Steve's Workshop: Day 2

We went over a bunch more scripts. I guess it comes from experience and education, but it's amazing how Steve can take any script and say "fix this, this, and this" and it's automatically better. Even a few scripts where I thought to myself, "this is a little bit of a cliched student film," Steve was able to give the exact right advice to make it better. In Jack's script, he actually called for a bus blowing up, and obviously that's unfilmable, so Steve suggested that he illustrate the character's hostility in a different way, so he would be able to film it. And I suppose that's what a professional artist of any discipline should be able to do: point out what doesn't work and suggest ways to fix it in order to make the art better. I can't wait till I'm able to do that with songwriting, or improvising.

I only have one session left, since I won't be here on Tuesday, so hopefully we'll have time to go over the script for Children's Theatre. Then we can get a jump on it as soon as possible, since the play is over.

Steve's Workshop

Workshop day 2. We did cold reads of four people's scripts, which were, for the most part, successful. Steve wanted the scripts to have that sense of not directly saying or illustrating what you are trying to say...just letting the audience figure it out. Nearly all of the scripts we hashed through succeeded in this.

In my humble experience, it seems to be a recurrent theme of student films to try too hard to be overly clever or make a joke just for the sake of doing so. It was so refreshing to hear dialogue that was necessary and legitimately whimsical. Once again, to make a connection to other disciplines of art, I find this to be true in songwriting. I heard a song today called "Butterly" by Jason Mraz...ugh...that was just uninteresting and cliched because, rather than writing lyrics that were suggestive but still left room for the listener to figure things out, he wrote foolish, trying-too-hard-to-be-clever lines like "I'm taking a moment, just imagining that I'm dancing with you. You're the pole and all you're wearing is your shoes"...why don't you just sing, "I want to have sex with you. I really want to have sex with you"..it would fulfill the same level of interest. The same goes for a film; we never see much violence in Kontroll, but we know it has happened. We never see Laci slit a man's throat, but we know he did, and that's what's important. Even take Psycho-supposedly one of the scariest movie scenes in history, but we never even see the girl in the shower get stabbed. Brilliant.

I am fortunate to be in STAC, in a group of more advanced artists who won't make generic student films. I am also fortunate that we have the limitations of time, location, budget, cast, resources, etc. because limitations are what makes art good. If you can have everything you want, then you can make episodes 1, 2 and 3, of Star Wars instead of episodes 4, 5, and 6...which ones are better?

On a sidenote: I hoped to be working on the children's theatre script with Steve. Will that be possible at all in this workshop or should Cassie and I just talk to him outside of it?

Kontroll...again

Luke, you were right; the more I learn about Kontroll, the harder it is for me to talk about it. After seeing it a second time, I'm finding it harder to wrap my mind around it. The setting of Kontroll is a world that combines and crosses boundaries between reality and fantasy, and it is hard for any human being to just go ahead and accept the fact that this movie is a blur; not everything is real, but not everything is an imaginary impossibility. And rightfully so; we live in a world where we, for the most part, know what is possible and what is not, so giving that up and living in an ambiguous fucked up "reality" for 105 minutes isn't easy at first.

Maybe Kontroll is so hard to talk about because Nimrod Antal has exposed a side of us that we don't really like to think about: the darker side, the troubled side, the side that maybe pushes innocent people in front of trains. I like that Bulcsú can both be the killer and not be the killer. If he is, then that shows just what a negative environment or a negative situation can do to a humans; it can break them. If he isn't, then there's the hope we're looking for, that there's some good in all of us, even though there's some evil too. We all have this moral conflict. We just don't want to admit it because it makes us look "bad" or "vulnerable." Should I do the right thing or the thing that makes me happy and gives me catharsis? Should I look out for others or take my needs as the most important?

Bulcsú isn't your typical underdog hero. He is more like the ancient Greek definition of a tragic hero. He is flawed, seemingly doomed to an unavoidable fate, forced to suffer, and is faced with a serious decision. He is not entirely a tragic hero because he doesn't die in the end, but perhaps the bitter, evil part of him does when he finally ascends out of the metro and into the next phase of his life.

Kontroll

I have not been able to stop thinking about Kontroll since I saw it. It's been built up in my mind for the four years I've been in STAC, and it was certainly worth the wait. Why is Kontroll such an incredible film? Sure, it won 17 awards, the cast is fantastic, the cinematography is stunning, the subject matter is unique, and the whole thing in general is funny, sad, and dark all at the same time. But it must be the combination of every amazing element that makes Kontroll one of those movies that just won't leave you alone. I've done a bit of research and read plenty of interviews with Nimrod Antal since I saw the film, and it's interesting how the more I find out, the more questions I have.

I can't even settle on whether or not I think Bulcsú is the killer. On one hand, I think it would make complete sense that the killer is a dark part of Bulcsú deep in his subconscious that hates his job so much that he ends up killing innocent passengers who never give him the respect he deserves. On the other hand, I think that conclusion might be too obvious, too predictable, too generic, and I don't think Nimrod Antal is the kind of director who would go for the obvious choice. In fact, he most probably wants us to tear our minds apart over whether or not Bulcsú is the pusher, only to never give us a definite answer. In one interview, Antal said he doesn't necessarily consider himself an artist, but for all intents and purposes, I'll consider him one. Like most artists, perhaps he wants us to wonder if there is a little bit of evil in ourselves. Roland Barthes once said, "Literature is the question minus the answer." Perhaps film is too.

This movie also has a killer soundtrack. Music can make or break a movie. For example, Watchmen was a mediocre movie, made even worse by a terrible soundtrack, full of songs that were neither good individually nor as a whole. The movie could have been made better if the soundtrack included music appropriate to the time it was set in, and especially music appropriate to the moods of individual scenes (No one should ever use "Hallelujah" for a sex scene). But I digress. The distinct sound of the band "Neo" perfectly suited chase scenes, murder scenes, comical scenes, and love scenes with their ominous, ambiguous, and one-of-a-kind style.

Now that I've seen Kontroll, all I want to do is watch Kontroll and talk about Kontroll. Basically, I want to live, breath, sleep, and eat Kontroll. I can't wait to watch it again and unravel more of the mystery. I dread the day any American tries to do a remake of it!