Today is my birthday, so I’m going to take the day off. I remember writing on my birthday 2 years ago. I’m 39 today, and I have yet to make my first feature. I think that is how my agent would market me.
Thinking about the voice over. Sans Soliel style. San Soliel is a visual collage set to the poetry of the filmmaker’s journey. American Movie is the journey of the subject. So, in my film, the filmmaker’s journey is tied to the journey of the subject. We are on the same path. The process of filmmaking facilitates both journeys. The camera changes things. And, hopefully, we all learn something. It’s a journey that none of us would have taken had it not been for the camera. This is all the intellectualization of things. But how do I make all of this concrete. I need the voice over. “It’s the early 21st century. And I’m back in Tokyo.” It has to be compact. That’s the danger…to write too much. It just has to be compact.
The difficult thing is to know where to begin. Maybe not thinking about the beginning and the end…maybe focus more on the bits and how they fit together.
“And I’m back in Tokyo…only it’s the early 21st century. I’m here looking for cowboys.” But what do I mean by that? What is a cowboy? Someone who is free. Someone who takes risks. So freedom…that was the big thing. That was my assumption when I went there. they have all of this freedom, and it’s the money that gives them this freedom. But, then I discovered that the job and the money was sort of taking freedom away from them. Or the lifestyle. They had this outrageous lifestyle. And in order to maintain it, they needed to make all of this money. So that wasn’t freedom. Something about that New Order song…”I don’t want to be like other people are…don’t want to own a key…don’t want to wash my car.” (I’d love to use that song in the film.)
They went there to have freedom. You could go there and make a lot of money. Maybe it’s a series of questions…maybe that’s how to structure it…or maybe by the trips. Feeling overwhelmed. Time to rest.
Watched Takeshi Miike’s Visitor Q and Nanni Maretti’s Dear Diary today. A very strange combination.
Etsuko called from Japan. It was three in the morning her time, and she was drunk. She kept telling me not to compromise. She’s right.
I went back to Tokyo in search of something. The new frontier? Maybe. I hated it when I left…couldn’t wait to get out. But everyone around me, they seemed to love it. The said they felt free. I never felt that freedom. Or maybe I did and just didn’t know what to call it. Maybe the question shouldn’t be “does money buy freedom,” but, it should be “does freedom buy happiness.” Bauman says that “freedom is likely to bring more misery than joy.”
