divided from herself and her fair judgment

A few weeks ago… or maybe it was months (gosh, summer, you sure do fly by)… I watched My Week with Marilyn.  I liked it well enough to troll through youtube for clips of Kenneth Branagh interviews… which led me to watching Laurence Olivier interviews… and some place in there, interviews with Vivien Leigh.  I started reading Olivier’s autobiography over fifteen years ago.  I didn’t finish it because I thought he was a pompous jackass who gave himself credit for Leigh’s successes.  But it was one of the first times I started to comprehend the story of the tragic British actress.

Hers is not a happy biography – if you buy into that sort of thing, part of the curse of all that had to do with Gone with the Wind.  I watched those interviews and put it in the back of my mind to revisit those biographies when I had more time.  This weekend I had a few stolen hours  -well, hours when I was less interested in learning bits of dialogue in a Mississippi accent and sought to find any other mental distraction. So, I picked up the book I am reading to inspire my own writing.  There is a scene in Tigers in Red Weather when Vivien Leigh is mentioned.  Indeed in reference to Gone with the Wind when, according to a bit of conversation in that novel, Vivien Leigh went crazy.  You can see it in her eyes.  I don’t know.  Can you?

I thought about that.  I thought about that because of those youtube interviews.  Because I have a scene in my novel that references Gone with the Wind and reveals the Mommy Dearest crazy of one of my main characters.  It’s not a pleasant scene… but I love it.  Because I love Helen’s crazy.  It’s, got to admit, fun to write.  

I’m not trying to make light of crazy here.  I know mental illness – or even just the struggle of the common person to cope with life’s difficulty is no laughing matter.  And yet I find myself actually contemplating that as a writer and as an actress.  When is the portrayal of crazy laughable?  When is it honest and a compelling part of the story?  And how does the fact these characters are women determine that place on the spectrum?

I have been thinking a lot about this on my commute, as I try to repeat those Mississippi lines of a hysterical breakdown into memory.  I stumble through that part of my role… because I don’t like hysterical crazy.  Not that I didn’t have my moments as a child and teenager.  Maybe I’m bored with it because I know it’s all noise and little substance.  It’s not as powerful… or mysterious as a look in the eye.  I don’t want to write Helen that way.  She has her intense moments, but no throwing of furniture and pulling out her hair.  Or crying.

I remember another interview with a famous British actress from about 15 years ago.  Helena Bonham Carter was discussing her role as Ophelia.  She said something I have heard in various interpretations over the years.  That crazy should be portrayed like drunkenness.  The drunk never wants to show off his intoxication.  He will do everything to prove he isn’t drunk… and in the slip up, that is where it is obvious.  I hate seeing over the top drunk on the stage.  It is seldom funny and so taxing on my attention span.  The funny is the tiny little reveal, even if it ends up being a huge pratfall.

Likewise, I have no interest in Ophelia if she is a cry baby.  The more she shrieks, the less I will rate that interpretation of my favorite play.  Her madness should have as much a question as Hamlet’s.  Wailing and screaming are dead giveaways.  

So I don’t know.  I know I’m not playing Helen on the stage in this play.  Her path to breakdown has a vague parallel to Babe, but not really.  They are two separate animals of creativity.  Two different interpretations of crazy.  But… I don’t know… I find it more fascinating when I’m asking myself, did those green eyes look a little bit mad?  At the very least, I find the character who noticed them much more compelling… and very likely going to distract me again from reviewing lines tonight.

Movies, Television, and Mystery

I have two barometers for deciding if a movie is good.  1. I don’t squirm and feel the need to constantly shift in my chair to manipulate the length of my legs into comfort.  2. I’m still thinking about it the next day.  Those are purely subjective elements and undoubtedly something with which no one else shall see the film in exactly the same way.  They are emotional… and not intellectual.  Not even having anything to do with the craft that I still appreciate in the art of cinema.  I will give a movie a lot of props for cinematography even if the plot is lame.  Or sound.  Or costumes.  Or the cleverness of working in a plot device used by hundreds or thousands of writers before.  But if it passes those first two tests, there is a strong likelihood I will spend the money to see it again before it streams on Netflix.

I believe those are both indicative of good writing.  That there is a story that helps me lose myself, intoxicates my imagination so much I don’t focus on anything else.  Then there is a drive to revisit the story and analyze how it all got pieced together with the special effects and glossy, unrealistically beautiful actors.  I know that’s writing by committee most of the time… but it’s still impressive when a money making machine churns out something that compelling.

I feel that way about some television, too.  Although, I’ll change the restless in my seat indicator for the fact I will sacrifice another hour of sleep just to watch that next episode… or in the case of some… the impatience to watch that next episode.  Television, unfortunately does suffer a longevity problem… in that it all too frequently craves longevity… and outlives its usefulness.  But the first three seasons of a tightly written show are usually crack to my storytelling mind.

I deliberately waited until my birthday to see The Dark Knight Rises this year.  I don’t find myself with a lot of spare time to go to movies… but actually I think that’s because earlier this summer I was so beguiled with the show Damages that I wanted to use my un-scheduled nights to go home and voraciously consume the unraveling of its mysteries.

Both were tightly written suspense pieces.  Again, written by committee and featuring high product placement people and ideas.  There was definitely formula to both, stories that I felt ever so clever for determining the outcome before I got there… but the satisfaction came with not knowing exactly how I was going to be led there.

I wasn’t disappointed in either (although I have yet to watch Damages beyond that magical third season, so who knows?).  And I think about that pleasure ride of getting to the end of a story and seeing all the pieces fall neatly into place without seeming contrived or ridiculous.  I think about it as I start to weave together all these various stories of my narrators.  I know their stories from beginning to end… and want to decide what threads to give readers to make the tapestry of the final chapter (if this book actually has chapters) a logical, beautiful picture.  Not a hasty paint by number generic image.

So I think about these most recent viewings… and wonder what kept me in my seat.  What makes me want to go see The Dark Knight again not even 24 hours later?  Even when I found something sort of predictable, I was so delighted when it fell neatly into revelation.  I think there is something like that in this novel.  Maybe it’s only obvious to me because I’ve known it for 15 years.  But maybe I want it to be sort of obvious… and just leave the mystery of how.

Indeed, I sometimes find that question as well as its cousin why, the most compelling mysteries.  There’s no need to proclaim the smug of knowing the obvious.  That’s life.  We know what happened. We know when things happened.  But we can never really understand or grasp the why or how did it get to this point?  Maybe, really, those are the mysteries of plot that keep my legs from twitching and my brain wanting to go back and see it again.

And maybe in movies and television… and books… they are the best mysteries.  Because in books and movies and television we can answer the why and how.  It’s not so easy in real life.