Yet Untitled Lite 009 - The long way around
On Waiting a bit before things happen
Dearest Yet Untitler
I ran a fever this week.
A little secret:
Sometimes, I peer up from my workload and fantasise about getting a fever so that I can pull away from everything and have no other agenda but to veg out! Vegging out can have sub agendas like bingeing on TV (but like a vegetable i.e with no appeandages that can be asked to do productive work) or read (not for work but for gratification).
Note to self: create more time to deliberately veg out once in a bit!
Nevertheless, I certainly got my fill with this bout of fever!
At one point, my reading and watching confluenced. On the recommendation of Austin Kleon, I’ve been reading BLOOD SWEAT & CHROME: The Wild and True Story of Mad Max: Fury Road. I started it because Kleon made a big statement, saying that this book is up on his shelf right beside Sidney Lumet’s Making Movies and Walter Murch’s In the Blink of an Eye as one of his all time favourite books on film.
Big statement indeed! But a few pages in, it made sense. What a book, Yet Untitlers! It compresses a long and arduous journey bringing a crazy-ambitious vision to life without ever losing the delicious details that draw you right in, like how the second lead Charlize Theron came to shoot in the Namibian desert with her seven month old baby, declaring she’d never do it for any other film. The whole book is a series of interviews spliced together according to theme in a clever arrangement that makes the read immediate and visceral.
A quarter of the way into the book, I had to revisit the film, which was easy because it’s streaming everywhere. I thought - a film like this deserved a book like that. Wow! I can watch it again this minute - and that would be the third time!
A recurring theme in all the interviews is Waiting. Everyone waited a long long time for this film to me made.
Two decades of…
It took 20 years for the director George Miller to realize “Mad Max: Fury Road”.
20 years = half my life.
The delays happened for various reasons. Once, the Australian desert they wanted to shoot in received rain after decades, turning it into a garden of flowers (more suited to My Little Pony than for a post-apocalyptic pertohead movie), shifting the production from Australia to Namibia.
But the director wasn’t idle during this time. He was constantly making and remaking the film in other ways. He had his vision drawn onto over 8000 storyboards. He was finding the right collaborators. His writers wrote entire screenplays covering the back stories of his secondary characters, one of which promises to be Miller’s follow up to Fury Road (‘Furiosa’ the movie is listed on IMDB as a 2024 release, starring Anya Taylor Joy in the lead).
This made me feel good about some of my stuff that hasn’t been made. And about the stuff I’ve gained in the waiting.
Here’s a list:
A certain Indo-Japanese project that was in development for nearly 4 years earned me some basic Japanese language skills while waiting for it to move. And also two very precious friendships (you both know who you are).
A certain feature film about a photographer, written 12 years ago and still incubating, got me interested enough in photography to become a photographer myself. Hell, YU would not exist in this form were it not for this film. Even this one gained me another precious friend (you too know who you are!).
A certain OTT show that spent an extra year in development gained me stronger scripts and much greater confidence in collaborative writing. This one gained me yet another precious friendship!
A certain bio-pic that I researched for a year and even travelled to America for never got made, but it did get me to sleep in room that (I was told) was haunted, earning me one of the most bizarre night-stay experiences of my life. Below is the portrait that loomed over my bed when I slept.
Hauntings aside, all these feel like ongoing stories! They hold my interest in the present. The stuff that got done feels like it’s already in the past gathering dust. The ongoing stuff is bright…and chrome. It has life.
I wonder why this is.
Is it because it’s linked with my desires?
“Earthly Desires are Enlightenment”
When I encountered this statement (it’s the title of a letter written by the monk Nichiren Daishonin to one of his disciples) in my Buddhist practice, it blew me away. Rather, it drew me in, because till then I had always imagined religion to be a path that eschews desire. That approach - I did not like. I really like the idea of finding the greatest versions of ourselves in the here and now - in the daily-ness of daily life - where our desires are very much our engines.
Desire is forward momentum. My Buddhist practice teaches that we can use this momentum to create value, generate happiness for ourselves and others; create peace. Choosing to do so in the course of fulfilling our desires, using the momentum they give us, this is my understanding of Buddhism in daily life.
That’s where this statement - “Earthly Desires are Enlightenment” - begins to make sense.
“There’s stuff to be done” & “There’s value to be created” so, 👉 “Create value while doing the stuff that needs to be done.”
Good practice, if you ask me!
PS. YU Lite 007 went a little deeper into how I find Anger to also be momentum, which, with better understanding, may allow us to harness it as a value creating phenomenon rather than a destructive force.
Also this week…
I also met a 12 year old Star Wars nerd. He told me very clearly that the only Star Wars stuff worth watching came out “before the Disney era”.
I really like this kid.
He made me very hopeful.
With that, I leave you with this quick hit, dearest Yet Untitlers.
By the way - I haven’t stopped with my one film a week promise. I’ve shot something each week, but I have them as a backlog to edit. No time, YUers, No time! I’m just glad I’m still hitting ‘Publish’ on Friday evenings!
Lots of love
V
PPS
By the way, the whole thing about the desert going green during the prep for “Mad Max: Fury Road” is very reminiscent of Lost in La Mancha, that amazing documentary about Terry Gilliam’s debacle with his Don Quixote story.
In retrospect, the making-of story arcs of these films are so similar. Yet one just vanished, while the other, albeit over 20 years, got made into what’s regarded as the finest action movie ever made.
I’d love to know where Gilliam let go. And why.
PPPS:
What’s ‘Waiting’ to you? Does it frustrate you? Does it grant you unexpected things? What’s your relationship with it?
Tell me. I want to know!
I hope you’re feeling better!
I hope you feel better soon. Sometimes I think we get ill because our body needs to rest.
Thanks for the 20 year story about the MadMax film. That makes me feel better about my own projects that seem to take forever!