Poetics
A friend of my brother’s just sent me an email asking: How do Keats, Eliot, and negative capability figure into your script? I’m pretty familiar with most of the poems you had listed and I would love to hear how they come up in your script.
So, friend of my brother (I’ll use your name if you’d like… it’s your call), thanks for asking.
For those of you who don’t know what he’s talking about, I’ve added a section on the right hand side called “research for the project.” This section is a list of links I’ve thrown up there for my benefit and that of others. Yes (strange as it may sound) they do factor into the movie.
And yes, the Late Night Project is an action movie. So, how, you ask, does this work?
I mentioned in an earlier post that an independent movie should “own those things that limit it.” And from the start of the writing process, Dean and I knew our budget was limited (~$20,000+) and that in order to make this action movie work, we needed to have something besides fancy explosions and chase scenes. Sun Tzu says in his Art of War that in order to defeat one’s enemies, one must maximize his strengths and minimize his weaknesses. We need to do for the movie what we do best: write; and ignore what we do worst: afford stuff.
Dean and I are both ridiculous romantics and amateur poets. So, when the question arose of how to make this movie different than a dull low-production-value/low-stunt/low-budget action movie, we agreed that a good jumping off point would be our mutual love for poetry.
I have pitched this movie as Dr. Zhivago meets Bullitt. Blake, our protagonist, is a poet who loves to drive late at night when the roads are open and clear. The action happens when he comes across Jessica, broken down on the side of the road and looking for help.
In related news, Travis recently his dislike for the name, Blake. While I do agree with his point that “if the name doesn’t work, you shouldn’t force it,” I would like to point out the obvious literary reference to a certain other “Blake” mentioned at the bottom right of the page and in an earlier post.
Should I delve deeper into character descriptions and explanations here? I’m tempted to stop “explaining” Dean’s and my writing. But I could be convinced. Then again, only a handful of you out there have actually read the script, so I guess I wouldn’t be “explaining” much at all now, would I?