Yesterday, my son informed me that Yoyoy Villame had died, it came as a sad shock to the Hyperbolic Hyperborean as I had had a chance to see the ebulient troubadour here in my own remote neck of the woods only last fall but didn't go...alas, mostly for want of money as I was still out of work at the time...more later...
R.I.P. Yoyoy
Please bear with me, this will all make more sense as and when I'm able to get back to my postings...
Forward (from the unfinished, unpublished intro to the book of the film of the...)
The following started out as a screenplay which, after gestating for well over a decade was finally blurted out over the space of many weeks beginning in May 2004. At this writing, I am still toying with the idea of trying to shoot a few scenes to use as a pitch to potential investors. I am much encouraged by the recent upsurge in the success of independent films. Also, we have reached a point where almost affordable digital video technology renders image quality comparable to, if not better than super 16mm, on a standard sized cinema screen.
There are nay sayers, and rather than be put off by them I’m energized by the challenge...There are after all a million good reasons to not even try to make a film...the trick is in finding the one reason to continue to try...I’m not so sure that even within a huge, well established studio that the process of getting any particular project “greenlit” doesn’t vary greatly from one picture to the next...oftentimes the stories of how films get made are better, or at least more interesting or amazing than the films themselves...hopefully if this project ever comes to light it won’t disappoint...
When friends and family continually prompted me to write a book I was reticent. I felt that I had to stick to my guns; I had, after all, already written a script...because I wanted to make a movie! Although, truthfully, I wouldn’t have even started had I not convinced myself that my only goal was just to finish a script. Curiously, the confidence gained in finishing 132 very imperfect pages, was enough to shift those goal posts; and the notion of actually bringing this project to fruition once again seized my thoughts and was keeping me awake at night. The idea of returning to square one; tearing it all apart and trying to rewrite it in novel form was onerous. I wrote a script, partly as a compromise to begin with, precisely because I wanted to tell the story, but I didn’t care to, or feel that I could write a novel/memoir. I had scenes in my head that I wanted to see shot the way I’d imagined them. I had recounted some of these as anecdotes, often many times over, others less so, and still others kept as secrets until they were laid bare on the page.
It occurred to me some months later that perhaps I could assemble all the material I had collected, including my own writing, research text and images, storyboards, designs, etc. and attempt to publish it as a ready made “kit” for making this film. The end result would not be unlike those numerous “making of” or “art of” film books that have become so much more popular over the last few decades. The only significant difference being that this would be a making of book for an as yet unmade film. It’s also a neat, and as far as I know, an as yet untried marketing strategy. Furthermore, even if it was self published (admittedly a strong possibility); properly bound and printed, it could be a very handsome and comprehensive proposal document, and/or press kit...it could even include an EPK on CD. In this latter instance, it needn’t even be expected to sell as a book; merely be used to drum up interest and hence, although more expensive to produce would only be published in a small edition...and of course if successful, then well worth it. Producing a book might also be a good crash course in tackling...on a smaller scale...some of the problems of producing a film.
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