Categories
mexico travel writing

Papers Please…

int-drivers-permit.jpg 

Going to Brazil requires proper foreign stuff like getting a VISA (for me as a Mexican national) and an International Driver’s License based on the 1926 treaty. It’s all prewar and all, a little cardboard booklet in Pre-War Government Grey.

I have papers! Like you see in films when they say ‘Ihre papieren, bitte…’

Some exciting news re sales of “Invisible City” – the Nielsen BookScan data has been crunched and it’s officially the fastest selling UK children’s debut so far this year! Congratulations to Scholastic for their brilliant work selling and promoting the book and many thanks to everyone who’s read it, blogged about it and given it a terrific review on Amazon or elsewhere. Guys…it’s working!


see Pedro Almodovar Blog

Meanwhile I have found a way to fangirl one of my favourite movie directors, that Castilian genius, Pedro Almodovar. He has a blog where he’s blogging about making his forthcoming movie, “Broken Embraces”.

I almost swooned with pleasure to read that he’s been writing in the ‘Las Mananitas’ hotel in Cuernavaca and to see from his photos that he’s been to Tepoztlan. Both are small towns outside Mexico City, around a hour’s drive away through tree-covered mountains, and both places where we’ve spent wonderful times with friends and family.

I was also delighted to read about his recollections of “Night of the Iguana”, a film I also admire. Of the monologue at the end where Deborah Kerr’s character movingly and naturally speaks of the one moment of (questionable) intimacy in her entire life, Almodovar writes:

“When a character has captured our attention and decides to tell us something intimate, something he has never confessed to anyone, there’s nothing better than letting the actor act. There are no digital effects, no frantic editing that can compare to the intensity of an actor’s face.”

I always try to achieve that cinematic moment in what I write. Robert McKee said that if there’s one message he’d telegraph to movie producers it’s this: MEANING produces EMOTION.

As in; not explosions, special effects, car chases etc; but that moment where you see on the actor’s face the sudden tumbling of the lock’s mechanism, the realisation, admission, confession.

Now in my case I’d like the car chases and the visual thrill too, thanks very much, but when the moment of meaning arrives, what I’m thinking about is the look on an actor’s face.

So – another blog to follow. Yay!

wordpress plugins and themes automotive,business,crime,health,life,politics,science,technology,travel

2 replies on “Papers Please…”

Who can forget Rutger Hauer’s final moments in Blade Runner? For me, it all rested on that one brief second when he glanced up and sideways at Harrison Ford. That brief moment of realisation and acceptance of his fate in the presence of the human he had been trying to kill, the human he could never truly be. Without that look, his words would have been less than they became.
I can’t believe a director would have asked him for this, and I’d like to ask him if he saw this look in the words set out before him, or did he find this from within himself and used it to enhance what was written.

Yep, a terrific example. And McKee reckons that it´s this moment which gives Rutger Hauer´s character MORE humanity than Ford´s…ultimately losing audience sympathy for Deckard in favour of Roy Batty! Powerful stuff…

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *