Friday, January 06, 2006

I am frightened I’m a liar and I’m tortured by desire

Pam writes in her Blend that:
There are so many dreadful lesbian films out there -- some that I've seen at the Gay and Lesbian film festival have been laughably bad


And here I am with a script for a lesbian-themed romantic comedy that, damnit, I think is pretty wonderful if I do say so myself. And I don't know how to sell it. I don't even know if I want to, even though-literally-my first image of Keitha & Colley ever was to see them on a big screen.

But the process it takes to get them there means they would have to pass through so many hands. If just one person gets it wrong, say, oh I don't know, an amateur director or diva actor...

Having made it through Tennessee (but not unchanged)...I don't want to know how it would make me feel to see someone hurt these characters/this story. Aw, screw it, I don't even know why I'm blogging about this...except that I've been having a real bad week in terms of shaken confidence. Confidence that my script is any good or that even if it is, I'll be able to sell it.

I am frightened I'm a liar, that it's not, that I'm not, as good as I think it is/I am. And I'm tortured by desire because all I want to do is get these characters and their relationships and their story out of my head and into other people's.

The frustration between the two sometimes feels like it's grinding me to dust.

6 comments:

Ben Varkentine said...

Not really, but there are actors I've seen after the fact who I could see playing them.

Julia said...

The frustration between the two sometimes feels like it's grinding me to dust.

The grinding is refinement. From that come great creations.

Old chestnut, but appropos: A diamond is a lump of coal that with stood the pressure.

Anonymous said...

Writing is love. You love your characters. Fear of having them hurt is pretty normal.

And while I agree with Pam that a lot of lesbian flicks are horrible, there's always Kissing Jessica Stein as a role model. :)

Ben Varkentine said...

"there's always Kissing Jessica Stein as a role model."

It's funny you say that, actually.

http://varkentine.blogspot.com/2005/07/kissing-jessica-stein.html

http://varkentine.blogspot.com/2005/08/stop-kiss.html

Anonymous said...

It's interesting that you don't love JKS. To each his own; I absolutely adore it. One thing you said was this:

I have no particular interest in seeing (or writing) stories about women who are neurotic about being gay

Which, to me, is not this movie. Jessica is neurotic about being loved, and neurotic about being straight. Ultimately, she's willing to forego her orientation for the sake of love, but Helen is not.

Helen, in the course of the movie, comes out, and is decidedly NOT neurotic about it. And the gay couple who are Helen's friends are also not neurotic about it.

Anyway. It's one of my favorite movies. If you want a better lesbian movie role model, maybe Better Than Chocolate lifts your socks.

Ben Varkentine said...

The movie still (for me) wastes much too much time on the title characters neurosis.

It's one of those films that ends just at the point where it's becoming interesting.

Actually, if you took all the things that are covered in montages in KJS and make them what the movie's about, and vice-versa, you might have a movie I would have liked a lot better.

I do like Better Than Chocolate, except for a couple of things. Mainly the way the main couple seem to go from first meeting and initial attraction to undying love really, really quickly.

Partly as a reaction against that, at the beginning of my story (in all of its forms), I establish at the start that the couple has been together a few months.