Missing the Bus (Part 2)
April 23rd 2009 09:03
I've never seen anything as beautiful in my entire life (American Beauty)
Catharsis is difficult in a film about fate. I agonised over how to dramatise fatalistic catharsis in a way that would be seminally uplifting. And gave meaning to a generation of souls looking for celluoid answers in a world of rapid images flashed before our eyes like a young girl considering working in the sex industry who sees a lot of bald, fat men flash before her eyes, and thinks, Is the money worth it? And, a film about fate where Providence didn't play a part, but fate was the thing. The only thing. No mention of God. Just women with crucifixes out in the forest at night watching Foxtel and talking about how they'd made a sea-change to a place nowhere near the ocean. These are difficult propositions for the serious filmmaker. Something anyone who has ever shot a home video will understand.
Seminal films only come along when seminal filmmakers seminate. To disassociate oneself with semination is to disemminate in a non-copulatory and quasi/pseudo celluloid way without the cellulite. But bring on the bulimia and watch the wide screen with the skinny woman on it. Which seems such a waste of seed. To split a woman in half is not what King Solomon had in mind when he wrote his first film, The Tyranny of God. He was thinking wheat taxes and tithes in that Old Testament way of filmmaking that Chartlon Heston got into before he discovered guns were the only way to protect your property from losers with guns. Thank God for condoms. And people who don't use them. And may we all disseminate in a way whereby the brotherhood of mankind and womankind comes together in a collusion of confluences which truly display the altruistic propensity of the human spirit to coagulate into a non-gluggy coagulum of love and understanding. Blessed be Henry Ford for creating a black car and not a white one. And will a minority group please put forward the cause of Mark David Chapman for canonisation to the Vatican before they totally lose the plot and canonise John Lennon.
And these were the thoughts coursing through my mind during this cathartic, estoteric, aromatheric filmmaking process, before even making a film. Before even writing a film. Just visualising it in all its glory and planning the Oscar acceptance speech for the greatest film ever written.
The filmmaking process is only understood by critics once the seminal moment has been realised beyond post production. Post post production. When a child is born to us after a long time of pregnant filmmaking. And let's face it. Film is all about tits. Forget the plot. Think tits.
It was the bag. Or the bags. It was the bag lady. There she was with her bags. Flapping in the breeze. And there I was like a hungry journalist in film-making mode, ready to pounce on a story. The auteur. Needing someone else to write about, whilst maintaining my status as auteur. The filmmaker who needs no-one else in life other than people with stories to exploit. And actors to act the part of other people while maintaining my status as auteur. The solitary filmmaker who need no-one other than actors, a decent script and a film crew. A true auteur. While I let her die. It seared my conscience to realise I could be so callous in a world gone mad with disinterest and inidfference. And apathy. As if I care about apathy. What a paltry thought. Let the apathetic make their own films. About violence. I'll make films about where a photograph of a person dying was more important to me than saving the life of a fellow human being. It was a defining moment in my filmmaking life.
I thought about the final scene in American Beauty. And just how beautiful a bag flapping in the breeze could be. And what approach Forest Gump would have taken to a Bag Lady's empty bags bereft of chocolates. Life is a $2 bag? You know there'll be nothing of value in it? Stay, Forest, stay! Could I write a film about a bag lady where bags featured prominently. Not just in the final scene in a way that says you people are idiots?
I realise I haven't told you a lot about the film yet, but I think if you're going to write a film, you have to go through the catharsis of what urges you to write a film which the masses will be interested in. And who hasn't ever had compassion on a bag lady? Apart from a filmmaker who only cares about his film and how to use and abuse her?
It is definitely a film about bags. Plastic bags are about to be outlawed from supermarkets. This is a film that taps into the subconscious of a collective generation of consumer shoppers. It's a film about plastic versus cloth. It's laminated Jesus meets Shroud Jesus. Without the blood stains. It's Don De Lillo's White Noise screaming out at the scanner at the supermarket checkout.
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Comment by Damo
Damo
c/o: Guilt by Association inc.
Comment by Lilla
From The Home Front
Enviro Warrior
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Wow, that was strangely satisfying.
So many classic lines, I could just *Quote the lot* but;
((hillarious))
Yes, its the middle bit that miffs so many . .
That whole closing para. *ROFL*
Too funny.
Thank you for inspiring my day with something of substance.
Lilla . .
Comment by Mistersmith
MRS SMITH
READ THIS
SISTERS IN CRIME
To talk film is to talk adjectivally. It was my intention to use as many filmic terms as possible. I may even become my own film's greatest critic.
Comment by Mistersmith
MRS SMITH
READ THIS
SISTERS IN CRIME
I don't think many people got this post.
Apparently if you waffle about a real film, it's really interesting. But if you waffle endlessly about a film that doesn't exist?
I guess not a lot of people appreciate the mad genius of David Lynch. They say they do. But do they really?
"Yes Jeffrey. That's an ear."
I think this film calls for a scene with a waffle maker in it. And a weird conversation at Norgenvaaz.
There really should be more films about what is going on around us. They talk about the Australian film industry? To me it's not so much the films they make, it's the ones they haven't made when there is so much out there on offer.
Forget about making some gay film that "encapsulates" Australia in broad-strokes and sweeping majestic panoramic shots of "nothing". Give me a bag lady.
As Graeme used to say, "Show me a war through the eyes of a single soldier."
Some of the great films have had the most simple premises. Three Colours Red. A woman runs over a dog and tries to find its owner is not a film about a woman running over a dog and trying to find its owner. It's a film about a judge. A sick judge. Who likes pear brandy.
Yes it's all about either the story or how you tell the story. I know how to tell a story. I just wish I had a story worth telling.
Comment by Lilla
From The Home Front
Enviro Warrior
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I don*t know who David Lynch is, did he write the Thing? But I do know that there is a great story inside everyone of us. We often just need the catalyst to bring it out, but i get your point.
What you say reminded me so much of the film Babel. I recommend it as a meta. story of a bag lady through the eyes of the bag itself. Fascinating performance from Mr Pitt too.
Perhaps something to while away the hours whilst waiting for Mrs Smith to come home from work, although i am sure she would like it very much too.
Lilla .
Comment by Lilla
From The Home Front
Enviro Warrior
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Gosh I just saw that. Some days your psychic abilities are positively occult!