Screenwriting teachers talk a lot about “beginning, middle,
and end” of a screenplay (there’s more, however, such as “point of no return”
and “point of recognition”). More advanced classes talk about “layered
storytelling”, which can throw away a lot of the rules and fracture the
narrative.
There are different ways “to layer”. The simplest is the flashback or backstory.
Another is to embed a fiction story written by one of the characters.
Then you can weave everything together in a continuous
narrative, or you segment the film into separate “shorts”.
The 2009 experiment by David Kittredge (from Wolfe), “Pornography:
A Thriller” (the official title has only the first word) takes the latter
approach, splitting into three “long short” films, with characters crossing and
connecting. He doesn’t title the sections (he should have).
The first part, about 28 minutes, shows a backstory of adult
film star Mark Anton (Jared Gray) in 1995.
Anton wanted a better life and walked into a dangerous business deal.
Strapped to a chair and then a gurney in an isolated closet apparently in NYC
(you think about Sweeny Todd), he argues for his own independence. They can pay him to perform, “but you can’t
buy my pain” he says. He also talks
about how pictures freeze time at the present, which always vanishes into the
future from the past, otherwise (sounds like General Relativity). A masked monster engages him, and he
disappears.
Part 2 takes place in 2009, as a “regular guy” gay
journalist Michael Castigan (Matthew
Montgomery, made to look about age 30, easily the steadiest character in the
film -- perhaps inspired by Anderson
Cooper) is writing a book about the history of gay porn, and moves into a large
apartment near the Botanical Gardens in Brooklyn (the area looked familiar to
me) with a lover William (Walter Delmar), whose appearance is interesting when
you look closely (as in the bedroom). Michael
finds a hidden safe in the closet, with a business card showing an image of a
ring with an ankh already shown in the first part. He also finds an old DAT tape with video of
whom we know to be Mark Anton.
Intrigues, he wants to find out what happened to Anton. He starts to visit a video technology shop.
When the owner (David Prevsner) restores the tape and watches the video, he
disappears, too. Now, the film is in territory
visited already by the 2002 thriller “The Ring” by Gore Verbinski from
Dreamworks (where anyone who watches a particular VHS video expires). At this point, we also feel
like we’re in David Lynch territory – concepts both from “Lost Highway” and the
infamous “Twin Peaks” series and movie prequel (“Fire Walk With Me”). There’s
also some reference to David Cronenberg, Brian de Palma, and even Ridley Scott.
This section of the film takes about 35
minutes.
‘Suddenly, we see a new character, actor and writer Matt
Stevens (Pete Scherer, who looks a bit too much like Montgomery), finishing off
a screenplay in Final Draft that seems to be writing itself. All the sudden, we’re in Hollywood, and Part
3 of the film is announced by oversaturated hues and an almost cartoonish
look. Matt gets to direct his film about
Mark Anton, which in time recreates (in pieces) Matt’s theory about what must
have happened to him. The work on the
set is quite taxing – no pee bathroom breaks allowed for actors. He gets a cell phone call from journalist Michael, who appears only once more
in the movie. We start to wonder if Matt
had Michael set up to live in that apartment.
What’s not so clear is all the surreal goings on. The last part of the film is the longest, and
the hardest to follow.
My own (“Do Ask Do Tell”) screenplay has a protagonist
(based on me) in a mystery interview situation (apparently on another
planet). I embed a troubling short film
that my character wrote and posted as a screenplay (showing it in black and
white), leading to a presentation of “life history” incidents, generated in
reaction to the screenplay, in natural color.
In the ashram (on this other planet, perhaps Titan), “Bill” is given
tasks to prove himself worthy for a special ritual, which the other characters,
who brought Bill here, must also face and need Bill’s story in order to prepare
themselves. Back home, on Earth, it will
soon be the End of Life as You Know It (but by no means the End of the
World). But in my setting, the “screenplay”
is totally fictitious, not a reenactment of past events; rather, it generates
events. The other “angels” who have
brought Bill to “Titan” have a definite interest in Bill’s attitudes or
fantasies about them. Following the example set by the Kittredge film here, it would be necessary to select one "angel" character and funnel all the information about "Bill" to him (his performance on the "tests" and backstory viewings) from the other companions, and show why he needs it.
“Pornography” is an ambitious film,, even monumental. It played many of the
LGBT festivals and at the Atlantic Film Festival. The DVD includes a featurette
“Smile for the Camera” (12 minutes) about the film, and a lot of replaying
delete scenes. The original film had run
150 minutes before trimming to 104 minutes.
The official site is here.
Pictures, mine (2012): Baltimore Pride (2); Palm Springs CA. I do get around!
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