Entailment Film

While attempting to conceal his betrayal, Josh uncovers a devastating truth…

Having submitted to Screen NSW for Emerging Filmmakers Funding, my short drama screenplay, Entailment, is well and truly is taking on new life. Whether we become one of 3 lucky grant recipients or not, completing the application was a worthwhile experience. The huge effort involved won’t go to waste. Yes, even that enormous A to Z Screen Australia template…

Stay tuned for more news in June. Otherwise check out the film’s web page here.

photo by d4digital

A lone fisherman at the snap of dawn

His crack showing and his belly bulging

G’day Frank, he bellows across the morn

Scaring the fish, I haven’t seen you down

Here for ages, and under the water

A sole skulks beneath a rock ‘cause it knows

That Frank’s got a mean left hook and tackle.

photo by d4digital

This story appears in the Tower Writing Group Anthology. Winner of the Fellowship of Australian Writers National Literary ‘Community of Writers’ Award, 2012.

My brother was excited when he saw the lights. Tiny pinpricks on an almost invisible horizon line. We were well sea sick by then; all the passengers had been vomiting for days, a hopeless yellow vomit stealing from our body’s precious fluid. When Papa put us on board he said that the shipmaster would give us food and water and our neighbour had given us each a parcel, which she knew to be our favourite foods, carefully wrapped in a cloth that smelt like the naphthalene flakes she boiled her clothes in every Wednesday. She’d boiled our clothes with hers for the past six months too and when Papa told her we were leaving she’d cried but said it was for the best. When the boat left, it was night and we were instructed not to make a sound, the Shipmaster took our food parcels and shared them amongst his crew who were swarthy and sweaty and who my brother said looked like men our mother would have told us to avoid. Since then we hadn’t been given a drop of water or food. So you see, my father and our neighbour were both wrong.

I’d scolded him when he lost his shoes. The waves were big that day and it had made me angry that he’d taken them off. The shoes slid overboard and were consumed by the water and I asked him how he could be so stupid, have so little sense. When his eyes welled up with tears I remembered he was only six and forgave him, drawing his thin frame to me for both his comfort and mine. Later, a kind woman gave him her second pair. She wasn’t the only passenger to have a bag of spare clothes, garments for their new life, but she was the only one to offer anything. When we told her we were hungry she told us not to ask for food, it would just make them angry and we might be thrown overboard, besides we would be there soon enough and there we would have food and water and comfort. I wasn’t so sure but she was proven right soon enough when a man much older than Papa saw the Shipmaster drinking and very politely asked for a sip. The Shipmaster laughed. Perhaps this would have been the end of it but one of the younger passengers became angry on the old man’s behalf and there was a fight. The kind woman told us to look away and for the first time I was glad that our Papa wasn’t with us as it might have been him reaching out as his face disappeared beneath the sea.

Papa had told us that when we got there our mother’s cousin’s aunt would be there to greet us, and that she would help us begin a new life on this far away shore. It was something else he was wrong about but I don’t blame him, hope can be a powerful thing. But when we saw the lights I believed what he’d told us, and I was excited by the prospect of a new school, a nice house and children to play with. Everything that Papa had told us about. I planned to eat and drink until I made myself sick. Now with seasoned sea legs I danced a weak limbed jig with my brother, infecting the other passengers with our silliness. I remember even the Shipmaster allowed himself a small smile and started saying to the passengers that he’d told them so, hadn’t he told them that he’d get them here safe and sound? No-one denied this but neither had we forgotten the young man he’d murdered and so no-one gave thanks. The Shipmaster was angered by this and shouted to us that we were worthless and that we deserved whatever became of us. He said it was no wonder that we were the shit-eaters of the Caribbean. This made my brother giggle nervously and look at me; he’d not heard this before and wasn’t sure what it meant.

When the boat’s hull hit coral it was under the light of an enormous full moon that was still not enough to see the reef, not even where the waves had softened, beaten down by the curve of the bay. It broke with a miserable yawing moan. Before the screaming started there was a moment of silence and in this I heard the sea gurgling and sucking with need, already summoning our bodies below. My brother looked towards the lights then back at me, then with hope still in his eyes he kicked off, valiantly remembering the strokes our Papa had taught us, and I realised that it was this moment he had prepared us for and that he’d known that this would happen all along. I wanted to stay with the boat, even as the water swirled around my legs and threatened to pull me under but the splash from my brother’s feeble kicks told me I had no choice but to follow. The water was icier than the sea spray we’d felt on the days before. It cut through my panic and made me kick hard and fast. I would have lost him in the dark had it not been for his small hand on my leg as he sunk.

I floated on my back, his small weight on my chest, his breath rasping just above the water line. The heads of other passengers bobbed about, wailing, calling to each other, but I knew not all of them were there. Not all of them could swim. There were so many stars accompanying the moon that night, more than I’d ever seen in Port au Prince and they blurred with the lights on the horizon whose line I thought might be becoming visible though I couldn’t be sure and we stayed like that, floating, for a long time. I thought about home and the fear in Papa’s heart when he’d heard about the little girl down the street who’d been raped and shot and murdered because her Papa had simply spoken the truth and how he didn’t want that for me, no, anything was better than that and as I floated I wondered if he were right, that if I let myself sink, opening my lungs to the cold salty water, would it be a better fate. Then he shivered against me, recalling the night our Mama died and so I kicked off again in the same direction as the waves.

A wave picked us up. It was bigger and stronger than those before it and it seemed to have a purpose for us and with water rushing in our ears we held our breath and clung to each other and for a moment we felt weightless, air born, until we were pushed across the razor sharp rocks and it felt like my flesh was sliced to a million ribbons and I couldn’t hold on any longer and he was torn from me in the dark and the cold and the stars spun and I wondered if somehow we’d swum into the sky amongst the stars. The pain drummed in my ears, screamed in my mind, throbbed through my entire being. I realised I could breathe and that the hard surface below, though unforgiving and cruel, meant that I could stand and I was no longer at sea. The lights on the horizon danced and moved closer, and though I could have stood I lay there, wondering what had become of my brother and mourning his death though I didn’t yet know it as fact. The dancing lights turned out to be torches held by people looking for survivors, looking for me. When they found me they already had him, his small body laid out on a stretcher, a shoe hanging from his ankle by its laces. His little hand squeezed mine tightly and so while I knew this wasn’t the welcome Papa had planned, we’d made it.

Our new life had begun.

photo by d4digital

Here’s a poem I wrote for a dear friend over year ago for her birthday, inspired by Stephen Fry and an unashamed borrowing from Rudyard Kipling‘s ‘If’, which according to Fry is regularly voted the UK’s favourite poem.

It’s written in strict iambic pentameter but with alternating feminine and masculine line endings. You’re meant to exaggerate the 10th syllable in each line and emphasise the last beat. This metrical alternation is meant to suggest a dialectical structure. I’ll leave it to you to decide.

An ‘If’ for Petrina

If sometimes your life feels like a rolling wave

And its peace and quiet that you really crave,

If everything is a whirling dervish ride

But what you really want to do is hide,

If today the world conspires against you

And nothing fruitful comes of what you do,

If you can think of all those times of boredom

When unexpected events were welcome;

If you recall the days that you felt lowly

As there was no excitement to be had,

Hold this feeling tightly and you will surely

Embrace this crazy feeling and be glad!

The tickets are only $15, for that you get approximately 2 hours of entertainment in 15 minute sets. What a bargain.

M and I arrived with low expectations, but left thoroughly entertained and inspired. One of the things that was great about it was the supportive audience, who clapped and cheered with gusto after each act, rewarding bravery regardless of the execution. Yet for the most part the execution was good. Not perfect, a little raw, but whole heartedly enjoyable.

My favourite was performance poet, Scott Sandwich. He rocked. Performance poetry isn’t something I’ve sought out, but if it’s all like his I’m very keen to see more. I felt like I was in an underground New York night club in the early 60s. He recited his version of a Finnish (I think) myth in verse which was very funny, long (I’ve no idea how he remembers it), and he did it without stumbling. Scott Sandwich posts his very original and amusing poems to his blog regularly, so check it out.

Postscript – It was called The Kalevala. You can see it, presumably performed in Finland, here…

Miami SoBe

I love the composition of this photo, the way the girls are framed by the street art and the cars.

OVERLAND 204
spring2011
ISBN 978-0-9871301-1-2
published 27 August 2011

You have to read this. Satirical – it makes you laugh and wince. It’s certainly influenced the screenplay I’ve been working on for the better.

Jennifer’s blog is also worth a look.

It has more historical context than the original. Check it out here.

M and I saw Sleeping Beauty at the Dendy on cheap skate Tuesday. I’m aspiring to Sid Field’s recommended quota of two features per week, with at least one on the big screen. Cheap skate Tuesday makes it all possible. Friends and relatives take note – movies tickets make great gifts.

Last year, Australian short film ‘Muscles’ made the 2010 official shorts selection of the Festival de Cannes. While artfully made I found the story an uncomfortable and joyless experience, so I was interested in how Sleeping Beauty would affect me. It’s a fascinating premise; a young woman who consents to being drugged so that old men can do what they wish with her, as long as they don’t penetrate her in any way. Clearly, shoving ones hand into her mouth as one gent did does not count as penetration. The sleeping beauty in question is Lucy (Emily Browning). She does it for money, and the old men do it for – well, that’s the interesting bit. One man reminisces over being in bed with his long dead wife, he’s satisfied by a quick caress and sleep; another chooses to put his cigarette out on Lucy’s neck. Over time Lucy wants to find out what happens to her while she’s asleep, and this is what leads to the story’s climax.

Sleeping Beauty is novelist Julia Leigh’s first film as writer and director. As a contemporary novelist she has been highly successful, best known for The Hunter (1999) and Disquiet (2008). Both works won numerous awards and accolades and The Hunter is soon to become a feature film starring William Dafoe. Sleeping Beauty is ‘presented by’ Jane Campion who mentored Leigh in its making, giving it instant credibility. Campion certainly had plenty of good things to say about the film, including ‘Heartbreaking, tender, terrifying. I love it’, her other quotes can be found in the press kit.

I enjoyed it. And according to the marketing material so did the reviewers from The Guardian and the Daily Telegraph UK. But many did not. As we were leaving a woman from one row back shared her opinion with heavy sarcasm, ‘Wasn’t that a cheery film’. Online the reviews were blunt, news.com.au went so far as saying; ‘ A HIDEOUS art house snoozer, Sleeping Beauty strikes the rare double of being as pretentious as it is puerile’. I feel this is an incredibly rough summation, but each to their own.

I’ll tell you why I liked this film, and offer an explanation to why it wasn’t to the tastes of others.

I enjoyed it because it was unconventional; this is no hero’s journey told in a classical 3 act structure. It is after all an art house film, which by definition are not popular because they defy the classical conventions most viewers feel comfortable with.  I appreciated the absence of clichéd Australian content. There were no Australian diggers, outback psycho’s, dogs, toilets or bromances in this film. Don’t get me wrong, I can appreciate films with all of these things, yet it was inspiring to watch an Australian film set in Australia but that looked like it could have been anywhere. This made me focus on the story, not the location. The only thing that anchored the story in Australia was the accents, and even these were refreshingly neutral.

The aesthetic was appealing, to my layman’s eye Geoffrey Simpson ACS did a fine job, as did Shareen Beringer in costume. (I wonder, does the costume designer have a say about the amount of nudity?). I found the restrained use of music interesting. In genre film the music tells you how to feel and what to expect. In all films it heavily impacts the emotional weight of the story. As it does through its absence. I found that the relative silence of Sleeping Beauty was an intellectual challenge to think about how I felt about the story, without be prompted into what I should be feeling. But I suspect that for some people this left them uncomfortable or confused.

Nakedness was essential to the story telling. It might be what drew many people to see it. The film was heralded with superlatives such as ‘erotic’, ‘sensual’ and ‘titillating’. If you find the sight of a fat old man licking the face of an unconscious young girl all of those things then good for you. I found it interesting, but in a fascination for the grotesque kind of way. So I think that some people would have felt that they’d been under sold in the sensuality stakes. There was a fair amount of nudity, sure, but after the first quarter of the film or so it had a numbing effect. M, a hot blooded hetero male remarked, ‘by the end of it I’d had enough of seeing Lucy’s boobs’.

Ever unchanging the erotic becomes uninteresting and this is the point, because instead you focus on the story, not the naked. It’s like a film that shows you that the protagonist survives at the beginning. Then you know the dramatic question is not about whether they live or die, but something else, usually (hopefully) something more profound. Sleeping Beauty is not a porno, its sole purpose is not to titillate, its story is not about sex or prostitution. It has other meanings.

So, to the story. The story’s existential essence was always going to draw a negative reaction. Without a clear understanding of Lucy’s  motivation, the loosening of cause and effect, unresolved endings and by finishing the story on what would have been the second act turning point in a more conventional film, the story serves to muck up a mainstream movie goers mojo.  Some blamed this on a poor script. I don’t think it’s the fault of the script if these were deliberate story choices, it’s just that the departure from the rules of the classical narrative is not to everyone’s taste.

You could argue that the story lacks a protagonist altogether. Undeniably the main character is Lucy, and the story is about her. But if you accept that a defining feature of a protagonist is that they allow the audience emotional access, then Lucy does not fulfil that role. I think this is why some people were not able to engage with the story, they didn’t care what happened to Lucy, they weren’t barracking for her to ‘win’. I found Lucy unlikable (as did her ex boyfriend who remarked on her unpleasantness). Her actions weren’t implausible, but we weren’t granted access to see the story from her point of view and understand her motivations.

Mainstream audiences like a clear cause and effect progression and generally speaking they respond well to unity. When Lucy slept with her cafe boss it did nothing to further the story. The subplot of Lucy’s relationship with the agoraphobic Birdmann (Ewen Leslie) was unresolved. Why didn’t she prevent his suicide? Why didn’t she report his death? Although this subplot is linked to the climax of story, it fuelled her horror in discovering her client’s death, for some it people it would have left too many questions unanswered. Even in mainstream films these days it’s ok to have an unresolved subplot , but only if the main plot is resolved, which in classical narrative terms Sleeping Beauty’s main plot was not.

To stand by the rules of mainstream narrative Sleeping Beauty would have had another act. During this act Lucy would’ve learnt what was wrong with her life and come out of her ordeal a changed and possibly better person. The audience would know beyond doubt what happened to Lucy and through her have learnt something that expands the limits of their own life experience. Even if it’s only, ‘Gee, next time I try to save a planet of blue aliens I’ll never do that…’. Instead, the story of Sleeping Beauty stopped. On a downer.

So that’s why I thought it was great, but it’s also why others responded negatively. For me, the sign of a good film is that it stays with me, that it causes me to turn it over in my mind for days on end. It certainly did that.

Transmission Films, 2011.

The anthology is full of quirky little stories, poems and artworks, each with a twisted end. You can purchase it directly from the publisher here.