Tag Archives: screenwriting

11 August 2017

Some sarcastic satellite says I’m not anywhere.

By andpantomime

My peculiar penalty for procrastination, the most amercing of enemies, is the feeling that accompanies every glance @ my film textbooks growing dusty on the shelves downstairs.

I graduated a little over 4 years ago w/ my bachelor’s in Radio, Television & Film, & I only took 2 screenwriting classes in that time.

We got the basics: I learned that formatting is incredibly important for ever keeping your work out of the trash can. I learned a few key definitions. But I was going to a documentary film school, & all I really want to do is write comedy.

I

don’t

think

that

can

be

taught.

If it can, I was in the wrong place. I needed to be taking improv classes, going to screenwriters’ workshops, investing emotion into stand-up routines & falling on my face when they timed my laughs-a-minute. Instead, outside of class, I was doing what I do best: working 2 jobs.

I wrote 1 short film script, & have since learned from other film majors who went to other institutions that including camera direction is egregious. But, that was curriculum! So that piece of work – not a comedy, mind you –  belongs in the garbage w/ all the work typographically erred or structurally flawed.

Let me stray a minute in order to illustrate my experience of the quintessence of creativity. My partner has the most capable imagination of anyone who has ever graced my presence. He literally (I swear I wouldn’t abuse that word, I mean actually in his sleep) dreams up songs, envisages caricatures to portray out of thin air (my current favorite stalking around the house is a sexually aggressive boyfriend who verbally threatens ravishing & then uncontrollably bestows butterfly kisses as if they are the promised defloration. I’m not joking, it’s tops.) He is constantly in pre-production or production on an original script, & even if the storylines or characters don’t leave me gaping in awe, at least they are moving out of his head onto the page. Story comes to him like an overexcited labrador greeting humans @ the door, & he retells his personal experiences w/ the gusto & timing of a seasoned comic. He paints when he is inclined, he doodles sad-but-delightful grotesqueries when he is made to sit still, he can transcribe drum notation from his brain to software & I don’t know of many songs outside intense genres he can’t play by ear on guitar.

I, on the other hand, write blog posts w/ a physical thesaurus as @ my fingertips as the keyboard is. I spend time sewing & inventing new ways to hang belongings from the walls & ceiling. I write melodic verse on occasion. Sometimes I say something clever in twisted, terse replies to people I should treat better. I don’t lack creativity, but I also don’t invent people, objectives, & intentions, ever, like a real storyteller.

Hell, I don’t even really tell stories. When I do, like this weblog is supposed to be an experiment in doing, they get loquacious & tedious simultaneously.

I always said, from years before graduation to now, years after, that I wanted to spend my twenties paying off debts & building up savings so that I can comfortably hide myself away in my thirties & practice the craft. Examine the  popular work year for year & emulate it. Fastidiously (but hopefully not desperately) seek approval, improvement, & work in the industry.

On the other hand, now as has been true before, I hold down 2 jobs in totally different fields, & protest “Why aren’t you working full time?” w/ “Oh, I want more spare time to work creatively.”

But I’m not doing that. I was, when we had a band; I was writing songs consistently or @ least practicing & performing the work of my bandmates. Now, it seems I’d be justified in choosing 1 job to do full-time & accepting that I will come home mentally drained & too tired to practice the kind of work that I aspire to but find very technically challenging. I am not bursting @ the seam w/ plots or players or even plainsongs, like my partner the paragon of performance.

Y’know the theory that we all think we are each far better than we actually are? We all believe ourselves to be the upper echelon of some amplitude for talent, intellect, morals, health, whatever value?

Maybe I give up before I’m 30. It’s no shame – so many people do, silently, unmourned & unnoticed & unremembered & therefore unashamed. The only sentient lamenting their unachieved dreams is contained in the same ego that failed to achieve them. Boohoo.

In any case, I am not exactly on track to pay off those debts by 30 & have a stash of savings stored up, anyway. Not working 2 part-time jobs which neither afford me a second to think for myself.

20170810_111752

The Zachary making music in a room where I’ve fanatically hung shit from the walls.

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29 April 2017

Cows & cars OR: guardian angels are completely fucking arbitrary.

By andpantomime

My mom called last weekend. We talked about my suicide attempt.

When I was 19, I was a little over a year removed from staying @ either of my parents’ homes. It wasn’t a pleasant move. There was no big send-off, no “Congrats you’re 18! You’re free to go!” complete w/ the efforts of a loving family loading your belongings onto a truck so they can finally turn your bedroom into a home-office, home-gym, or in my mother’s case, home-pet-shelter. It was just that around the age of 17-&-a-half I started getting kicked out a lot (Mom would say, “You should go live w/ your dad!” & Dad would tolerate it for a little while before saying, “Go live w/ your mom!”) & I was only a week into my 18th year whenever I moved into a dorm room mere blocks from Dad’s apartment & started going to college. That was freshman year, & sophomore year I upped the ante by moving 2 hrs away to Denton, to study Film @ the University of North Texas.

I transferred partly because I’d decided I didn’t want to be a stage actress (& had been on a theater-degree path @ the college local to my family’s hometown), partly because my best friend M was already @ UNT, & partly because my boyfriend C wanted to go to UNT for Film as well. My real dream was (& still is) to write television sitcoms, but there were no affordable in-state programs for it, so I figured I would just enjoy my college degree, no matter what it came out in name to be. So long as I graduated w/ @ least 1 scriptwriting class under my belt, I’d be a happy bird.

C broke up w/ me pretty immediately after we arrived @ UNT. This was perfectly reasonable, as I’d been a traumatizing, inconsiderate wreck the entirety of our relationship. I was convinced I was undeserving of love, had my parents’ & sisters’ opinions to show for it, & was generally always on the verge of breaking down & trying to convince him to break up w/ me. So as soon as we landed on campus, out of town, amidst @ least 18,000 other pretty girls, he did. & I broke down.

@ 1 point, I told C to take back everything he’d ever given me. Pajama shorts, a bound book of 1 of my favorite webcomics, these neat green shoes I’m wearing.

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Green tennies as featured in the shadowy bits of my frontage.

Later, probably w/in the same week, I asked for it all back. I’m goddamned sentimental & I wasn’t ready to let him go.

Since I’d lost my virginity to this person, we started sleeping together again really soon after the break-up. We were still apart, & I distinctly remember encouraging him to go after every girl he had a crush on, but lonely + hormones is the perfect cocktail for having a friend-w/-benefits that you are not developmentally equipped to handle. It took me a long time to come to terms w/ the idea that we would just keep having sex but not get back together, despite my enthusiastic cheerleading of his every amorous attempt.

For Christmas that year, the dorm where M – my aforementioned best friend – & I were roommates closed up & all the tenants had to go home. I wound up back @ my Dad’s place, & then my Mom’s, but not before crashing & totaling my purple Chrysler Concorde, Daria.

1993-Chrysler-Concorde-Sedan-Image-01

This is what Daria looked like but w/ rims less cool & flat-ass Texas behind her.

This is where things get blurry.

On my way home for Christmas, or maybe Thanksgiving, I had crashed Daria, & my parents met me somewhere in Dallas to help me get my belongings outta the totaled vehicle & help me purchase a replacement car. As soon as the local gov’t offices were open & I was in town after New Year’s, I would need to go get the title officially signed into my name.

On New Year’s Eve, I was @ a house party @ my friend S’s place, where I had stayed much of the previous summer between Local College & UNT, in order to avoid living w/ my parents. Bonus, C was allowed to stay there as much as he liked, too, that past summer.

M & C were both @ S’s place. M told me she’d slept w/ C. In our dorm room. I forgave her, I walked out of the room where we were discussing it, & I sucker-punched C in the face. He didn’t see it coming, & neither did our group of a dozen friends who leapt up & demanded to know what made me so suddenly & heartily violent. S kicked me out of her home & has never spoken to me since.

I don’t know where I went that night, but I went to my Mom’s the next day or day after. My mom says when I arrived, I somehow got myself locked in the garage, & wailed on the door to the house hard enough to put several dents in the sheet metal comprising that door. I think I was just trying to make my little sister, who was often in her own world, hear me & let me in. I was a bottle rocket. I was devastated by what M & C had done, even though he & I were no longer together, because it just felt more like infidelity when your best friend & ex have sex in your room. I’ve changed my mind about this point, since, because relationships ought to be defined by what you have the courage to name them, but still. Then, I felt betrayed.

Mom got home from work to find the dents in the door & me in my bedroom, which had been almost completely dismantled in the year I hadn’t lived there, further dismantling it by viciously unpacking the suitcase I’d brought from UNT. I was probably looking for the papers I needed to go into the DMV & register Garth, my new green Chevrolet Beretta, but I was pissed, & I was tearful, & I was making a lot of angry racket. She burst into my room, screamed about the dents in the door & my clearly-loosed temper, & told me to get the hell out & go back to Dad’s.

Garth

This is not Garth, but is what Garth looked like, except this car has way more paint. Also, I hated this Beretta & berated it every single day.

 

Mind you, until that point, Mom had never more than suggested I get out of her house. She’d never spoken to me in the imperative. She’d been telling me since I was 14 that her home was my home, & she hoped I would always think of it as home, & she mostly had only pushed me out the years prior because I was staying up too late for my little sister to get a fair amount of sleep.

I think I might have intended to drive to my Dad’s place, @ 1st. But that 19-year-old-lonely-hormonal brain set in instead. I went to the supermarket & got a bottle of extra-strength Tylenol. Perhaps because I thought people could read suicide on my face, I had to be careful to buy it from 1 of the cashiers who didn’t know me & C’s relationship too well, because he’d worked @ that supermarket for years &, well, would someone really phone him & say “Dude I saw your ex-girl crying & buying painkillers?” I dunno. The desperation brain does not make itself accountable to reality.

I took the entire bottle & drove Garth really far out of town. I think I just got on a highway that I rarely used, so even I didn’t know where I was going, but I texted my mother what I’d done (because, of course, if you kill yourself you not-so-secretly want everyone who loves you to feel like shit), then I turned my phone off. I drove for over an hour, until I could feel myself getting very sleepy & sick. My liver was shutting down, for all I knew. I just realized that I couldn’t keep driving, because I didn’t want to die in a crash or, god forbid, kill anyone else by running my piece-of-shit Beretta off the road.

I pulled into a field that had a house on it, set way back from the road. I didn’t know where I was, what town, or on whose property, but I think the farmland reminded me just enough of my mom’s house to be a comfort. I turned Garth off & I went to sleep.

After who-knows-how-long I woke up, though.

My car was fucking surrounded by cows.

I always think about this part of the story as the guardian-angel portion. A lot of these details don’t add up exactly, but they are nonetheless what happened.

1st of all, I didn’t open anyone’s gates in order to get onto their land & park my car. I’ve lived around enough barn animals to know that wherever they are on your property, they should be on the other side of a damned gate. So these cows had clearly stepped over some collapsed barbed wire in order to greet the new, green member of their herd. That part makes sense though. Cows are mad friendly.

2ndly, these cows were excited about my car. They were mooing, & rubbing up against it, probably just trying to scratch their faces but thankfully also waking me up from the sleep that probably would have killed me. It was like I’d taken a reverse-cow-tipping trip, where their frenetic energy rocked my car back & forth quite noticeably.

3rdly, they were ear-tagged. W/ the name of the farmer. & his phone #. If you’ve ever lived in a rural area where people keep their animals between fences that they can barely maintain, you’d be dumbfounded to see that they’d sprung for the money to ear-tag their cattle w/ that much info. I guess it makes a little sense though. Cattle are capital, & if you’re not gonna maintain your barbed wire so they can get out & save a 19-year-old girl w/ liver damage, you probably don’t want to lose money on not being able to find a head in your herd when it goes to visit the neighbors.

So I woke up. I immediately opened the door & willed myself to vomit. Fun fact: this was when my bulimia officially started. I felt so nauseous & headachey, & the cows rocking my car were definitely exacerbating the former, so I opened the door & stuck my finger down my throat & a few weeks later, still depressed about the break up & the betrayal, I remembered having the power to not keep down food so that I could instead keep down my weight.

A feeling of being profoundly alone hit me after vomiting. The nearest cows were dismayed by this display, & they backed off, which really bummed me out because I kind of wanted to get out & pet them & hold them & cry. I was too weak, though, to stand. So I closed the door to my car & turned my phone on.

The missed calls & voicemails took a lot of time to sift through. My mother had called, screaming, angry, but also sad. Wanting to know where I was. My other best friend, Pierce, had called, & he was neither screaming nor angry but very sad, & very scared, & also wanted to know where I was. I called him. I told him everything I knew, which was that I had taken a bottle of extra-strength Tylenol & driven out of town & now there were cows who wouldn’t let me go back to sleep. I told Pierce I wanted to go back to sleep & I hung up on him. I’m sure I told him I love him, but I don’t remember anything he said. I’m sure I wasn’t too lucid either.

W/in seconds, my mother called, & I figured I would get no peace if I didn’t answer her. I genuinely did just want to go back to sleep, but I think I had decided not to die, which was why I didn’t turn my phone off as soon as I finished talking w/ Pierce.

In my memory, I told my mom exactly what I told Pierce. Yes, I did take a lot of painkillers. No, I don’t know where I am. But here is some information off a cow. & the license plate of a truck parked in this driveway. & I told her my phone only had 8% battery, & that I wanted to sleep, & then I hung up on her.

Last week, my mom told me what really happened.

As soon as I texted her, she scoffed because I must have been bluffing. & then she thought, “What if she’s not?”

She called & called Pierce, & C. She drove to S’s house. She found C. She asked him if there was anywhere I might try to go for solitude. He told her yes, that there was a back road in Oklahoma where I often drove to think. He took her there. I wasn’t there. Wherever I was, I hadn’t gone north to Oklahoma.

My mom & C sped back to Burkburnett, TX. During that drive, Pierce was in touch. He hadn’t gotten ahold of me. My mom called me over & over. Finally, she got more than 1 tone before voicemail, which meant my phone was back on. Must have been while I was talking to Pierce. She called again. I picked up. She arrived @ the police station & told someone what was happening, & they took the phone off her. They traced it for about 15 seconds. Then my phone died.

I fell back asleep in Garth that day. I woke up when an ambulance arrived. I went to the hospital, had my stomach pumped, & then was sent to a psychiatric ward for the weekend, where there were no doors & a young man walked in on me in the shower. I convinced the resident shrink that I didn’t really want to kill myself, & was just acting out for attention. He bought it. My parents bought it. Hell, I bought it.

But I came really fucking close to dying. I never really knew how close. I thought I’d saved myself, w/ my vomiting & my miracle cow phone #. My mom & I hadn’t really talked about it the past 6 years, &  I’m glad that now I know how hard she worked to find me. She & C, who were the people I was most angry @, that day.

Louis CK has a new bit about suicide. It is the answer to all of the world’s problems, for you. The people who are here right now are just people who have succeeded @ not killing themselves, again, today. If everyone who were afraid of, say, ISIS, just killed themselves, it would end the terror because it would suck all the fun out of it for them.

Maybe suicidal tendencies are a recessive gene. That wasn’t the 1st, or the last, time in my life that I considered killing myself. Sometimes this is all way too much.

But I’m sitting in my apartment in my green tennis shoes. My best friend & lover is behind me promoting the shows our band is going to play next month. I’ve had a houseguest in recent weeks who keeps secretly leaving original poems in different parts of the living room. & I am writing this stupid blog because I kind of needed to cry & laugh @ the fact that I’m still alive. Even if I DO beat the recessive gene, I will die someday. But, as my partner puts it, “If everything is dreadful, fun isn’t going to be handed to you. You have to make fun.” So I guess I’m trying to make fun of the fact that I, too, succeeded @ not killing myself again today.

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31 August 2016

The Creative Imperative

By andpantomime

I don’t want to reproduce.

Sometimes when I state these opinions, people who have children or would like to, feel offense. That is not my intent. So let me propose a disclaimer: I understand that having a family brings most if not all people a great sense of wonder, a newfound fulfillment, & more joy than grief despite the tough years. I understand that, much of the time, you create a lifelong friend & a whole person who can teach you until the day you pass on.

None of that is exactly why I am not doing it, though. Those are reasons, good reasons, others’ reasons. My reasons for abstaining are painless & pragmatic.

I grew up w/ parents who weren’t ready for children because they hadn’t figured out how to love themselves, & thus couldn’t love 1 another. They loved us (truly madly), but they weren’t right mentally, emotionally, or physically. I’ve heard the argument, that “no 1 ever is”, but 1 must deeply wish to create to do it anyway. Right?

I decided growing up that I wanted to create, but not life, & now that I am (arguably?) grown, I have a lot of arguments which I could not have predicted to factor back into the equation. Deciding not to make half-clones has been like algebra, for me, w/ @ least 10 variables.

It used to look like this:

Me / (pregnancy + partner) x career – money x (F G H I J K L M N O P) = The Mountain Goats, “No Children.”

Now I see more. About cesarean sections, breach births, vaginal tearing; about belonging, esteem, self-actualization; about college tuition, global warming, wage stagnation.

& in all the bodies all the other coupling bodies have given life, I’ve never met a human who isn’t climbing Maslow’s Hierarchy.

For reference: Maslow Maslow

People on the whole surpass red, skim orange, secure yellow, score questionable marks in green, & sometimes settle for skipping indigo. Everyone I meet seems stuck in the middle (presumably w/ you if Stealers Wheel is to be believed).

It’s been a while, since I elaborated on it. But when I was 21 I made a 44-yr plan for my life. I don’t think of myself as very talented (except, perhaps, vocally), but I work extremely hard. So when I picked out the careers I desire to have, 1stly there were several, & 2ndly for each there is a huge gap between my abilities & the abilities required to perform it.

From 21 to 30 yrs old: I will pay off my debts.

From 30 to 40: I will be in California, laboring tirelessly to learn, perfect, & be hired for sitcom writing. Probably maintaining my sad day-job @ Costco. But sitcoms will be how I sneakily teach the next generation something. Ethics. Or feminism. Or how healthy relationships happen. I need to figure that out myself, 1st, though.

From 40 to 44: I will obtain my Master’s & PhD, in Film Studies. I’m thinking east coast, maybe the midwest. The University of Iowa has an interdisciplinary program I like well enough. I love narrative. I think it is the most sympathetic pursuit. I think film & television have the most powerful tools to do it beautifully. I went to film school because my imagination didn’t function, & now it is full to bursting, & I will go back until it overflows.

From 44 to 55: I will be a professor of screenwriting. Preferably in Spokane, Washington. At a community college. Where I can go to the Reservation often, or scholarship some of the generation coming out of it. Maybe be present as new stories about neglected populations surface or screen.

From 55 to 57: I’d like to go to the Union Theological Seminary in New York, & find out if I believe in God any longer. Rejuvenate myself & care about others. Not their salvation, but their self-preservation.

From 57 to 65: I will be in Iraq. Helping anyone oppressed become a refugee. Hopefully, the political climate in nearby, developed countries will have changed quite a bit in 32 years, & I can be employed by a church or nonprofit that calls it mission or social work.

& @ 65, perhaps I’ll go “home” to NC. Where there are mountains, & beaches, for whatever I like as an old gray-hair. Maybe return to teaching. Maybe do prison ministry. Maybe write my memoirs. Maybe make movies.

Along my plodding way, I have picked up employment, resources, achievement, respect, & decided ages ago to dive headfirst into problem-solving & tolerance (the lukewarm opposite of prejudice). Some days, I’m the incarnate Serenity Prayer.  Others, I don’t get enough food/water/sleep.

Trauma can be passed on in your genetic code.

Sometimes, people hear that I want to write sitcoms & they ask, “Why not now?” & the answer is, because I’m not ready, & I am rooting myself as part of the process of getting ready. I just got my diagnosis 6 months ago. I’m not wise or capable enough to impart the lessons I value, & under the crushing debts I’ve acquired, I can’t create something so time-intensive as a screenplay. For now, I’m just happily alive. I want to make music.

Sometimes, I tell people I won’t have children & they say, “That will change.” & I don’t have a succinct response to their assumption. I don’t have a shortcut to spilling out my 44-yr plan, how I believe it will be my contribution to the future I won’t live through, how certain I am I’ll need to work extremely hard the rest of my life to make my brain organized enough to sharpen my skills adroitly enough to give away my heart clearly enough to impact minds on a grand enough scale. How I believe that a new human life will fog up my head, & leave me less time to climb Maslow’s Pyramid.

Because I’m so worried – too worried – about any life that depends on me discovering how to climb it themselves. How I know –

know

that I won’t feel healthy until I’ve passed my mile markers: television, graduate school, tenure, seminary, travel.

Many have children when they surmount indigo. It is how they transmogrify the creative imperative.

Me?

I need my whole life to do that.

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21 July 2013

The Atlantic & Pacific are the very same far away.

By andpantomime

I’m lying down listening to a John K Samson album that Lando gave me over a year ago, & I’m struggling struggling struggling to collect my thoughts. They’re sorta like the flashes of light you see in the corner of your eye when there are car headlights pointing in your window for a split second. They appear very briefly & move very quickly & the temptation to look at them is irresistible, but the ability to gain anything out of the looking is almost nonexistent. So I guess what I should ask myself is, what do I wanna think about?

This morning @ work we had a team-building exercise. Since there was a mass exodus from the office, Courtney’s goal is to get us working as a team as quickly as possible. So Kati, Courtney, Chelsea, John, Brad, & I all wrote down 3 facts about ourselves as well as 2 goals we have for our life. My facts were: I do not wear blue jeans, only colorful pants. I play bass, guitar, & marimba, & I sing. Almost all of my favorite literature is postmodern. My goals were: I want to do mission work in Iraq. I want to teach film in Spokane, Washington @ a community college.

Everybody @ work kind of thinks of me as a do-gooder. I think of myself as a do-gooder. Sometimes I wonder if I’m only motivated by the affirmations that I am an overall positive person.

I’ve kinda always craved fame but not fortune, but there are some nights when I think, “Urgh, I just want enough money that when I am not working I can spend it freely.” So the options here are either work nonstop so I can never go spending money, or make a lotta money & spend wisely. I choose make a lotta money & spend wisely.

But back to this do-gooder thing.

I’ve been to a National Conference for Roadshows, & just from the meet-n’-greet I did not get the impression that aggressive, successful business people in this business are as soft as I am. They do have a hard edge, but I’m also willing to call everything that they do in their offices “tough love”. Because ultimately I’ve also never met a person in this business that I didn’t like for @ least 1 or 2 reasons. & ultimately I haven’t had very many chances to meet that many face-to-face, but networking is always a positive experience.

Megan Phelan, all your work psychojabberbabblejargontalk is very boring for your audience. Back to the point.

I think I’m motivated only by my need for approval, and so there are 2 things for which work allows me to lobby for approval.

1 thing is the positivity – I don’t remember which Dean Koontz book it was, but it was probably Odd Thomas where I first read the phrase “indefatigable optimist.” Either that, or Life Expectancy. & I’ve been waiting every day of my life since then for somebody to say that to me, describing me. My manager does a great job of pointing out how positive I am & I’m addicted to the affirmation.

The other thing that I know motivates me is being called a hard-worker. I think of myself as a hard-worker, but only compared to most people. Compared to most people in this business, I fear that I might not be, but compared to most people on the planet I’m an asskicker. & I need people to tell me that’s true.

See, I don’t think I’m worth a lot by a few measures. I’m not naturally gifted or talented in the things I’d like best to be good @, like songs & music & scripts & movies. So I choose sales & marketing. I can sing but I can’t play instruments well (so I even exaggerate when telling people facts about myself @ work), and voices fade. I am not skinny so I don’t think I’m beautiful & if I were beautiful, beauty fades.

Now what do I really like to do? Is communicate thoughts. I used to think that the words used were of utmost importance, but that is now only true in print & I see that because communicating w/ the masses is about how you say it, not what you say. So w/ all that said, do I think I’m settling? No. I think I’m enabling myself, by working hard, to have the other things I desire: that freedom to write scripts & communicate thoughts.

I wanna run this business in Boulder until I’m 30. I wanna go to California until I’m 40 & write TV shows. I wanna go to North Carolina until I’m 44 & get a doctorate in film. I wanna go to Spokane or Seattle, Washington until I’m 54 & teach media studies. I wanna go to the Union Theological Seminary in New York until I’m 55 & get ordained as a presbyterian minister. I wanna go to Pueblo West, Colorado until I’m 65 & preach in prisons.
The only thing that’s missing is making music…but I am listening to John K Samson right now, & just hearing it makes me happy.

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6 April 2013

Whale Rider, Young Woman, Empty Sign

By andpantomime

by Megan Phelan

 

Writer and director of the 2002 film Whale Rider, Niki Caro, asserts this in the film’s production notes: “Pai has become this iconic young girl who is desperately trying to seek her own sovereignty and her own destiny in a male-orientated world.” While there is not a question that Pai is “trying to seek” her destiny throughout the film, whether or not she finds independence is a question for reception studies. Through the responses of film viewers, I will show the consensus that Pai does not attain her own “sovereignty” in this film and, thus, is not the main character.

A synopsis on filmeducation.org describes the most probable protagonist, Pai’s grandfather Koro, by defining the central conflict of the film. “Koro is blinded by prejudice and even Flowers [Pai’s grandmother] cannot convince him that Pai is the natural heir. The old Chief [Koro] is convinced that the tribe’s misfortunes began at Pai’s birth and calls for his people to bring their twelve-year-old boys to him for training. He is certain that through a gruelling process of teaching the ancient chants, tribal lore and warrior techniques, the future leader of their tribe will be revealed to him.” This author outlines the majority of the film’s action in a way that marginalizes Pai, the purported main character. In this telling, it is Koro who acts with agency when he leads all the adolescent males of his township into training of ancient Maori fighting and culture. The narrative centers on Koro, and on his belief that a true leader will emerge from amidst the young boys. Despite filmeducation.org being an ostensibly academic text, its synopsis wholly omits the fact that throughout Koro’s adventures in training young men, Pai is in the background imitating the lessons and proving herself a better warrior even than the boys her age. If a reader or reviewer of this educational text accepts it as canon, and especially as evidence for how the film is perceived by the public, then it is clear that whether or not Pai proves herself to Koro is not of first importance to the narrative. If this is not the primary focus of the narrative, then it necessarily is instead the desires of Koro – not Pai, and his destiny – not hers, that forms the film’s plot.

Esther Figueroa, in 2004, reviewed the film in the journal Contemporary Pacific. While the review is filled with praise, it does not communicate a clear belief that Pai is really the film’s hero. One paragraph ends with a commendation of Pai’s character, but the compliments are framed with two issues. The first issue is that Pai’s worth is only measured by Koro’s standards, as evidenced in the reviewer’s quote: “[Koro] tells his boys that the qualities of a chief are strength, courage, intelligence, and leadership. These are all qualities that Paikea demonstrates in abundance.” The second issue is that, although these traits prove her worth, they do not prove that she is unique. Figueroa establishes that Paikea is, in fact, not remarkable when she immediately lauds other characters in the subsequent paragraph: “These are qualities that others also demonstrate. Nanny Flowers continually performs interpersonal interventions that have profound implications. The second son, Rawiri, once ignored and left to underachieve, shows nurturing leadership at a time of heartbreaking crisis. The schoolteacher, Miss Parata, faithfully trains her students in Maori language and culture, and makes a daily difference in the quality of their lives.” It should be noted that Nanny Flowers and Miss Parata are not given as much screen time as Rawiri, so although they have positive attributes in common with Paikea, they are just as marginalized as she is and the males of the film (Koro and, in this mention, Rawiri) have far more weight.

Above all else, Pai serves as a foil for Koro and his patriarchy instead of as a hero in her own right. In her article published by Feminist Media Studies, “Indigenizing Girl Power,” Marnina Gonick points out that everything Pai does to assert herself is done covertly in avoidance of Koro’s temper. “When Koro assembles the first born boys to begin their training as potential leaders, he tells them: ‘you will be tested for your strength, your courage, your intelligence and your leadership.’ It is only Koro who is unaware that Pai has already begun demonstrating each of these characteristic in her quest to gain his recognition. Her strength and courage is demonstrated as she learns the art of the ceremonial spear from her uncle, after Koro barred her from the boys’ training classes. She is seen handily winning in a contest with her grandfather’s favored student, knocking his spear out of his hands with her own, inciting Koro’s fury when he catches them.” Whether or not our anti-hero, Koro, is displeased, is the issue to which the film continually returns.

Many extensive summaries of the film’s major plot points leave out the actions and achievements of Pai. These include an award she wins for a speech, delivered in the native Maori language, about the traditions of her people, and dedicated to her grandfather. Another oft-forgotten point is her retrieval of a whale tooth which Koro throws into the ocean to test the boys. While these actions make Pai seem capable and competent, it is important to note three problems with them. One is that major internet databases for film synopses, such as Fandango.com and The Internet Movie Database, include no mention of these seemingly-willful acts. The second is that even when Pai is acting alone in these feats, the fact that she is doing it only for Koro means that she does not have any emotional independence from his authority. Their complete absence from dedicated plot summaries, as well as Pai’s reasons for performing them within the narrative, bring about the third point: these acts of “independence” exist in the narrative as fleeting, inconsequential consolation prizes for the lack of a truly powerful central female character. They provide a false sense of female empowerment which is nevertheless governed by the patriarchy of the diegetic Maori culture.

Niki Caro was right when she asserted that Pai is “iconic”, but unfortunately she is iconic in the plainest sense of the word “icon”. Pai is only an image, another example of “women as empty signifiers.” She is not a matriarch, but instead the hollow place where patriarchy echoes. The true protagonist of the film, Koro, governs the narrative and governs Pai’s importance as well as her right to be his honorable heir.

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5 February 2013

I don’t come with instructions.

By andpantomime

“Pamphleteer” by The Weakerthans is written from the man’s perspective, explaining to the girl that he’s standing outside during rush-hour and carrying a few papers he has (presumably) written about her – as all good troubadours do for their muse. When she shows, they avoid eye contact, they go upstairs into his place, and he paces. Then, he expresses with cognitive dissonance (“the rhetoric and treason”) that “I’ll miss you,” would mean simultaneously, “I still love you,” but “I can’t love you anymore.” So, with “the feeble strength of one” he gives up his muse. There is little else to the song, but its title says a lot (and is only repeated three times.) “I am your pamphleteer,” as in, “I have been trying to make the manual for understanding you, perhaps to benefit the next suitor.”

So yeah. That’s a favorite love song. I don’t know which character I am, though. I vacillate.

But wait, Megan! You can’t write about things that interest and define you! That bores your audience!

Maybe my audience’ll identify. We are all slightly defeatist in romance.

In the end of 1984, after all their love for rebellion’s sake, Winston and Julia come physically into contact with one another and the obvious disconnect is my favorite part of the novel. “He put his arm around her waist[… Her] waist had grown thicker and, in a surprising way, had stiffened[…] He did not attempt to kiss her, nor did they speak. […] ‘I betrayed you, she said baldly.

‘I betrayed you,’ he said. She gave him another quick look of dislike.”

In a dystopian novel, it’s going to be apparent that a lack of love can’t be compensated with “coffee cake ice cream and a bottle of ten dollar wine,” but I always hold the belief that Julia and Winston were lacking only in God. I mean, don’tgetmewrong, I’d be bored to read the novel where the totalitarian government is overcome by the power of love (read: faith), but that’s still what I learned from that novel. In a future where God is stamped out (much to Nietzsche’s triumph), love is effectively stamped out before it can get up & get going. So they may have had romance, but hey, most of us experience that bi-weekly.

Neither of these are loves I want but they are ones I’ve learned from. The loves I want show up mostly in asofterworld.

It references Vonnegut,

It makes me monstrous,

And it comes outta nowhere despite my pessimism.

As to who I want to be, that shows up elsewhere:
http://www.buttercupfestival.com/59vol2.htm
This’s who I am and my love is unfocused.

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9 January 2013

And the wanting comes in waves.

By andpantomime

i am just a little tired of the small annoyances i feel. primarily those which stem from not being perfect, picturesque, or even very traditional.  it’s been a week now that I’ve worked here in Colorado, and while the business has perceived a change in me – namely an ability to adapt and make sales – I have gone, night after night, to bed a feeling of helplessness that is truly uncharacteristic.  usually, just work is enough for me to feel fulfilled and enthusiastic – even impressive. But tonight again, I’m hopelessly hopeful for a heart-change. as some people can be “in love with being in love” (like my favorite Format song, “Inches and Falling”), i temporarily desire to desire. what do I have to blame for the fact that I wish I were more or less romantic? more romantic in the sense that I be vulnerable and charmed and feel undeserving rather than entitled. and less romantic in the sense that I stop idealizing my business potential as if it’s all I need. I guess the observable truth about love and work is that it all depends what you make of what you have, whether or not happiness follows clo

se behind is more or less all dependent upon your capacity to be satisfied. Now, me? I am not satisfied. I feel cheated by the relationship I do or don’t have. I feel cheated like a princess with a frog – or at least like a Sandra Bullock character who ends up with the I feel uncontrollably angry that I did not bring my computer and so am forced, frustratedly, to type on a phone which has zero continuity-editing capabilities. All my sentences are strewn about pell-mell and all I can do is hope for the catharsis of posting a few angst-riddled “paragraphs” in a forlorn hotel bathroom. I just want to have somewhere safe to sleep naked, grocery-shop, and change my contacts. It could be here in Colorado if onlt I weren’t leashed by an unfinished degree and a bad mood and insomnia. supporting actor. nd this dissatisfaction has been done to me by all the mediums I like best. Music makes me desirous. Movies make me desirous. And, heaven-forbid-but-it’s true, evei also feel uncontrollabn the most popular television makes me wish I were more normal, more easily swept-off-my-feet, or at least that a broom were nearby.
Truthfully, I am rambling. I see no harm nor benefit in either rattling or not rattling on about the fact that I need more stimulation. Everywhere from business to the boudoir. I feel insatiable and still. I feel lovely and lovable and useless and infamous. I also feel

I’m annoyed. Mostly at the feelings I have of stagnation, and also oddly annoyed at the audacious nature of why I feel annoyed, if that makes any sense.

I don’t have any right to feel unfulfilled. I am, now, in Colorado on a business trip and I’ve had 5 straight days of incomparable success. I’m making money, I’m training someone amazing, and most importantly I’m overcoming the kind of obstacles that would ordinarily be holding me back in a two-week rotation. I also, not to mention, get to sleep in, get off work early, and I don’t have to spend any of my own money for gas. It’s a dream, right?
But I’m bothered nonetheless. I feel so still that I’m uncharacteristically melancholy. I’m not still or stagnant at work – obviously – but there are other parts of life that give me the breathless feeling of struggling to catch up with the everyman.
I hate to admit this as a source of my frustration, but I didn’t pack my computer for this trip so I spend a few minutes each night scrolling the only web app on my phone: Facebook. And here it is, a new year, and I see half a dozen people getting a new start – a fresh start – on something that will absolutely define them for the rest of their lives. People within a year or two of my age are getting married to the right people, starting work as teachers, moving to California and Germany, and man am I jealous. Not of any of those three things specifically (definitely not of being married or being a teacher, and I don’t think I am ready for California or Germany although they’re in the long-term plan), but I am definitely envious of the kind of heart it takes to want those things. It is

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14 December 2012

Make me something somebody can use.

By andpantomime

I have so many things to be grateful for, especially lately, and I missed out on pointing them out over Thanksgiving. But I feel like it’s never too soon to look at the year in retrospect. Or to make some New Year’s resolutions. Tomorrow’s a brand new year if tomorrow is when I start to count to 365.

December 2011, I wrote the lyrics to a little ditty for Chris Redmon, Ben Noe, and Hunter Cannon, and called it “Jim from Accounting”. It was the beginning of a short-lived, but well-loved membership in Death in the West, and while my biggest contribution was probably just that song, getting in with those guys challenged and shaped me. I learned that making music is a difficult labor of love.

In January, I volunteered for the media team at a Chi Alpha Christian conference called Salt, and I got to run slides for a congregation of a thousand and star in three short films. As a ninja, no less. I met a filmmaker named Nathan Cole and one named Vladyslav Alexander and they made me feel good, helpful, important, and loved by God.

In February I met Anthony Foreman in a creative writing class. He’d had experience with one hard-hitting poetry professor, and along with his infinite patience and interest in people, he has film experience too. We have film classes together and a lot in common which helps us edify one another.

In March, Mallory married her best friend, Chris Redmon, and I was there to be a part. A month later, Mallory got me my first full-time position and the career choice I was seeking so desperately – one that would carry over after graduation. I was safe, and this pair had once again proved to me that they are a family to me that I do not even deserve.

In June and July, I worked and I met people. I developed strange but loving friendships with people who work, of all places, at a CostCo in Plano. I felt safe and needed and encouraged and, again, I felt challenged. I also started to think, for the first time, about leaving the University of North Texas Phonathon. I did my first interviews. I trained my first teammates.

In August, I celebrated my birthday with the inimitable Glenn Boisvert. He makes me laugh, he teases me, he meets me halfway, he puts up with all of my crap, and he thinks I’m worthwhile. I told him he shouldn’t expect more than capricious flirtation from me, but he has ended up with so much more.

In September, I had to leave Death in the West so they could find a better bassist, and it was a lot like amicably breaking up a relationship. But at the same time, I made huge strides in my work at Phonathon and I met a kid who was ready for someone to take him under their wing.

In October I had the luck of shooting a movie with this kid. Along with his fellow actors and Phonathon employees – Ryan Lowery and Michael Incavo – I have to give huge props to Ryan Tatum for being an intelligent, moving, and impassioned young man.

In November I started and finished my first non-silent student short film. We had no lighting, I was a bad camera person, and the editing process took several weeks (and turned out black and white), but I had unbelievably good cast members like Wraychel Fobbs. Kimberly Marshall was my lovable production assistant. And it was Glenn’s story.

It’s December, and I finally had to retire from Phonathon after three years, because now I’m looking forward again. Tomorrow I go back to work full-time, and I’m motivated. I have had a changing, challenging year. Some people have been constant throughout it – family, my best friends from all over space and time.

But now to my resolution. All I want, next year, is to cease to be so selfish – or at least cut back as much as humanly possible. I want to do whatever is in my power to just make other people happy and better and empowered all the time. Nothing needs to be about me unless it’s about them first. After all – I owe it to everyone. If all of these people can love me and support me for a year, then I can do the same for so many others.

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29 November 2012

I need your arms around me I need to feel your touch.

By andpantomime

Sometimes (and by that I mean every single time), all one can do to get oneself out of a rut is grit teeth and bear it.
I am sitting in front of Facebook, Klout, prevention.com/weight-loss, an open Google Document and LetMeWatchThis.com. The point is, respectively: to get distracted by men (boys), to monitor my social status, to feel guilty and simultaneously motivated about losing weight, and to write a paper about ethical media in reference to The Social Network.
The truth is, respectively: there’s just one guy whose attention I want but can’t get, the only movements I want in my social status I want to come elsewhere than Facebook, I was excited about losing weight all day until my boss brought cake to work and then I snacked when I got home, and I have only written one paragraph on a three-page paper because I prefer to do that kind of shit in the mornings.

What’s wrong with me? she asked, like everyone. I just had two weekends off work from Dallas Roadshows, and it made me realize what a rock my job really is to me. Without it as an anchor, I just crack and become the worst person imaginable. Let’s work backwards here:
The reason I need to write the paper tonight is because I can’t write it in the morning, which IS what I would normally do. I think better in the mornings. At this time of night, my brain is pissed off from thinking so hard about everything all day long (work, school, but more importantly: how to navigate between people). I need to rejuvenate. But I can’t write this paper in the morning, because in the morning what I truly need to do is finish editing on my final film project. Why didn’t I edit the film project any morning before? Let’s continue working backwards. On Monday, after my second weekend off from Roadshows, I slept in incredibly late (so couldn’t edit the film) and at night I broke my diet (though by only a couple hundred calories). Yesterday, Tuesday, I slept in late again and broke my diet midday by more calories by snacking at work. Today I couldn’t sleep in late because of class, and I didn’t break my diet for 12 hours straight, until cake was brought to work and then everything went to hell in a handbasket. Looking back at Monday, though, I think I can make tomorrow similar to it – in terms of pros, not cons. I want my social status (Klout) to move around because of LinkedIn, which is another connection to work and another reason I’m sorry to miss Roadshows and be identified by Phonathon. Though, being identified through Phonathon wouldn’t be so bad if I intended to stay in higher education. But, to come full circle, I don’t want to stay in higher education – as I mentioned on Facebook (which is where all my Klout comes from), and where also I sat back and made idle chat with the silliest of guys just because I miss the version of my own who said sweet things to me.

I’m lonely again. I knew this would happen. Every time I am not lonely and have the chance to increase my companionship, missing that companion makes me lonely. Especially when I’m missing the things I want them to do or be. What about me? What about the things I want to do – make these grades, love my work? What about the things I want to be – ten pounds lighter, twenty dollars richer? Lonely makes my identity dissipate. Or at least, taking a day off does.

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21 October 2012

Bicentennial Man

By andpantomime

We read so much about our heroes, if we have them. We’ll chew on all the information we can about their successes, their talents, their lives, and occasionally we’ll be fascinated by some fact of failure in their “past”. Even if you don’t have heroes, you’re surrounded by the mythology of America; the Horatio Alger, rags-to-riches, I-overcame-adversity-by-the-skin-of-my-teeth mentality. But what we inherently miss the importance of, and what we should supremely value, is what the myth lacks in its superficial structure:
Failure, failure, failure, and more failure.

I only have a few examples of the people in whose presence I would feel myself a jackass. One of them is Joss Whedon, who – chronologically – has done one thing after another that I (and his paychecks, no doubt) call enormously successful, but which others might call categorical failures. Let’s face it: Buffy the Vampire Slayer was campy, Angel a spinoff, Firefly was canceled, Dollhouse ran less than 3 seasons, Speed and Serenity and The Cabin in the Woods appeal to niche audiences and the opposing kinds of audiences for each are always highly critical due to their misinterpretation of the text (e.g.: the layman’s review,

OH BUT OH WAIT. IS ANYONE LOOKING. GUY CO-WROTE TOY STORY. AND AVENGERS. 3RD-HIGHEST GROSSING FILM OF ALL TIME.
And yet he doesn’t qualify for universal respect. Shocking.

You know, I’d also feel myself a real jerk if I were sitting in a room with Thomas Edison. Say what you will about Tesla, but Edison was a badass as well. For as long as I can remember, so from at least the time I was 7, I’ve had this time-transcendent crush on Edison. I don’t know why, but I grew up always consuming biographies about people with disabilities: Louis Braille, Thomas Edison, Helen Keller – blind, deaf, blind and deaf. I won’t talk about Edison and the Lumiere brothers, or Edison and Tesla (though if you want an informed and balanced opinion, measure this: based upon your own scale of authorial ethos).

What I will talk about is Edison and his work on Bell’s telephone. He is, to me, an example of invention and entrepreneurship – which, damnit, is the hardest balance to strike but probably the most necessary. It never, ever, EVER matters what you do or make if too few people know you’re doing or making it. This starts with lies – who cares if no one notices? And ends with telephones – thank you, Edison and Charles Batchelor, for phonograph parlors. ()

Edison had ear infections growing up and was so deaf by the time he worked on phonographs that he had to bite the instruments and hear sound through the rattling of his skullbones (). He cared so much about other people hearing things (and marketing those things to hearing-abled people!).

Me, at present. I’m reading a book by John C. Maxwell called Failing Forward. It’s encouraging business and self-help propaganda that most would probably quietly regard as goulash. But Maxwell makes a few key points as he succeeds in teaching me to not be afraid of my screw-ups:

The difference between people who achieve whatever they want, people who achieve whatever, and people who don’t achieve is this: the ones who do whatever they want perceive and respond to failure differently. It’s usually not a, “pick-yourself-up-dust-yourself-off” attitude, but more of an, “I do not need time to recover I will just do whatever I planned to do, immediately.”

It’s the essence of YOLO, really. Carpe diem. Passive versus aggressive. One of the problems my cohorts frequently cite when talking about why they haven’t done something – anything! ask a girl out! write a book! – is fear of failing. But, c’mon. I, personally, wouldn’t love Whedon so much if he weren’t a bit of an underdog. He is made so much BIGGER to me by his “big”, so-called “failures”. We love that part that’s missing in the myth. Like Edison –  some deaf inventor guy who spent his life literally chewing on the phonograph. You remember your teachers buying those well-marketed posters from Mardels Christian Bookstore and all they said was some bastardized version of, “Success is this: ‘I have not failed 1,000 times.  I have successfully discovered 1,000 ways to NOT make a light bulb,'” and we hemmed and hawed and ignored them or just kept quiet and colored?

Well sheesh. I wanna be one of the 1 or 2 of every 100 people who DO what we say we’re going to do. Who GETS what she wants because she doesn’t care (i.e., is fearless). And everybody can have a copy of my every screw-up along the way, because I want us all to to know exactly how big and great I am by how much I’ve ignored and bullied through.

I only hope I can pick up and drag and push and pull and tug and tussle with as many people as possible in the wake of my success. I wanna teach people to take chances. Raise the stakes. Risk and risk and risk and risk until risking 1 thing becomes so easy that you have to risk something else instead. The first thing you’ll always risk is your pride – whether you want to be a musician, an entrepreneur, or an auteur. The average of 98 to 99 out of 100 people is the risks they have in common: they risk losing themselves in relationships, marriages, careers with soulless bosses, mindless jobs, having kids, or – worse – losing themselves in complete inactivity. If you’re going to risk something, don’t risk all the shit that makes you who you are (or who you want to be). Risk a little time, a little money, a little money, a little pride, a little energy. Get bigger than your obstacles or risk not getting big at all.

You’re just gonna die whispering, “I have this one idea, but no, no – I can’t explain it.”

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