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Letters to Theo
Jan. 16th, 2011 12:22 amExhausted. Watched the rough cut of the film, and my editor seems to have completely misunderstood what the film is about, and maybe didn't read my initial notes about what shot goes where, because there are whole sections missing and she's frequently using takes I said not to use. She's competent and not a jerk, so I tend to think (1) she didn't read my notes, which means she didn't realize she had them, which I'm sure made assembling this edit difficult for her and which also means I'm going to need her to start over again from scratch, and (2) she fundamentally doesn't understand that this is a comedy, and is cutting all the jokes because she thinks they're mistakes. And there are obviously some cultural disconnects that are stopping her from understanding what's going on in certain scenes.
Rough cuts are always a nightmare for a director to watch, so I was kind of expecting this, but it's also much worse than I expected (in that I was prepared for her to miss what I was trying to do in several places, but not prepared for her to have not read the notes where I say "start with this shot, and at this point go to this shot, and this shot" or "this is a montage and should last x time.")
Anyway, I've spent the last six or seven hours writing a literary analysis of my own script, which is likely to be as long or longer than the script itself, in which I explain the themes and subtext in every scene, plus what the jokes are and why they are funny, and how it relates to the larger film. I'm about a fifth of the way through. It is like writing a master's thesis. Again. It's not exactly unpleasant, because I'm good at textual analysis, not to mention trained in it, and it's always pleasant to be good at something. It's also clearly necessary. But it's a ton of work. And I don't think many directors are capable of doing what I'm doing now, so I don't know how they get by, which sort of makes me want to hit things against other things. I really don't think my writing is as opaque as all that.
I'm going to be freaking Van Gogh, and academics are never going to write about anything I do because it will be too documented to have room for their interpretations.
I believe I have successfully gotten Ciro interested in the bass. If I can track down a cheap bass for him and a cheap drum set for Scarlett, and maybe a PA system, I think we are in business. Slowly, slowly, my plan shall unfurl. Although that's kind of terrifying, because then I'd have to make further plans, like about recordings or gigs or rehearsals or whatever, which freezes my little heart.
Rough cuts are always a nightmare for a director to watch, so I was kind of expecting this, but it's also much worse than I expected (in that I was prepared for her to miss what I was trying to do in several places, but not prepared for her to have not read the notes where I say "start with this shot, and at this point go to this shot, and this shot" or "this is a montage and should last x time.")
Anyway, I've spent the last six or seven hours writing a literary analysis of my own script, which is likely to be as long or longer than the script itself, in which I explain the themes and subtext in every scene, plus what the jokes are and why they are funny, and how it relates to the larger film. I'm about a fifth of the way through. It is like writing a master's thesis. Again. It's not exactly unpleasant, because I'm good at textual analysis, not to mention trained in it, and it's always pleasant to be good at something. It's also clearly necessary. But it's a ton of work. And I don't think many directors are capable of doing what I'm doing now, so I don't know how they get by, which sort of makes me want to hit things against other things. I really don't think my writing is as opaque as all that.
I'm going to be freaking Van Gogh, and academics are never going to write about anything I do because it will be too documented to have room for their interpretations.
I believe I have successfully gotten Ciro interested in the bass. If I can track down a cheap bass for him and a cheap drum set for Scarlett, and maybe a PA system, I think we are in business. Slowly, slowly, my plan shall unfurl. Although that's kind of terrifying, because then I'd have to make further plans, like about recordings or gigs or rehearsals or whatever, which freezes my little heart.
