to work on one piece, I had a brief lightning strike moment in which I wrote a scene for...well, I'm not sure.

I have a few ideas for it, but I'm not sure where to take it. So I figure getting it out into the internetz might lead to some sort of inspiration.

So here tis:

As she walked through the doors she had everyone in the bar's attention. Hardly surprising, really. It was full of bikers, middle-aged bearded men in leather. In age she beat them all by about 20 years.

The women in the bar, scarce as they were, resembled the men more than they resembled her. She wasn't giving anyone in the bar the satisfaction of a first glance, let alone a second.

She sat down at the bar and waited. To the bar patrons, and probably the rest of the world, the girl was worthy of more than a cursory once-over. She was wearing a long black t-shirt that was supposed to qualify as a dress, accompanied by ripped tights and scuffed motorcycle boots. Her long, bright red hair was what could only be described as a mess. The ghost of an up-do remained, making it look as though she had pulled her hair out in a rage.

Her make-up was similarly messy, with mascara that looked like it was running down her face and her lipstick smudged. It reminded some of the Joker. The dark smudges around her blue eyes made them blaze out of her face. All in all, this girl looked like she'd been in a big scrap. The entire bar wondered who had won the fight. All bets were on her.

But one patron found her absurd. He leaned against the bar, standing near to where she was sitting. He took his time before speaking. "You know, Halloween's over, Honey." His female companion cackled, the sound slicing through the atmosphere.

She swiftly turned to face him, and her blue eyes burned into his. The shitkicking grin on his face faltered, flickered, went out. The bartender came over soon after.

"You got ID?" he asked, knowing the answer. She stared at him for what seemed like a long time. The bar collectively held ther breath.

She got up and stormed out. The bar followed her with their eyes. Soon conversation returned to normal, except for the guy who had to stare into her eyes. He didn't say a word for the rest of the night.

I have a couple of stories this could fit into. Is there a mystical element? Is she just some punk kid trying to forge her identity? Is she some assassin in the making, waiting to be brought under some more experienced person's wing? Is she a time-traveller having a rough time of it? These are the contexts I've previously created that this heroine could fall into. Is she even a heroine? Not sure yet, but any suggestions are welcome and appreciated.