Hi, fellow Stage 32's. I'm a hungry screenwriter and self published novelist living in London UK who's been mesmerised by cinema since my days in my native Canada where I discovered classic cinema through a screenings programme run by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation called 'CBC LATENIGHT'. Was anyone else out there similarly inspired? In those days, the long-gone early '80s, local channels also had bulk-bought late night movies to fill the graveyard hours between midnight and 6am and that's largely how I came to love repertory cinema since there was only one actual rep movie theatre in Winnipeg where I grew up. PBS was also a great source of classics and over time I started to more comprehensively research and read about cinema and identify the themes and subjects I loved best. Movies like KING RAT (1965) and SECONDS (1966) and THE VICTORS (1963) for example taught me just how sophisticated and moving a cinematic story can be when directed by a master like Bryan Forbes or Carl Foreman. I'd say a great current example of that same spirit I love from the best of the past is found in the recent KILL YOUR DARLINGS, which I found outstanding in its writing. A scribbler from an equally early age it took me a lot longer though to find my voice both in fiction and screenwriting. Combining an interest in the deranged contemporary reality we collectively inhabit and the only slightly less crazed milieus of the past has been occupying me for the last ten years, when I've been writing novels and scripts adapted from them. I've tackled subjects ranging from a Samarian wizard machinating against the ministry of Jesus Christ to the nefarious adventures of a present day pop star and his evil rock journalist nemesis. With the advent of DTV and online viewing and the like I still like that big-screen cinematic experience, which has always had a certain magic for me. There's an excellent film festival called SCALARAMA.COM that will be happening in London in September where you can discover a lot of obscure or otherwise difficult-to-find movies with an appreciative audience. It's great fun and if you're in London or in one of the cities and towns where the programme is having screenings it's a fun thing. When I came to London in the latter '80s repertory cinemas were plentifu, state subsidised and I spent waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much time hanging around in them and am glad I did, for how it broadened my appreciation of how many interesting ways there are to tell a good story. What's your good story about discovering a movie you prize?
Introduce Yourself : Just a poor boy from Manitoba who has to be chucked out of the cinema just before double feature closing time... by Edward St.Boniface
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Hiya Kathryn, Yes, I was definitely inspired by episodes of X FILES and you might check out the original TWILIGHT ZONE too. Some episodes like A PIANO IN THE HOUSE or EYE OF THE BEHOLDER or especially THE OBSOLETE MAN, and THE HOWLING MAN and THE LATENESS OF THE HOUR and SHADOW PLAY among others, are some of the most memorable television I've ever seen. Of course I was watching at an impressionable age and about 2am, which may have contributed to the otherworldliness, but they've lost none of their scare quality for me on DVD. If you get the chance to visit London I think you'd love it - an incredible concentration of art and culture and politics and finance and that metropolitan buzz you get in a big city. But living in it day to day, such things as finding a decent and quiet place to live can be problematic. I do miss the cheaper good food of Canada and the more spacious apartments and houses I grew up in, and the close proximity of nature in most places. A balance; I guess! Never limit yourself in your writing; if you don't mind my saying. Sometimes finding your own voice is difficult and you need to experiment as widely as possible to test yourself. Often you can surprise yourself. I really started making progress a few years ago when I started to incorporate aspects of my own life and experiences into a contemporary novel I decided to write. I hadn't done this before but it grew into a trilogy! Since I was writing about both myself and things I would have liked to try but never had, and fictionalising all that, it really flowed. Ya write best when angriest - most sincere! Best of luck with it.
Sorry about that Kathryn - didn't know you had cruised the Capital! It sounds like you had a fun time. The music scene here is incredible. I once saw a show by the Jazz and blues composer Roy Ayers and a separate show by the Black-Eyed Peas over the years by chance. I'm not a huge gigger but experiences like that are memorable and one of the reasons I love London so much. I hope you do some more gigs here - please let me know if you do. Canadian solidarity! And yep; writing of whatever kind is a pleasant mania. I never feel so fulfilled as when I'm successfully getting something important to me in a written chapter or anecdote or whatever. I once read an excellent book called THE ART OF DRAMATIC WRITING by Lajos Egri as part of a screenwriting degree I did years ago and really recommend it. A great breakdown of the interplay of character and story and motives which is pretty widely read among screenwriters although it was originally for playwrights. And a lot of Ray Bradbury...
Welcome Edward, great to have you on board. I hope you make lots of great connections and friends here
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(replying to Duncan Whitcombe) Cheers Duncan, it's a terrific site. We scribes need emperors and pharoahs and assorted other powerful patrons to bring our Gilgameshes and Narcissusses and assorted other creepy characters to published and filmed and cybertelepathically broadcast life...
...without wanting to seem tooooooooooooooooooooooooooo excessive or over-emphatic...
Aha! Hail Caesar! Ramses! Ozymandias! Nebuchadnezzar! As long as you gotta line into the movie biz...
True, true, true. Mind you, Ramses did get THE TEN COMMANDMENTS made and strong-armed Yul Bryner into playing him sympathetically. Oh sorry; that was Cecil B. DeMIlle, another sadly departed emperor. Guess I should seek out the Princes Weinstein and Kings Wachowski really...
Brilliant and best of luck! I have yet to even approach the outer gates of Olympia (Weinsteins) or the Death Star (CAA) or the Gates Of Hell (Disney)...
Triple best of luck! The interesting thing about the current crop of superhero movies is how hard good directors like Singer and Nolan work to put contemporary political issues in, modified by the adventure story format. THE DARK KNIGHT and Gravelly-Voiced Batty Guy's battle with Heath Ledger's The Joker was a remarkable dissection of terrorism and government corruption all centred on Gotham City rather than internationally. I was hugely impressed with that, and how X-MEN deals in a coded way with issues of race and class bigotry, just as the comic did nearly thirty years ago now against the strictures of the then-Comic Code. My superheroes all tend to be a bit too doomladen...
Aha! Goddesses are a preoccupation of mine. I informally worship the Great one, the source of all inspiration. You could have Her (I always capitalise) running a gang of nine angry Muses and some hysterical far-seeing Oracles...
Or the mythical Lilith herself, the true First Woman made simultaneously with Adam as his equal. No word of a lie; Lilith got written out of the Christian book of Genesis. She's still in the books of the Torah. Great story, 'cos Adam was a real primordial creep...
It's fascinating, isn't it, how much has been edited out over the centuries. And yet our society is built on Greek principles as well as Christian ones, incorporating the Goddess principle. She's alive and well, just takes on other forms to suit Herself. Including the Christian pantheon. It's funny how where we both come from if you draw attention to that you'll get not just puzzled looks but practically get called a heretic. But it's fascinated me ever since I read a book called 'Ancient Evenings' by Norman Mailer about what ancient Egypt is likely really to have been like; incredibly alien and intensified. I read it first when I was 15 not really comprehending a lot but then after a great deal of intervening reading in the esoteric and occult read it again ten years ago with more understanding. For example you see reminders of the Muses everywhere and even the term 'Museum' recalls them. It first originated I think in Alexandria where the great library and 'Museion' dedicated to them at the university was. So we've still got Hellenism and the Goddess around inspiring us. I'll check out your series - I too have written of the devotions in a screenplay called SIMON MAGUS ISCARIOT - he's not exactly sympathetic but he does his best to get those heathen Christians from undermining the Goddess. Sadly unsuccessfully...