#'pauling paris wanted to share this story with his little girl so he adapted it for children uwu'

[thewritingpossum]

[ev--writes]

Master wip Intro Post (I’m so sorry lol)

I mentioned in my last post that I had notes for upwards of 15 projects in a ton of different formats (side note to myself:whyyyy). Ergo, I thought it would be helpful to do a short overview of all of them, as I’ll probably be doing update posts for all of these at some point.

Also: Thank you for 6 followers already??? I honestly didn’t think anyone would see my last post (especially as I had no idea how tags worked until after I posted it).

Novels

GRACE

“After the sudden death of her childhood best friend and crush Vicky, Robin is invited to spend the summer with her estranged father, his new husband, and her half-sister at their Maine cabin. As her relationships with her father’s family and a fellow vacationing teen Claire grow, her relationships with her remaining friends and mother back home begin to fracture.”  

Oh boy does this book have a backstory.It’s a little complicated to get into right now (I’ll talk about it in my post for this wip), but I got the idea for the original version of this book in April 2016, and it’s been through three major overhauls since then. I’ve done enough planning to start drafting the newest version, but I’m waiting to get a few mostly-complete projects done before I jump in. 

Attic (working title)

“The discovery of a dead body in the attic of Theo’s new house puts a damper on his fresh start. When a singular death becomes a series, Theo and his new friends decide to investigate and discover that the explanation isn’t able to be explained.”

This story also has a long history. I wrote this for NaNoWriMo 2017, overhauled it for NaNoWriMo 2019, and overhauled it again in the middle of that month. I’m currently stuck with a certain aspect, so I’ve put it to the side for the moment.  

Pinewood Guild

“A group of scholarship students at an elite private boarding school obsess over the seemingly unexplainable death of a fellow student.”

This is very much a baby idea, from April of this year. I was having a grand old time writing a different project Three Can Keep a Secret (which I’ll get to later), and I wanted to write another book about terrible people being horrible to each other. I don’t have very many plans for this book at the moment. 

Blood in the Water

“Paul returns to his hometown for the first time since high school to attend the funeral of his brother when he starts to receive anonymous letters. What starts as innocent and quirky quickly turns dark and potentially deadly”

I got this idea in February of this year, as I wanted to write a novel with the letter format. I was supposed to start this project as my “I’m Leaving Highschool Emotional Support Book”, but I’m not sure if I’m going to actually do that.

The Lion Tattoo

“Jordan bonds with classmate Cade over their shared foster care status. As Jordan starts to spend more and more time with Cade, they see a darker side to the boy. When one of Cade’s adventures ends with them sent off to different foster homes, Jordan must turn their life around.”

This is a very old idea that I honestly forgot about. However, there’s still a lot I want to explore with this story, so I’ll probably get to it someday.  

Anthologies

Sunny

“August ‘Sunny’ finally gets engaged to her long-time girlfriend Tatsu, sending her back to the beginnings of their relationship as camp counselors.”

This is a short set of vignettes I wrote as a birthday present to a friend. As it was just for shiggles, it’s not my most sophisticated story, but I’m okay with it. You can actually read this on my Wattpad if you’d like (I’ll add a link here when I figure out how to do that). I also adapted it as a short film because I was bored, if I’m being honest. 

Hypocrite

This is my poetry collection! Some of these poems are based on real life experiences (for example, the poem I named the collection after was based on a friendship that exploded), and others are completely fiction. This might just be my favorite project I’m working on, if I’m being honest. 

Short Story Collection

I can’t title this wip for the life of me, so the name is relatively self explanatory. I’ve written four stories for this so far, and I have three brewing in the notes app.

Safety Orange

“When an accident kills her father and sends her mother into a coma, Angie and her brother Oliver are sent to live with their Aunt Marie. Romance should be the last thing on her mind when a local barista Natalie catches her eye.”

This was my “Quarantine Emotional Support Book”. I had two simultaneous itches--to write something cute and fluffy, and to try out prose poetry. These two ideas birthed this story. I want to get a printed copy for me and my mom, but I don’t have any plans for it after that. 

Three Can Keep a Secret

 “Hattie, her girlfriend Regan, and her best friend Vincent return from a weekend camping trip to discover their town has been ravaged by the undead. Sophie and her brother Joseph are driven from the military’s safety by a tragic accident. Aspen discovers something wrong with her younger sister Paris that might prove more difficult to handle than the walking bodies around every corner.”

This was my other “Quarantine Emotional Support Book”, written for Camp NaNo 2020. It’s technically a short story collection, although I structured the stories with chapters. I also enjoyed the little flash pieces that appeared in-between each story. Like Safety Orange, I want to get a printed copy of this book, but I don’t think I’ll seek publication for it. 

Screen

Horror Web Series

“Outcast sisters Heaven and Eden make a new friend--one that gives them special abilities. While Eden is more timid about her powers, Heaven is almost too excited and drags her sister along on her quest for revenge.”

This is another one of my projects that I just Cannot Title.The description makes it sound kind of lighthearted, but it’s one of the darkest ideas that I’ve come up with. Right now it’s outlined on my phone, and really all I need to do is dedicate a day to pounding it out. 

Video Games

I’m Sorry This Happened

“Archer’s attempts to cheer up her girlfriend Helena accidentally awakens Sylvia, a playfully violent ghost who convinces the girls to get revenge on the two boys that caused her death almost half a century ago.”

This is a visual novel my sister and I are teaming up with to create. We’re still not sure whether we’re going to publish it, but nevertheless I’m having a grand old time writing it, and I guess that’s what really matters. 

Swanhill Convenience 

“A misfit crew of the local gas station convenience store have a strong customer base. When new employee Pearl becomes suspicious of the group, the whole town’s careful facade crumbles.”

This one needs...more time to brew. There’s a lot of basic details that I’m having trouble making solid decisions on (for example, whether the store is a coffee shop or a convenience store), so this will probably have to sit until I have an epiphany or something. 

[I can’t put the working title here because it’s a blatant spoiler]

“You should not have gone into the forest. Now escape, however you can.”

I debated whether to put this on the list because it’s so hard to talk about without ruining the whole thing. It’s a puzzle solving game that I think has some really interesting lore that I can incorporate. I think that’s literally all I can say lol. 

Wow, that post was LONG. Thank you for reading all the way through! Each of these projects will get dedicated post when I start working on them more frequently. Moral of the story: I have absolutely no self control when it comes to starting projects. 

Note: Any photograph used that I did not take myself came from Unsplash.

See you around,

-Ev

[tcm]

Counterculture Films of 1969 by Susan King

One often looks at 1969 through nostalgia-trimmed glasses. It was the year we landed on the moon. Woodstock took place. Women’s liberation and equal rights were very much on everyone’s mind. There was sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. People were turning on and tuning out. But the U.S. was still reeling from the assassinations of Senator Robert Kennedy and Rev. Martin Luther King the year before. Richard Nixon was president. The Vietnam War continued to rage and so did the anti-war protests.

Though Hollywood was still producing successful, traditional fare like the Western TRUE GRIT, for which John Wayne won his only Oscar, the counterculture was very much on the studios’ minds. John Schlesinger’s MIDNIGHT COWBOY, the only X-rated film to win the best picture Oscar, found commercial success and Dennis Hopper’s low-budget road picture EASY RIDER, with Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson, captured the zeitgeist of that time. Its blockbuster status forced the studios to produce films for the young and often disenfranchised.

It was during this turbulent, albeit creative time that Columbia brought French auteur Jacques Demy to Hollywood to make MODEL SHOP. Accompanying Demy on the voyage was his wife and fellow New Wave filmmaker Agnes Varda, who managed to make a short and a feature while her husband was toiling on MODEL SHOP.

The auteur had made his film debut with 1961’s LOLA starring the luminous Anouk Aimee as a cabaret dancer in Nantes who has a young son. Demy had received international acclaim with his lush 1964 musical THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG, which made Catherine Deneuve a major star. He and Deneuve reunited for the 1967 musical THE YOUNG GIRLS OF ROCHEFORT, which also starred her sister Francois Dorleac and Gene Kelly.

In MODEL SHOP, Gary Lockwood, still riding high from his role in Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 masterpiece 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, plays a young uncompromising and unemployed architect who lives in Los Angeles in a tiny cottage in the middle of oil rigs with his aspiring actress girlfriend (Alexandra Hay). Not only does the couple fight like cats and dogs, Lockwood’s George is about to lose his cherry red sportscar due to back payments and get his draft notice.

While on a search to get money to keep his car, he witnesses a beautiful woman (Aimee) dressed in white in a parking lot and decides to follow her. She is none other than Lola, now divorced and working without a permit in a grungy part of Hollywood at a model shop where men rent a Polaroid to shoot photos of women in intimate settings.

MODEL SHOP wasn’t a hit with critics or audiences, and Demy and Varda packed up their bags and returned to Paris. Nevertheless, the film feels less dated than a lot of the films released 50 years ago. First of all, for anyone living in Los Angeles it’s great fun to watch Lockwood drive around the City of Angels of half-a-century ago. Demy avoided the traditional L.A. locations and set MODEL SHOP in the grungy part of the city reflecting the characters’ marginalized lives. Demy deftly captures the angst and dissatisfaction so many young people were going through at the time.

Paul Mazursky captured the affluent L.A. culture of 1969 with his R-rated comedy BOB & CAROL & TED & ALICE, which marked his feature directorial debut. It was a winner with critics and audiences. And the ads which feature stars Robert Culp, Natalie Wood, Elliott Gould and Dyan Cannon sharing a bed together caused controversy and an even bigger box office.

Documentary filmmaker Bob (Culp) and his wife Carol (Wood) attend one of the era’s enlightenment swingers’ retreats which opens their minds and hearts and makes them more sexually aware. But their uptight friends—the delightfully funny Gould as Ted and Cannon as Alice, who both earned Oscar nominations— are upset at the changes in their friends Bob and Carol.

Featuring a score by Quincy Jones, BOB & CAROL & TED & ALICE also earned Oscar nominations for screenplay and cinematography. It was definitely groundbreaking and is still quite amusing, but it seems so tame by today’s standards that one wonders what all the hullabaloo was about 50 years ago.

There was very little hullabaloo over the comedy-drama STAIRCASE, starring Rex Harrison and Richard Burton in their first film together since 1963’s CLEOPATRA. In fact, the best way to describe the production directed by Stanley Donen is as a mess.

Adapted by Charles Dyer and based on his hit play, STAIRCASE finds Harrison and Burton as longtime lovers who operate a barbershop in a lower-class London neighborhood. Harrison serves up the ham as Charles, an egotistical part-time actor who is about to go on trial for cross-dressing at a nightclub. Burton’s Harry wears a towel on his head because he suffers from alopecia and refuses to wear his wig. He spends a lot of his time taking care of his mother (Cathleen Nesbitt) who has dementia and suffers from incontinence. For the majority of the film the two lovers scream and yell at each other. It’s exhausting to watch. Unlike the recent Brit-com VICIOUS, starring Ian McKellen and Derek Jacobi as a squabbling gay couple, there is little humanity or love emanating from Charles and Harry.

The production was difficult. Both actors were earning over $1 million for their work. And because they wanted to avoid England’s severe taxes, they insisted STAIRCASE be shot in Paris. And talk about demanding stars. Because Elizabeth Taylor didn’t want to be separated from Burton, she insisted the film she was making, the Las Vegas-set THE ONLY GAME IN TOWN also be shot in Paris.

Granted, it was brave of Donen, the actors and 20th Century Fox to make the film, considering it had only been two years since homosexuality had been legalized in England and Wales with the passing of the Sexual Offences Act of 1967. But STAIRCASE is so campy and mean-spirited, no wonder critics panned it and audiences stayed away.

Foreign films broke out of the art house circuit in 1969 with the release of the political thriller Z, directed by Greek-born, French-based director Costa-Gavras. The Algerian production not only became the first foreign language film in three decades to be nominated for the best film Oscar, Z won Academy Awards for best foreign film and editing. Costa-Gavras was also nominated for screenplay and directing. Z, starring Yves Montand, Irene Pappas and Jean-Louis Trintignant, was a very thinly veiled account of the assassination in 1963 of the liberal Greek politician Grigoris Lambrakis.

Costa-Gavras told the L.A. Times in 2009 that the film ended up being made in Algeria because no French producer or distributor wanted to do the film. There was no love story and there were several characters going through it, he said. “I remember even an important producer said to me, I will film the telephone book, but not that story.”

“Thankfully, co-star and co-producer Jacques Perrin knew high-profile individuals in Algeria. We saw the minister of information in Algeria”, noted Costa-Gavras. “He was a very great intellectual. He said we can do it. We can’t give you money, but all the facilities.”

The closing credits were unusual and masterful listing everything that had been banned in Greece after a 1967 military coup including Mark Twain, the Beatles, popular music and even the letter Z because it was symbolic of Lambrakis and the resistance that was still very much alive in the county.