Kelley – I read for a lot of reasons – some of which are – to learn, feel, experience, contemplate, confront, dream, and transcend. Sometimes I seek solace, a new way of approaching life, or the unexpected. The stories that have the most impact on me become a world unto themselves – these are my favorites and I will read everything I can get my hands on by that author [or musician or director in other mediums]. What they have written lives on forever in my psyche. Solitaire is one of those books.
You taught me something important. I am a solo and I need to do some [more] online editing. And I am fortunate to have my own web.
Jackal and her world have intersected mine and I am grateful.
I enjoy the links and referrals by you and your readers. I am looking forward to reading more. Thank you.
Chela
And thank you. I do this myself with books and music, and can’t imagine how I could be myself without them moving through me like tides. I’m honored that you would include Solitaire on your list of things that work in you this way.
It’s interesting to think about the difference for me between books, music, and visual media in this context.
I give my heart to a TV show every so often, one led by a really good writer/director whose vision shapes all aspects of the experience (Buffy, Firefly, The West Wing, My So-Called Life, and does anyone remember Wizards and Warriors from the early 80’s? I loved that show.)
Movies are different. I tend to think of them as a more singular experience rather than part of a spectrum of work. I have a few favorite actors whose work I will seek out, but I don’t make the same commitment to directors and screenwriters. I’m partial to some (Peter Weir, John Sayles) but I don’t form the same passionate attachments that I do to authors and musicians. Hmm, she said, thinking, thinking. I wonder if this is perhaps because I recognize movies as collaborative, and what I am talking about rightnow is being drawn to the work of the individual? Auteur television falls somewhere in the middle ground. And of course no artist is free of the influence of others: in some ways, we’re all collaborating with the world in general and our own lives in particular. We are all editing online, all the time.
I love movies and television and theatre: I love the total sensory experience, and the complexity of so many elements coming together. Successful collaboration is a particular thrill to participate in, and to witness, and I’ve had some amazing emotional experiences in these situations. But I find my most powerful connection and recognition with books and music, where I am more free to consider the experience from multiple perspectives. It fascinates me that movies are a collaborative effort to present a unified vision, and fiction is an individual effort to present an experience that can be entered into in multiple ways. At least, that’s how it works for me. And music: well, for me, it’s the express train to places sometimes too deep for words alone.
Hm… I’ve been thinking about this one for days now. I still can’t make up my mind on what to say.
There are some film directors that have my heart; I give it to them just as fully as I do to some authors and musicians. On top of that, film directors must not just be artists, but also managers, psychologists, gods and so on to be able to keep at it in the eye of the storm—they often push the limits of their bodies and sanity. All my admiration, hats off, on my knees for them. From my point of view, film director is by far the hardest role to play as an artist. Not only must you have a very clear vision of what you aim to create as an individual, but also be flexible and creative enough to accommodate the various unexpected elements and talents that will come into the mix. Plus you need tons of humility to acknowledge you can’t work alone—yet you also know you are alone in many ways: you are the gate keeper, you are the Charon, you are the one responsible for maintaining and nursing the soul of the project. And you must do so under the pressure of a large amount of resources—monetary, technical, human—being invested in a film.
I’ve never played director, the role terrifies me and I don’t believe I have the skills required to pull it off. But I’ve worked with and had the fortune of watching directors do their thing. Wow, you can almost see the whirlwinds of magic gathering around great directors, while the bad ones can tank the best of teams and stories. I don’t rally around screenwriters (they are a great asset, and I do respect and enjoy reading works by a few names), because even the best of screenplays, when given to a bad director, will turn out rotten. It doesn’t work the same way if you give a sucky screenplay to an awesome director. She’ll find the way to make it into art.
From my experience, theater is a lot more collaborative than film, since there aren’t so many elements and filters to keep in mind, so many balls to juggle and strings to pull. But even in theater, you can see how much of a cornerstone directors are, both as managers, magnets around which artists gather, and artists themselves in the full extent of the word.
Argh, I’m still not saying this right. Theater isn’t more collaborative than film… It’s just that the end result in film seems to rely so much more on the director. I don’t know. *lowers head in resigned frustration*