My Life in a Fellini Film
My life, I have very often said, resembles a Fellini film. Absurdist in the extreme. Fantastical. Insane.And now, it's all being filmed.
Why? Oldest Son, Oldest Son's Best Friend (who lives in my house about half the week--his family gets MY son about half the week . . . it's sort of like shared custody), and Baby Girl want to be filmmakers. They now film EVERYTHING. The pizza man arrived. It was all captued on digital camera. My opening the door. Filmmaker poised "Hello, Pizza Man!" Slowly backing up the stairs to get a tracking shot. Capturing this mundane act ("Pizza's here!") for all eternity.
I now feel as if I have to hold up my hands and beg, "Off camera, guys, please. Can I blow my nose off camera?"
I happen to know many a director started out this way. Maybe this is their future. I hear the three of them behind closed doors upstairs, plotting films. There are plans to make a Cujo-esque movie using Fat Dog. They have plot. Actors (a.k.a. Me and Demon Baby).
And as I laugh my way through my afternoons on film now . . . it got me thinking. How did YOU start out, dear readers, planning and plotting your literary (or other) careers? Did Ello set up moot court at her kitchen table? Did Stephen make a map from his bedroom to the bathroom? (And please visit his blog post, 72 Virgins--I publicly declare my love for Stephen here . . . thank you!)
Did you write? I remember notebooks filled with scribblings, and a book about a dysfunctional mouse family living in the New York Public Library that I wrote when I was about 8. The mouse family had very elaborate lives . . . and I think in my little girl mind, I assumed fame and fortune as a writer. However, I also wanted to be a vet. Now I just have a lot of pets, including the soon-to-be Oscar-winning Fat Dog). And no fame and fortune--but my name on more than a few book covers.
So I encourage my budding filmmakers, even if it means I will soon be on YouTube. I'll be sure to invite you to the movie premiere. In the meantime, share. How did you start on your journey to the writer you are today? The person you are today.
Labels: childhood books, movies
posted by Erica Orloff at 7:50 AM
27 Comments:
Reading, reading, reading. I've been addicted to reading for as long as I can remember.
In grade school I decided to write a story of my own. It had only one character, a middle-aged man whose life had gone to shit; he decided to buy a great big pile of life insurance and then do himself.
The plot went like this:
1. There was a man (I even remember his name---Alexander Waring). His life had gone to shit.
2. He bought a great big pile of life insurance.
3. He did himself. I considered this part high drama because Alexander Waring chose to walk into heavy traffic on the freeway. Imagine the movie footage.
My grade school teacher took me aside and told me I needed to work on my originality. I've been in therapy ever since.
Stephen:
Poor Alexander Waring. :-(
And yes, reading, reading, reading.
E
Reading here, too, combined with daydreaming. I didn't write my stories down, but I dreamed great scenarios. Of course, I was always the star. In my longest running one, I flew like Supergirl and I saved people from harm.
I can remember plotting a script for a karate movie when I was about your son's age. I guess that's how I got started with writing, just noodling with story ideas.
Reading, reading, reading here too!
And like my darling Anne (the Green Gables one of course) I kept a very detailed diary for years. I guess that was the beginning, although I didn't know it.
I AM on YouTube, courtesy of my budding film maker and I will NEVER share the link. NEVER! =)
Hi Edie:
I had a really active imaginations as a kid, too. Demon Baby's fantasy life is really rich . . . lots of dragons, monsters . . . last night he said he was going to paint himself silver, climb a ladder and BE the moon for a night.
E
Jude:
I hope my filmmaker takes me as his Oscar date someday.
E
Lainey:
Oh come on! If I share my link, will you share yous?
E
Obsessive reader (some things don't change) and I kept a diary off and on for years. The real point for me was actually in college, the summer before my senior year. My girlfriend (now wife) had graduated and was living at home and working, my roommate took a summer internship and I was working fulltime and living alone, spending my free time hitting the bookstores and video arcades. I chanced across a collection of essays about Stephen King (I think it was titled "Faces of Fear," by other horror novelists, and there was an intro by King called something like "The Making of a Brand Name") and what I took away from it was that a writer wrote. You didn't wait for a degree or annointment by the gods, you sat at the keyboard, wrote something and sent it in to be published.
So I wrote an SF short story and that pretty much hooked me on writing ever since. (The story was "When Red Eyes Blue," and it's about intergalactic war. It sucked, but the idea still holds up after all these years).
Erica:
I found some footage you might not be aware of. Be sure to watch the whole thing (it's only a few seconds).
JUDE!!!!!
LOL!!!!!
How did they get footage from my little guy?
E
Mark:
What a great seminal moment. Yes . . . we aren't appointed. We just ARE,
E
I read a lot and watched a lot of movies. My stories began as mental fanfic. I would daydream and retell the plotlines to myself with a better ending, etc...
I wrote mostly poetry as a child, though.
And my 9 yr old's extra appendage is his camcorder...
I found some footage you might not be aware of.
Damn, Jude! Warn me next time. I have a weak heart.
Not really. But I walked out in the middle of "The Exorcist" because I couldn't take the spinning head.
Heather:
We can go to the Oscars together!
E
Stephen:
I couldn't handle that either.
E
Awwww! They're going to go to Hollywood!
Growing up, I read three books a day like clockwork. At night, I would lie in bed awake until after two in the morning, living in these elaborate worlds. At school, I would stare out the window, living in these worlds (school was tortuously easy). Sometimes I would live in the same world for months and months, and then come back to it for many years.
I never thought to write them down, until one time an erotica site I enjoyed had a writing contest. I'd been living in an imaginary world that fit it, so I wrote it down. It was FUN! I would play with one sentence for literally an hour, testing how different words changed the meaning ever so slightly.
I had such a blast. I don't play with words like that anymore, but I do play with structure and story and characters.
Anyway, when I finished a story, the most bizarre thing happened: I could fall asleep, right away, peacefully. I don't have four hour imagining sessions staring at the ceiling in bed anymore, which I'm actually grateful for. I write them down, and I can sleep.
Weirdly, my love for writing seems to grow every day. It's getting ridiculous.
LOL, on the Jude link! What a way to wake up in the morning! Scared the bejesus outta me. And your kiddies sound adorable, Erica, camera and all.
Growing up I read, read, read, and watched those amazing old movies with my mom. She was in theater too, so a script was always lying around. While memorizing lines, whenever I got a little part, I was more intriqued with the sentences preceding and following the dialogue. The mood-setting lines, and scenery changes, motivation, etc. It was like a whole other world, one the audience couldn't see, but the actors had to convey. I was hooked into anything STORY.
Hi Spy;
Wow . . . what a neat story! I think that's amazing . . . I'm very similar as far as sleep. If I am in a "stuck" part of a book OR a really exciting part . . . I find my brain can't rest until it's resolved a bit and written down.
E
ladonna:
I always just enjoyed moves for movies sake--until I got more into writing. Now, I find it hard to NOT notice the dialogue's "tricks"--the way a single sentence can reveal all I need for a character's back story. What I used to think was so organic and natural, I realize now is the brilliance of script.
E
OMG I remember the video phase.... luckily it didn't last too long!!!
I didn't write when I was young, just read loads and loads!
I was a voracious reader from a very early age. However, I didn’t particularly like fiction…especially the stuff the penguins made us read for English. I was into military history. I always liked writing.
While stationed in Germany in the 80’s a mutual friend of Stephen and I hooked me up with Jerry Pournelle. And then I was hooked. I then started looking for science fiction with a military theme and fantasy. I’ve been a big fantasy fan, particularly High Fantasy ever since.
I started writing fantasy because I didn’t want government interference in my writing since I was still on active duty (which would have been the case if I chose military topics). I might have otherwise taken the path of guys like Harold Coyle and written military fiction.
Glad you guys enjoyed the little video. Of course, that's just an actor playing the part. We all know where the REAL Demon Baby is.
A writing lesson can be learned from that video too, I think--the technique of lulling readers into a sense of utter benign normalcy, and then...BLAMMO! Hitting them with a shocker.
Sara:
I will console myself that my film career will be short.
E
Hi JLK:
I used to read fantasy in my teens . . . loved all of Tolkein's books.
E
Gosh, how did I miss this post? I was a very argumentative and opinionated child and only got worse as I grew older. I believed I had the right to argue for whatever I believed in. But I always enjoyed writing, all my life.
ello:
Seems the universe paid you back with Angus. ;-)
E
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