Monday, March 24, 2008

My Invisible Screenplay: The solitary driving scene

The majority of my really good song ideas (here meaning songs I can gank for the movie) tend to happen while I'm driving. It's generally the one place where I'm alone, awake and actively engaged in something other than taking notes. So this means that if I happened to burn a decent mixtape (yet another rather lame pursuit of mine), I often realize that a particular song fits in such and such a scene, and I go about formulating how such a scene might happen.

This happened a while back with "Ocean of Noise" by the Arcade Fire. The night was a rather rainy one, and I was driving back from someone's house (for the life of me, I can't remember if it was Matt or Jeff) and the song came on and seemed somber and moody and emotionally intrusive. I recalled a night way back in the day when I was coming home from...relations (no, not those) with a girl I really hadn't wanted to have anything to do with. I remember that almost immediate sense of...not regret, but cetainly a pensive debate (out loud, mind you, the car is also where i talk to myself the most, to the point I almost wanna buy a bluetooth to look like I'm on the phone...almost).

So, that scene began. I'm working on some kind of regret, as I need that first. I'm thinking that this ill-advised romance is a good street to head down, as I've got Simon written down with girl issues (namely, actually talking to them romantically). A get-together purely because he knows she's interested? I've got some nice stuff just by writing this paragraph...

Also, this will take up one of my maximum of two allotted car scenes. Rather pathetically, I've created this rule for myself; otherwise I will use driving scenes as a crutch.

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