How HUGO Restores My Energy

I mentioned in an earlier post how a good blockbuster movie gives me psychic, emotional, spiritual, and creative energy. Sadly, only one movie in 100 fits that bill. But those that do are worth their weight in….in….Oscars.

Here are some past winners:

Babe (unlikely “shepherd” saves the day)

Back to the Future (love the Emmett Brown character)

Castaway (inspiring tale of survival)

Flight of the Phoenix (model maker saves the day)

Forrest Gump (anti-hero makes good)

Lord of the Rings trilogy (unassuming hobbits save the day)

Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (the insanity of group think)

Star Wars (love reclusive Obiwon Kenobi biding his time on Tatooine drinking tea) 

Across the Universe (cartoonist saves the day, gets the girl)
Never Cry Wolf (loner scientist muses about life while playing the oboe, battling bureaucratic ineptitude, and saving wolves) 

Twelve Angry Men (one guy’s stand against group think)

The newest addition to my all time movie favs: Hugo by Martin Scorsese. 

As if the astonishing cinematography and period setting (Paris, 1930s) wasn’t enough, the plot energizes me; “retired silent film maker bounces back with help of intrepid kid inventor.” This is a simple film, easy for kids to understand. Maybe that’s why I’m so enthralled. A brain exercised by Ecclesiastes needs something easy to understand!  Here are the astonishing features of this film.

                                              

1. Mechanical gadgets galore! (My love affair with volvelles is gadgetry for the non mechanical).
2. Some scenes took place in a funky old used book store and huge library (my lairs).
3. D’jango Reinhart (I used to play guitar) and Salvador Dali (I love surrealism) make brief cameo appearances.
4. Scorsese pays homage to this seminal figure in early cinematic history, Georges Melies. There are original clips, artifacts, stills, and a reenactment of what the silent stage was like. What a neat way to tell history (I have a couple of degrees in history but learning history was never this fun).
5. Flip book animation (an old hobby of mine)
6. Magic (I used to do goofy magic shows for my kids and neighbor kids).
7. An Inventor’s Notebook and personal diary play significant roles in the plot. (I have my own stash of journals for flopped inventions).
8. Scorsese’s brilliance shows up in his synchronicity: mechanical automaton contrasts with man with mechanical brace; Melies crashed steam trains; so did Scorsese; flickering lights mirrors flickering lights in old films; Harold Lloyd hangs from a clock; Hugo hangs from a clock.
9. The automaton draws a cartoon!

10. Melies thought he failed but finally received his just due.
11. Hugo and Isabelle hold hands; a love story!
12. The broken automaton “worked perfectly” in uniting lonely people. (A person with a disease can still “work perfectly” by uniting people, inspiring sacrifice and faith, and celebrating virtue).
13. Hugo seeks for a hidden “message” from his deceased father (not unlike Mr. Q seeking a “message” in Providence).
14. Hugo lost his dad and sought his purpose in life … and finds it.

Listen to this exchange.

Hugo: Everything has a purpose, even machines. Clocks tell the time and trains take you places. They do what they’re meant to do.

Isabelle: Like Monsieur Labisse.

Huge: Maybe that’s why broken machines make me so sad. They can’t do what they’re meant to do. Maybe it’s the same with people. If you lose your purpose its like you’re broken.

Isabelle: Like Papa Georges.

Hugo: Maybe we can fix him.

Isabelle: Is that your purpose, fixing things?

Huge: I don’t know. That’s what my father did.

Isabelle: I wonder what my purpose is.

Hugo: I don’t know.

Isabelle: Maybe if I knew my parents I would know.

Hugo won Oscars for best visual effects, best sound mixing, best sound editing, best art direction, and best cinematography. I don’t understand movie economics but according to IMDb the movie budget was $170,000,000 and grossed only $115,814,000. This means, despite all those Oscars, a loss of $54 million. Ouch.

If one measures success by receipts, then this movie clearly cost Scorsese. But if we measure a movie’s brilliance by the effect is has on guys like me, it’s a winner.

A Twinge of Nervousness

Skeptical about the existence of sub-personalities and neural multiplicity? Consider this:

Part of my brain despairs that this project is way beyond my capabilities. The task is immense and the convoluted worldviews of Ecclesiastes defy novelization (graphic or otherwise) by a pea brain like me.

At the same time, I am possessed of a grandiosity breathtaking in its scope. I read the following quote and got a jolt of fear.


It is mostly understandable (though to a cinema enthusiast like myself, bitterly disappointing) that Qoheleth has never been ‘filmed’ as such. His direct ‘filmability’ is an intriguing potential to reflect on (I see Ed Harris in the role, personally), but there are other senses in which he has been rendered in celluloid. (Eric Christianson, Ecclesiastes Through the Centuries, page 83).

I thought to myself with fear and trembling, "Good grief...somebody might beat me to it and make a film out of Ecclesiastes leaving me with reams of unpublished notes, unread blog posts, and unrealized dreams" (a very Ecclesiastes-like response, by the way). 

I'd love it if my 400+ page graphic novel could be rendered in celluloid. Whole films have been made in one location (Breakfast Club, 12 Angry Men, etc); couldn't a gifted cinematographer use my book as a story board for a movie taking place in a university classroom? If I had creative influence, credit, and a contract this would be a sweet deal. 

But what if, when I start posting my completed pages (ETA: next fall), some unscrupulous kid with a video camera rips off my idea? I am creating something highly amenable to Mr. Christianson's "intriguing potential."

These two disparate parts of my neural machinery fight each other, mock each other, and chide each other for their absurd optimism and pessimism. This is sub-personalities at work. 

PUBLIC NOTICE: I, Erik Johnson, do hereby self copyright, claim proprietary rights, and register as intellectual property of the following trademarked, registered, and personalized slogans, notions, and names: Mr. Q, Ecclesiastes U, Ecclesiastes University, and the plot of Ecclesiastes being spoken as a classroom lecture, and all characters to be depicted herein. (C) 2012, (R) 2012, (TM) 2012, (PKYHOMS*) 2012.

* Please keep your hands off my stuff.

Finished First Rough Draft!

A pile of sixty-nine large (14" x 18") hand written notes have been converted to twenty five Publisher files, each of which contain about 20 pages, each of which consists of six panels. I've got a huge drawing task ahead of me. I am going to pencil, hand ink, and then hand color approximately 3000 individual panels.

Each of those 3000 individual panels already contain the word balloons and text I started writing last Christmas. Converting the book of Ecclesiastes into a classroom dialog was a blast. I was able to ponder each word and react to it.

Achieving this milestone marks the end of stage one and the beginning of stage two: reread and edit while fleshing out the characters. I do not want to design the classroom or costumes yet.

At the same time I read somewhere that some movie makers edit their script just before filming. We'll just have to see what stage two entails. Stay tuned.

12 Angry Men

Both the 1957 original film and the 1997 remake of Twelve Angry Men enthrall me because the directors (Sidney Lumet and William Friedkin) were "forced" to create dramatic action inside one stuffy jury room!  I wonder if they were familiar with Kierkegaard's famous line, "The more a person limits himself the more resourceful he becomes" (Either/Or).


Their amazing feat of cinematic legerdemain inspires me because the graphic novel I'm working on will take place entirely inside a university classroom. Can I use creative camera angles, close up/wide shots, and evocative poses/facial expressions to keep the plot from feeling cramped or bogged down?


These are the questions I'm grappling with as I near the completion of the second draft of dialog. I haven't started story boarding this thing yet; I gotta get the words right, first. I'm only 4 verses away from completion and I find my mind wandering from what the actors say to how I'll depict them saying those words.


My inspiration for drawing a graphic novel is Tin Tin's Herge (Georges Remi) but he had the whole universe as stage: cargo ships, deserts, the moon, under water, inside a mansion, etc. I will have only the classroom setting.


My plan:

• draw interesting characters with exquisite facial expressions who make snappy bon mots
• introduce Power Point slide shows for several lengthy passages 
• give each student a lap top on which can appear in images as needed
• close ups/long shots
• movable "camera" angles 
• the point of view needn't be fixed; we can look down upon or look up into each character
• colorful clothing/costume (I am losing interest in making this black and white; I think hand drawn with colored pencils will look nice; it'll be a ton of work but it's enjoyable work)

Such are my musings as I wrap up rough draft number 2.