Hope I get to see them spin a cocoon.
Does fate start where free will ends?
At the National Screenwriters' Conference last month, I had a micro-mentorship with one of Australia's top TV drama writers.
The Australian Film Commission backed her first spec script, encouraged her, supported her and her project was made.
She sat in the edit suite, she visited the set, she took an interest in the production process - she didn't interfere she listened and they let her.
If you dig usually you find that these "overnight" success stories have been years in the making.
She said everything she'd done in her life to that point had converged to make her career as a TV writer.
It's a similar story for Shaun Tan's Oscar winning short film which came out of an award-winning picture book The Lost Thing.
They work in trust.
Trust the universe but not enough to stop peddling the canoe - even if it feels like the universe is conspiring to tip your canoe over.
I trust the universe because I have seen goodwill.
I trust the universe because my dog puts her head on my shoulder when I'm on the phone.
But what about words?
Why must it be paddle and not ever paddel or peddle?
You lock words up to keep them in place - but still they do move.
What is the fate that words create?
I went to see Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer's Life 1990-2005 last week at Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art.
I see it's been extended into April.
Surprising to me that this collection captures the struggle of life and death in today's youth and beauty and fame and wealth obsessed world.
Though once upon a time it was not unknown to take a funeral assembly photograph with the open casket, I wonder if any of these famous people would let her photograph their corpse - or would any magazine publish a photograph of the corpse of a famous "it"/"in" thing.
But here in this collection Leibovitz includes death, alongside youth and beauty, and fame and wealth. She photographs indiscriminately and unashamedly.
She shows photos of her dead lover, Susan Sontag, and photos of her parents in bed just days before her father died - extraordinary family documents in this day and age.
It wasn't the big portraits hung in crowded halls that impressed me most. I only became fascinated when I entered the little corridor of snapshots perhaps used to plan this exhibition.
They are all pinned to a board in horizontal lines across two walls. I think it's effect is stronger than the actual exhibition because all the images are here together in a confined space.
The strongest photograph for me was an abandoned bike on a sidewalk smeared with blood in Sarajevo - a sniper had just murdered a teenage boy.
Her portrait of Daniel Day-Lewis proves my theory that he's the most magnificent looking man on the screen - better looking than Brad Pitt who she also photographed along with Nicole Kidman, Johnny Depp, David Beckham, John Lennon ...
The plaque beside a beautiful photograph of her mother tells how she cried behind the camera as she took the photograph despite her mother's concerns that she would look old - that's what her daughter wanted to capture and her mother knew it but allowed her to take it anyway.
It is a picture of honesty, a communication between mother and daughter. But that don't pay the bills. I bought a copy of Vanity Fair at the airport for $10 - the cost of entry to the collection is $15.
Correction: Well, almost today ... at least just three days ago
Little Johnny The Movie is a new Australian animated comedy premiering at Melbourne's Comedy Festival on April Fool's Day.
Digital distribution plus clever marketing targeting a niche audience - with a streaming option available in the US by the looks.
Australian content being pumped out over an Australian digital channel - this is the kind of activity that is under threat, if you heard Robert Tercec speak at the XMedia conference in Sydney last week. Tercec, one of the world's most prolific creators of online content, spoke about Comcast's takeover of AOL as the start of the end for an open internet. I'm more concerned about national sovereignty versus multi-national corporations - & whether governments can learn to withstand the mighty dollar.
With the networks building their channels online they will go into business with the Telcos to control not just programming but the quality of delivery - according to your ability to pay.
Little Johnny seems to embody so much possibility of a great future on an open web - where anyone can produce content find an audience.
While many Australian program producers are still looking to the networks and other traditional distribution models, Instinct Entertainment has taken a giant leap into the unknown it seems with this project - though it really is great content so from that perspective it's not a risk. Though it is in the native Aussie twang which is a no-no for international markets.
The cinema page of the website has a demand widget that tallies votes by towns and cities so you can keep track - though I don't know how many votes it will take to get screenings.
Distributor Instinct Entertainment has a swag of merchandising online for the Melbourne Comedy Festival Premiere. They are not, it seems, spending money on P&A (Prints & Advertising) to put the film into cinemas without any guarantee of an audience. Perhaps they are as wary of Australian audiences as Australian audiences are as wary of Australian films.
If the trailer is anything to go by, this could be Australia's answer to The Family Guy but the swearing and adult humour (though I'm sure it wouldn't make a hardened TV exec blush) would raise the alarm in terms of general programming.
"He's cute as a button and has a mouth like a sewer."
Not only is there merchandising on sale online but you can stream the whole movie for just $US4.95 - the Aussie dollar is still on par with the USD.
Well, I'm assuming it will go up soon because it's not there at the moment.
If you want to meet the kid from Gallangatta on the big screen in your hometown then you have to raise a posse.
Earthquakes, floods, cyclones, blizzards ... exactly what kind of mother is Nature? A trippin' cyclops.
When the pilgrims' ship, The Mayflower, dropped anchor in Plymouth, Massachusetts, (in what became the USA) in 1620 they didn't have immigration papers or identification or passports.
UCLA Film School professor, screenwriter Richard Walter, tells a little story about how he needed a passport to teach in Nevada as proof of US citizenship. And an expired passport would not do for they had to be sure he hadn't renounced his citizenship.
This is state of paranoia against illegal immigrants in Nevada - the laws put the onus upon employers to make sure they don't employ illegal immigrants.
(Kind of like trying to renew an expired Australian passport really - but really!)
Everyone in the audience laughs when he jokes about the uni's claim that they don't discriminate - "They treat everyone badly". Boom-boom.
"Art is the lie that makes us realise the truth" - he says, quoting Picasso. So when writing a screenplay, he advises, lie through your teeth!
Making films is not like painting pictures - you can't be discovered after you die you must be appreciated for the work you do while you live.
No point in making obscure films which don't make money & reach a lot of people. Shakespeare was a phenomenon in his own time - as was Sophocles.
Interesting.
Walter wrote the first two drafts of American Graffiti for George Lucas but his name doesn't appear on the credits because of union / industry conventions. His friend "George", along with Steven Spielberg, may be the Sophocles and Shakespeare of our art & times.
Thanks to Star Wars, George has eclipsed Walter, a successful author and screenwriter as well as honoured educator with tenure at UCLA, but Walter makes another good point.
He asks: "Isn't it enough to be privileged to lead an artistic life?"
UCLA graduates have won or been nominated for Oscars for the past three years - Sideways, Milk, Benjamin Button.
Spielberg has hired UCLA graduates to write 10 projects including Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones 2&3, and War of the Worlds.
"So much arts education is about tearing down & negative criticism," he says. "We are affirming, encouraging, healing. It's a miracle to be involved in creative expression.
"It's so unique to the species. We should rejoice and celebrate and not tear down. We put the safety of the artist first."
When it comes to teaching comedy they get the likes of Neil (The Odd Couple) Simon. "That's like God himself to give a sermon on Sunday." (paraphrased)
Walters says stories spiritually nourish people, underpin culture and make the human race unique.
The tears you cry in a movie are no different to the tears you cry in real life - the grief, the laughter, the anger is real.
If you can make people feel then you successful - the difference between a successful writer and a failed writer apparently is time.
It takes time and discipline to write. Most people give up.
I think the question should be how much are you prepared to sacrifice?
People complain about Hollywood but might it not be easier in Australia if we did have our own "Hollywood" - isn't it called an industry?
One more point Walters makes: American movies - every one of them (I'm sure he's exaggerating) - is sold overseas into markets all over the world.
Why? He thinks it's because they are made by immigrants who tell stories with universal themes which may on the face of it be American stories but tell us what it is to be human.
I had to laugh tho when I opened his book because the first thing I saw was his advice on creating characters: Do not write stereotypes.
Does anyone think that Australian films, media, TV are full of stereotypes? Packed to the Rafters even? Joke! ;) But really ... Walters also thinks that middle class values are antz pantz.
There you go.
My grandmother used to take me up the corrugated dirt easement leading to the gate of her farm when I was a toddler to collect the paper - the Telegraph which no longer exists.
The bush was full of fluffy yellow wattle. The street was a dirt road. And the noise of the freeways and Gateways and tollways was decades away.
The little walk up the road was Baba's way of stopping my tears when mum dropped me off and left to go to work.
"Let's go collect the newspaper," she would tell me. I named her Baba Gazetta (gazetta is newspaper in Russian). She was always Baba Gazetta in our family.
My brother and I raised dust in this quiet place climbing umbrella trees to scramble through the second-story window, running through the dark of the night with sheets over our heads playing ghosts.
My grandmother talked about lyre birds, borers (the kind that bore through wooden furniture) and barbed wire.
She milked the cows, fed the chickens, raised six daughters and never learned to drive.
Baba Gazetta died on Monday about 1am in a Brisbane nursing home. She died alone in a strange place after breaking her hip.
At 2am on Monday I sat beside her body with my mother and my aunts.
The nursing home staff had combed Baba's eyebrows and her false teeth stuck out strangely.
"Are you sure it's her?" I asked my mother.
But her name was above the bed - along with a spooky piece of black ruffled plastic stuck on the ceiling.
I imagined lying in this bed having to look at this black thing above me - it would be even more frightening if all you could see is a black blur.
She'd spent four weeks in hospital after a hip operation - they tried to make her walk at 93 after a hip operation.
And they were surprised when she couldn't. The reason she broke her hip was that she could not get out of bed, let alone walk that day.
It wasn't long before she stopped talking and seemed angry.
She started wringing her hands, wringing the sheets, grabbing the doctor by the tie and yanking him toward her.
Through her last ordeal she wasn't wearing her hearing aids - but people still talked at her in her face and called her "cutie".
As we sat at 2am with the fluorescent lights blazing in a room where three other old women lay in their beds behind drawn curtains - people discussed things ... things ... like parking, giving her clothes to the second-hand shop, how she died peacefully in her sleep. The stories we tell ourselves are so scary.
Baba's only possessions were a few clothes and photos of all her grandchildren and great grandchildren which made her happy. She was a gentle woman - it's a difficult thing to be.
We've lost something.
Does it take an earthquake followed by a tsunami followed by a nuclear crisis to bring silence into the world?
Why aren’t you happy?
It’s because ninety-nine percent of everything you do,
and think, and say, is for yourself
— and there isn’t one. – Wu Wei Wu
Most people go through their lives without deviating from "the plan" - maybe that's what freewheeling is? Anyway, they don't exercise "free will".
"The Plan" is written by "The Chairman" and "men in hats" are The Adjustment Bureau. Watch out for the men in hats!
The Bureau steps in when people stray off grid - the whole of humanity is represented as little moving dots on grids in their little black books.
Gives location-based social media platforms like FourSquare and GPS a WHOLE different image doesn't it?
I like this story and I like this film probably as much as Inception but I for different reasons - Inception overthinks while The Adjustment Bureau fails to think deeply enough.
The perfect paranoia film is probably located somewhere between the two - a little bit of action, but not too much, and a little bit of screwing your mind, but not totally screwing it up.
Just how many films justify the existence of paranoia? Shutter Island, Matrix, District 9, Distrubia, Gamer and perhaps There Will Be Blood? Is paranoia a necessary part of free will?
I don't want to spoil the twists and turns so it's difficult to say much but it's directed by a writer - George Nolfi. It's a well structured read.
Let's just say ... "boy-meets-girl", "boy-loses-girl", "boy-finds-girl", "boy-gives-girl-up", "boy-defies-the-odds", chance intervenes to change his fate - so they are extraordinary but it's not all free will after all.
The first-time director wrote and produced various other gems such as The Bourne Ultimatum and Ocean's Twelve.
All the way through, unfortunately, I was waiting for "the chase scene" - sorry, must be Matt Damon. The chase scene is great but the end is disappointing.
It's like a flatulent balloon deflating as it fizzes out - I was waiting for a BANG? I guess that's a surprise in itself. Oh well.
Somewhere in the middle of the film my mind invented a different destination when interesting questions are raised.
Does he become president? Does she become a great dancer? Is that all still in the new "plan"? Is the new plan better or worse? No clues. Call me paranoid but I needed satisfaction to be sure.
I'm not saying it is a boring film but it kind of plops the idea on the table in Act 1 as if to say: And there it is!
Act 2: From the TOP! Again. There are these scary guys, see ... !
I didn't realise that Nolfi has adapted a short story by Philip K Dick and nor did I realise that so were Blade Runner, Through a Scanner Darkly, Minority Report, and Total Recall. This is more like Sliding Doors.
However, it's a great way to slip history to the kids in a few quick lines and get them to visit museums and art galleries to turn the doorknobs anti-clockwise and see what happens. ;)
Why is it that tsunamis always obliterate farms, villages and tropical islands and miss densely populated cities such as Tokyo?
I'm not trying to be funny by asking seemingly irrelevant questions.
But this sprang to mind after I asked another question:
Are the earthquakes and natural disasters the planet's way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions?
Reasoning: Get rid of the species causing the problem, or at least reduce the problem.
Maybe there are other considerations which we are not yet aware of in the way climate change affects the Earth's crust?
All you see is that there's a gap in my logic.
(This is a gap. This is a gap. This is a gap. This is a gap.this is agapthisisagapthisisagapthisisagap...)
How is it that so few people seem able to see the gap as wide and as high as the tsunami that hit Japan in this country's thinking about what should be done about climate change?
(This is a gap. This is a gap. This is a gap. This is a gap...his is a gap.this is agapthisisagapthisisagapthisisagap...)
In the polls we cry: "Do something!"
(This is a gap. This is a gap. This is a gap. his is a gap.this is agapthisisagapthisisagapthisisagap......)
The Climate Institute's 2010 exit poll on the night of the election of a hung parliament found that 32 percent of Green voters would have voted Labor - if Julia Gillard had shown leadership on Climate Change and not delayed the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.
Labor could have won outright and had a mandate to take action - instead they lost the farms and villages.
And Opposition Leader Tony Abbott insists that people flat out don't want change.
All the surveys show that Australians do want action on climate change but they're petrified of taking their private "Tokyo" down.
(This is a gap. This is a gap.this is agapthisisagapthisisagapthisisagap...
How you ask the question makes the difference.
For instance, the Climate of the Nation survey taken by Auspoll for the Climate Institute last year asked people: "Do you want cheaper clean fuel through large-scale development of solar, geothermal and wind power?"
Only one percent of respondents opposed it.
(This is a his is a gap.this is agapthisisagapthisisagapthisisagap... is a gap...)
And at least three-quarters of those surveyed wanted either a "detailed plan to change Australia using cleaner sources of energy" and/or they want "a plan to reverse our rising pollution in the next three years" - btw, that countdown is now just over two years.
Act now! Just don't direct charge us - say 5 percent of the population surveyed.
And what ever you DO do ... do not set up an emissions trading scheme that will raise our cost of living - 16 percent of respondents opposed an emissions trading scheme. This was before the election.
(This ihis is a gap.this is agapthisisagapthisisagapthisisagap...
Reminds me of a Dario Fo play called We Can't Pay We Won't Pay - it's Nobel Prize-winning high Italian farce by a communist leaning thinker.
And exactly where is the leadership of this country heading with this?
his is a gap.this is agapthisisagapthisisagapthisisagap...
This is a gap in logic which no political party seems willing to breach. We have a "Multi-Party Climate Change Committee" which reports to the Prime Minister and Cabinet and it sits behind closed doors - no attempt to breach the gap in public thinking on this issue. They simply proclaim the decision to introduce the very thing that everyone is "afraid" of: a carbon tax. Which I support but that's beside the point.
a gap.this is agapthisisagapthisisagapthisisagap...
Maybe we need a TV reality show: So you think there's a gap in my reasoning?
Perhaps it should be the title of Opposition Leader Tony Abbott's Global Warming action manifesto - the one he has yet to write.
Meanwhile, the 6th update of the Garnaut Climate Change Review recommends tax reform to compensate low to middle income earners for the effects of the mooted carbon tax.
"Most other developed countries now have falling or steady emissions but, largely as a result of the contemporary resources boom, our emissions continue to increase rapidly," Ross Garnaut writes in this latest update.
Per capita, Australia has one of the highest rates of carbon emission in the world.
Any gaps here when you consider this in the context of our future demand for electricity as shown in the graphs from Chapter 20 of the Garnaut Review:
When I visited San Francisco's Exploratorium I bought this postcard showing psychologist's EG Boring's little intelligence test.
I think the climate change debate is a reincarnation of the postcard.
Do you see a young or old woman or both?
Tim Flannery and the rest of the Climate Commission appointed by the Federal Government in February held it's first community meeting in Geelong on Friday.
I watched it on the ABC. They responded to the fears of the average Australian from how a carbon tax will affect petrol prices and groceries to whether jobs will be lost in the most energy intensive industries such as aluminum smelters. This unfortunately was broadcast on the ABC on a Friday night after 8.30pm while the Tony Abbott in the climate skeptics crowd speech was all over every media outlet for the past few days.
So here's how I think it must look to the average Aussie who bothered with last week's debate at all:
- Petrol prices would go up $2-$3 a tank (depending on the size of the tank) with the introduction of a recommened $20-$30/tonne price on carbon.
- Jobs at Alcoa would be saved if (as is part of every plan under consideration) the aluminum industry gets some form of compensation - because it's actually doing something about reducing its energy consumption already and is already internationally competitive in this area.
- There is no global warming debate in the scientific community. Why? Because the existence and cause of Global Warming is accepted as fact by 98 percent of the scientific community.
- "UNCERTAINTY" is the reason investors are not investing in clean energy which means it will take even longer to bring the price of clean energy down.
- Scientists are annoyed and frustrated by the "political" debate around climate change and went back to their test tubes, exploration ships and the like to do the work rather than argue with people who don't have their facts straight.
PS: If television's morning programs really want to do a public service then perhaps they should do a segment every morning with a scientist!
Translation for international readers of da Scriffles:
The GoGo Bird: Prime Minister Julia Gillard - leader of a minority government in a hung parliament - is captive to the Greens (hence green shoes).
The Poll Dancer: Opposition Leader Tony Abbott & his team of fat cats are worried about the cost of living for ordinary Australians and the fact that Julia Gillard lied before the election when she said her government would never introduce a carbon tax. Now that she needs the support of The Greens to remain in government she's changed her mind.