What if:
Companies gave each employee personal leave of say 6 or 12 months with guaranteed income and the promise that their job would await them at the end of that time period.
And let’s say the employee could have one of these personal leave periods for every 3 years of employment at the company.
The employee could use that time for travel, to write a novel, to teach monkeys to sing or to raise a newborn child, all without the worry of money or job-security.
That seems fair, doesn’t it?
This may sound like an unimportant statement, but as a newly minted screenwriter, I was starting to worry that I seemed to dislike every movie I watched in theatres or via Netflix.
Now, I must admit that I have spent much of my life as a hypercritical asshole, a picker of nits most egregious, so it perhaps came as no surprise that a movie had to be pretty solid to impress me…but when you go through dozens of movies and find all of them meh, you start to worry. Or at least, I did.
You see, I slowly began to doubt my own understanding of what makes for a good film, or more importantly to me, a good story. And as someone who has decided to be a professional storyteller that is a worrisome doubt to have.
Movies that I have found lacking despite their acclaim
The recent fare that I had heard wonderful reviews of or that had won awards:
I have many colleagues who will defend some or all of these movies to the hilt and yet I found each of them somewhere between seriously flawed and downright insulting.
Clearly, I was the problem. In my zeal to craft my own stories, I had become myopic on what a good story is, what good characters are.
And then I watched The Boy In The Striped Pajamas.
Wow. I was blown away, not just by the subject matter, but by the story itself, the unique perspective and the richly drawn characters.
Sure, there were one or two small moments where I tilted my head askew, but they did not linger. Nor did they snowball in my consciousness as they were few and far between.
Movies that have renewed my faith in storytelling
Last night, I watched The Reader.
Not as blown away, but still enthralled. Rich characters, slow revelations, palpable conflict both within and without.
I don’t hate movies.
I have no time for movies that fail…and more importantly, I aspire to and am inspired by movies that succeed.
Doubts remain, but thankfully, they have diminished.
I’ve seen a lot of hate and anger in my social media feeds lately, directed at people of different religions, heritages, philosophies, and lifestyle choices, and it makes me sad.
I am sorry that the individuals who have posted this stuff feel this way and think these things. They are not bad people. They have their reasons of which I cannot possibly fathom. I can only offer them my love.
If I have contributed to these feelings in any way, through my humour, sarcasm or cynicism, I am sorry. That was not my intent. I meant only to induce people to smile and think.
The world can be an amazingly shitty place that naturally prompts fear, anger, hatred. The challenge is that these feelings only serve to make a shitty situation that much shittier.
The world can also be an amazingly beautiful place that hopefully prompts feelings of wonder, awe, unity and love. And just as in the previous situation, these feelings too serve to make a beautiful place that much more beautiful.
I cannot ask you to set aside your negative feelings. We all feel pain in our lives. To even suggest that you ignore these feelings is to invalidate them. That would be wrong of me.
I can only ask that you try love whenever you are able.
Not in the hope that it will cure your ills or diminish the slights you have suffered. Merely in the hope that a surfeit of love in the world will make those ills and slights easier to bear, if only because you will find you do not have to bear them alone.
(Images are property of their owners and are used here without permission but in the hope that I have done them justice.)
Peter O’Toole as Alan Swan
The announcement of Peter O’Toole’s death came as a bit of a shock to me. Not so much that he died—he was a very old gentleman—but rather in how it affected me. I felt like I’d lost a friend whom I had not seen in quite some time.
Fairly or unfairly, I give Peter O’Toole a lot of credit for the life that I am leading right now: the life of a creative artist who plies his art with words. You see, Peter O’Toole was the biggest name in a little movie that might not have seen the light of my consciousness had he not been in it.
The movie is My Favorite Year.
For the uninitiated (For shame, Swanny), the movie tells the story of a couple days in life of a budding young comedy writer working in the 1950s on the King Kaiser Show; a clear homage to Sid Caesar’s Show of Shows. On the day the movie opens, Benjamin is going to meet his greatest hero, fading matinee idol Alan Swan; a clear homage to Errol Flynn. Unfortunately, Swann’s star has faded into alcoholism and practical destitution, and it becomes Benjamin’s job to keep Swann sober enough for the live television performance. The rest is a love story between these two men; one ascending, the other wishing he were dead.
If that doesn’t want to make you see the movie, you’re dead yourself.
The thing is, for all the university science degrees and work I had done, my life was incomplete. What I didn’t realize right away upon seeing My Favorite Year—mostly because the young are stupid and blind—was that I desperately wanted to be Benjamin. More accurately, I WAS Benjamin, I just didn’t know it.
Benjamin Stone stares lovingly at his idol and now friend Alan Swan
I was a creative writer. I was a comedy writer. But I didn’t know how to express it beyond my own personal doodlings. And even if I had, science seemed the more rationale move (btw, I love science…really, I do).
As I’ve related in previous posts on my creative journey, it wasn’t until my wife took me aside one day and cornered me into answering what I wanted to do more than anything that I realized and embraced my inner Benjamin.
My life of today was still about a decade away, but that moment, that recognition, that admission started the ball rolling.
I had a visual to go by, a guide. I couldn’t go back in time to write for a 1950s sketch comedy show, but I could work toward the modern equivalents.
The other posts will tell you what I did, but without having seen My Favorite Year, I might not have been able to articulate my dream that fateful day.
And without Peter O’Toole, there might not have been a My Favorite Year to see.
So thank you, Mr. O’Toole. Aside from being one of the finest actors to walk this stage, you made dreams come true. This dreamer will be eternally grateful.
Links of possible interest:
If I were truly plastered (scene)
This is for ladies only (scene)
Who the hell is Niblick? (scene)
(Images are property of owners and are used here without permission, but a lot of love and gratitude)
Weep not, my love.
Release the sadness
That encumbers your heart,
Holding you earthbound
When you should soar.
Deny the anger
That blots your visage,
Shading your eyes
Where once smiles did dance.
You are beautiful
Of body and of spirit.
The world sings
Of your graces and charms.
Hear the song.
Feel the dance.
Rejoice in warmth
And weep no more,
For you are love.
The phoenix rises,
Feet firmly planted
In death and decay,
To stretch its wings
And catch the rays
Of life-giving Phoebus.
Wind rustles quiet
Giving brazen birth
To feathered choirs
Of heavenly song.
A magic silhouette
Shadows the orb.
Earth is forgotten
In a leap of faith.
How do you say goodbye to a dream? How do you deal with the fact that you can only start a dream but have no control over how it ends?
Dreams don’t ever end the way you expect them to. My first clue should have been dreams of the sleep variety.
So often, for the ones I can remember on waking, my dreams start remarkably well for me; I am achieving something, accomplishing something, learning something highly desirable to me. But just as often—whether positive dream or nightmare—the dream veers off the course that I would have consciously or rationally chosen for it, and I find I am not as in control of the dream as I had hoped. When the dream ends or when I awake, I find I am in a different place than I expected to be.
So it goes, I am learning, with wakeful dreams; those moments of aspiration and decision where you consciously set yourself on a path to something different.
I have spent my life dreaming of a different existence, and in the last year or so, I have been very active in making those dreams my new realities. As time passes, however, I am coming to realize that I have only so much power to steer my dream once I have initiated it. It is like climbing into a barrel and rolling into the river above Niagara Falls.
The current will do what the current will do. The rapids will buffet me as they choose. Gravity is the great roaring sound in the distance.
But as much as I talk about passively floating downstream and letting the universe decide, there is still a part of me—the human part, no doubt—that feels if I just press my shoulder this way or press my heels out that way, I can right the barrel so my head is high or somehow adjust the forces acting on the barrel such that I remain suspended above the gorge when I hit the precipice. But I am wrong.
I cannot say with certainty that upon hitting the precipice, I will plummet into the waiting whirlpools and eddies at the base of the falls. However unlikely, according to my friend Isaac Newton, I might fall sideways. The river could reverse its course at the last second. I could wedge behind a rock and simply be buffeted in place. Or I could wake up and find myself in bed.
I chose to set the wheels in motion, but that’s all I did, and to a greater or lesser extent, that’s all I can do.
The next few months will be very telling for the directions my recently initiated dreams will take me. I may awake to find they were ephemeral. They may continue into idyllic fields. They may turn into nightmares. It is not up to me.
If a dream must end, it will end. And if it ends badly, then I shall be sad and maybe a little angry. The onus is then on me to start another one. It is all I can do.
Almost a year ago, I had the opportunity to substitute teach a class of would-be advertising copywriters at a local community college. I was quite excited because it would give me the chance to talk to people at the beginning of their careers, while they were still fresh with anticipation and ready to take on the world.
Out of the gate, I let them know a little about myself and background, and then went straight for the “So, what made you decide to become a copywriter?”
To a person, the response was largely the same: “Well, I saw so many terrible advertisements and knew I could do better than that.” I am extremely happy to report that this was not all that they had going for them. Each was amazingly talented in his or her own way and it was a great couple of weeks.
But their original motivation hangs in the air, like a persistent echo that refuses to die.
No matter what our art, I would not be surprised to find that out that we have all said at some point in our lives “I can do better than that”. It’s only natural. It is how society has raised us.
I would like us to stop, however, because I fear it is killing our spirit and therefore threatens our art.
First, it’s just negative thinking on a topic for which we do not have a full understanding.
Having worked in advertising for a few years, I have a much better understanding of the great divide between what we came up with creatively and what finally made it to the magazine page or television screen. Trust me, the average ad you watch bears almost no resemblance to the original concept.
And even if my head exploded a little at the thought of the movie Piranha 3DD, I have to give the writers and producers some credit for getting it made and into theatres. They’re well ahead of where I am with my screenplays, which currently sit on my laptop computer and in a few competitions.
But more important than simply being the “why can’t we all just get along” guy, I think we denigrate our own efforts by focusing our attention downward.
Art should inspire and the artist should aspire. We shouldn’t look down and sneer. We should look up in awe at works that truly stir our hearts; that shake us to our artist core and make us strive to be better.
If all we do is attempt to be slightly above the dirt, then we merely set ourselves up to be the target of the next person in line.
If, however, we push ourselves to reach further, attempt more, climb higher, then there is every reason to believe that we will be the one who inspires the next person to stretch beyond our grasp.
I don’t want to write a screenplay that’s slightly better than Walk Like A Man. I want to write one that surpasses The Usual Suspects.
I want to write sketches funnier and more pointed than Sid Caesar and Monty Python.
I want to take the most beautiful photos that tell the most intricate stories, using every other photo as my muse.
By looking up, we become a lightning rod for our art, attracting the energy and inspiration that drives our passion. Looking down, we shut ourselves off from those same spirits, blocking out the positive input that surrounds us.
Simply in aspiring to something greater, we raise our art and therefore ourselves to new levels. And as difficult as each incremental step may be, the rewards are exponentially greater.
When we look up, we are bathed in the light of our truth. Looking down, we see only the threatening abyss of failure.
Aspire or expire, the choice is yours.
The sheer scale of these falls was only overtaken by the thought that they followed a geologic fault separating Europe from Greenland.
PIECES OF ME...
Mother, Nehiyaw, Metis, & Itisahwâkan - career communicator. This is my collection of opinions, stories, and the occasional rise to, or fall from, challenge. In other words, it's my party, I can fun if I want to. Artwork by aaronpaquette.net
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The internet web log of Michael Cedarwood. I used to be a stripper. Now I'm a writer.
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