2005-04-01 - 2:15 p.m.
I just found this book around; I�d forgotten I saved it. It was a prop created by a girl I worked with and I thought it was so funny that I kept it.
Years ago I was an art director for low-budget independent films shot around Boston. The entire budget for some of them was <$100K, which is a rounding error for major studios. (I was initially an actor before moving to behind-camera work � check my Internet Movie Database entry.)
Now, I don�t really know a lot about art and design. Certainly, I have no formal training. But I�m pretty good at dealing with stuff and low-budget filmmaking is really just a whole series of practical challenges. I would have been totally adrift trying to design a set for some �Star Wars�-level production, but I could work something out when the director said �Can you turn this borrowed office into a gynecological exam room for a scene we�re shooting in two hours using no money?� (I just realized that makes it sound like I worked in blue films; I did not.)
Eventually, I quit. �I work in film� sounds good at parties, but it really doesn�t pay the rent. Plus it was the late-90s and everyone and their brother was making movies. I chafed at being associated with such a hipster industry. I was sitting at a table once in a Greenwich Village coffee shop. At the table in front of me, people were running lines and practicing a film script. Across the aisle, people were breaking down a shooting schedule for a different film. Exasperated, I turned around to see that at least the old lady behind me was reading a book. Then I saw the title. �How to Write a Screenplay�.
Finally, I realized that I was involved in siphoning money, usually from the wealthy relatives of the wannabe artistes, to make bad art. Now it�s one thing to make your own bad art; I encourage everyone to do this. But helping someone else make bad art � well, you�re just adding to the dreck in the world. What�s the point?
In like 1998 I was working on a film where a character was supposed to be reading �The Great Gatsby�. The problem arose that the cover art (you know, the Art Deco painting with the eyes) was still copyrighted and we didn�t have clearance to use it. All editions of the book have this cover (Fitzgerald was so taken with it that he basically wrote it into the novel).
Now, a lot of low-budget props have details that are too small to be made out on screen (given that less-than-crystal film stock might be used), but can be seen by actors and help add to the atmosphere. The props mistress mocked up a fake version of the book with a large front title font and a generic watercolor of a girl in a sun hat. I think the review blurb she wrote on the back is hilarious:
In The Great Gatsby, National Book Award finalist and bestselling author F. Scott Fitzgerald turns from fiction to memoir, weaving the story of her own family�s history in rural South Carolina into a meditation on the meaning of storytelling.
With luminous clarity, Fitzgerald tells the story of the Gibson women � sisters, cousins, daughters, and aunts � and the men who loved them, often abused them, and nonetheless shared their destinies. This vivid, moving memoir is illustrated with photographs from F. Scott Fitzgerald�s personal collection.
Man. I really want to read that alternative �Gatsby�.
� 2005 Geoff Gladstone
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