Cinematic Superhero

Like any great editor, time can be ruthless.

In August, I finished writing the second draft of my new feature screenplay, Bitter Pills.

Bitter Pills is the story of a small town doctor who begins telling all his healthy patients they are dying of cancer. This news gives them a new perspective on life.

Back in August, I was rather happy with what I had written and felt the script was almost ready to be released into the world.

Having spent most of the first eight months of 2009 distributing The Last New Year (and writing Bitter Pills), in September it was time to get a job and pay some bills. I took a job as a producer on Down2Earth, and put the writing aside for a while.

Last week, I picked up Bitter Pills for the first time in almost three months. Reading it, I was shocked (and somewhat dismayed) over the amount of work which still needs to be done! Far from the polished work I had considered it to be three months ago, I feel it’s now a ‘good’ draft that requires considerable structural changes to get it where it needs to be.

… As the paint dries, the cracks begin to show through.

Stephen King says giving your drafts time to rest is one of the best things you can do as a writer. He suggests pounding out a draft, and then putting it away for at least a few months. The time between drafts allows one to become detached and provides a new perspective on the work.

Of course he’s right. What’s most surprising is my ability to forget this truth over and over again. Every time I finish a draft, I think it’s perfect, or at worst, only a ‘polish’ away from perfect.

Coming back to the work several months later is both daunting and exciting. Daunting because, even after diving back in, tearing the work apart and piecing it back together with laboured precision, there’s a good chance I could find myself in a similar state of mind three months after completing the next draft.

Exciting because, seeing the cracks so clearly now, I know there are ways to make it better.

Despite my feelings last September that Bitter Pills was ready to leave the nest and face the critiques of a harsh, unforgiving world, I never really felt it was as good as I’d initially hoped. Although well structured with strong characters, it wasn’t as remarkably, unbelievably, stupendously compelling as I thought it deserved to be. It wasn’t jumping off the page and grabbing me in a headlock and throwing me on the ground and kicking me in the teeth. It just wasn’t THAT good yet, and I thought, perhaps that’s just its fate. Perhaps it will never be that good…

But, perhaps it will, and with time come new ideas and new hope. I again believe it can and will be an amazing script, an ass-kicking script, and I have an arsenal of ideas about how to take it to the next level.

Now all I need to find is the time to work on it!

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So it’s official, I’m going to Cop15, the United Nations Climate Change Conference taking place from December 7-18 in Copenhagen.

The conference will attract the world’s environment ministers as well as more than 15,000 officials, advisers, diplomats, campaigners and journalists to Denmark. I’m going with Down2Earth to document the Indigenous presence and to explore the many ways in which Indigenous individuals and communities around the world are at the forefront of environmental stewardship, activism and/or education. Our goal is to connect with as many individuals and groups as possible so that we can feature them and their work on our show (and on the web). So, if you know of anyone who’s going, please let me know!

As COP15 approaches I’ll be posting updates as to who we’ll be seeing in Copenhagen and the stories that they’ll be sharing with us.

Caught my friends, Jets Overhead at The Commodore in Vancouver last night. It was the first club show of theirs I’d seen since traveling on tour with them in June, and I gotta say it sounded great! The band’s been tearing it up over the last month, playing in NYC, LA and at Neil Young’s renowned Bridge School Benefit concert in the bay area.

Last night’s show was the first one on a Canadian tour supporting Lights, a 22 year old pop-star who’s known for her intergalactic synth rock tunes, and for incorporating self produced anime into her shows. The animation features her as “Captain Lights,” a space crusader fighting evil forces trying to remove all the music from the universe…

Her music’s not my style, nor really is the animation, but her performance is impressive, as is the persona she’s created for herself. It’s easy to see why she’s drawn such a fan base, and it of course reaffirms what all the media gurus are saying about attracting an audience: create a strong personal brand, develop multiple points of entry across different forms of media, know and interact with your supporters, etc…

Of course, this is all much easier said then done and to do this work requires a colossal effort IN ADDITION to the colossal effort one must undergo to actually create the work. The challenges are finding the time and staying focused… at least these are the challenges for me…