11:32 a.m. - 2011-11-12
Dreams that provoke laughs when spoken aloud
Ah it has been a while since I came here to write anything.
I looked back at my last entry, it was about 9 months ago, while I was just starting my 2nd month at the advertising agency as a copywriter and finding the late hours tiring and feeling trapped.
Now, 9 months later, I'm taking a break, something which sounds obscene and which I sometimes feel embarrassed to tell my working friends.
What are you going to do with your time? They would ask. To some, I would say I'm just taking a break, as if I had just returned from a war. To some, I would hesitatingly reveal that I'm trying to write a script.
The thing is, I'm not sure I would ever finish it. Like most of the things I've started. Or some.
I would be more positive with you, but that's me. Eeyore. Haha.
Ok anyway, yeah i sort of wrote a rough plot breakdown of this story i was thinking of, it was on my mind when Xai mentioned to me in 2008 or 9 about villagers who loved cows.
Haha, okay not in the way you were thinking. They love cows rather, as in the vilage, having a cow is like a status symbol, so the villagers would save their money to buy a cow, and then use it for farming, for racing during some festivals (perhaps to do with fertility, i speculate), and to give away as dowry for marriages.
So i was thinking, what if a family's cow got abducted by aliens, yeah aliens, stay with me here, and then this young boy about 9 years old decides to go after those aliens to get his cow back.
Sort of a coming-of-age, Stand By Me, village boy versus powerful aliens kind of story.
After going to the community centre to write a bit, because I had writer's block and all kinds of lazy symptoms, reading the newspapers in the reading room before I start was one of them, it took me quite some weeks before i got to the plotting stage.
I've sort of worked out the major plot points but still feel unsatisfied and scared to start on it.
I don't know if this should be the first script i want to write. I don't know if the plot is original and surprising. I don't know if there's any character growth in the kid, because i didn't give him any hangups, like cowardice or low confidence or fear or something that he can improve later in the story.
The plot felt like a series of events that happens.
Then i had another idea... maybe it could be like Seven Samurais, where the boy rallies the whole village to fight against the aliens. Will this work? Similar to Cowboys & Aliens?
Then i started thinking again, what makes any story original?
I watched, You Are The Apple Of My Eye, by Giddens Ko, a love story about his high school days when he and a group of friends all liked this girl in class. It was creatively scripted, nicely shot and beautifully acted.
(To know Giddens Ko, you click here for a wsj article.)
While watching it, it didn't feel like a first love kind of show, more like a paean to youth and those bygone days of growing up. Or maybe all first love kind of stories are a combination of that.
About love stories, there are so many kinds. I used to think there were all the same: Boy meets Girl. Boy falls in love. Boy chases Girl. They fall in love. Get together in the end. Happily ever after.
But now i realise, there are so many love stories. When Harry Met Sally, Ice Kachang Love, He's not that into you, 50 First Dates, The Wedding Singer, etc. I feel so ignorant.
Anyway, the thing that started me writing again here, is reading in the Chinese papers that Giddens Ko wrote 5000 words every day. That was his discipline.
And what he wrote on his blog about his movie:
有一个人说：�说出来会被嘲笑的梦想，才有实践的价值，即使跌倒了，姿势也会非常豪迈。�这个人，偏偏就是我自己。
Someone once said, "It's the dreams that provoke laughs when said aloud, that are worthy of pursuing; even when you fall, that falling pose looks heroic." And this someone, happens to be me.
I think that's a very thoughtful statement. And funny too, the added sentence behind it.
So anyway, that's just what I wanted to say today. See you around.
Oops, forgot to answer, what makes any story original?
The answer is damm hard la. i could say an apple is an apple, many people have painted apples, but the one you paint is yours. Something koan like that. Or just go and do it, maybe the answer is in there somewhere.
