One of my sisters keeps bringing up the subject of narcissism with me in a way that I find disturbing. What is going on here? What could possibly be on her mind? Is there a hint that she thinks I may be one? This doubt in her mind, which crosspollinated with mine, led to a late-night google search on the topic by yours truly?
Here is the low down. There are many types of narcissist. The Trumpian being the only one that most people tend to notice. But then there is the workplace bully too, a bitter pill who, on closer inspection, transpires to be one. There is also the domestic poor-poor-pitiful-me devil who drives every household member to thoughts of violence. However, the one I like most, is the social narcissist who, armed only with lipstick and a selfie stick, sets out for deepest Africa to feed the multitudes. However, in all my research I never once discovered mention of the narcissistic writer. Not that I would expect one. We are a shy, retiring type of folk, too busy in our attics to bother the world at large. However, sometimes we do pop our heads out of our molehills and wander into the world at large. This is the tale of one such adventure.
The short, ‘Work/ Life Balance,’ came into being after I attended a weekend film production course. Here, I met like-minded individuals who wanted to make their own calling card films. Over a cup of coffee, a group of four of us decided to help each other make a short. The group consisted of two writers, a writer-director, and a want-a-be producer; four narcissists in my sister’s speak. Male hormones were to the fore after our rather inadequate course, and we held a series of meetings which eventually yielded an outline plan. The writer-director (are hyphenates a sign of narcissism?) passionately pitched a short about a tramp. He proposed that we should all write down-and-out themed stories, that way our shorts would complement each other’s. I’m a writer, I said yes. Everybody agreed.
Brainstorming the idea with Isabella Codd (my story collaborator), we discussed the death of a homeless man on the streets of Wicklow town just a few days before. We considered the town council’s reaction to homeless people sleeping on benches meant for tourists. They removed them. We talked about the street people we knew, wondered what their stories were, what mental issues they were diagnosed with and asked ourselves who cared. How, we wondered, could we tell their stories? The answer was, of course, that we could not. But maybe we could tell somebody else’s story and manage to reflect on a homeless person’s plight and its reflection on us as a society.
And so, our story is that of a young man living on auto pilot, trapped on a treadmill, caught in a perpetual commuter’s hell. Every day he passes by the homeless man, but never sees him. Then things begin to change. Over the course of five days, he wakes up to his surroundings and ultimately connects, not only to the world around him, but also to the down-and-out he has never noticed before. After outlining the story with Isabella Codd, I wrote up a screenplay which was both very simple and very complicated to film.
At the next meeting, the writer-director had another idea, this time involving a courier cyclist, the other writer wanted to make a short about a man-eating sofa, while the producer was earnestly thinking about a man-eating shark film. My down-and-out screenplay was handed around and rose a few sceptical eyebrows.
Lots were drawn. I drew the short straw, which meant that the only completed script would be the first of our projects to be made.
Now, here is the thing about producing a no-budget short, everybody is investing in themselves, showing off their talents, and giving up their time for free. If you are thinking of writing a short, you owe it to everybody to write one which highlights their talents, as well as your own. The question then is how to work to the team’s strengths.
Our budget was zero, or as near zero as I could make it. Lights, camera, and makeup had to be paid for, everything else was blagged.
By now the writer-director was pitching a third script, the other writer was struggling with the technical problems of having a sofa eat someone, and our producer was unavailable to organize a blagging offensive, actors, makeup, or music. So, I added my first hyphenate and became the unofficial producer. My new title was writer-producer. Oops, what would my sister say?
Wearing my writer-producer’s cap meant making important decisions. The first was to shoot digitally, which had die-hards shaking their heads in disgust back then. The second was to make a silent short; one less technical headache to deal with. The breakdown of the script was easy on one level, but difficult on another. There were only three locations to deal with, but there were a hell of a lot of costume changes.
Planning done, it was time to go meet some people and get them on board. A writer is not necessarily the person to do this. I needed a human interface, somebody less scary than me, perhaps; somebody who could smile and mean it; somebody who understood the project. Thankfully, there was someone who matched these criteria. Isabella Codd did a fantastic job of translating me into human by recasting me into the brooding director of the short, instructed to speak, only when prompted to during our recruitment drive. See how hyphens, like mould, multiply if not treated immediately. It seemed that I was now as weighed down by hyphens as a Russian general is by medals. Oh sister: things were not looking good for the state of my mental health.
Despite her handicap, me, Isabella convinced Shane O’Niell, Eoghan Kelly and Michelle Buckley to star in our short. And star they did. Not only that, but Michelle introduced us to the phenomenal musician and composer Timara Galassi. No matter which hat I wear, which hyphen I hide behind, there is no denying the importance of her score. It not only gave the short a rhythm, a strong, thumping heartbeat; it added light, comic touches to the film which lifted it when needed, and the pathos, so essential in the film’s closing scene.
With everyone signed up it was time to go to work. A story board was drawn, a shooting schedule organised, a filming date agreed on. Costumes were gathered together, food arranged and, all-in-all, a carnival mood settled on us as we gathered on the streets of Wicklow town to shoot Work/ Life Balance.
It took a mere six weeks to go from first meeting my co-conspirators to shooting the film itself. It would take over eight weeks to edit the film and add the music.
In the meantime, we held meetings to organise the second short. The writer-director had dropped the courier story and had now written a forty-nine-minute horror script which included car chases and shoot-outs. Our second writer was getting cold feet and our producer had failed to land his shark.
The editing of the movie was a challenge, but thankfully our editor was brilliant. However, hopes of presenting a jazzy, black and white short to the world dissolved on the cutting room floor when a good monochrome could not be settled on. Thankfully our producer had no say over the final cut, so what you see adheres very closely to the original script I had written. Working with Isabella, Tom and Timara, we glued our silent film to the soundtrack and created what you see today. No matter how many hyphens a person has there comes a moment when you have to sit down and decide if any of your personas can stand over their work. Playing the short for the first time on a laptop with only the tinniest of sound systems I relaxed for the first time in weeks. This was a short which fulfilled on its promise, it was a gild-edged calling card for everyone involved to use. In my opinion it was a no-budget gem that deserved a wider audience.
No matter how many hyphenates I use, the word salesman is never stuck between any of them. That job falls at the feet of the producer. Note the single word title, there is no hyphen required here, no ambiguity about this person’s role. This is the money person, the idea to cinema person. Ideally a person who can deal with multiple devils at any given time. This is the type of person who could have guided Faust safely through negotiations with creatures from the nether world and turned his story into a happy one. Every film needs such a person; a mono-focused, testosterone-filled, producer. It was time ours came on board. But about this time he went on holiday and became difficult to contact. This is possibly a producer’s second greatest trait, their unavailability when it suits them.
Ignoring my interpersonal handicap, I did my best to launch the short. This again involved Isabella Codd vouching for me as a human being while we organised a premier for the movie. A venue was sourced. Pictures went to the press. A red carpet was found. Invitations were issued. And finally, a hall was filled with people on a cold December night.
They mingled around the wonderful venue that is the Tinahely Arts Centre. There was mulled wine to be sipped, mince pies to be tasted and chat to be had. Then it was time to take a seat.
No story is told in a vacuum. It needs an audience if it is to fulfil its promise. No matter what that promise is, it has to be kept. A short film, like a short story, must quickly make its point. It does not matter if that point is to retell the most faded of jokes, or if it highlights the latest philosophical questions, it must do so quickly, and the audience must feel that they got the punchline.
Taking a seat alongside the audience, I felt that I was not part of it. I was an outsider, a neutral observer with my own agenda. I wanted to see them watching a story they knew nothing about, to observe their eyes as light from the screen reflected on them, to see if they fell into the story unfolding before them, or if they remained unmoved. Thankfully the magic lantern cast its spell and even the most cynical among the audience were absorbed during the telling of the tale. A round of applause can be faked, but rapt attention cannot.
Afterwards, one person approached me and said, ‘He’s toast.’ In other words the story worked on him enough that he wanted to share his opinion about it. Another person told me her story, of waiting with an unconscious, homeless man for an ambulance to arrive. The film had brought her back to that day, a couple of years before, when she was the person who made the emergency call.
At an arts festival where the film was shown a few months later, I listened to two women excitedly look for clues in the story and share them with each other as they watched.
“He’s getting up earlier,” one of the women told her friend, only to have the other woman tell her a minute later, “Look. It’s Friday, he’s not wearing a tie.”
This feedback shows how much work an audience will do for you if you trust them to.
I also knew some teenagers at the time, from Germany, musicians, who watched the film five times in a row, enthralled by how the score drove the story along. Everybody involved in the film contributed so much to making it what it became.
One can never tell how people will react to your story, but trust them and they will give you their time. Us writers and filmmakers owe it to them tell a story worthy of their time. I hope this is what we did with Work/ Life Balance.
So, throwing all the hyphenates aside, I think one word can sum up what I and my fellow filmmakers are, we are storytellers.
I sometimes feel that there should be a twelve-step program for people like me, those addicted to the telling of tall tales.
Step one: My name is Jim Clarken and I am a storyteller.
But is a twelve step program a little narcissistic in its focus? Could I safely tell my sister that I’m on one, without raising serious doubts in her mind about my true intentions? Maybe this is a topic for another blog.
