Travels with a Cactus

Staying with a friend…

Sylvia: You travel with a cactus?
Antonia: That’s Rolenzo. I’m writing a book. Working title: Travels with My Cactus.
Sylvia: Graham Greene?
Antonia: But Rolenzo doesn’t chatter so much as an auntie. Very supportive. Just sits and listens.
Sylvia: I see he has a red streak.
Antonia: Everyone needs a bit of red in their life.
Sylvia: That pencil case? Be strong as cactus. And it’s green. You’re obsessed. Everything you own is green. Your bag, your water bottle, even your socks.
Antonia: Green is soothing. Like moss. Or tea leaves.
Sylvia: Does Rolenzo get a dedication?
Antonia: Of course. Page one.
__________
Voice-over
Antonia goes on to explain why Rolenzo is a perfect travel companion. Doesn’t need to be taken on walks or go sightseeing. “I am enough of a sight,” Antonia heard him whisper once.  Just a stoic little traveller who absorbs sunlight and doesn’t complain.

Giovanni: A shop/writing den in Tokyo

Nakamichi Street in Tokyo. A quaint shop filled with Italian posters, papers, calligraphy pens...

Giovanni: Buongiorno.

Masa: Buongiorno. I'm quite interested in traditional Italian papers, especially those from Fabriano.

Giovanni: Ah, Fabriano. You have good taste. 

Masa: I've used Fabriano papers for my watercolor paintings. Nice texture.

Giovanni: Aha. An artist, you are then. Most people just come in and take a look at the posters and wander off. But I like it this way. It gives me plenty of time to work on a novel I'm writing.

Masa: A novel?

Giovanni: Set in Italy during the Renaissance.

Masa: I've always found novels to be a wonderful way to learn about other cultures and times.

Giovanni: Novels paint us into different worlds and eras. But my novel is a labor of love, and this shop serves as my writing den. It's quiet, and I can immerse myself in the world of Renaissance Italy while minding the shop.

Masa: Nice. Writing a novel set in Renaissance Italy while running a shop, great. What’s the plot of the novel?

Giovanni: It's a tale of intrigue, art, and love set in Florence during the height of the Renaissance. Character-heavy. It's my way of bringing a piece of Italy here to Tokyo.

_________

Voice-over

And the conversation ends with an exchange of names and contacts. Scribed on a slips of Fabriano paper with a quill pen.

Screenwriters and Chatbots

A veiled threat…

Antonio Sortino

Jason: So management think a film scenario can be written by a couple of writers tweaking their script with a chatbot instead of a room of a dozen writers bouncing ideas off each other?

Alice: We've spent years perfecting our skills, and now we're being told that a machine can do it better?

Jason: We need to do something. Even when we show them how mediocre and anodyne Chat scripts are, management won’t listen. I know they’re looking to cut costs but…

Alice: They seem set on replacing us no matter what we say.

Jason: We can go to the press, or organize a strike.

Alice: I don't want to have to go on strike, but I don't see any other option. We have to show them that we're serious.

Jason: Exactly. We're not going to let some machine take our place. We're writers, damn it, and we're good at what we do. We're not going down without a fight."

_________

Voice-over

A bot, taking the side of being sympathetic to human creativity, helped write this. Not in its entirety. But commented at the end:

“While AI technology like myself may someday replace some human jobs, I also recognize the value of human creativity in certain fields, such as screenwriting. Humans make contributions to society so we don’t want to replace them. Yet.”

One way to start a book

The first sentence…

Madeleine: I’ve got writer’s block at the first sentence.

Maurice: The start is crucial. The first sentence grabs the reader, sets the scene.

Madeleine: The writer is saying, in effect, attendez-moi, regarde ça?

Maurice: Forster’s Howards End began, “One might as well start with Helen’s letters to her sister.” Zadie Smith was impressed with that so she started her On Beauty with a brazen copy, “One may as well begin with Jerome’s e-mails to his father.”

A good start..

Madeleine: But my book is a book of reflections as I travel around Japan.

Maurice: Here’s just the thing. The opening of Soseki’s Kusa Makura: “As I was going up the mountain road, I thought of this."

Madeleine: So I should walk up a mountain road and be struck with a great realization?

Maurice: Good beginning. As I was walking up the mountain road, I had an epiphany.

__________

Voice-over

Maurice went on to say “Acknowledge if you borrow. As with Zadie Smith, a book of thoughts while traveling in Japan could benefit from a close reading of the original. And then decorate the story, take it in unexpected directions. And make sure it’s not just epiphanies, add some action.”

Faust Revisited

From 1971

Sebastian: When we were students, twelve of us, living in an old rambling house. There was a large room which served well for parties. And one of the residents rewrote a play, Faust. Based on his last hour before the devil came to take him. I just found the script..

Vivienne: Dramatic.

Give me more time!

Sebastian: It was. Declamatory, as befits a conversation between a man who has an hour to live and the devil. “I need more time. I pray you, beseech you, plead with you, grant Faustus more time.” That was fifty years ago. 

Vivienne: I wonder where he is now.

Sebastian: I did meet him a few times over the years. But the drama he was writing about invaded his personality. His mellow nature became unpredictable, angry and his humor turned even darker. It’s as if he knew the devil was shadowing him and time was running out..

Vivienne: Dramatists beware. 

_______

Voice-over

It was a brave declamatory script. Elizabethan in voice. The performance featured guttering candles and dry ice smoking on the floor. The writer-director was gifted but he walked away from literature by moving to Australia to dig for opals in the outback. He found some and followed a path challenging all as he stamped his way through a brave and somewhat uncompromising life.

Winding down then starting up again

At project’s end...

Antonio: The article is written. Just the final proofing taking a day or two.

Federico: Not as bad as a film shoot.

Antonio: How so?

Federico: Well, filming might take two or three weeks then you spend two or three months in post-production.

Antonio: Onto the next?

Federico: Not so fast.There’s always a day or two of sinking feelings before you can surface for air and get on with the next big thing.

Reflexive sketch

Antonio: How do you handle it?

Federico: Go by the river early, sketch or paint something. Read a book, call up friends.

Antonio: I go out, have the ortho pull my back straight. Coming back the other day, I rested a bit on a bench, an old delivery man on a Gyro pulls up, jumps off and starts eating his lunch. I smile as I leave. And he smiles back. The warm glow from a stranger helps rekindle enthusiasm.

___________

Voice-over

“I have watched people who have nothing to do with the film business, but who have become part of the circle for a short period of time. They can be truly devastated when the film wraps and people leave.” Jacqueline Bisset

Self -publishing: Writer as Production Manager

Another rejection…

Violet: Nobody wants it.
Max Sellars: Why not publish it yourself?
Violet: Vanity publishing?
Max Sellars: Not necessarily. You control it, it goes into print, or becomes an e-book, you get bigger royalties. 
Violet: Downside?
Max Sellars: Downside is you have to do the publisher’s work too. Editing, designing, illustrating, printing, marketing, promoting, following up.
Violet: It’s not as though I haven’t thought of it. I even started planning the second in the series.
Max Sellars: Great. You theme your tales.  Your genre is sci-fi so run a hero through the series. Be consistent with the covers.
_________

Voice-over
Anyone can write a book if they have the self-discipline. Whether you are an early-morning writer or a night-writer, or whether you crank out 1,000 or 5,000 words per day. Regularity seems important. After that, it’s getting it published. Increasingly competitive in terms of numbers of books being written. Increasingly easy in terms of having the option to self-publish. Do your research before going down that path. There are scores of guides. 

 

Dreams From My Father: Read like a writer

Tips from a writer…
Woodibee: I’m a speaker, not a writer, but I’ve been told to write a short story. A memoir about my father.
Writer-in-residence: Having problems?
Woodibee: Acute writer’s block. Can’t get started.
Writer-in-residence: Did you read someone else’s memoir? Like say, oh, Barack Obama’s “Dreams From My Father.”
Woodibee: I've read it. Nice piece of work. Barack’s a great writer as well as a speaker.
Writer-in-residence: So you read it one time, to get the feeling. Then you read it for the structure. See how the wh5 is put together.
Woodibee: wh5?
Writer-in-residence: The what, where, when, who and why leading to the conclusion. That’s not everything though. It’s a like telling a joke. You can’t just tell the punchline. Unveil the story a little at a time, always keeping something back. Keep the reader in suspense.
Woodibee: Character? Dialogue?
Writer-in-residence: These are important. First know the character. Craft a voice. Then the dialogue will flow.
________
Voice-over
Read like a writer. Deconstruct what you read. See the craft behind the art.

Richard III as Hamlet?

In a writers workshop…
Gerard: I want to write a story, about vengeance, using the Hamlet premise, you know, a character who has to take revenge on his uncle for killing his father and marrying his mother.

Instructor: A lot of people died in that play.
Gerard: Exactly. Too many deaths. Too melodramatic. All caused by Hamlet being too indecisive.
Instructor: You want to make him more decisive?
Gerard: Yeah. Have him get in there. Take out Claudius without all the fussing about.
Instructor: Like Richard III? A killer from the get-go?
Gerard: That’s it.
Instructor: No “To be, or not to be”? The play would be finished in five minutes. No Hamlet.
________

Voice-over
Over in five minutes. What would happen if you replaced Hamlet with Richard III? Vengeance is Hamlet’s superwant. But the story is also driven by his internal conflict of thinking deeply, seen by some as indecisiveness. Richard III? A decisive psychopath. Without Hamlet, there is no inner conflict, no character-driven plot, no universal themes, no story. Hamlet: therein lies the genius of Shakespeare, lasting so far 400 years.

After writing comes the hard work

The author has finished the book…

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Publisher: Great. Now you have to go on the road.

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Writer: Why?

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Publisher: It’s part of the process. You write, we publish, you promote. There’s bookstore signings and some meetings… a women’s group in Stockholm organizing a panel on women who eat men for breakfast or some such…  Thursday, flight tomorrow, here’s your ticket. You’ll be met.

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Writer: What’s my line?

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Publisher: Talk about your next big thing, an old chap with three sons, that three arrows analogy… How’s it coming?

.

Writer: Getting there. He’s becoming more obsessive about finding his identity, he’s never come to terms with his inner female, his shrink tells him to confront his sons. Drawing on American psychobabble.

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Publisher: Sounds marketable. Oh, a couple more things. We need blurbs and photos.

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Writer: Blurbs?

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Publisher: Get your writing friends to recommend the book. Big names. Celebrities.

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Writer: I’m not keen on having my photo on the book. Let the words speak for themselves.

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Publisher: Readers want to see you. They can see who is speaking to them. Someone they can relate to.

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Writer: But some readers want to imagine what the writer looks like. They want to create their own image.

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Publisher: Forget them. They’re a minority. We’re in the visual age. A good PR photo helps sales. We’ll see to it.

___________

Voice-over

Starting out writers may be not be aware just how much other stuff will interrupt their writing. Even if a book generates sales, royalties and residuals, it’s still just the script. Once it’s written, find a producer (publisher), generate publicity (do the PR), hire actors (the author and booksellers), rent a theater (signing venues and conferences), follow up (manage social media). A book is just part of a production.

...

Illuminations on Narrations

As the watercolorist said to the writer...

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Sui: Sometimes I look at a painting I’ve done and feel I want to change it. But that’s difficult with watercolor.

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Scrivener: If it’s oil, you can just add more paint.

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Sui: With water color you can correct to some extent, not impossible, but better before it’s dry.

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Scrivener: What happens if you try to change an already finished watercolor?

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Sui: Oh, you can lose transparency, upset the color balance, even tear the paper surface.

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Scrivener: With writing, you can always edit. Unless you were a scribe in the middle ages using a quill on parchment. Back then, writing was akin to painting.

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Sui: Mmm, art and writing have deviated a lot since then.

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Scrivener: But we can admire an artist who can talk and a writer who can draw.

____________

Voice-over

Pre-Gutenberg, writing was closer to painting. Think scriptoriums of monks laboriously scribing. Occasionally embellishing an initial letter, or illuminating a manuscript through devout illustrations.

...

Intricacies in shocking, stressing and spying scripts

After TIFF…

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Olga: How many films did you see during the festival?

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Oliver: Five.

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Olga: Only five? You usually see more.

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Oliver: Yes, last year I saw fifteen. But this year, the shows didn’t align with my planning.

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Olga: Anything remarkable?

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Oliver: They were all great. But the last three, they were all so … so intricately layered.

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Olga: You mean complicated?

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Oliver: Well, Advantages of Travelling by Train, that was layers of stories of a paranoid schizophrenic. Shocking. And Marriage Story, well the story gets complicated when Charlie and Nicole start on the road to divorce and the lawyers come in like jackals to tear strips off what little they had, oh total gobsmack. And WASP Network, Cuban migrants in Miami, some groups for Castro, others anti-Castro, all spying and counterspying on each other through the FBI.

_________

Voice-over

Movie plots with labyrinthine complexities.

Advantages of Travelling by Train: Paranoid schizophrenia > parallel universes.

Marriage Story: Spousal mental anguish > legal venality.

WASP Network: Castro’s political naivety > migrants’ political intrigues.

In such films, it might help if the scriptwriter works with an editor from the get-go.

And not try to review three films in one post? Yes. Point taken.

...