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You Must Be Catching, Bad Bird
Jul. 31st, 2002 12:21 pm
Hi there, all...
So, after reading a friend's post on almost exactly the same subject, I'm about to make one...but probably in a more roundabout, stream-of-consciousness way...because I like doing that or something.
Last night I got incredibly frustrated with the way things are going with me. My writing has stagnated, I seem to be distancing from friends (yeah yeah, I know I know) despite spending a lot more time around them, I feel spiritually stunted (Raven's stopped talking because I stopped listening? Not quite; I had an experience last night that I won't go into just yet.) and most of my projects are met with apathy by a good deal of close friends I mention it to. To be fair, I don't mention many of my projects to anyone, until they're finished...and even then I only talk about them here. Apathy is...the worst thing to experience in people. Ever.
Well, I'm working on an on-line Choose Your Own Adventure story that I'd like to keep hush-hush about; but I'm *very* excited about it, and I have a few good ideas. The problem is, every time I got into a good writing groove this week, I would be kicked off-line by my roommate because he needed to a) build a mutual friend's business website or b) try to figure out what was wrong with his own. The most frustrating thing about this is it's completely understandable reasons to take the connection, and I shouldn't be pissed at my roommate for doing it, but I *am*, and that frustrates me even more because I feel guilty for being such a bastard, but I *really* wanted to work on this story but he needs it for professional reasons and the best I can manage is stupid amateur work and so forth and so on and hencewith...
It kept building and building like that until I spilled my guts to another good friend (man, I'm being vague aren't I?) who slapped me around, injected reality into my veins and took me out to buy Pop Tarts. Thanks, guy. I really appreciated it. :)
Anyway, to get rid of the negative feelings burgeoning up in me I decided two things: one, I need to spend a lot more time alone, to get completely immersed in what I need to do. Two, I would watch Requiem For A Dream.
So I did, and it actually wrecked me even more than the first time I watched it, I think. I sobbed non-stop for the last 30 minutes, and cried more when I went to bed. It's the type of movie where little touches that you notice for the first time make the characters' descent into madness and despair all the more painful. My heart actually broke watching it this time around; noticing things like Sara cleaning out her fridge to near-emptiness in a sped up sequence, or hearing her go on about how she has no food in the house when Harry came over. Seeing Harry take drugs constantly to glaze over the problems he's having to support his frenzied optimism makes his crash back to 'reality' just that much more hard. Seeing Marion screw for money the first time and realizing that it's only the beginning of a downward trend just...breaks you. (Well, that and the fact that the girl from "Labyrinth" is being taken advantage of by the guy from "Pi".) It was all...really, really traumatic this time around. I'm fascinated by the fact that this movie, instead of losing its impact with repeated viewings, just gets harder and harder to watch every time I see it. It's...amazing.
If I had a top five list of movies, it would go something like this:
5. Bamboozled
4. Gone With The Wind
3. Pleasantville
2. Moulin Rouge
1. Requiem For A Dream
I tend to rate movies by sheer emotional impact and inspirational influence...with a healthy bit of nostalgia thrown in. There are quite a few movies that do the trick nearly as well (American Beauty, The Blair Witch Project, Titus, A.I., Warriors of Virtue, Cube), but these films have such a special quality because of their ability to make the human experience seem so...strange, surreal and heartbreaking. They uphold an ideal so purely that everything in relation to them just seems...inevitably believable, but so mind-boggling strange...it makes me wonder how people can do what people do to each other.
It also renews my faith in storytelling, and I want to do it more than ever.
In other news, I got a voice-acting job for a friend's business, and he told me that he would get in touch with the head of NPR about a possible radio job (The time is 9:37 here at KUAF, and it's time for smooth buttered jazz.). I don't know how well either will pan out, but hey, it's something right? Baby steps, Ellie, baby steps...
...and then a friend told me he's being considered for a part in a movie.
I just can't win. <:)
So, after reading a friend's post on almost exactly the same subject, I'm about to make one...but probably in a more roundabout, stream-of-consciousness way...because I like doing that or something.
Last night I got incredibly frustrated with the way things are going with me. My writing has stagnated, I seem to be distancing from friends (yeah yeah, I know I know) despite spending a lot more time around them, I feel spiritually stunted (Raven's stopped talking because I stopped listening? Not quite; I had an experience last night that I won't go into just yet.) and most of my projects are met with apathy by a good deal of close friends I mention it to. To be fair, I don't mention many of my projects to anyone, until they're finished...and even then I only talk about them here. Apathy is...the worst thing to experience in people. Ever.
Well, I'm working on an on-line Choose Your Own Adventure story that I'd like to keep hush-hush about; but I'm *very* excited about it, and I have a few good ideas. The problem is, every time I got into a good writing groove this week, I would be kicked off-line by my roommate because he needed to a) build a mutual friend's business website or b) try to figure out what was wrong with his own. The most frustrating thing about this is it's completely understandable reasons to take the connection, and I shouldn't be pissed at my roommate for doing it, but I *am*, and that frustrates me even more because I feel guilty for being such a bastard, but I *really* wanted to work on this story but he needs it for professional reasons and the best I can manage is stupid amateur work and so forth and so on and hencewith...
It kept building and building like that until I spilled my guts to another good friend (man, I'm being vague aren't I?) who slapped me around, injected reality into my veins and took me out to buy Pop Tarts. Thanks, guy. I really appreciated it. :)
Anyway, to get rid of the negative feelings burgeoning up in me I decided two things: one, I need to spend a lot more time alone, to get completely immersed in what I need to do. Two, I would watch Requiem For A Dream.
So I did, and it actually wrecked me even more than the first time I watched it, I think. I sobbed non-stop for the last 30 minutes, and cried more when I went to bed. It's the type of movie where little touches that you notice for the first time make the characters' descent into madness and despair all the more painful. My heart actually broke watching it this time around; noticing things like Sara cleaning out her fridge to near-emptiness in a sped up sequence, or hearing her go on about how she has no food in the house when Harry came over. Seeing Harry take drugs constantly to glaze over the problems he's having to support his frenzied optimism makes his crash back to 'reality' just that much more hard. Seeing Marion screw for money the first time and realizing that it's only the beginning of a downward trend just...breaks you. (Well, that and the fact that the girl from "Labyrinth" is being taken advantage of by the guy from "Pi".) It was all...really, really traumatic this time around. I'm fascinated by the fact that this movie, instead of losing its impact with repeated viewings, just gets harder and harder to watch every time I see it. It's...amazing.
If I had a top five list of movies, it would go something like this:
5. Bamboozled
4. Gone With The Wind
3. Pleasantville
2. Moulin Rouge
1. Requiem For A Dream
I tend to rate movies by sheer emotional impact and inspirational influence...with a healthy bit of nostalgia thrown in. There are quite a few movies that do the trick nearly as well (American Beauty, The Blair Witch Project, Titus, A.I., Warriors of Virtue, Cube), but these films have such a special quality because of their ability to make the human experience seem so...strange, surreal and heartbreaking. They uphold an ideal so purely that everything in relation to them just seems...inevitably believable, but so mind-boggling strange...it makes me wonder how people can do what people do to each other.
It also renews my faith in storytelling, and I want to do it more than ever.
In other news, I got a voice-acting job for a friend's business, and he told me that he would get in touch with the head of NPR about a possible radio job (The time is 9:37 here at KUAF, and it's time for smooth buttered jazz.). I don't know how well either will pan out, but hey, it's something right? Baby steps, Ellie, baby steps...
...and then a friend told me he's being considered for a part in a movie.
I just can't win. <:)
