I agree with Anton. The emperor has no clothes. Don't get me wrong. I enojyed Pulp Fiction, for the most part. But if I brought this script to any critique group I've ever seen or to any script consultants I've talked to, they would tear it to shreds. Too much talking, huge chunks of dialog. Confusing timeline. Strange structure.
But a great story told pretty well. The moral of this story is, if you want to do something unconventional, you better have the resources to film it yourself. And hope you're truly genius and not just a crackpot.
Like with most artists, I came to Pierce through albums, and what great albums they were. Produced by Mark Heard until his death, they showcased Pierce's incredible talent as a songwriter and a guitar player. In particular, Making Light of It blew me away. Here's the song that provides the album title.
I had a chance to see him live in Augusta, GA in 1997, but it conflicted with a my own gig, and I decided to do my own gig rather than cancel and see his. It was probably a mistake.
Five years later, The Woman and I got to see him at the Grey Eagle in Ashville, NC on our 25th anniversary. It was awesome, but I found his stage presence distracting, the left leg rocking on the quarter notes, his right on the eight notes. And when he played harmonica, his body seemed to undulate. On top of the legs pumping, it made for a spectacle. Here's another nice tune from State of Grace.
We got to see Pierce last year at a house concert near Manor. It was incredible -- a few dozen folks crowded around the fireplace, me sitting less than ten feet from him. I wasn't as distracted this time and he played some wonderful stuff. My only regret was that I already had all the albums, so there was nothing there for me to buy. We also got to hear his son, and his daughter, Grace, who is currently attending St. Edwards here in Austin.
The nice thing about putting these things together is finding stuff I haven't seen before. I haven't heard this story behind one of my favorite songs on Making Light of It.
I finally made it to hear Grace a month before her first CD came out, then again at the songwriter showcase at the Bugle Boy in LaGrange. She's an amazing songwriter with a great voice. Go figure. You can check out a few of the tracks from her new CD on her MySpace page.
Here's some consolation for The Wunderfool from a wildly successful novelist who lived for some time in Hollywood in the 1930s, getting paid $1,500 a week to tinker around with screenplays. He asked novelist Claude Houghton:
Have you ever done any picture work? It is quite interesting, but I hate
having to condense my dialogue as one has to do. I can't seem to get used to
writing a couple of lines for a scene between two characers, where in a novel
you would be able to extend yourself to a page or so.
Having spent the last three years trying to make the transition from novels to screenplays, I can confess that it is painful.
** Benjamin Franklink: The autobiography and other writings, Benjamin Franklin, 1961
I finally got through one of the four large books I'm reading before the end of the year. Like Lives of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence this is another volume from my dad's bookshelf. Interesting, but slow going. I'll have to dig out some of the tidbits for a quotes party.
** While You Were Sleeping, Dan Sullivan and Fred Lebow, 1995
In the 90s, this became the official Wunderfool family movie. We've seen it dozens of times. It's nicely constructed with some great lines and some groaners. When The Woman pulled it out for Christmas viewing, I tracked down a copy of the script to read along. It's an earlier draft and it's amazing how drastically improved the final script is. I'm assuming Sullivan and Lebow did the rewrites, since imdb.com lists them as the writers. However, this as the only writing credit for them. Oh well.
*** Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), Jerome K. Jerome, 1889
This book may be 120 years old, but it's still funny as dammit. I learned of the existence of this book from To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis, also worth reading. JKJ was an influence on Wodehouse, as I learned from the bio I'm currently reading and from the style of this book.
I never got around to finding a copy in a bookstore. Instead, I grabbed text copy from Gutenberg.org, and snagged a Librivox.org audio book while I was at it. I listened to about half of the book and read the other half.
A note on Librivox. Free is a good price for an audio book, but the old thing of "you get what you pay for" still applies. In this case, the 19 chapters were narrated by almost as many different people from different countries and widely varied accents, not all of whom knew how to pronounce "Thames" or "row" as in, "Harris and I had a bit of a row over it" in which case it rhymes with "cow" not "tow." On the upside, I listened to half the book while taking care of two projects (hanging a towel rack and fixing burnt-out Xmas tree lights), both of which presented highly frustrating complications which bothered me a lot less since I had a hilarious audio book keeping me company.
Back to TMiaB (TSNotD), for the most part it was very satisfyingly funny in an understated 19th-century British kind of way, much more so that I was expecting. There were a few places where JKJ went off on a lyrical or historical tangent and required some skimming. But aside from those 3 or 4 spots, it was excellent.
I also NetFlixed a movie adaptation from 1956. It was mind-numbingly horrid. Be advised.
Here's an incisive quote from Anton Chekhov as related in Alphabet Juice by Roy Blount, Jr.
Very well, then, I shall marry . . . But under the following conditions:
everything must continue as it was before, in other words, she must live in
Moscow and I in the country, and I'll go visit her. I will never be able to
stand the sort of happiness that lasts from one day to the next, from one
morning to the next. Whenever someone talks to me day after day about the same
thing in the same tone of voice, it brings out the ferocity in me . . . I
promise to be a splendid husband, but give me a wife who, like the moon, does
not appear in my sky every day. I won't write any better for having gotten
married.
Another book I read (or in this case, re-read) while writing Escape From Fred. Once you've read it, you can see how this book might have informed it. Greene was my favorite author until I discovered Robertson Davies.
p. 55. It’s odd how sharing a sense of doubt can bring two men together perhaps even more that sharing a faith. The believer will fight another believer over a shade of difference; the doubter fights only with himself.
