Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Search for Inspiration


Last Thursday I caught myself adding Instruments of Torture to my library request list, and realized it was time to take another dose of romantic comedies to get back on track.

Friday I watched The Big Lebowski. No romance, but I was stuck at a (hot) math student’s apartment, and it was either that or Lord of the Rings. I left around 3am uninspired. Funny stuff, but it had nothing to do with my script.

Saturday was Chasing Amy, Definitely, Maybe, and somehow Dance for Camera 2 and clips from 21 Grams were thrown in the mix. I was surprisingly disappointed by Chasing Amy. I had expected it to be mind-blowingly good....and it was good 2/3 of the way through. But the during last third I was outraged and flabbergasted instead. Definitely, Maybe on the other hand, turned out to be unexpectedly good. However, even with a happy ending, it was an extremely depressing movie about life. I was briefly cheered up by the perfectly cooked fish for dinner. After all, there was still tomorrow.

Sunday after church, I pulled out the last romantic comedy I had prepped: Someone Like You. It seemed like a winner: a) it was suggested to me by a normal, happy, non-writer girl, b) like my script, one of the love interest was a player, c) Hugh Jackman was in it. How could this possibly not spark some idea or motivation me to write? Well it didn’t.

At that point, I gave up. All that love and happiness were annoying the hell out of me. Screw my script. If I was going to waste a whole weekend, I'm going to enjoy wasting it. I rolled onto the carpet with a bag of white cheddar corn puffs and began binging on House M.D.


After four episodes back to back, somehow there were fifteen new pages attached to my script.


Moral of this story: Hugh Laurie is MAGIC.