Sign Language Class - Week 1

Fire Truck #4
Originally uploaded by The Other Pete

So class started last Tuesday. I was one of the first people in the room, so I wound up sitting with the teaching assistant (who is deaf) for a while. I had forgotten what it was that drove me to learn ASL in the first place, all those many years ago when I was in college - I HATE not being able to talk with someone. As a person who prides himself on being an effective communicator (which I think is a necessary trait for a writer), having to fumble my way through even the pleasantries was absolutely maddening.

I have also discovered that my fingers are not nearly as limber as they once were. Back in college, I used to be able to do the alphabet forwards with my right hand and backwards with my left hand at the same time. Now, I can hardly remember the alphabet at all. I know it's all a matter of practice and the more I use it, the more I will remember, but you have to remember - I'm not used to sucking at things. No hubris there, just the simple fact that I get easily turned off to things I'm not good at right away. And right now, the fact that I will only have a month of classes is already driving me crazy. I want to know EVERYTHING. And I want to know it NOW!

Funny story though -

During the last class, the teacher paired us up to practice some of the stuff we had learned. He matched me up with a gorgeous young girl with a fantastic body that I had noticed the first time. We got to chatting and she asked me why I was taking the class. I told her and she was suitably impressed (who wouldn't be, right?). So asked her the same question and she said that she was going to be an interpreter. I asked her whether she was going to college or not. She said she was going to be a junior in the fall. I asked her where she was going and she shyly admitted that she attended the high school down the street.

*shakes his head ruefully*

Where's My Happy Ending?

Architecture
Originally uploaded by The Other Pete

Or my sad one or any ending, for that matter?

Usually, when I start working on a new screenplay, I try to immerse myself in movies as much as possible, in the hopes that it will help get me in the right frame of mind. A while back, I had been trying to set aside Saturdays to just sit and watch movies. And while the writing has come to a bit of an impasse, I still turn it over on my head now and then.

After all that time watching mostly independent movies and now with the uproar over the Sopranos series finale, I've realized something very important – independent screenwriters and directors have absolutely no idea how to end a story anymore. It's almost as if they're so intent on creating "realistic depictions of life" that they've completely lost sight of the fact that movies are only entertaining if they're somehow different from life.

Case in point – Junebug. This movie was hailed as a brilliant feature film, from a screenplay by playwright Angus McLachlan, and even won a Special Jury Prize at Sundance for Amy Adams' portrayal of Ashley. While I will admit that Adams' performance was excellent, I wonder how much of it had to do with the fact that she was the only character with a pulse in the entire film. With the possible exception of Embeth Davidtz's Madeleine, everyone else seemed to wander about, mumbling or staring or just killing time.

But that's really neither here nor there. Because were it not for the completely lackluster ending, all that might have been bearable, if not welcome. Instead, I was left with an overwhelming sense of "so what?" I still don't see any reason for that story to have been committed to film, as it wasn't a story. But for the one major event that takes place, the whole 104-minute span was completely pointless, especially if one expects to get any kind of catharsis from the characters.

Now much is made of not giving the audience too many answers, out of respect for their intelligence. Nonsense. That's just an abdication of the author's reponsibility to pose a question and answer it in a satisfying, or at least understandable, way.

Independent film has recently begun taking its lead from the worst of short fiction trends – that of depicting a series of events without context, with the expectation that merely committing those events to paper (or film) automatically imbues them with enough meaning to make it worth experiencing. With independent film, there's the added dimension of the opposition with the studio system. Anything studios do, indies won't. It doesn't matter what it is, they just won't do it. And that clearly extends to providing a sense of closure or catharsis or anything that will make a viewer feel that he's actually seen something of real importance rather than some writer/director's vanity project.

So let me offer this one tip – if you're going to write ten minutes of crap at any point in your script, it would be a damn good idea to make sure it's not the last ten minutes. Because that's what the audience remembers. And overlooking that has ruined a number of otherwise excellent independent features for me.

How to Give Up Before you Even Start

Found Abstract #5
Originally uploaded by The Other Pete

I was chatting with a friend last night who had seen some of my recent photographic efforts and she said "y'know, your pictures are really pissing me off." Naturally, I was a little confused.

She went on to say that if she had a car, she'd be able to take pictures as good as the ones I was showing her. At the time, I pretty much shrugged it off and the conversation went on. I guess I was still thinking about it, though, because this morning it made me realize something about my own photography: I simply won't go out of my way to do it.

Every weekend, I make plans to go someplace for the sake of taking pictures and every weekend, something stops me. I used to feel like a useless sack because of it, telling myself that if I was a real artist, I'd be cruising all over the countryside, camera in hand, recording life in all its myriad detail and beauty. But the truth is that's exactly what I'm doing. I'm just confining it to my life alone.

The pictures that I take don't involve my going out much out of my way. When I'm out and about, I bring my camera and take photos of anything that interests me (like the one above, for example). There's always something interesting out there that's worthy of a photograph. I just set my mind to finding it.

Which brings me back to my friend's complaint. In deciding that she needs a car to take photos, she has already decided that there's nothing remotely worthy of photographing anywhere around her. That strikes me as especially sad, in that, not only is she miserable for not producing art, she's already judged her life as not worthy of being art and is miserable as a result of that, too. I suspect that if she could just bring herself to take the camera out in her back yard, she would find an endless array of things to strike her fancy. Perhaps they won't be the usual things she's used to photographing, but that won't matter. After all, hardly any of the 300 pictures I've taken in the last month reflect my typical sensibilities. But at least I can't say that I've taken 300 picutres this month and some of them don't even suck.

Oh well. I'm sure she'll come around eventually.

There's a Name for People Like Me

Evangelism
Originally uploaded by The Other Pete

And apparently it's not flake, dilletante, spaz, aimless wanderer, or anything else like that. According to Barbara Sher's book, Refuse to Choose, I am a Scanner, so named because rather than diving into a single subject, I am constantly scanning the horizon for the next interesting thing. (Note to self: if ever given the opportunity to name a personality type, choose something a little less idiotically sci-fi sounding.)

Someone on a writers message board I frequent recommended this book to me after I complained about feeling completely blocked on my screenplay. I explained to him how I had been completely obsessed with taking pictures lately and that it was making me feel like a bit of a dilletante about my writing. After all, I said, if I was really a writer, I'd be at my desk trying to hash out whatever problem I'm having with the script, not running around taking pictures.

"Check out this book," he said.

The feeling of finally being understood I got just from reading the jacket copy was so amazing, I can't even think of any other time in my life that it's happened. The fact that her archetypal Scanner is someone no less illustrious (and notably unproductive) as Leonardo da Vinci makes it even better. After all, I've often described myself as a jack of all trades, even though I have often resented the conclusion of that cliché.

Anyway, hopefully I will be able to forever put away the "dilletante" label and begin to truly enjoy being myself, with all the seemingly flaky behavior that it brings with it.

Stupid Freaking Muse

Sign o' the Times.
Originally uploaded by The Other Pete

For some reason, this story I'm try to write really feels like it's kicking my ass. I'm not really a believer in writer's block, per se, but for some reason I just can't crack the concept in such a way that it leads to a full length screenplay rather than a handful of shorts.

But when the creative urge comes over me, it doesn't care where it goes, but it needs to go somewhere. I guess since writing is getting me nowhere, the juice has decided to fuel a photography binge. In the past two weeks, I have taken in the neighborhood of 400 photographs – cityscapes, landscapes, artsy ones, lame ones. I'm fascinated by the landscapes the most, though.

Historically, I would never photograph something that didn't have a person in it. But lately, it's been the complete opposite. I guess people just don't seem that interesting to me anymore. Or maybe it's the people around here, since there were one or two pictures I took in Boston over Memorial Day weekend that were the old style me.

But, while it is very irritating not to be getting the results that I want writing-wise, I'm choosing to believe that all this picture taking will somehow pay off in the end. I really haven't a clue as to how it will pay off, but I'm choosing to have faith.