oh yeah, i've been reading this french dude barthes lately, i don't know if you got any of that in your criticism class, but there's a whole theory of semiotics and structralism that i wanna talk about, which is applicable to our movie in some manner. i'll post when i get the whole thing sorted out.
posted by gxyz at 4:45 PM

BRIGHT FLAMING IDEA CASTING LIGHT INTO THE DARKNESS:

The first line of OUR script will be the first line of HIS script which will be the first thing he sees and the first line of his internal narration. The sight of the object compels him to follow it and thus begins his trip which unravels across San Francisco in the next forty eight sleepless hours.

The line is a concrete sentence involving subject, verb and object.

I.E.: The girl with the red purse weaves through the sidewalk and the camera follows.

Our camera does exactly that. At the same moment, our protagonist (let's call him Oedipus for now) follows, while he's narrating it (because that's his habit). And of course he's following because the scene is the exact first line of his own movie.

also the script for the film should be held in a better receptacle than a red folder or whatever. what are manuscripts usually held in? yellow envelopes? there needs to be something less boring.
posted by gxyz at 4:27 PM

grisborne thornhill isn't awful. i can call you gris for short. or maybe thorny.

some details here and there:

1. i see our young protagonist as only temporarily residing in San Francisco. there's the element of being, as always, thematically consistent -- he's on a search, and he's in no way satisfied with where he is currently. Maybe he's planning a move to New York, but living with a friend of a distant relative in San Francisco until he makes enough money to make the move.

2. i see, early in the movie, a pivotal encounter with a prophetic figure. these are always key in epics and modern day myths ( a la the cowboy from big lebowski or the oracle of delphi from orpheus). he'd be old and decrepit -- a neighbor or just a homeless man on a street corner (though that very example sounds a little trite).

3. i'm a fan of the constant self-narration. it'll give the film a noir/first person/memento-esque feel.

4. the plot of the last philip k. dick book i read ("flow my tears, the policeman said") revolved entirely around a drug which demolishes the brain's ability to delineate spatial coordinates, wiping out "reality" entirely. thus ensued the normal series of philip k. dick plot twists. anyway, we should have a drug that does something ridculously improbable. and of course, our protagonist should take a healthy dose of it.

5. though our hero goes through a lot of adventures, he should come back again and again to a single significant event constrained either temporally or spatially. the open mic comes to mind, but maybe something not as straightforward, but equally symbolic (bumpin into a gorgeous girl, for example).

These things are better done in fitful bursts of creativity greased liberally with alcohol or marijuana. this isn't an entirelly impossible scenario. i think the next step is to manifest a lengthy list of interesting occurences, people and elements that we want in our movie.

out, one time.
posted by gxyz at 8:27 PM

shit, brotha.

it's been more than a minute, and i'm taking off for a short little vacation-in-a-vacation in the coming week, but i'm excited by all these ideas floating around, so i'ma lay some things down on paper.

first of all, i like the idea that he is physically seeking a tangible object.

second, i think he should naturally render the events in his life into art. so he starts writing this play about his search... maybe it's an epic a la gilgamesh or odyssey... but what he creates he only considers to be an exercise-- to stay sharp... and we're not limited to scripts. he can write poems about girls he meets or write songs about parties he's been to... these are just a normal part of his life... rendering things around him into art.

anyway, the search should be kafka-esque... maybe you're not familiar, so i'll elaborate. his search will take him places. he might run into that creepy chorus we were talking about. he'll run into an marginal underground drug scene. it'll be almost mythic in proportions... strange places and strange people. at the same time, he doesnt get anywhere. the feeling he gets is that, everyone else is in on the joke, but he's not. though he moves through circles of people, his quest never moves forward. (this is reminiscent of pynchon, i know, but the godfather of it all is definitely kafka) ... i guess the reason why kafka (and pynchon) is so incredibly resonant, is that, his characters (kafka's) are easily universal, and they evolve into metaphors for the predicament of modern man. and the same with our movie... the unending search for beauty, for art, for some missing aspect of yourself that you know you once had... these are pretty universal. but at times, we are so frustrated by the search that we doubt that any of it ever even existed. (note, that's good, he should at some point, doubt whether or not he even wrote a script... or wrote anything).

whew. i think that establishes a good general sweep of the plot. it leaves a lot of room for anything we're amused by or interested in writing. i could see it as a darkly satirical kind of movie (the kind i've always wanted to write, given the opportunity).

george out

posted by gxyz at 5:56 PM

the name change seems to be in effect only in this blog form, but not in the ultmate, web browsing form. fortunately, i have no idea how to remedy this and it will probably be a unpleasing thorn in our side. a pockmark in smooth face of perfection. three hours and counting to the brazil/germany world cup final. so i had a thought, a general sketch, or outline, if you will. we should focus our movie on just one writer. the predicament of the writer should be that of our predicament. we like art. all kinds of art. and we know we wanna make it. but not just ape it, and especially not the pre-packaged sanitized pop mass media stuff, but our own shit with irregularities and personal quirks. so it is with our main character. but he's stuck. not blocked like grady from wonder boys, but almost the opposite, stuck with too many paths and choices. so he decides that he needs more life experience before he can really create anything and plunges himself into "the scene". i guess thats a preliminary backstory. on the way, i see him getting involved in incredibly strange side projects invovling a number of colorful people. it sets the stage for a huge variety of different things to happen, but i was thinking some disturbingly familiar yet altogether new event would lead him deep into an underground, which ultimately reveals truths about himself ... a la crying lot of 49. or maybe a mulholland drive without all the second half silliness and changing of bodies.

also, i'm not entirely happy with the setting of the seventies. we dont know anything about the seventies, but we have a large stock of stereotypical seventies images. i think it would be hard to depict the seventies without resorting to cliche. i think that our modern era is interesting enough in itself.

george out and to bed.
posted by gxyz at 9:32 PM

now we're talking about something different.

i think if things revolved around a writer and the creative process, we have a different story, with different themes, and we can effectively cast aside the entire christian motif. in fact, i'd like to cast aside the entire christian motif. frankly, i'm tired of it, and i'm through exploring its potential. i've been finishing up my reread of pynchon's the crying lot and i realized most of the pleasure from reading that book comes from its shocking originality. causes dont necessarily proceed effects and vice versa in his books, but the reader forgives him mostly because there is a trust that he understands the greater picture, and that's all that matters. i'd like to make something like that, some incredibly new and expansive story. a new madness at the discotheque.

also, george imed me a few days ago. i didnt type anything back.

here are the names i liked out of your list, modified and in some cases, totally different:

1. sweet bowl of cherries
2. other words...
3. red. blue. disaster!
4. deep ocean tidal disaster
posted by gxyz at 11:39 AM

ideas of the day:

we should give it the classic greek epic treatment, ie, we should have a chorus. maybe a chorus of angels. someone to hang around and explain shit, or narrate flashbacks.

also, jesus should have flashforwards.
posted by gxyz at 10:56 AM

there was an amusing little subtitle that i generated for this blog, but this particular manifestation isnt displaying it. fuck it. its dead. anyway, i think we need to straighten out the themes and the charachters first, and then decide whether or not it would "thematically consistent" to begin with the ending. also, i am generally unhappy with our somewhat cheesy concept for an ending. also, i hate the title, and will entertain suggestions for new titles (for the blog)

anyways, a prelude to it all:

the foundation of western modern thought, or western ontology (i think) is the dialectic. hegel's dialectic is probably most famous and comes to mind, but the ideas based upon it can be found in goethe's faust, a little earlier. it also appears in plato and aristotle's views of thigns and their properties. anyway, the principle hegelian dialectic is one of nothing and something. these are simplifications for german words that imply more than their english counterparts. its more like "the force that negates" and "the force that is"... these two forces combine to create. goethe extended this concept to God and mephisto, in ways that i hope i've made clear. this concept will extend to our charachters for our movie. so, the characters that represent mephisto and jesus must reflect these two principles.

that's point one.

point two, is an explanation of goethe's added flourish. from the perspective of the devil, goethe reasons that the devil is probably tired of simply negating gods creation by generating strife and pain and sufferng. instead, his interest is in negating it all. so he works to find a seam in god's perfection that he can crack. in faust, it was a bet about dr. faustus. in the bible, it was a bet over job. in our script, we assume that the devil has gotten a little more sophisticated since a couple of hundred years ago. he sees that god has given man reason so that man may separate god from evil and choose god. (why doesnt god just make everyone good? here's why: we've already established that all things can be created through a dialectic, so it is with god, and these are his tools, to create a perfect form of man, he needs to devil to negate, and he needs men to choose) anyway, the devil hopes to exploit all this by eliminating reason (he rails on reason in the prelude to faust). this explains his manifestation as a pastor or religious leader. he preaches absolute, unqestioning faith and elimination of reason. in a world without choice and with blind devotion, there can be no free will and no progress. god's plan comes to a halt and the devil can rest. this is his motivation. it's complicated, but we are depending upon the poetry readings as elucidation and a lot can probably be explained through poems.

which brings us to point three...

we havent thought out at all why jesus is who he is. or exactly who is he and why he is motivated. the only think i can think of is his desire to stop what the devil is doing. our problem is mainly theological... since the second time jesus comes to earth, incredible shit is supposed to happen, ie the rapture. this needs work.

anyway, this is the philosophical and theological framework of the concept, so you should probably get comfortable with it. everything is in flux, so if you wanna tweak and redo, tweak and redo. i gotta go and wash the smell of soy sauce and ribs out of my pants.

recommended quick read: anthony bourdain's kitchen confidential... a drug fueled ride through the underworld of highstakes restaraunt cooking.
posted by gxyz at 12:01 AM