Posts Tagged ‘Okkervil River’
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Life Is Not A Movie Or Maybe … It Is For LesterMay 21st, 2008
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Imagine, for a moment, that you’re a down-on-your-luck screenwriter languishing away in the bottomless depths of the unjust Hollywood caste system. You’re miserable, depressed, and desperately trying to regain the talent and sanity you once had—if you ever truly had it at all.
But then, an epiphany hits you in the dead of the night like a surge of untapped creative energy. You can’t sleep. You have to write. Because the idea stuck in your brain that has launched into ceaseless jumping jacks won’t let you do anything else.
And then, in the midst of this artistic euphoria, let’s say you draft up this amazing baseball narrative about a top-notch pitching prospect that debuts at age 22 only to find out mere months later that he has been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
With his career derailed in the immediate future, a long, hard road back to good health, let alone the big leagues, now awaits the young athlete—the perfect inspirational plot-line.
So, if you were writing this script, you’d then wonder how to end it. Sure, he’d battle back from cancer and certainly win his first start back in the majors, but how would you cap off the script, ensuring that no eyes were dry when the credits started to roll.
Would you have him winning the World Series clincher just ten months after completing radiation treatment?
Or would you have him tossing a no-hitter for the film’s final climax?
Well, against better judgment, you decide to have the protagonist accomplish both feats. But hey, you’re excited, and you can’t wait to pitch your yarn to the motion picture bigwigs … plus, you really want to quit working as a used-car salesman in Santa Monica.