Narrative Time
Much like a similar movie I waited too long to see when it suits me so well (
Magnolia) I fell in love with another *flowery* masterpiece tonight,
Adaptation. You might say that it's my kind of movie, and if you said that, you'd be on the right track. Writing worthy of the New Yorker infused with a New Yorker's neuroses, right up my alley. It actually made me want to read the book the film is ever so loosely based on,
The Orchid Thief, because the voice-over passages are remarkable. But, if you've been lax and view summers as a time to catch up on reruns, don't make the same mistake I did and get on the bus and see this gem already.
There is a very interesting relationship centered in this film - a triangular / quadrangular twist between a writer, a source, the story, all unfolding in a linear narrative time. This kind of talk is still new to me, but it framed a conversation I was having with Katie on Saturday night, over diet cokes and chips and salsa. She's hit a much harder impasse than I have - and out of her frustration with work and place and everything else, she's opting to put her poetry away because she's in a "sentence" mode, thinking about taking a year and writing a book. Interestingly, her intention comes after I've recently done more thinking about screenplays, or at least the kernel of a good story (maybe more screenplay than book because I'm filmy these days and watching a lot of HBO's
Project Greenlight).... All that aside, I am not ready to take on anything of that magnitude. I am not committed to a story that will take me a year to tell. Regardless of how long it takes your eye to skim from the top to the bottom of the page, there is an unmeasured investment in a writer's page. Even if I were to get hepped up and start telling a story, I doubt I have the stamina to get to the end. Ironically the last time I finished writing a story I was in high school and an athlete - in college I stopped the daily exercise and now I find it that much harder to finish other (mental) projects.
I think I was practically a different person the last time I wrote fiction. Now in my present state, I don't think I can disconnect myself from the story. Setting out to tell the story of a reporter and her muse (a horticulturist in Florida), Charlie (our screenwriter in
Adapt) becomes an involved narrator, a participant, and eventually the protagonist. It has been said that the best writing comes from life, but I'm too close to it, and all that comes out is non-fiction. For me, in my method, it's not a matter of writing from life, lately and for the last six years, it is just writing life -- this is not to be confused, I make no claims to be a serious writer or for this blog to count for much. I am not old enough or I've yet to see or feel enough to pen some other story that unfolds in a much shorter narrative span, about some other time and space that thematically encapsulates what I've learned or think I know. I wish Katie luck on her manuscript, but think all the would-be writers out there should see
Adaptation more than once, and I contest that it is not as narcissistic or sinful to inject a little of yourself into your work as this film would have you believe. Even if it is really that indulgent, I don't think it's a bad thing.
This is a little heavy and I am on the verge of overtired (I just about lost it last night when I came home and was unable to do more than collapse), but I am still processing about this movie and thinking about myself as someone who could potentially tell a story if only I had one primed to tell. I've somewhat missed the point in what I wanted to sit down and say. Case and point, I can't even mutter out three coherent paragraphs about what's most important just before turning in for the night.
posted by lmjasinski at 1:13 AM
