Life is for living, dammit

Some people have been a tad surprised at me putting it out there yesterday.  In reply, I'd just like to make a couple of points (bad language may follow):

1.  IF I had followed "advice" given to me, I wouldn't have entered Miss Waikato, and gained 2nd Runner-up;

2.  IF I had listened to those who were snarky and said I couldn't do it, I wouldn't have moved overseas and started my degree, and in turn finished the whole thing six months early;

3.  IF I had followed "advice" given to me, I wouldn't have become the leading female luxury car sales person in Australasia;

4.  IF I had listened to all the negative people in whom I'd confided my plans and dreams, there's a whole stack of other things I wouldn't have achieved (of which I am damn proud).

In The Muppet Movie, Fozzy said "turn left at the fork in the road", and I guess that's what I've always done.  I haven't gone with whats perceived to be "right", I've chosen various challenges because, well...they were mine to choose and for one reason or another they appealed to me.

Life is for living and I truly believe that deep down inside YOU alone know what is right for YOU.  The next time someone tells you that what you want to do is the stupidest thing they've ever heard or that you won't succeed, don't listen, ok?   You'll never know whether or not you could have achieved it, if you haven't given it a whirl. 

Oh, by the way...this doesn't go for people who attempt things half-heartedly.  You've gotta give it all you've got.  Work harder than anyone else you know, especially if you're in a competitive situation.  Prove those fuckers wrong. 

Imagine being on your deathbed with a "I wish I'd done such and such" list so long, that you died before you could remember everything on it?  How annoying would that be? ;-)  I, for one, will not die wishing that I'd given something a whirl.

Oh, and by the way...maybe if I was to re-write the above list in another five years time, my fifth point would look something like this:

5.  IF I had listened to all those who were snarky and said my script would never amount to anything, I wouldn't have won an Oscar.

"Out damn script, out I say!"

A picture speaks a thousand words, right?  One single photograph in a Cleo magazine captured my heart and imagination when I was at high school, and has gone on to speak tens of thousands of words to me since that time.

The image was of a girl wearing an Arran sweater and sitting amongst beautiful tussock-like beach grass.  She had her back to the camera, was hugging her knees and her stunning long brown hair was windswept.  The photo was part of a series of winter wear, and other images showed her with her boyfriend and other friends.  Everyone at school bought a copy of that magazine, and we all cut out THE picture and hung it on our bedroom walls.  Eventually the picture must have made way for something a bit more "mature", and it was lost.

During my teenage angst, I'd gaze at that photo for hours and wish I was that girl (either literally her or who she was representing).  And after hours of gazing, a story began to form in my mind, a story so compelling to me about why she was on that beach, who she was, and who she was pining for, that I HAD to write it down. 

The words tumbled easily through the end of my biro and began to fill up an exercise book.  I also wrote notes on other scraps of paper and soon had a scrapbook full to the brim that needed to be molded into a novel.  A family friend gave me an old laptop just before I finished university and I started to type the novel into Microsoft word.

Uh oh. This is where the problem began.  For some strange reason when I was no longer handwriting my story, I began to see camera angles.  I could hear music in my head and I could see more than clothes, they were costumes; ends of sentences became ends of scenes. 

The opening scene became apparent, and so real that I could literally feel the icy grass crunching beneath my feet as the mist swirled around the group of people I was with.  The titles, the music...everything...this was no longer a novel, it wanted to be a screenplay.

Damn.  I tried to ignore the screenplay issue.  But then Matt Damon and Ben Affleck won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for Good Will Hunting.  At that moment, the dream could not be denied.  My story born from a picture in a teenage magazine, which had developed through novel form and was morphing into a screenplay now had a goal.  An Oscar.  I needed to win for me, for all the heartbroken, forlorn and angsty teenagers, and for my country New Zealand.

The next step was to research screenplay layout, and I painstakingly "tabbed" for all I was worth to put in dialogue, scene changes and action into Microsoft word.  Courier New 12pt became my best friend.

What next?  Acting class, of course.  I successfully enrolled in Michael Saccente's Meisner class in Auckland.  The two year course was brilliant, and I devoured every script that I was presented with and learnt more about script construction and indeed me, than at any other time during my life.  If you don't know about the Meisner technique, Google it.  Fascinating and extraordinary.

Then I discovered the script formatting software "Final Draft".  The order arrived from the Writers Store in Los Angeles within a week, and tabbing became a thing of the past.  Final Draft is so damn clever!  It can almost anticipate who is going to speak next and where the scene is set.  Best of all, you can assign voices to your characters and have your script read back so you can ascertain the flow of language and check that conversations actually sound like conversations in real life.

Unfortunately, without the pleasure of being able to write full-time, boring stuff like work and study has inevitably held up the final push needed to complete the script.  But, two weeks ago a competition was launched, and now I have that final kick in the pants that I need.  I'm entering the script into http://www.makemymovie.co.nz/

A requirement of entry is to produce a movie poster.  A dear friend was happy to become my "star" on the poster, and via facebook, I was put in touch with an incredibly talented young photographer who leapt at the chance to be involved.  We were supposed to shoot the poster yesterday, but the weather wasn't playing nicely.  Hopefully, we'll get it shot next weekend, and then my entry will be complete.

I’ll let you know when the entry has been loaded, then if you like the idea, I’d be thrilled to receive your vote so I make it into the next round of judging.

If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be, right?  And maybe, just maybe this story will stop gnawing at my soul, and begin to stir other people's souls as they watch the tale unfold on the silver screen. Just maybe.

9/12

Perhaps if I dug around in the shoeboxes in the spare wardrobe, I'd find my 2001 diary and be able to tell you what I did on the 11th of September.  However, not knowing is almost a blessing.  

On our side of the international date line, it was probably just ordinary day, nothing too memorable.  I would have gone to work, raced home, had a quick dinner then being a Tuesday, attended my Meisner class in the evening.  Like I said, just another day.

However while I slept, terrorists without warning, bent the world over and dealt to the whole entire planet.  Not once, but four horrific times.

On the morning of the 12th of September, I didn't turn on the tv to watch the breakfast news.  My mobile phone was on silent, and I didn't have a landline in my little apartment.  I just puddled around getting ready for work oblivious to the carnage caused in the outside world.  Just as I was about to race out the door, I flicked on the tv to check the weather forecast.

Cue HORROR. I sat aghast on the couch, not believing what I was watching. I grabbed my mobile from my bag and saw a myriad of missed calls.  My mum, my sister, other family members, my best friends, my colleagues...everyone.

I remember nearly every detail of the remainder of the day.  The Auckland Home Show had finished a week or so beforehand, I was scheduled to follow up some prospects. 

On this particular day, the owners of a business were fairly sure that cash was being stolen and they wanted me to quote on covert cameras to watch over the cash register.  From our perspective, the job was a simple one and I just needed to complete the quote in order to get a tech in there to wire up the job.

I drove to the business in question.  It was in an industrial area and looked like any other business.  Oh, did I mention that it was a brothel?  Sorry, I mean "a Gentlemens Club" (you say tomato...).

I waited in the library for the proprietor (Miss Scarlett in the Library with the Candlestick).  Through some partially opened sliding doors, I could see the girls painting their toenails, reading the Herald and of course watching CNN.  I literally had to pull myself together in order to feign interest in the job I was quoting.

I'm not sure if the owner (a very smart young business woman) was trying to put me at ease or what, but she proceeded to take me on a tour of three of their four theme rooms - an aquarium room (thank god Goldfish only have a 10-second memory span), a grotto with the bed built into a cave and a jail complete with bars and handcuffs.  The fourth room was occupied (at 9.30am so I couldn't be shown through that one). From memory, it was African themed. Rawr.

Every time we passed the lounge with the partially opened doors, I was torn between looking at the girls and staring at the big blaring tv.   

Eventually, I had all the info I needed, and went out to lunch in a restaurant where again the tv was blaring.  I ordered a Caesar Salad, and didn't even start it.

Elvis, Diana, Michael Jackson - I know where I was and what I was doing on hearing of their passing.  Those stories are fairly vanilla.  But jeepers, where was I during 9/11 (US time)?  That story is far from vanilla, and not one I generally share when people are playing "remember when".

I can't really say to people "Oh, 9/11? I was at a Gentlemens Club in Auckland being thankful that the African-themed room had sound-proofing".

Some words just plain suck

Want to wind me up?  Use one of the following words or phrases:

• Amazeballs
• Awesomesauce
• Much
• My Bad
• Nom
• Not 
• Shitballs

I’d never seen “awesomesauce” or “amazeballs” before joining twitter.  The only prefixes that should be attached to the word “balls” should be sports related – soccer, rugby and so on.

Sentences that end in "much" or "not" show a complete lack of ability to write humorously.  Sarcasm isn’t even a tiny bit funny. It’s pathetic, weak and totally unoriginal.   Where the hell did “much” come from anyway?  “Not” was bad enough. 

By the way, have you ever thought about the word much – how it sounds, how it feels to say it? Much is actually a ghastly sounding word. Even the f-word isn’t as hideous to say or hear as much. Much is so fleshy and salivary to pronounce. In fact, it’s down right creepy. Much. Much. Much.

As for “my bad”...that drives me INSANE.  My bad is an appalling phrase that needs to be given the old heave-ho. Shame on all the script writers who have included it in their scripts. Shame on you.  Bad script writers. Go to the naughty corner.  Hearing it spoken on television and in movies just increases the desire of the masses to use it more.  Then, the more I hear it, the more I want to hunt down the little idiot who coined the phrase in the first place and string him up by his goolies.

But the one that grates on my nerves more than any of the others is “nom”.  Adults using “nom” to describe something appetising or to inform others that they’re masticating while tweeting is horrific.

Nom. What the hell are you? Three?  I feel embarrassed whenever I see it. Seriously embarrassed.  Surely rattling around in your vocabulary somewhere is a word better than nom. Look for it.

I was going to sign off with something witty that used all the words and phrases initially listed, but just couldn’t bring myself to do it.