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September 15, 2006

Incomplete

After the academic fervor of last year, I felt a bit let down when I realized I wouldn't be able to return to school this semester, and that, indeed, last spring might have been my last taste of collegiate life. Not that I'm complaining - I've certainly got a couple of great reasons to be otherwise occupied - but I can't hep but feel a tinge of regret that, now that I finally feel like getting a serious education, I don't have the time for it.

I gave my sister a lot of the books I had left over from my courses, since she'll be able to use them in hers. I, meanwhile, decided that I would put all the money I wasn't spending on textbooks towards a tome I've been wanting for a while: Taschen's The Stanley Kubrick Archives. It arrived yesterday morning: a coffee table book large enough to function as a coffee table itself. It's almost too big to read. Which won't stop me from reading it, of course.

Included in all first edition copies of the book is a strip of frames from Kubrick's personal 70mm print of 2001. The shot I got was of the Lunar lander descending to the moon base.

The image on the actual frames has been tinted by the decades, and is somewhat hard to make out; but it has a sort of hypnotic power, and it brought back, just a little bit, that feeling I had when I visited the archives themselves. You feel just a little bit closer - not to Kubrick himself, necessarily, nor to his work, but maybe to that ephemeral genius that filled the space between them.

* * *

I've been scared lately - of what, I don't know, but it's preventing me from finishing anything. I've got the means and will to start project after project, but it seems like I can't complete a single one. I've a short film (that oen called Upheave) which for the past two months has only needed one or two pickup shots and some sound effects; a plethora of screenplays that have tapered out after page sixty or twenty or five; two music videos in various stages of completion; a Writers Guild membership form that hasn't been completely filled out; a website for Nick that needs to go online; long due e-mails that have gone long unwritten; books to read; movies to see. I've had the same three Netflix movies out since June. I still haven't finished my short review of The Science Of Sleep (which I guess is okay since I saw the film again last night and have a clearer perception of it). I have the desire to finish all these things, but something is stopping me, and I'm afraid that I'm shooting myself in the foot, and the hand, and possibly in the head. I've no shortage of inspiration; I just need someone to help me channel it. I need someone to slap some sense into me, is what I need.

So I suppose it's a good thing that I'm about to start a project where completion isn't an option, and where the schedule isn't open-ended or (more importantly) up to me. Jim wants a rough cut of Ciao ready two weeks after production wraps. Maybe this regimented schedule will be just what I need to restore the sense of discipline that seems to have evaporated over the course of this long, busy (and, thankfully, ending) summer.

Posted by David Lowery at September 15, 2006 5:55 PM

Comments

Posted by: brad at September 16, 2006 11:48 PM