Adapting to Adaptation (Notebook blog entry, March 7, 2008)

Spring break has officially begun! Woot!! :)

Which means spring cleaning. Ugh. I don't understand why I can't stay organized. C'est la vie, I suppose. It's just that getting ready to put the house on the market again is hard work. Plus, why would I want to put Mansfield Park down so I can pack up my room? I'd choose Austen over cleanliness any day. Haha, I just reread that.

I liked "Adaptation." It was definitely worth seeing, and I think I could honestly bring it to weekly movie-nights w/the family/friends group and not get scolded (which has happened maybe once or twice). It was surprisingly funny. And the end-- oh my goodness, the end!-- nothing says ironic like ending your screenplay with the very things you protested against at the beginning of the movie. Even Nicholas Cage has endeared himself to me somewhat. I say SOMEWHAT very particularly... I still haven't recovered from that awful movie with the motorcycle and the flaming skeleton and Eva Mendez... good lord, Eva Mendez! What WAS the director/writer thinking?!? Guess "We Own the Night" hadn't come out before then, so they didn't know any better.

So, back to the subject of good movies. I think one of the reasons I like Adaptation so much was that it was poignent, in that it stressed the difficulties of coming up with "the story". I felt like Charlie when I was writing my Sister Bay (literary anecdote) story-- I wanted to wow and impress, but in the end I felt mediocre and unfulfilled. Which is not to say I didn't like what I came up with-- I think to a fifth grader it was perfectly funny and engaging. But I want to get to my level. The level I know I can achieve in my writing, just haven't gotten to yet. I feel like it's bubbling under the surface, but hasn't erupted to make sense of the chaotic universe that is my writing style. Practice makes perfect, I suppose. Unless you're Charlie Kaufman-- in which case, a toothless flower junkie, a drugged up author, a twin brother and a morphed sense of self make perfect. Oh, and a voiceover-- can't forget that :0)