Dispatch From The Quest: Waka Brown
Over the course of the 24 weeks I am working with the writers in The Quest, each will write a weekly dispatch to share with the GITS community. There are several reasons for doing this, the main one educational: Hopefully you will learn something of value for your own understanding of the craft from the experiences of the Questers. I should also add they are a great group of people, so I expect you will enjoy getting to know them.
Today: Waka details some movies she loves:
Our assignment this week was describing our 10 plot points. Because of our extensive prep, this came together pretty easily. In this past week’s teleconference, Scott mentioned to us that there’d be only two more weeks of dispatches, and then we concentrate completely on pages. I’ve been thinking about what to write — and I thought at this close-to-jumping-off point, I’d write about what motivates me, i.e. movies I’ve loved.
When I was little, my dad would take us to movies. Sometimes age-inappropriate (Jaws), sometimes a little over our heads (Chariots of Fire), sometimes scary (trash-compactor scene in Star Wars). As a parent, I realize now that my dad probably wanted to see these movies himself and that it’s pretty easy to babysit kids at a movie theater (especially a kid like me who went slack-jawed and didn’t blink once a movie started). I remember these movies so much better than a lot of material I read when I was a kid. For instance, I’ve been re-reading the Narnia Chronicles to my boys and honestly I have NO recollection of anything that’s happened in about half of them. The best movies, though, have stayed with me. Although I didn’t understand everything that was going on in Chariots of Fire, after watching it as a kid, I was sure that I was going to become an Olympic runner. I even woke up at 6 AM for several weeks to train by running around the neighborhood — pretty amazing that a movie could have that kind of effect on an 8 year-old. After watching Breakfast Club during my tween/early teen years, I wrote in my diary about how much this movie “got” what I was feeling. My friends in high school thought I was a little odd when I told them I had a crush on Tommy Lee Jones (based on his performance in The Fugitive). That speech, “What I want out of each and every one of you is a hard-target search of every gas station, residence, warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse and doghouse in that area…Your fugitive’s name is Dr. Richard Kimble. Go get him.” Forget Harrison Ford — at that time of my life, it was all about Tommy Lee Jones.
Before Sunrise, Lost in Translation, Hoosiers, Dead Poets Society, Shawshank Redemption — these were the types of films I’d watch and take a breath only when they were over. When Harry Met Sally, Say Anything, Almost Famous, Clueless, Four Weddings and a Funeral, American Beauty, The Descendants, Jerry Maguire — they completed me. There are some in my list of favorites that are a little more obscure. Take, for instance, Mystic Pizza. I watch it now, and sure, it makes me cringe a little. But as a teenage girl, I loved that movie. Shakespeare in Love was the one, though, that made me realize, I want to do that.
So, two weeks before FADE IN, I am thinking again about all these movies I love. I’ve been told that Breakfast Club wouldn’t be made if it were pitched today. That the romcom is dead. That Shakespeare in Love and Four Weddings and a Funeral were British productions that would never have been made in the U.S. That working in Hollywood is called “show business” and not “the artists’ colony” for a reason. That being said, I’m still going to write something I love. If at some point my movie is made, and there’s a person in the audience who goes slack-jawed and doesn’t blink for the entirety of the film, and is… changed at the end… well, I think that would be one of the best feelings in world, don’t you?
(I should also mention that my crush on Tommy Lee Jones had waned considerably over the years, and ended quite definitively after watching Hope Springs.)
Some nostalgia may be setting in with the Questers as they only have 1 more week of Dispatches before I ‘release’ them from that obligation to allow them to focus exclusively on pounding out a first draft.
So Waka’s post today offers a great opportunity to reflect on this question: What movies inspire you as a writer?
Tomorrow: Another Dispatch From The Quest.
About Waka: Kansan turned Californian turned Oregonian. Fan of Nat Faxon & Jim Rash, Richard Curtis, Tina Fey (who isn’t?), & I still use a $30 Tracfone @wakatb.
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