This song was partially the inspiration for a feature-length screenplay I wrote back in 2005 that had the working title of The Watcher. Synopsis: A mans marriage and life is derailed. He begins to have surreal encounters with an entity calling himself The Watcher. The man commits suicide and finds himself on an empty but lit theatre stage. The Watcher, hidden in the shadows among the audience seats, converses with the man about the nature of life. When the man complains about his lot, the Watcher offers him the Faustian bargain in which the man would be able to start his life over and change things about his life. However, he would have to experience his life on a loop from birth to death continually, always changing details and decisions at the end of each loop, until he had gotten it perfect. I worked on The Watcher nearly every night for an entire year. I would leave my apartment and walk down to a neighboring bar around 8:00 every night, drinking pitchers of beer and writing until closing time. This practice earned me the only nickname Ive ever had: Shakespeare. I actually did several extracurricular activities with some of the other bar regulars (including the most epic game of paintball ever) but Im not sure that any of them knew my actual name. I was just Shakespeare. It was a very horrible but strange and lovely time of my life. I never was able to do much with The Watcher. I rewrote it several times, offered it to a few independent (and very low-budget) film companies, and even tried to put it together and film it myself. It never got further than casting. Which was good, because it was a crap script. It had a few scenes that I was really proud of, but, on the whole, it was crap. I learned a valuable writing lesson, though. You can actually over-cook a piece. Some of my overwork came from being unfamiliar with screenplay writing, but mostly I was just too obsessed with making it perfect. I worked on it 5-7 hours a day for a straight year, and that ruined it for the most part. I think the only writing you should work that long on is a 500 page novel. The Watcher was the worst piece of completed writing Ive ever done. Oddly enough, it was also the most successful piece Ive ever done, at least in terms of audience reaction. Those cats I hung out with at the bar thought it was great. Theyd ask me to read parts of it out loud. A CPD officer who spent most of his off hours there once made me recite a monologue from my screenplay while standing on top of one of the trestle tables. 2005 was a really shit year, but Id be lying if I said I didnt miss belonging in a social setting, even if it was just a dive bar in Hyde Park. Id walk in and someoned cry, The night just started, Shakespeare is here! Id feed the jukebox with Genesis tracks (until they banned me from the jukebox), the bartender would have a pitcher ready for me, and Id sit at my table and do my thing. It was horrible. It was great.
Posted on: Thu, 01 Jan 2015 19:09:48 +0000
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