| |
Eli | Mike | Mary - click for individual bio
October 22, 2003
The Mauve Lagoon
I didn’t go straight home from drawing class this past Monday night because I wanted to stop by the set of a little indie film production that I’m involved with. I’m not sure that I want to tell you the production’s name at the moment because that would be kind of a spoiler, but in general I can say that it’s a 6-minute short that resides in the reality tv/game show-genres, and that it involves a linoleum knife. I wrote the script and have a small acting part, which I’m pretty excited about, and Mary’s producing the whole thing. Something like this is a bit different from the stuff I worked on while I was back in film school in Ann Arbor, which mostly involved thinking up vague, underdeveloped ideas that we talked about a great deal but never shot. It’s nice to be at a stage of my life now that I can help turn underdeveloped ideas into actual underdeveloped films, or books, or records, or whatever.
But, unfortunately, not all of my recent projects have panned out so nicely. For instance: quite a while back my friend Gary asked me to write a play for him. He wanted something that he and our friend Joanna could star in; Gary’s been in a couple of my plays in the past, as well as some of my animated shorts, so I said yeah, I could certainly do that. That was, well, about two years ago, and I have yet to hand him anything.
That is certainly not for lack of trying! Almost immediately I came up with a title and a concept for the play: “The Mauve Lagoon.” This would be, as you might guess, a parody of the classic Brooke Shields film “The Blue Lagoon.” My synopsis was this: two young cousins (Gary and Joanna) are shipwrecked on a desert island in Lake Superior, sole survivors of the 1970’s “Edmund Fitzgerald” shipwreck. Years pass, they grow into adolescence, and the young boy falls in love with his cousin. She does not return his love in kind, however, preferring to spend most of her time with her pet parrot. Eventually the boy discovers that the girl loves the parrot, not him; when he catches them together in a scene of tender intimacy he goes insane with jealousy and murders the girl. The parrot commits suicide in despair and then the boy is eaten by wolves, cunningly disguised as Canadians. I’m not sure where the “mauve” part fits in, I think I just called it that because it sounded cool.
Now, with an idea like that, you would think that that the play would just write itself! Yes, you’d think so. God knows I tried. I have started writing this stupid play at least ten times, and always I get about two or three scenes into it and then get totally and utterly stuck. I’ve tried writing it in different styles: Ancient Greek Tragedy style, German Expressionist style, Screwball Marx Brothers style, Neurotic Woody Allen style, Medieval Mystery Play style. Nothing. The play defies me. It hates me.
I think part of the problem is with the source material itself: have you seen The Blue Lagoon lately? Have you read the book (oh yes, there’s a book)? It’s just so incredibly…awful. Tawdry beyond belief, incompetently written, not so much a drama as one big, sweaty, pubescent leer. Do you want an example? An excerpt from the script? Of course you do:
RICHARD: Oh!
EMMELINE: Heh heh heh.
RICHARD: Why are we always fighting so much.
EMMELINE: I don’t know. I don’t know what’s wrong with me when I say the things I say. I just keep on having all these strange thoughts.
RICHARD: What kind of thoughts?
EMMELINE: Just thoughts. Funny thoughts, about you and me.
[Richard is working on a raft, which has some wood set down as a bottom, as well as a sail. He starts to tie another piece of wood to the sail. Emmeline is staring at his chest. He looks up and notices.]
RICHARD: What are you looking at?
EMMELINE: Your muscles.
See? That’s the problem right there: “The Blue Lagoon” is already a parody of itself! It’s that bad. How can you parody a parody? Well, you can, of course, but apparently I’m having a bit of a hard time doing it. The book, by the way, written by one H.D. Stacpoole, is even trashier than the film, if that’s possible. You might enjoy it.
At any rate, I eventually decided to put “The Mauve Lagoon” aside and move on to something else. But I can’t. I haven’t been able to write another play since I started Mauve Lagoon. It’s an albatross around my neck, a curse: I won’t be able to finish anything until I finish Mauve Lagoon. I don’t have time for a curse! I’m too busy! But there it is. I have to write it, even if it ends up being the worst play ever written. I just need an angle. A science fiction version, maybe? That could be neat. At the end they could all be eaten by the alien Canadian Gamma Monster, or something. I’m very clear on that: someone has to be eaten. Oh well. At least I have an ending.
Eli |
