Michael Blowhard writes:

Dear Blowhards --

Over at Querencia, Steve, Matt, and Reid have all posted photos of their book-heaps, those end-tables-full of books that you're in the middle of reading, or that you're maybe on the verge of cracking open, or that you're about to get back to. Amazing how many books a single person can consider "in process" at a given moment, isn't it?

Inspired by da boyz, I let myself get a little carried away: Lights, camera, video! After hours of frenzied wrestling with iMovie, I came away with a hot 'n' seething document about the movies and audiobooks that I'm in the middle of, or at least plan to get around to soon.

Check out the editing on this sucka. Marty Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker, watch your backs.

During the final credits you'll notice a tip of the hat to The Wife. Therein lies a small tale. Proud of my initial storyboad for the project, I showed it to her. She looked at it and gave a laugh, if a fond and Wifely one. Where was the arc?, she wanted to know. What was being built-to? And where was the all-important final whammy?

Wounded, I responded by pointing out the many Kieslowskian complexities I'd woven through my masterpiece. This only made her laugh louder, and say that it was OK with her if I really wanted to make the only movie in all movie history that would put audiences to sleep despite being a mere 90 seconds long.

I writhed, I went on a bender, I gave an anonymous interview to the New York Times about dissension on the set. Producers, eh? Always interfering. And so crass. What about the art?

But, y'know, I finally had to admit that she had a point. The audience deserves its chance at pleasure too. I mean, for whose sake are we showpeople putting out all this effort? You! You! The great entertainment-hungry public! So I took The Wife's suggestions, being careful to figure out ways of doing so without compromising my essential vision.

I learned a lesson from the experience: Clashes can be creative things, so long as they're resolved in creative ways that move the process along in creative directions.

Best,

Michael

wait, in what sense can "The Dreamers" be considered "in process"? You blogged that one years ago. I should know, I watched it then.

I'm on to you. :)

Posted by: the holzbachian on June 26, 2007 3:20 PM

It's a good thing you were able to keep it under budget, too, or else surely the studio would've pulled the plug. Although, I hear the final total doesn't include marketing costs. I hope you were able to negotiate points.

Posted by: Bryan on June 26, 2007 3:58 PM

Michael, can you ask the Wife for recommendations?
I have nothing to read.

Posted by: Tatyana on June 26, 2007 4:29 PM

Nice hardwood floors! Three books I highly recommend and am slowly getting into: P.J. O'Rourke on The Wealth Of Nations; Creators by Paul Johnson; a biography of John Osborne by John Heilpern. All three of these guys write lively.

Posted by: ricpic on June 26, 2007 7:15 PM

We have so been outdone!

Posted by: Matt Mullenix on June 26, 2007 7:50 PM

*rick, in case your comment was addressed to me: who is John Osborne and why should I find his life interesting?

do you have any recommendation of belle lettre(sp?)? I avoid anything that is not fiction; boring.

Posted by: Tat on June 26, 2007 10:32 PM

Michael,
Is the input by your wife at the conclusion that you should have more output of the videoed items, as in put out the door?

Just wonderin'. If I dared show something like this to my ever loving spouse, she'd be on the horn orderin' up a Jimmy.

And, no, she's not a PITA about this; we simply have different spatial fulfillment issues.

You're quite the brave soul exposing such a possession vice.

Posted by: DarkoV on June 27, 2007 7:31 AM

On a second thought: I have just 1(on) bookcase with books and usually 4-5 library-owned books at my nightstand.
Not that I don't like to read, but I have a principle - if I'm sure I will not want to read this book again, I'm not buying it.

However, that consideration is never my priority where shoes are concerned...weird.

Posted by: Tatyana on June 27, 2007 9:17 AM

What Matt said!!! We're not worthy!

Posted by: Reid Farmer on June 27, 2007 10:58 AM

That's awesome. Gotta love it when people take a simple, relatively insignificant task, and go all out. (I'm not being sarcastic.)

Posted by: JewishAtheist on June 27, 2007 11:13 AM

Tat - John Osborne: playwright, "Look Back In Anger," seminal figure in the transformation of theater from drawing room to wrecking ball.

Posted by: ricpic on June 27, 2007 11:43 AM

rick, I know of too many such illustrous figures to get sufficiently interested; need I remind you whence I came from?

Posted by: Tat on June 27, 2007 1:13 PM

The Big Sleep read by Eliot Gould! I gotta get me one of those.

Posted by: David Brown on June 30, 2007 12:43 PM






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