Category: Life Observations

“THE CHOICE”

We’ve finished filming. My 12 minute screenplay has being filmed out of sequence over 2 weekends, at 6 different sites. We’ve now got the film equivalent of 10 boxes of jig saw puzzle pieces except they could be put together in an almost infinite range of sequences.

It’s been an intense experience – thrown together with a wonderful eclectic crew, some of whom I’ve never met before. Over the first weekend there are up to 20 cast and crew plus baby and cat at any one time. We start on Saturday at 7.30am and part company about 11pm on the Sunday. Then 9 of us re-group the following Saturday.

Among the crowd are a baby, a cat, a group of teenage hoodies (my daughter and friends from Cheney) and Barbara Deane, who is approaching 90. There are 4 exceptional professional actresses from London, otherwise everyone else is local. There’s our make-up artist, Diego who creates a silicon pregnant belly over the weekend, just for fun; Danny, camera-man and tree surgeon who scales walls to cover a skylight, and Ollie who feels someone should be holding a clip-board. Polly sorts our sound (with Ollie) and helpfully informs one of our actresses that childbirth is like being chopped open with an axe.

Andy directs with almost inexhaustible energy, arguing over a shot from time to time with Phil, DoP and cameraman who can be overheard growling ‘get on with it.’ Alex and Adam regularly save the day by finding essential bits of equipment or collecting forgotten people or things. Laura brings our star cat and an endless stream of cakes and food, Dan quietly sorts the lights and Jo patiently changes her baby, Isis into the correct clothing for each scene, sharply aware of continuity issues.

There is a strange mix of all-consuming activity and waiting. Everyone on the team is switched on. Until they are switched off. Suddenly they laugh, grab biscuits, water, coffee. People coo over the baby or the cat or share stories. Swathes of time pass as each set is prepared: skylights covered, camera angles argued over, lights shifted, locks blue tacked to doors. There are beats when we’re told to be silent as the sound is tested or a scene is shot. I find myself holding my breath. The actresses are made up, and wait with an extraordinary patience. Lights are adjusted. Director and camera men obsess about the image. They repeat the scene. Mel grabs a photo. They repeat the scene. Every now and then, a particularly intense moment seems to transmit itself
through all of us, a collective hit. Sometimes a shot is repeated and repeated, with exhausting commitment.

I obsess about details which turn out to be irrelevant. The curtains MUST be ironed! We must have a ‘real’ rape alarm, the hoodies look too nice, One of the actresses has forgotten her dressing gown… At other times, I observe only just in time that the scene needs a mobile phone or glass of wine or…

There are great moments – The cat runs off on cue in the right direction with the camera on him. Andy, the director, has been angsting over how we achieve a flickering light – Adam appears with one he’s made earlier. The corner by the stage must look like the entrance to a flat. A piece of flowery staging is discovered which fits perfectly as a wall.

Then there are the glitches – an actress who can only come for one of the days, the central venue is suddenly not available on that day except between 8am and 1pm. A furious care-taker has not been told about us, Crew mistakenly take food supplies from a theatre production when we leave the venue after filming (we return them). Then there’s the bemused employee who reports CTV footage of some apparently relaxed fly-tippers dumping old mattresses, bin bags and a fridge outside his place of work.

Throughout all this and over all this Mel, our photographer, casts her spell. She is everywhere, snapping photos with speed and ease. At the end there we are – caught and transformed. We are cast and crew of “The Choice”.

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They say that people with schizophrenia hear voices and can’t discern between which voices are real and which are not.

I don’t have schizophrenia. I do have voices. You know them – the ones who tell you ‘that was a stupid thing to do’ or who trawl over unsatisfactory conversations. They pop up frequently when I’m alone: in the bath, on a walk, in the car. Sometimes it’s only one but occasionally the whole lot emerge like zombies from a bad movie. It doesn’t matter how often you hack their limbs off, they just keep coming. Sometimes I summon them, especially if I think I’ve got the clinching argument. The one I should have used in the real conversation. In these internal dialogues, I’m always witty, sharp, and brilliant. They are always slow, stupid and put in their places… briefly.

They are all ghosts of real people, living and dead. They are all unfinished business.

Occasionally I have moments of clarity. I say ‘why am I spending so much time with YOU?’ But like sticky, over chewed gum, I can’t get them off my metaphorical fingers.

Except I can.

They are not holding onto me. I am holding onto them. I have my hand fisted round their shirt collar and I won’t let go. I’m intense and angry or else I’m cool and reasonable. But I never let them go. I want my view of the world to be accepted, agreed. But it is only the ghosts who concede. Their real counterparts obstinately and continually refuse to collude with my interpretation of matters. And I will not collude with theirs.

It seems that it’s not possible to resolve unfinished business with ghosts.

Recently I wrote a screenplay for a short film. It wasn’t until at least the 5th draft and complaints from others that I realised that my main character was unfinished business. I’d created her and set her up so I could destroy her. I was pretending I had sympathy when actually I wanted her to suffer.

Who wants the difficulty of real people? Next time I’ll go for a Fairy Story. Forget attempts at inclusion and go for full on dualism – I’ll have a fairy godmother, a crowd of wonderful mythical creatures (all on my side) and zombies. Lots of them. It’ll be a hard and difficult journey but just before the closing credits, good will triumph (my side of course) and all the zombies will be buried forever under concrete or thrown in the sea or turned into deformed statues to be ogled at by strangers. A few of my beloved creatures will have sacrificed themselves for me on the way and I will remember them always.

There. Done. If only.

She used  to bring a small stool and sit down on the pavement for periods of time just watching life pass.  Or she would stand by the stool and stare.  I don’t know how long she stayed there because I was normally driving or cycling past, doing something ‘useful’.  But she was out there most days, somewhere in the area.  And sometimes she would still be in exactly the same position when I came back.

One afternoon I saw her sat by a driveway, watching a man wash his car.  She appeared engrossed and he unbothered.  There was no conversation. She didn’t sit in one of our attractive parks or wander about in the beauty of central Oxford but out here on a pavement in a suburban area with a housing estate, a couple of schools and some backwater roads.  I never saw her by the shops.

We’re not talking here about just summer or only in daylight.  She was out at any time and in any and all weathers.  Someone gave her a thick coat once after watching her sit there in the freezing cold, day after day one January.  She was established in these habits when I arrived in the neighbourhood and was still there on her stool, 5 years later.

She was Chinese but with a skin discoloration which looked like she’d tried creams or medication at one stage to become more ‘white’-  but it could just have been an accident of birth.  At the time that she wandered about the neighbourhood with her stool, her hair was  long and untended.  She would sometimes carry an umbrella but only to keep off the sun.

My teenage daughter’s school friends were frightened of her.  They thought she should just stay at home and watch TV.  On her own?  All day?  Her behaviour struck me as being remarkably rational.

Someone has now ‘done something’ about her.  I understand that she’s been re-housed in some supportive accommodation.  She now has a neat short bob haircut and no longer carries a stool.  She no longer stands or sits for periods of time on the street.  I only see her occasionally and say hello.

I hope she’s happy and that this move has been good for her.  For myself, it feels like a loss.  Was it just that she acted like an interesting local landmark?  Or was it her stillness?  In the midst of the busyness of life, someone simply sitting and observing was strangely affirming and comforting.  Or was it the fact that she was ‘allowed’ to be there by everyone.  It was ok to behave in a different manner.  A sign that there is still room in our community for ‘the other’?

If only people like that knew how important they were.  Especially to people like me.