The year I was born Milan Kundera published the English translation of his novel “The Book of Laughter and Forgetting”. An incredibly nuanced work full not of answers but questions of impact, translated into many other languages with numbers likely in the millions for copies sold, it has affected more lives than I could ever speculate on. As the author intended it was a novel of consequence.
Its specific effect on me was likely less intended. As I finished his section on graphomania I found my impulses severed like grass under the sickle and my motivation smashed like glass under the hammer. Kundera damn near crushed my will to write. As a result I have failed to finish a number of blog entries. Thoughts on comedy as tragedy plus time, rants on the world’s reaction to Michael Phelps’ bong hit, and a short narrative on a recent tarot card reading have all been recorded then destroyed. Instead I’ve settled on posting a very short synopsis for a movie idea that I came up with over a year ago.
The year is 2012. Fighting in the Middle East has spread and threatens to become a global conflict. Fear of the release of a massive biological weapon rivals that of nuclear weapons during the Cold War. When everyone’s fears are realized and whole continents are faced with epidemics of biblical proportion the struggle to survive for a multinational group isolated at a remote Antarctic outpost begins. Will they survive and if they do will they be able to face a new world order created out of hate and terror?
At the time I came up with it I believed my idea could rival Titanic for highest grossing and worst disaster movie of all time. All it would need is the only thing that any movie slated (and therefore destined) for popularity needs -- a trailer of epic proportions. The forty-five second clip could start with a panoramic shot of a giant ice field. The camera would then dramatically zoom in until a group of specks seen moving across the expanse become a group of heavily bundled humans. This would be followed by an accelerating and invigorating series of Antarctic action clips (likely culminating in a slow motion dive across a widening glacial crevice (ice picks extended)) that would cause Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton to hang his head in shame. Following this would be a close up of a gapped mouth Nicholas Cage (or some equally wretched but somehow popular actor) ending with an all white screen and complete silence. A moment later, in an icy blue font, the number 2012 would boom onto the screen as the white fades to black. Flash a simple website address after all of that and you would have the basic ingredients for Hollywood success.
Yesterday I discovered such a movie is already slated to exist. Substitute biological warfare with the more marketable idea of environmental disaster, Nicholas Cage with the slightly more talented John Cusack, the Antarctic for the Himalayas and you have Roland Emmerich’s new blockbuster 2012. Or you would at a glance anyway. My movie concept not only lacks the same backing but also the content and expansion. Then there’s the reference to the catastrophic predictions of the Mayan calendar, which is not only phenomenal enough to grab attentions but could also (potentially) offer some relevant historical and philosophical reflections.
After a brief moment of gratification realizing that I might have actually had a marketable idea Kundera’s disapproving voice returned. It reminded me that without the appropriate thrust these ideas are self-indulgent, even inane. We cannot all be writers. And so the never-ending dread that there is much more than the result of our passions that distinguishes me from Goethe continues.
But don’t worry, I’m not one to give up (just one not likely to try hard enough).
