The Hollywood Quest - Any StoryTaeler Game?

The IT I promise to reveal refers to Desiderata's vision of PARADISE ON EARTH.

I caught some some glimpses of what Paradise is, since running that post on "I've Never Been To Me" (March 05, 2006) . I also saw some descriptions of its Opposite or Antithesis -- for we discern Light through its contrast with Darkness -- collected over the course of engaging several Bloggers recently.

In between the poles, where we mostly dwell in our everyday living, is the real world -- neither Paradise nor Hell. In the metaphor of light, this region is Chiaroscuro, where lie the different shades of grey with white light and total darkness bounding their extremities.

AllOfHelen says:

"Nice new look..... Your Blue Heaven.
....OK....understatement..... Very Nice.

Understanding wat you're reading is indeed Heavenly. :-)

By Helen, at 1:41 PM "


"Wow, that's going to be a difficult question to answer. There are varying answers as to what Paradise mean to individuals. It can be a place for some, some delicious food tasted for others, it can be err...having an orgasmic experience (if you know what I mean)...hmmm...
By Primrose, at 5:07 PM "


"JOE.PSC of sin-land recalls:

The thing that came closest to "Paradise" was when me and my Japanese guest were flying back from Jakarta on a Garuda plane, during one sunset, and the view of the clear white clouds hanging ouside the plane for hundreds of miles, the golden ray of the sun piercing through them, and the soft keroncong music of the cabin, all happening in harmony, certainly was blissful and heavenly; so blissful that my guest told me repeatedly he would not mind dying there and then !"

A fishtaeler laments:

"The worst thing that can happen to me is to be tied to a post at 4 pm on a Sunday at the Singapore harbour and watch the 16 storey beauty slide out to sea."

Sad refrain from "I Need a Cabin-Mate" on March 16, 2006 (http://julyfish.blogspot.com)

mGf Yan says:

""Life is short. Death is inevitable. But death is not eternal good-bye. Oneday, we shall meet in heaven!
Yan at 7:35 PM "

Yan has also writ earlier:

"In Verse 7 of the same chapter, Paul made it clear that it happened to him. Here is verse 7:

To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great relevations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.

See, the ecstasy and agony? The ecstasy of being in paradise and the agony of a thorn in the flesh!

Paul pleaded the Lord to take away the thorn, but the Lord said,

"My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." (v. 9)

Back to paradise, the "third heaven" was a reference to the Jewish belief about the structure of the universe. There were three heavens, they believed. The first was the atmosphere around the earth, the clouds, etc. Then beyond that they could see a second heaven where the stars, the sun and moon were. The third heaven was the invisible realm where God's throne was, therefore, it was called Paradise.

By Yan, at 1:33 PM "



Desi whispers: Besides visualising and hopefully realising My Blue Heaven, There Will Come a Day, Faith Hill promises, when Desi sees at the end of a Hollywood movie on the big screen -- come 2010 -- the CREDITS slowly run down and suddenly, the name appears, desiderata-ylchong, as that script-writer.

I intimated to helenALLOFTHEE that this Sunday's rumination would target some STORY-TAELERS -- tael because their tales are worth several taels of gold, or platinum! -- and of course, my EsteemedReaders at this humble abode. But one must not be humble when seeking out your Paradise. I told HelenOfTroy she has a group of warm, cosy and close-knit, or isit knut? friends, they call themselves kayIpoh(en)cik, who are all, IMHO, fascinating cock&bull&dogs&cats story-tellers.

I wish from out of this group could arise that one, or two, breakthrough StoryTaeler, to take us to Hollywood. Then fishtail, yan and desi and other members of GSE7EN could realise our Paradise by the Seaboard Lights where Bloggers G++ can sail away and have that "Din and Dine (and D....) on the SE7EN SEAS" on the Super Virgo that sails our from sin-land harbour at 4PM bringing some adventuristfellow&fellas from Ipoh-Koala Lumpur-Fu Rong for our Paradise on Earth voyage. Once a year.

Paradise does not fall from out of the blue. Its antithesis, Death, yes.
Paradise awaits thy bidding and tasting through your own hard work, and using that unique brain that God gave each and everyone of us.

To help any StoryTaeler out there,
Desi invites you to join him in progressing
Like Pilgrims mayhaps?
On The Trail to Hollywood.
Make it my quest, make it your quest.
Better still, maketh IT Our Quest.

You must equip yourself with the knowledge, and tools, and network,for No Man Is an Lisland, is such a noble, and challenging quest, hence, my sharing this bright, bonny and gay morn, after a double take of CON BF, ala-see fei with his capitalistic styloform of Golf, Tennis and eeeehPOH Fish&CheapBalls:

What are the deep structures of screenwriting that make a film truly human, truly universal?

How do we design and craft a screenplay that will be a magnet to attract producers and financiers?

How do we think local industry and at the same time be able to break the boundaries of country, community and culture?

You will find answers to these and many more questions in the upcoming workshop on April 22-23.
The workshop is presented by ScreenAsia Narratives. The presenter is ScreenAsia's Managing Director, Daniel Chan, who is an advocate of media democracy, which simply asserts that every community has the right to produce stories about themselves. He has been presenting courses and workshops like this one for over 10 years to community groups, professional associations and educational institutions. In 2000 he founded the Screenwriters Association (Singapore), served as its first President and in 2003 brought to Singapore, for the first time in Asia, Hollywood's most-sought screenwriting guru, Robert McKee.

He is a Research Associate with the Media Asia Research Group at Curtin University, a Script Reader for the Singapore Film Commission, and is published in several academic journals and magazines.

Workshop Details
Dates: 22 – 23 April 2006 (Sat & Sun) Time: 9am – 5pm
Venue: The Copthorne King's Hotel, Singapore

Workshop Fee (Regular): S$438
Block Booking rate: S$368 per participant (for groups of 5 or more, rate expires 2pm, 11 Apr 2006)

Registration Online at http://screenasia.com.sg

For enquiries about the workshop, email daniel@screenasia.com.sg

Did I also mention today's INTER:LUDE is also an EPIC?
Well, here's the EPIC ePost.

REPRISING:

~~~~~~~~

The Sound of Silence

- Lyrics by Paul Simon -

Hello darkness, my old friend,
I've come to talk with you again,
Because a vision softly creeping,
Left its seeds while I was sleeping,
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence.

In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone,
'Neath the halo of a street lamp,
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence.

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more.
People talking without speaking,
People hearing without listening,
People writing songs that voices never shared
And no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence.......

Just in the last SE&EN days, I have been recalling some memorable lyrics from THE GRADUATE -- first Scarborough Fair, and now,in the stealthy hours of just past midnight on Monday morn, I tread slowly to break the Sound of Silence so that I can see through my mind:

People, faces
Scenes, places
Laughter, tears
CONversations
that sometimes dare to disturb
the transquility that echoes within
Sound of Silence

I want to be able to capture all these images one day in a written form, and hopefully followed by visual medium too, and that desire led me to a trail to learn from some willing experts who dedicated themselves to lead some I.Cows up the Hollywood garden-lined-with-silver-lilies pavement. Well if it finally turns out to be "narrow streets of cobblestone" so what, at least we can savour the sound of silence, yet there were people writing songs that voices never shared, no one dared ...
At least some 20 Malaysians DARED TO DISTRUB The Sound of Silence echoing in Hollywood.

That explains why last Saturday Desi joined a group of about 20 souls -- in bravery or bravado -- who dared to set their eyes beyond the shores of Malaysia towards HOLLYWOOD, hoping to make it the final destination of their creative efforts. We must and can dreAm, can't we?

I did intimate to my XsteamedReaders a li'l I'll be penning some thoughts on film-scripting -- hence this first post spelling out his pre-adventure on which he invested eight enjoyable hours from 0900hrs October 29, 2005 at Colonade Hotel in Jalan Walter Grenier hidden behind Salem's Lot (10) downtown the big bad wolfish city lights of koala lumpuh.

ScreenAsia provided the call.
Several like-minded ambitious, maybe foolhardy, but with a devil-may-care attitude, Malaysians answered ScreenAsia's Call to Adventure.

Each of us invested RM268 each for a full-day interaction with some film practitioners led by Australian film school-trained DANIEL CHAN, with a Film Producer named ANTHONY FU, trained in Hollywood with many international film credits up his sleeves, to learn:


HOW TO WRITE FOR HOLLYWOOD

InfoFile:
"****Malaysia imported over 2,000 films and television programs from North America in 2001, against the 14 films produced locally (according to data from FINAS). The naked truth is, we prefer to watch Hollywood movies than locally produced films. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that writing scripts for Hollywood has a higher chance of the public seeing your story, and getting paid at lucrative Hollywood’s rates too.

Out of 100 scripts written locally, 99 are never produced simply because there are limited opportunities in the local film industry. In addition, poor scriptwriting skills and story telling skills hamper the enthusiasm of any potential producers. Frankly, there aren’t that many producers locally to start with. The obvious solution is to write for Hollywood.

ScreenAsia's Exposition:

“Human beings have traditionally used stories to describe or explain things they could not explain otherwise.”

"The myriad experiences of ordinary individuals are instruments to understanding the human condition. These describe the identity and culture of a people, and should therefore be suitably packaged in some medium if we were to engage in dialogue amongst ourselves and the rest of the world.

ScreenAsia aims to lead this enterprise in the creation of Asian content at the level of writing stories for film and television. All other activity of production follows.


The Singapore-based company, avows in its website (screenasia.com.sg) this Vision:

To give birth to a new breed of Asian storytellers and establish them as a team of ScreenAsia Associates to bring their stories to screens in the world.

Its Mission:

To develop, coach and mentor 300 writers from the Asian region by end of 2006.
To provide a safe space for writers to focus completely on their craft by looking after their intellectual property and other business issues.
To represent ScreenAsia Associates in a global market, as well as create opportunities for future creative works.***"


DESIDERATA has always been a movie fan, also a gobbler of well-scripted humour TV serious, outstanding and favourite of which was MOONLIGHTING, that dishes out lots of humour, sexual innuendoes, yet elegant and tasteful, with some thriller-detection work woven into its story plots.

The star attractions of beautiful, intelligent and curvaseous CYBILL SHEPHERD, and an engaging heart-stealer in BRUCE WILLIS portraying the MADDIE HAYES-DAVID ADDISON madcap A team of detectives gives the motivation for Desi to want to one-day make a li'l mark on the same hallowed halls as the celluloid world that Cybill and Bruce tread.

A typical scene in Moonlighting contains funny and fast remarks, sexual innuendos between Maddie and David who definitely have feelings for each other, yet there is tension, and sometimes like sibling rivalry, no, more akin to romance between two highly individualistic professionals sold to their calling. Hence the "love" in the air is suggestive, and doesn't overwhelm the show's storyline to diminish the entertaining value.

The success of the show is anchored on every episode's script being of exquisite quality and standard -- and a convincing and thriller-ending of the detection. Of course it's fairy-tale that does not occur in a run-of-the-mill detective agency, but the chemistry and riveting acting on the two protagonists carry the show effortlessly, every time. Behind the success of the series, always remember there is the WRITER! And Desi learns that each script can garner the author several hundred thousand dollars! Desi could do with that sort of moolah-lah, remember I still want to transfer to spiritedestination if Hollywood is beyong the horizon. Well,with ScreenAsia's help, Desi would be proud to be able, ONE DAY SOON, Insya-Allah, to be able to produce just one episode of a story of that league.

Well, if I can't achieve the equivalent of a Moonlighting script, I'd settle for the one that won young DUSTIN HOFFMAN an Oscar nomination, and this movie essentially launched him into Hollywood stardom. May even fantasise about reprising Dustin's role with a contemporary virginal maiden to Anne Bancroft, eh?

Hence, do you think the RM268 investment was value for money? Worth every 2 sen (about SG1 sen-lah!) of it, in Desi's laughing opinion.He's not laffing his way to the bank -- to 'ollywood.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~the end ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~