So that’s why I don’t entirely understand a phenomenon I have experienced since I became a screenwriter; everyone wants to read my scripts!  When you hear the first person request a gander, there is no better feeling.  You’ve poured an elaborate ensemble and a full story, arced like a rainbow, out of your head and into the tangible world.  You can’t wait for someone else to experience it and then, of course, tell you it’s just as amazing as you think it is.  But it only takes a few e-mails sent into the abyss of “never heard from again” before you realize how few people actually mean it.  There are those constant readers, and by that I mean the ones you are actually related to.  You have enough history with family to guilt them into giving you a read and review.  But it’s almost a guarantee that no one else, even the best of your friends, will ever read your script.   Even on the rare occasion that they find time in their busy lives that is not already occupied by Facebook to scan through your heart and soul in paper form, they will never tell you what they thought of it.

I’ve learned my lesson.  Let them ask.  Let them ask again.  See if they actually send you an e-mail about it.  Tell them that if you send your script, you’ll want to know what they thought.  Add the caveat that it need not be more than a few sentences, basic reactions, less words than one would utter when leaving a movie theater.  Tell them over and over again that a bad review will not mean the end of your friendship.  We all learn from our mistakes.  Tell them to take their time, we all have full lives to manage.  Forgive their first few “I just haven’t had time yet” responses.  Continue to be that good friend and communicator that you are.  But it won’t matter if you get a thousand yeses and words of good intention, they are not going to read shit.

So your creative mastery floats out into the internet ether.  Drafts one through thirteen have been sent to someone at some point, and could have been bounced around to any other human sharing your electronic cloud.  And all you hear is crickets chirping.  I know that when one of my films actually gets made, I will only get reviews from those paid to publish them, and those who think it’s their duty to share their opinion in all CAPS on every comment stream they come in contact with.  But it won’t matter.  My script will be a fucking movie!  The people who want to see it can drive their asses to the theater and pay (what will probably be a good $45 by then) for a seat.  You won’t have to ask me.  You won’t have to ask me again.  You won’t have to make promises you can’t keep.  You won’t have to feel the guilt of having broken those promises.  Just buy me a cocktail and all is forgiven.  Then go see my fucking movie.  You’ll wish you had read the script.

Substantially harder to explain is why I choose to do what I do.  Life would certainly be easier if I had a paycheck handed to me every once in a while (which is one of my aims).  And it would be substantially easier if I simply chose to do less.  I don’t have to volunteer to design yet another short film that only the festival geeks will ever see.  I don’t have to set a deadline for my next screenplay since I’m worlds away from having an agent breathing down my neck for it.  So why do I?

All people are driven to step beyond their obligations to simply exist and procreate by different reasons.  It can be to stave off boredom, to release a subconscious desire, to answer the call of the muse, or the desperate need to be able to look back on their lives and say “yeah, I did that.”  For me it is both all of those reasons and none of them the same time.  It’s a voice that tells me that I will accomplish something great.  It’s the visions of me attending my own premiere, being interviewed by an iconic figure and yes, being handed awards.  Above all that, it’s the idea that I will watch a compelling story that I helped to create, play out before my eyes and still get from it that same sense of amazement and wonder one only seems to touch in the early years of childhood.  It is want.  It is desire.  It is drive.  It is need.

I can only relate this intangible concept to one tangible object: Michelangelo’s Rondanini Pietà.  Never heard of it?  I’m not surprised.  It was the last piece Michelangelo was working on up until a few days before his death, and it was never finished.  What remains of this marble block is only the sinewy ghosts of Mary and Jesus, and one nearly finished arm, polished to a shine but completely dismembered from any body.  This hacked apart marble block could never have become a completed work worthy of the master’s reputation.  Nonetheless, seeing it nearly brought me to tears.  Michelangelo worked on this sculpture up until a few days before his death at the unheard of age of 89.  Driven by whatever his need was, to touch the divine, to step beyond the mortal plane and out of his pain-ridden mortal body, or to perhaps leave a piece of his soul here on earth, he just had to keep working.  In that dismembered arm, the shadowy faces in the stone, the jittery marks of an unstable chisel, I could feel that need, that driving force to create that was so strong it became destruction.

So I keep chiseling.  I answer my muse.  I let my subconscious take the driver’s seat.  I am far from bored, and someday I will look back and say “Wow, I did that!”  I just hope I know when to stop chiseling.  Even if I don’t, someone may look at what I created and see beautiful destruction.  I leave you with the words of the master himself.

Only with fire can the smith shape iron
from his conception into fine, dear work;
neither, without fire, can any artist
refine and bring gold to its highest state,
nor can the unique phoenix be revived
unless first burned. And so, if I die burning,
I hope to rise again brighter among those
whom death augments and time no longer hurts.
I’m fortunate that the fire of which I speak
still finds a place within me, to renew me,
since already I’m almost numbered among the dead;
or, since by its nature it ascends to heaven,
to its own element, if I should be transformed
into fire, how could it not bear me up with it?
- Michelangelo Buonarroti 1532

But lately I’ve been finding myself short of material for my loyal readers.  Why?  Because having committed myself to life in Sydney it has become just that, life.  It’s not always average but it’s also not always interesting either.  Aussie culture isn’t the mystery it once was and though I have a lot of the country left to travel, thinning bank accounts prevent it from happening with any regularity.  So my inspiration to write about the oddities of life as an ex-pat is waning.  But my desire to create beautifully written pieces of bite-sized autobiographical literature lives on.

So what am I going to write about now?  What is interesting enough about my life that it will make my blog better than your dogs?  Well, moving to another country wasn’t the only thing that changed about my life in the last year.  I also officially became a freelancer, a.k.a. starving artist, a.k.a. indy filmmaker, a.k.a. broke-ass writer.  These were all things I had done in the past but always in balance with the 9-5 daily grind.   But now I live my daily life in the constant pursuit of seemingly lofty artistic aspirations, with no promise of an income in my immediate future.  And I love it!

My experiences may not always be blogworthy, but life as a freelancer has taken me to some odd places and introduced me to some even odder people.  It’s also forced me to face the most frightening challenge of all, self discipline.  Cultural observations and travel reports will still be choice topics on Marglish.com but I’m expanding my palate to include the colors of life as a hopeful artist.  I hope to paint you all an entertaining picture.

A few observations from the flip side:

American money IS really boring.  I had heard that before but could never really relate.  It also feels substantially less robust than Aussie money.  Perhaps currency reflects culture in more ways than intended.  But you certainly spend a lot less of it.  My idea of a reasonable price is so far from what it used to be.  Shopping at certain outlets and chain stores felt almost like getting away with theft.  I guess there is something to be said for a mass consumerist culture.  Although, taxes and tipping sucks a bit.  Go easy on the foreigners who might shortchange you.  They probably just come from a culture with a more straightforward billing system.

Driving on the other side of the road only seemed a little strange when I was on a new road.  It created a particularly strange sensation while on a road lined with eucalyptus trees though.  Coincidence?  I think not.

Changing seasons on the way there was not particularly hard, but coming back to winter is quite a depressing experience.  If the cold doesn’t get to you, then the lack of light does.  We came back to Sydney on the shortest day of the year after having been in a city where it was still light at 8pm.  Luckily the days can only get longer from here.

My Many Homes:

Going back to LA felt the same way it always has.  I guess I’m used to coming home again, even if the trips happen less frequently than they used to.  But this was the first time I have ever gone back to New York and not been returning to my own humble abode.  I can only describe the sensation of going back like that of reading a book or seeing a movie that you loved as a child but haven’t been exposed to for many years.  You remember the major plot points, the characters and how it ends (usually with a slice of pizza at 2am on a Sunday) but you’ve forgotten little details here and there.  I’d see certain street corners, overhear conversations on the subway, get trapped in the stampede of a deli lunch rush and find myself thinking, oh yeah, I remember that.

It was also louder, more congested and just generally more insane than I remember.  I guess after living there for enough time you develop the ability to shut out everything but what you need and want to hear, see and even smell, then lose it after spending some time away.  But I muscled through overstimulation with the iron will (and stomach) of a true New Yorker.  Yeah, I’ve still got it.

The bagels are amazing, the cocktails are generous, the pizza is rich and delicious and the coffee sucks.  But it tastes like no other coffee in the world.  That slight hint of burnt metal and taste of grounds that have spent weeks at the bottom of the machine is a flavor I fondly associate with the Big Apple, ode de health violations.  I also thought I walked plenty in Sydney, but I realize now that no creature on earth walks as much as a New Yorker.  It took wearing holes in one pair of shoes and my only pair of feet before I got my city legs back.  Aussies will be able to swim around the planet when the polar ice caps melt but until then they’ll never beat a New Yorker in an endurance walk.

But perhaps the most surprising thing about going back home was the fact that it made me really feel how much time has passed since I’ve been back.  When you move to a new country, how you feel and what you experience tends to change every few weeks.  Excitement becomes culture shock, because excitement again.  New experiences become everyday life.  Odd becomes normal and eventually your new environment becomes your new home and before you know it an entire year has passed.  But for the people you left behind, the people whose lives now have one less person in them, they seem to have felt every day pass.  You can tell by how tightly they hug you when they finally see you again.  You can see it in the tears they can’t hold back when you have to say goodbye for another year.  It suddenly becomes much harder to leave than you thought it would be.

But because of all those people, both East coast and West, I now have more than one place to call home.  As hard as it is to be separated by time zones and hemispheres, I know I can not only always come back but that I will also always be welcomed.  I’ve felt so much at home in two vastly different cities now, that  when people here ask me where I’m from I have trouble deciding what to say.  And I wouldn’t feel that way without the people I have so much trouble prying myself away from.  So I consider myself lucky, exceptionally lucky.  And if I continue to be as lucky as I am now, maybe I’ll have a third city to call my home.

Now, I’m going back to two different places that I’ve called home for most of my life and I wonder if all the commonplace everyday things that I once took for granted are going to stick out like the peaks of the Opera House.  Will the LA traffic finally seem as ridiculous as I know it really is?  (although Sydney has its fair share of congested arteries as well.)  Will NY actually seem like the densely, jam-packed pickle of an island I had once been so accustomed to?  Will I experience a sense of relief at finally no longer being the one with the accent?  At least no one will think I’m Canadian.

I’ll report my findings upon my return to the land of Oz.  Until then, I’ll be enjoying a literal change of season. Cheers!

One year ago today I noticed how great the air smelled, even out by the airport.

One year ago today I saw the Opera House and crossed the Harbor Bridge for the first time.

One year ago today I saw my first glimpse of a Sydney beach.

One year ago today I had my first Aussie meat pie.

One year ago today I had no idea what any of the crazy birds outside my window were, but I was amazed at how talkative they all were.

One year ago today I got my first taste of life without insulation.

One year ago today I realized that everyone on TV had an Australian accent.

One year ago today I didn’t really understand what “harden the fuck up” meant.  Now I do.

One year ago today I was so jet-lagged I couldn’t stay up past 8:30pm.  I’ve since recovered.

Thanks for a great year, Australia.

There are a lot of theories as to why this trend exists; that the films coming out of Australia tend to be underdeveloped, don’t appeal to a large audience and are marketed poorly.  Another theory points to the quirky nature of Australian films.  Indeed, all of the films I have worked on since moving here have an element of what I’d call “fantastic reality” to them.  But if anything I think quirkiness helps sell a film because it generates a buzz.  Think about the Aussie films that you probably saw in a theater, Strictly Ballroom, Muriel’s Wedding, Babe (should have won the Oscar that year), Priscilla Queen of the Desert and Moulin Rouge.  Pretty quirky, hey?  And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the final number in Priscilla is to drag queens what the final number in Center Stage is to dancers, or what the Pamchenko twist in The Cutting Edge is to figure skaters; physically impossible but oh so deliciously fun.  We all love a little fantasy, so I doubt that’s the problem.

Even though my filmmaking experiences in Oz thus far has been limited and I’ve no knowledge of the marketplace on a professional level, I’ve developed some different theories of my own.  The first is that Aussies, and particularly Australian film makers, suffer from a crippling case of self deprecating humor.  It exists in the best of us.  Anyone with a modicum of humility makes fun of themselves and those of us with artistic talent tend to do it lot.  But Australians in entertainment do this so much that even American TV star Johnny Galecki, in his recent trip to Oz, felt surprised by how prevalent it was.  And he attended the Logie Awards (the Australian Emmys) an event intended to praise the great talent on Australian television.  You’d think that perhaps this applies only to the old hats, the vets of the industry who have probably done a few things worthy of making fun, but I find it amongst the fresh-faced hopefuls too.  I’ve already read three scripts by Aussies that each contained jokes about the hopeless state of the Oz industry.  Apparently they’ve never heard of self fulfilling prophecies.

But I think the main reason Australian films tend to fail in the US (the ultimate money spending target audience for most international fare) is because Americans don’t know a damn thing about Australia.  Bill Bryson said it best in his book In a Sunburned Country, “We pay shamefully scant attention to our dear cousins down under.”  Before I got here everything I knew about Australia I either learned from Steve Irwin or remembered from a brief Australian Renaissance in the 1980s thanks to Crocodile Dundee and Men at Work.  It was very little and hardly representative.  I have yet to see The Castle, a film that’s a cornerstone of Australian comedy.  And why is that?  Because it’s very Australian.  I probably wouldn’t have understood half the jokes in the film before I had moved here.  I’ve since been loaned a copy and I will see how many I understand now.  And with a great percentage of the film industry in Oz supported by government grants (a luxury for indy filmmakers if you ask me) many films coming out of the country are bound to be very Australian.  With plots, places, characters and jokes heavily colored by Aussies unique culture, those films are going to be mis-understood by international audiences.  Just imagine trying to explain Aussie rules football or, better yet cricket, to a Giants fan.  It just wouldn’t translate.

I’m not suggesting Australians write American stories and make American films.  If anything, we have too many of those already and the Hollywood machine is churning out more sequels then there are popcorn kernels consumed while watching them.  What I suggest instead is that Aussies spend a little more time advertising not just their movies but themselves.  They could stand to learn a little from their loud, self-important cousins to the north.  If we knew more about Australia, its history, its people, its traditions, its music, its fashion, its pop-culture, its slang, its lazy Sunday activities, its drinking games, its knock-knock jokes and everything else that comprises a unique culture, then when we see a preview for an Australian movie we’d be able to say “yeah, I get that.”  Stop making fun of yourselves and start telling the world how awesome you are.  Chances are, we will listen.  After all, in America everyone gets their 15 minutes, including a lot of people who shouldn’t.  Separate yourselves from the tabloid darlings with your talents and you might even get a whole 45.  Just don’t expect us to ever understand why you eat Vegemite.

I did participate in Earth Hour, but was away from my own apartment so I couldn’t watch as the city center went dark.  I was actually looking forward to seeing how the birthplace of the tradition would celebrate it, especially since Time Square gave such a pathetic showing last year.  I guess it will take another blackout of the entire eastern seaboard to put out all the blinking lights on 42nd Street.

This past weekend I just barely missed the homecoming of Jessica Watson the youngest person to (unofficially) sail solo around the world.  Of course, I wouldn’t have missed that had she shown up on time.  Dang teenagers.  At first I felt a sense of guilt at missing these odd, unique and occasionally historic events occurring right outside my window, then I thought about all the things I probably missed seeing every day of my life until now.

I never once saw the New Years Eve ball drop in Time Square.  I’m of the school of thought that real New Yorkers know it’s too crowded, too cold and too touristy.  We’d all rather be drinking indoors.  I never went ice skating at Rockafeller Center.  You want how much for 45 minutes?  My gracefulness belongs on cheaper ice.  And even though we made a yearly tradition of watching the parade balloons getting inflated the night before, there was no way in hell I was getting up at the crack of dawn to actually watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

But my life is not lacking.  Something interesting probably happens in every city in the world every single day.  I won’t let the drive to experience the goings on in this lovely city die, but I won’t drive myself crazy trying to catch every event that might just happen to cruise by my window.  For every event I miss a spontaneous fireworks show occurs.  There was a lovely one just a few hours ago.  Someone must have been really happy it was Monday.

With friends on both coasts in the US, e-mail had already become a quite a trusted friend of mine.  And then G-chat was just the icing on the cake.  Most of my online communication was still in fairly real time with friends I would have happily called and had the same conversations with (only you can G-chat topics at work that you probably wouldn’t say out loud, at least not in front of your boss).  But now the e-mails get sent with less regularity and I only have so many hours to chat before everyone I know in the US goes to sleep.  Afternoons online are quite quiet indeed.

But because of facebook, I can now not only keep tabs on those same friends but also on my childhood friends, friends of friends, classmates, business associates, former professors, bosses, and relatives I might have otherwise never knew I had.  What a weird and wonderful world we live in that I can see pictures from a wedding I would have attended had I been in the States, alongside photos of a former professors newborn son whom I’ll probably never meet.  Being on facebook is like attending a reunion of every institution and family you have ever been associated with.  But unlike the one on one conversations over cocktails that you might get at a real reunion, facebook is one where every guests grabs the mic and gives a speech at the same time.  It can be very hard to have a decent conversation over all that noise.

I love you guys, but I don’t need to see every video that amused you during your otherwise dull work week.  We probably know each other because of some common interest that we share, but that doesn’t mean I read the same extreme political columnists or listen to the same bands you do.  And it’s because I care about you that I have to tell you, the amount of time you spend playing farmville is just sad.  And don’t even get me started on those of you who complain about facebook on facebook.  If you hate it so much then just stop using it for f*^%$# sake!

What people seem to forget when they are using short form, instant e-communication, is to consider what they wouldn’t say if they were broadcasting on a different forum.  Over the phone, you might tell your friend about an interesting thing you saw on TV that week, or whinge a bit about how you’re feeling sick.  But would you call the same friend every five minutes to give them an update on the latest topic that was running through your mind?  Probably not.  So does your ex-boyfriend’s, co-worker’s, roomate’s cousin really care how many avocados you ate on Tuesday?  Probably not.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, the internet has blessed my life with Skype.  I may be drinking my coffee while my friends are sipping glasses of wine, but we are still having a conversation over drinks just like we would in person, rude gestures and facials expressions included.   I not only get to have my weekly conversations with the parents but I can also see that they’ve never fixed the clock on the stereo in the living room.  Those little things add such a pleasant touch of home.  And no one on Skype bothers to tell me how many times they went to Starbucks that week.  They know that would be a waste of bandwidth.

So when communicating through the wonderful interwebs, that has blessed our life with such an abundance of information both exciting and mundane, interesting and dull, relevant and very much not, stop to consider this; does my friend living on the other side of the world, having her breakfast a full calendar day ahead of me, really care about what I’m about to post?  Or, would she perhaps like to hear about that crazy blind date I went on last week, that promotion I got at work, that I’m getting married, having a baby, getting a sex change or any number of other things that cannot be communicated in 200 characters or less and probably shouldn’t be broadcast to 300 people at the same time.  Maybe, just maybe, since she’s such good friend that I have her e-mail address, skype name, phone number, home address and enough information about her personal life to keep her from ever running for public office, I should have a chat with her instead.  Yeah, she’d probably like that.