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So of course I'm hit with a sore throat two days before my brother's wedding. And I still haven't written by best man speech yet. Of course.
The Blue Angels are flying overhead, and my mother is standing outside oohing and aahing over them like a five year old boy. Why am I so curmudgeonly that I'm uncomfortable with her doing this? Ok, granted, I just saw one and yeah, they are pretty damn cool. Your tax dollars at work! And she keeps going on about how these pilots have "balls of steel" and are "real men." To which I, sitting at my brother's fiancee's laptop reading LJ, can only respond, "Thanks mom."
My brother's soon-to-be mother-in-law is an awesome woman. Virginia is brilliant, funny, and, if I may say so, a total MILF. She's also a film director, and has won an Emmy and two Tellys (for what, I couldn't say). And she told me that she really wants me to send her a script. For something, anything. So now I'm plotting what the hell script to send her, or rather, which script I should actually write.
There's the movie of Bub and Johnny Go, but I dunno... aside from the potential budget of the thing, I don't know if there'd ever be a market for the story of a swinger and his zombie. There's the Tammy play I was writing, which by all accounts from those who've read it actually was very good (all the more reason I'm too scared to try to finish it as of yet). And then, there's the maybe more obvious one. The Hefner Monologues. A movie of The Hefner Monologues? You bet I was pondering that one all last evening.
The fundamental problem with the Hefner Monologues has always been that they've been little more than amusing anecdotes. If they've ever achieved the status of full-fledged stories, I still don't think there's been enough depth in them that a person can take anything away from it. This is the fundamental reason why I never submitted any of them to This American Life on NPR, because as entertaining as they are (or at least, as much as I *hope* they are, otherwise I wouldn't want to tell them) they lack a certain... theme? Universality? Depth? Maybe I'm wrong, maybe you guys can correct me, but that's how they've always felt to me. That's why I've been hesitant to do the whole one-man-show thing; sure it'd be fun, but what's the point?
And that's what I think the Hefner Monologues movie or comic could explore. Not simply the fact that I tell these stories, but it should really explore the ideas of why I tell them. To vent? To put my pain and confusion into my own hands so I can better deal with it on my terms? To give myself some idea of control over all the things I couldn't? To villainize the causers of my pain and to bring people onto my side? Because there have been times, several times, when these stories have led to conflict and to hurt. There is a certain responsibility with these stories that I sometimes feel like I am breaking, for the sake of either entertainment or my own catharsis.
Where the hell am I going with this? Hell, I'm just being sicky stream-of-consciousness again. Let's go back outside and look at the pretty planes! Yvan eht nioj, yvan eht nioj... (ok, ok, so it's the air force not the navy, sue me).
The Blue Angels are flying overhead, and my mother is standing outside oohing and aahing over them like a five year old boy. Why am I so curmudgeonly that I'm uncomfortable with her doing this? Ok, granted, I just saw one and yeah, they are pretty damn cool. Your tax dollars at work! And she keeps going on about how these pilots have "balls of steel" and are "real men." To which I, sitting at my brother's fiancee's laptop reading LJ, can only respond, "Thanks mom."
My brother's soon-to-be mother-in-law is an awesome woman. Virginia is brilliant, funny, and, if I may say so, a total MILF. She's also a film director, and has won an Emmy and two Tellys (for what, I couldn't say). And she told me that she really wants me to send her a script. For something, anything. So now I'm plotting what the hell script to send her, or rather, which script I should actually write.
There's the movie of Bub and Johnny Go, but I dunno... aside from the potential budget of the thing, I don't know if there'd ever be a market for the story of a swinger and his zombie. There's the Tammy play I was writing, which by all accounts from those who've read it actually was very good (all the more reason I'm too scared to try to finish it as of yet). And then, there's the maybe more obvious one. The Hefner Monologues. A movie of The Hefner Monologues? You bet I was pondering that one all last evening.
The fundamental problem with the Hefner Monologues has always been that they've been little more than amusing anecdotes. If they've ever achieved the status of full-fledged stories, I still don't think there's been enough depth in them that a person can take anything away from it. This is the fundamental reason why I never submitted any of them to This American Life on NPR, because as entertaining as they are (or at least, as much as I *hope* they are, otherwise I wouldn't want to tell them) they lack a certain... theme? Universality? Depth? Maybe I'm wrong, maybe you guys can correct me, but that's how they've always felt to me. That's why I've been hesitant to do the whole one-man-show thing; sure it'd be fun, but what's the point?
And that's what I think the Hefner Monologues movie or comic could explore. Not simply the fact that I tell these stories, but it should really explore the ideas of why I tell them. To vent? To put my pain and confusion into my own hands so I can better deal with it on my terms? To give myself some idea of control over all the things I couldn't? To villainize the causers of my pain and to bring people onto my side? Because there have been times, several times, when these stories have led to conflict and to hurt. There is a certain responsibility with these stories that I sometimes feel like I am breaking, for the sake of either entertainment or my own catharsis.
Where the hell am I going with this? Hell, I'm just being sicky stream-of-consciousness again. Let's go back outside and look at the pretty planes! Yvan eht nioj, yvan eht nioj... (ok, ok, so it's the air force not the navy, sue me).
