Ridiculous Opinions #298
Odd thoughts on a Sunday morning…
There are big changes afoot. Not literally, but metaphorically. I spent the summer working on the end of Maurice, which I detailed in the last issue. Simultaneously, I finally finished my science fiction novel that I had been working on for the last year and a half. It was a beast, and it’s much more than one novel at the moment. However, I don’t plan on going back to edit the thing for a while.
What all of this means is that I have an open schedule. This was planned for a bit, as I feel like I needed a bit of a change in regard to what I work on in my spare time. I have been pushing myself, from a creative standpoint, for a while now, just seeing what I could accomplish. It’s fun to do that, but it can become an exhausting grind if I’m not careful. So, what’s next?
I’ve decided I’m going to make another movie.
I’ve made a movie before…The Bean! It’s pretty good and available to rent on Amazon for those of you who have the attention span to handle it. The Bean was a covid-related experiment to see if I could actually do it. The whole thing was just me. I mean, I had actors involved (my long-suffering family and friends and former students), but everything else about the whole thing was just me, right down to the music, the artwork for the posters, etc. It was a lot of work, but I proved my point in my ability to put something together of that magnitude. And in all honesty, I think it’s a pretty good little film; a weird slice-of-life tale that, when I watch it, brings back some vivid memories of what life was like during that first summer after the pandemic. Your mileage may vary, but for a first film with zero budget and crew, it’s pretty good.
But what now? Well, I have this vague ambition that I’m going to start a movie career. I think I’m going to start making films.
My goal is to make one per year for the next ten years.
Weird, right? I figure, why not? I have all the technology at my disposal. I have zero ambitions to make money off of these things. I just want to make art. Is that such a bad goal?
So many people are just drifting through life without much ambition. They do what they do and they enjoy that and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that approach to your existence. I admire it sometimes. But somewhere along the line, I got something in my system that made me want to do other things. I wanted to have adventures and travel the world and write books and draw pictures and make movies. I don’t know where it came from, but it was there very early. I would love to study where all of this originated, because I’m not how these things became embedded into my brain.
And that feeling has led me down the path that I’m on. All of those things that I dreamed about when I was younger…all of those things have become a reality. Interestingly enough, it has never taken the form in which I originally imagined it, but it’s there nonetheless. I wanted to travel the world…I have done so. I wanted to write books…I’ve written twenty-five of them. I wanted to make comics…I’ve got a 120 page graphic novel coming out soon! All of that is so, incredibly cool! And I did those things.
And now, I want to make movies. I don’t know where this will lead, but I’m excited about it. Wait…let me emphasize…I’m excited about this. I have this well of excitement in me that makes me giddy. “Wow,” I think to myself, “I’m going to make movies!”
This will not take the form that one would imagine. I am not moving to Hollywood. I am not going to make money off of these things. I am not going to achieve vast riches or fame from any of this. No one is interested.
But I am interested. And really, that’s all that matters. “Please yourselves, say I, and they/Need only look the other way…” says A.E. Housman. That’s the plan, sir.
The first film in this project is going to be called, “Booth”. The outline is done. Script-writing will commence in October, and we’ll see where we go from there. Hell, I might actually finish!
Then again, I might not!
It doesn’t matter! To quote Mr. Housman again:
And if my ways are not as theirs
Let them mind their own affairs.
Their deeds I judge and much condemn,
Yet when did I make laws for them?
Indeed!
