The Sound of Silence & Moonlighting

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.