Draft Four?!

There has to be some kind of mechanism that can help switch off my ever-thinking brain. After going through the supposed final-end-all-be-all third draft, a thought occured: I don't know shit about writing a novel.

Allow me to explain.

The male protagonist, Jo, was always meant to be a writer dabbling in journalism. But when I wrote it and had him as a novelist, something didn't feel right. For one, when Jo goes to the publisher's office and praises him on his writing, it comes across... wrong. Reason being, I wouldn't know how a publisher would praise someone for a good book.

But I would know how someone would praise someone else for writing a good comic book. Or in this case, a graphic novel (although I don't like making a distinction between the two; I like the word 'comics' and find the term 'sequential art' intensely pretentious).

So I'm re-writing Jo's character as a comic book writer/artist. This does, however, add a bit of production problematism.

I'm sure that's not a word.

With him writing a novel, all I need is about 300 pages of A4 paper with words on them for him to carry around as his prop for the novel and just shoot the guy typing on a keyboard. If he's a comic book writer and artist (because to add an artist in the mix would entail him having a friend, which I don't want) he's not only typing, he's drawing, and those 300 pages are going to have to be illustrated and coloured and...

Aargh.

On the plus side, I've got some pretty cool (in my opinion) camera ideas on how to shoot him drawing and making his comic book come to life.

Also, by having him as a comic book writer/artist he's even more of a non-conformist rebel trying to achieve an impossible dream. How many parents would take their son seriously if he said he wanted to write comics for the rest of his life?

And the fact that I actually know a bit about comics as opposed to novels makes writing the character a it more real. I can't have a writer who's sole inspiration is Chuck Pahlaniuk and Hunter S. Thompson. He'd need more depth than that if he were to write 'great works of literature'. But I can imagine exactly how someone would aspire to be a comic book writer. He wouldn't just be inspired by Neil Gaiman (that would be fucking too obvious) but by Ellis, Ennis, Dillon, Romita (Snr and Jnr), Eisner, Stan Lee & Steve Ditko et al.

I just hope no one says it's a Chasing Amy rip-off. I'm already being given the "it's a bit like Sepet, isn't it?" line repeatedly.

...

... and I still can't believe I'm writing a fourth draft, though.

On the pre-production side, I met up with Ariff Akhir, my producer for this little endeavour, together with his girlfriend, Aida, who refuses to be the "transport coordinator" (translation: person who drives shit around). And by producer, I'm using "person who handles all the shit to get the production going" as his job description, as opposed to Ariff's definition of "do fuck all and collect the royalties".

The main thing we talked about was the possibility (or impossibility) of getting Sony to sponsor us a camera, as I was quite impressed with their salesperson's expertise (see how much a difference good service makes, you bitter clerks!?)

"I just want a discount on equipment and tapes," I told him, "shit, I'll take the camera they have on display! I'll stick their logo anywhere they fucking want!"

I've officially fallen into the 'I want to sell out' zone.

Or not. Production's need money. When I met up with a Ariff Arris (a completely different Ariff, who will be cameraman) and his friends, one of them asked what my budget was.

"RM$30,000?" he asked.

"Fuck that, I can do it for RM$10,000," I replied.

"Sure or not?"

Sure... or maybe not.

Considering I use Vegas to edit (which was acquired by Sony) and I know Sony make very good video cameras I don't mind some form of corporate whoring. I'd gladly feather their balls for a DVX2100.

Ariff Akhir (confused yet?) then made a comment on 'Nicotine', which he watched last night.

"It's good," he said, "but it's missing something."

"What's that?"

"It's very... straight."

Please explain further, good sir.

"It's lacking the... the Khai. There's an inherent wackiness in your writing which isn't in Nicotine and that's what separates you from the others. It's almost as if you were scared of going all out with Nicotine, it's reserved."

Hehe. I'm wacky.

"People like Amir Muhammad, he's very political, that's his thing. You're thing is wacky. Wackiness. It's missing in Nicotine."

I then tell him 'Celup' isn't exactly a 90 minute movie of dick and fart jokes. He then reminds me he still hasn't received the script. Does the producer read the script? Can producers read? Sure signs of how I never went to film school.

So now I have to do up a little document/resume/credentials/bio/whoring material for us to start hitting up sponsorship whilst Ariff will try and contact Rafique Rashid for the purposes of playing the father figure which would mean casting Kamal for the part of suhaimi the early-30's businessman who tries to convince Diane to call him 'abang'.

Yeah.