Idea for a film, including its suggested performance at Cannes

In this entry I will give my idea for a film, including its suggested performance at Cannes. Now, to illustrate my entry, here's a picture from the booklet that came with my old inkjet printer:

Obligatory image

Dear diary,

I like movies about regular people doing regular things, but there are not many movies like this: I’ve found that most movies are about extraordinary individuals enduring unusual circumstances.

I wish that there could be a movie about people who work at a shop, and the camera would just follow these people around and listen to them interact with each other; and then we could see what they eat on their lunch break, and we could hear the dinner conversation that they enjoy when they return home to their families.

And if any of the characters lives alone, we could follow them home and see what they do, from the moment they walk in the door until they go to bed.

If this initial film is a hit, I plan on developing many sequel films; and each would focus on just one character from the main picture. For instance, that guy who delivers mail to the shop periodically — we could make a whole movie about that guy’s life, since we only see him from the perspective of the shop workers in the original feature. He deserves his own motion picture.

And now the question comes up: Would these movies be scripted dramas or real-life documentaries? My answer is: Either one would work, and I think it would be most interesting to make our movie a mixture of both. We could choose characters who really do work at an existing shop, and follow them around with our team of cameramen, and edit into our film any footage that’s even-keeled.

But if an exceptional event happens to be caught on film — say that in real life, a customer enters the shop and treats one of the workers rudely, so then that worker flies into a rage and kills this customer: I would opt to edit this scene out, and not to use it in our film. — In this case, we would re-shoot a scripted scene where someone plays the now-deceased customer, and I’d write lines for them to say that are pleasant instead of rude; and then I’d give friendly lines to the worker who murdered the character in real life, so that this same worker could interact with the fictionalized version of her victim in our film and have the conversation end uneventfully.

In this way, we would draw upon the plum aspects of real life as well as the plum aspects of fantasy; and combine them seamlessly, thru editing, to create a plum world.

I would prefer to use mostly only non-actors, too — that is, people who do not act in plays and films for a living: non-professionals.

But for certain key scenes I wouldn’t be against hiring a professional actor; especially if, for instance, one of the real-life siblings of our main character doesn’t want to appear in our movie: in that case, we could hire a seasoned actor to replace her.

What this would mean for the family is that the sister who declined to be in our film would still eat dinner with them every night, but she would sit right next to the actor who was hired to play her in our production, and we would instruct our camera crew to always frame their shots so that the real-life sister is cropped out and thus does not appear: only the hired professional would be seen in the shot. That way, we could use the natural conversation that comes from the real-life sister, but her words would be attributed to her surrogate in the final cut.

And if you’re wondering how we’re going to make it look like the pro actor said the lines that the real sister said, when all that the pro did during those moments was sit and chew her food with her mouth shut (cuz how is the actor who is playing the part of the sister ever to know when the real-life sister is going to blurt out a remark, let alone what words she will say exactly? — I mean, the definition of reality is that it’s unplanned; therefore the professional actor in a real-life setting will have nothing to do but listen while enjoying her meal), I answer that we will implement a routine and follow it religiously during shooting — it will go like so:

As the real sister speaks, the professional will be penciling shorthand dictation in a college-ruled journal that is hidden out-of-frame and which contains notations on timing and accent for all that is said. This the actor shall do while eating the meal. Then, when the dinner is over and the family has left the table, the film crew shall remain and keep the same angles of shooting while the professional actor pantomimes all the lines that were recently spoken during the scene that just passed. Then, later, in post-production, we can edit in these pantomimed performances to replace the same actor’s mute chewing scenes from the “real” film-reel: the initial event which was recorded when the actual sister was present and speaking. Yet we’ll leave the real-life sister’s voice on the soundtrack, so that her dialogue will all sound authentic. This will work fine, because the sister signed a legal release form that allows us to use her words and her actual vocalizations — she only doesn’t want her physical image to appear in the film, as she believes that cinematography traps one’s soul inside the big-screen and thus prohibits it from transmigrating to other dimensions in the afterlife.

And what I’d really hope could happen is that the detective who was called in to inspect all the details of the murder of the customer from earlier would agree to play that very customer whose suspicious slaying he is investigating in real-life. That way, our film would portray this detective entering the shop and engaging in friendly conversation with the worker who, in actuality, was responsible for having taken the life of his own character; and this would create an on-screen tension that would possess no discernible reason within the universe of our film, as we will have scripted all the dialogue to be innocuous. Those little touches of strangeness and unease will give the finished movie a distinctive air that will prove caviar to the masses while perplexing the financiers. — I’ll be proud of that.

And I would manage to script into our documentary a way for our cast of real-life characters to attend the festival where their own film is showing in competition. I’d have our cinematographer position his team of cameramen skillfully throughout the theater as our movie is being screened, so as to record the reactions of our characters to their film-selves. And it would be especially interesting to see, in close-up, the facial expressions that are made by that one worker whom we know executed the customer, when she’s watching herself act the scenes with the detective playing the role of what is now her non-victim.

And then when the International Film Festival officially presents its Golden Palm (the highest prize awarded) to some other film, I personally will storm backstage after the ceremonies have concluded and coerce the judges to participate in a rewritten, new dramatized version of what just happened tonight, which shall depict our film as winning the GRAND PRIX (the most prestigious award in the world of film); and if they decline, then we will do the same thing for their characters as we did for the real-life sister in all the dinner scenes.

But because being crowned the Best Director Ever by a panel of my favorite filmmakers serving as movie-judges would be a little too extraordinary for our humble documentary, which you’ll recall was supposed to be “a movie about regular people doing regular things”, I’ll probably opt to edit out these award ceremonies. Instead, directly after my personal coronation, we can script a scene where I simply drive home on my motorbike and type up a blog post — that can replace all the hype of praise and worship from the raving audience, which, after all, is just a big headache: it continues forever. Perhaps we can include all this pomp as a deleted scene in the DVD “extras”; or put it as the alternate ending for the European release.