I saw the Auckland Philharmonic last night and it gave me an idea for a story, possibly even a novel. We have a character whose life-long wish is to perform as part of a professional orchestra. The problem is that the only instrument he plays is the triangle. By some fluke of chance, one day the National Orchestra requires his services: a symphony by Beethoven with a small but integral role for a triangulist. By good fortune our hero is given this role.
Conscientiously, he attends all rehearsals and eventually comes to grip with the part. The night before the performance he sleeps poorly; nerves and bad-digestion keep him awake. And then the day arrives. The audience files into the hall, and then the orchestra take their places on the stage. The Symphony begins. Our hero sits at the back, trying his best to stay awake and vigilant but the gentle strains of string, wind and brass lull him into a kind of stupor so that when the decisive moment comes, towards the end of the third movement, he misses the cue completely. The orchestra pauses; the conductor casts a furious glare in his direction, then carries on. Our protagonist has botched it! The audience knows that something is missing but they cannot tell what.
On his way home the protagonist throws himself from a bridge. At that moment, an endless stream of humanity is passing by.
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On a completely unrelated topic … How about that Joe Biden? His apparently off-the-cuff comment to Barack Obama, about health-care reform, that “This is a big f**king deal” couldn’t be improved upon if they had tried. How better to underline the fact, in passing the health-care bill, the Obama Administration is living up to its promise of Change? This is the sound-bite that people will remember when they think of the bill. It makes you wonder if Biden’s remark was premeditated. Perhaps Obama is Mr. Serious and Biden is the clown who gets the administration’s message across?
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The New Zealand film Boy, directed by and starring First off, let me say that it is a fantastic film, certainly the best movie I have seen recently (the last two were La France and Alice in Wonderland). But that does not stop one from imagining how it might be improved.
Boy is about an eleven year old Maori kid growing up in a West Coast town who idealises his absent father. When the father, Alamein, comes home the boy must come to terms with the fact that his father is not all that he is cracked up to be.
At least this is one way you could pitch the film. Alternatively, you could argue that the central character is the father and the film is about him accepting responsibility for his own life and the lives of his children. A tenet of professional storytelling is that every major character should have a character arc, learning something or developing in some way. Alamein’s character arc is really Boy’s central narrative, but the finished film fails to dramatise this properly.
So how could we change the film to make this stand out? Alamein’s real reason for returning home is to collect the stolen loot that he has buried in one of the paddocks. A snatch of dialogue could have been included where Alamein tells his mates that they are going to “blow this one-horse-town” as soon as they find the money. Boy could desperately want his father to stay, but Alamein fobs him off with empty promises. The ending of the film (which is great as it is) would then have been a more satisfying resolution of conflict, the conflict between Alemain and Boy, and the conflict within Alamein himself.