August 24, 2004
I watched Nicholas Roeg's Walkabout this evening; given the nature of script I'm working on, I felt the need to see some people lost in wide open space. It was a stunning film, and not at all what I had expected from the synopsis on the Netflix sleeve. Not that I had expected anything lesser than what it was; but I thought perhaps it would be a more subtly ironic film, which it is not at all, and I did not anticipate its tremendous sense of sadness. I kept thinking while watching it how it could not be made now; partially because of the numerous animal killings, which like the oxen slaughter in Apocalypse Now are appropriate but very troubling (Roeg mentions this on the commentary track, saying that he's not vegetarian but that he wanted to comment on the obscene amount of waste in our society); but mainly because of the nudity on the part of the sixteen year old actress, which was very innocent, but very sexual at the same time. Then I learned that those scenes had been cut when the film was first released in 1971, and only restored eight years ago. Our culture is so frustrating/confusing/etc.
"He was very honest in terms of the story he was telling, and told me in detail his sense of it all. And not all of it fixed in my mind because it was hard to understand what he wanted to do. It was only actually seeing the film -- the film is really what he described to me...the vision that he had inside his head was on the screen. It's something that was actually quite difficult to describe."--Actress Jenny Agutter on the Walkabout commmentary track.
Lovely.
I felt offkey all day today (technically yesterday); at a certain point, I started working on Rocketman and got twenty slightly revised pages written, which left me so depressed that I had to lay down for a while. I hate it when that happens. I used to just give up when those moods hit, but now I'm self aware enough to be able to force myself to get back up and keep working.
Posted by David Lowery at August 24, 2004 2:29 AM