no devil lived on

Verbal Diarrhea

It's amazing that for the first time in a long time, I feel like I'm making progress. For better or for worse, I'm going to try and make a career in film or TV work out for me. Over the past few weeks, I've sort of devoted myself to expanding my knowledge of film, and it's working. I'm starting to make some connections both from standpoint as a writer and storyteller, but also as a student of film. I'm starting to see patterns in the types of films I like to watch: Tarantino, Ritchie, Hitchcock, Leone, Romero, Carpenter ... even Lucas were all inspired stylistically with the pulp novels and comics - the serials of the early 20th century.

Lovecraft and Hammet, Black Mask and Weird Tales, all of the pulp writers of this era draw influence from other writers, particularly Twain, Poe, Fitzgerald and Hemingway. The former two popularized and legitimized American short stories, the latter were the pinnacle of style of that time span. Kurosawa, and Leone both adapted a Dashiel Hammet novel, Red Harvest, into the respective films: Yojimbo, and A Fistful of Dollars. In 1996, Walter Hill also adapted the same story for his ultraviolent, bullet-riddled Last Man Standing. George Romero and Sam Raimi draw heavy influence from horror writers like H.P. Lovecraft, in fact Raimi borrows directly from Lovecraft's literary invention, the Necronomicon, in his first two films: Evil Dead I and II.

My point to all of this is that I'm seeing the connections in my head. I'm seeing where all of the people who have inspired me are drawing their influences from, and where they drew theirs from. So now, the path almost seems laid out in front of me. For me, I treat learning about film and writing like some people treat learning to play the guitar: you have your influences, and that directly influences you, but it's also very good to be familiar with who influenced the people that influenced them. To put it into a philosophical context, "If you want to know where you're going, you have to know where you've been." It seems to add more depth to your style, and I feel that it gives you a foundation to build on as an artist.

That's the reason why I like History, it gives you reference points. It lets you know (usually in an indirect manner) how you got to be where you are and why the world is like it is today. As opposed to human history, sociology and political science, it's much easier to track down the history of motion picture because it's only been in existence for a little over a century. Not only that, but the progression of motion pictures is extremely well documented. As of now, I'm trying to track down my roots in motion picture history. I'm tracing through the lineage of my favorite directors, and hopefully discovering new ones, adding to my knowledge and understanding.

Now this may sound like a modern cliche, but I really have Tarantino to thank for this recent surge of creativity and desire. The boat loads of extras on Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction scream to me, "Here, this is where I started. I hope this helps." Well it does ... for me, anyhow. At this point I'm trying to prepare myself to do what I have to do to make it a part of my life. I'll be happy even if I never make a penny off of my work.

That's a lot of crap, but I needed to get that out. Sometimes just thinking about it isn't enough.

In other news I recently found out that on of my friends from high school is an extra and grip on a zombie movie that's being filmed in Orlando. Apparently, there's a good chance of Lions Gate Films distributing the flick because I think they were planning on going straight to video. I hope that the film gets distributed, that would be a good thing for Andy.

posted by bumbletbw @ 4:11 PM