Am too tired now, to finish the concepts of my next projects. I don't want to sleep, as I have a dental appointment at 10am. So I'll just write here.
Lots of people come up to me and tell me they have good ideas. And that their ideas are so good, it would be a privilege for me to collaborate with them.
Here's their deal: They will TELL me their idea, and then I get the privilege of WRITING it, DEVELOPING it, PITCHING it, PRODUCING it, SELLING it, and finally it gets on TV or the cinemas or in print. And then they make a million bucks, and I get thrown a bone or two.
You know what?
Okay, you have an idea.
BIG FUCKING DEAL.
Okay, let me tell you how it works outside of your fantasy land.
The job of sitting around, just giving ideas verbally, and getting paid for it - I only know one or two people who can honestly say that this is their job.
How do they get that kind of job?
Well, how about over two decades of proven track records? And by proven track records, I mean their shows would have been at some point the top shows in the country, and it is because of them and their ideas that the shows are the top ones in the country.
There are a few people who, when they open their mouths to say something, I immediately shut up and listen, which is a hard thing for me to do. Cause I love the sound of my own voice.
Why? Cause they know their shit.
So. If you are NOT one of these people, honestly speaking, your ideas are not really worth that much.
Furthermore, ideas, at their seed stage, no matter who gives them, are useless.
Ideas need to be nurtured, developed and executed well. Execution is everything.
Look at Avatar. To me, that is THE best executed movie of all time. Simple idea, common storyline, creative but hardly original design. But the execution, oh my science.
Some people don't even have ideas. They have gimmicks.
"Let's do a story where everything is backwards!"
"Let's do a story where a manly-man gets pregnant! It'll be funny, LOL!"
The problem with gimmicks is two-fold:
1. A good gimmick would have been used by better people before. For the above examples, Memento and Irreversible for backwards plot, and Junior for the second one.
2. A gimmick is only the hook. What a project needs is not JUST a hook, but substance. There must be the soul of the story, a driving creative intention.
Okay, let's talk about the driving creative intention. The soul.
In The Prestige, the hook would be: "There's two of them! LOL!"
But the driving creative intention would be performance as a little death. How art is discarding a little portion of your life and dying bit by bit. How performers only have only a half a life.
I am a performer. An online performer. Read my articles, and you will see the many personas I have created for you. For your pleasure.
Romantic and cynical, kind and cruel, wise and stupid.
I am Harlequin and Pulcinello. The Trickster. Unbeatable. Invulnerable. Immortal.
This is getting incestuous and self-absorbed, but it's 7.25am and I haven't slept yet. So fuck you. Here goes.
The idea behind my online forays on THIS blog is multiparted.
1. The original driving force was to show how writing is a farce. There is no real credibility, and you can never trust everything you read. Not even this sentence.
2. Contradictions abound here. I am all for Freedom of Speech, but wish for liberals to shut up. It is a mirror to a mirror. Infinity.
3. I need a place to wank and to write stories I can't publish in the papers. To have an alternate life outside of work, which at one point consumed me.
4. To poke, and to challenge. If you do not agree that women are all prostitutes, or that all politicians are stupid, evil, vile people, then prove me wrong. I'll be happy for the statement to be wrong. Alas, I am right. Boo fucking hoo. I don't really care. Nothing I say or you say can ever change the truth. But if I can move some people for good things, then why not?
5. To wank. Because my head is full and I need to crap.
ANyway, yes, The Prestige. Art is a little death. La petit mort. Orgasmic. There are other themes, but that is the one that speaks to me. That, and TESLA!
I have died and reborn so many times here. Maybe, maybe THAT's a good idea for a TV series. Or a movie. A man who keeps dying and reborn again.
Ah, whatever. Who cares?
