We just shot a scene from my feature, Transnationals. What happens in the scene? A woman traveling in Korea buys birthday cupcakes for her translator. On the surface, not such an exciting scene. But what is really happening? The girl, who is falling in love with the translator, learns during the scene that the translator is her biological brother. Needless to say, the stakes in the scene are fairly high.
Not so dis-similar to the stakes for the movie. Doing the scene itself cost the bulk of the money we raised on our Kickstarter campaign in November. The purpose of completing a scene like this, along with an atmospheric scene from each of the other storylines (one in “rural Japan,” or my Northern California interpretation of it; the other — later this month — in Bangladesh) is to create a “trailer” of sorts for investors and producers to see. At this point, with the scene completed, money spent and the style and tone completely committed to, we’ve shot our wad. Everything is out there, on the table. There is no way to change what we’ve done, and no way to say “but you don’t understand,” or “it’s not what we’re trying to do”; it’s all out there. And it’s now that we’ve got to get that full and total commitment from “the other side.”
Somehow, I’m both nervous and confident about it: nervous because I’m not so good at asking for things, but confident because I think what I’ve directed is complete and substantial. I think the actors’ performances are raw and authentic. I think the camera moves effortlessly and the set and lighting draw an eerily romantic mood. I think it dovetails with the Japanese scene nicely and that the beauty, drama and emotion will seduce an audience willing to go to a movie and go on a real journey with the characters.
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about what draws me into drama, and why it punches me in the gut when it’s done well (in the way all lovers of a good drama are somehow masochistic, which is worthy of a separate psychological appraisal). What draws me in, first of all, is people who are different from me. This is probably a carry-over from my inner cultural anthropologist and philosopher. What makes people tick? What cultural references cause them to tick differently? How can values and core beliefs be so deeply ingrained by culture? And what causes all of us who are so different to be the same? It’s quite interesting that faith (both in the ‘organized religion’ sense and at the deeper spiritual/moral/philosophical level) unites us, even though sometimes theology can be divisive. For me, good drama will bring me into a completely different world or lifestyle but then give me something familiar to hold onto there: something that is a deep, enduring and truly universal need expressed in a specific, culturally relevant way. Perhaps a way I didn’t see, because it wasn’t taught to me by my culture. Maybe that need is even mediated in some way by the culture at large.
By way of my over-thought definition of “drama”, it’s probably not hard to see now why I seem to exist at the intersection between theology and art: both uncover our deepest secrets and fulfill our greatest needs. They bring into focus the central paradox of life, crystalized in any good drama: if humanity shares a common thread of inter-connectedness, why do we spend all of our time hurting each other in all of the ways we do? And, more urgently, how do we get back to the Garden? If not you and me, perhaps our characters can.
