I watched an interesting little movie last weekend… on VOD (via iTunes) called Almost Human. I’m not going to pretend it was really great, but it definitely tried to maintain a high fidelity 80’s vibe, from the whole John Carpenter’s The Thing brooding synth score, to the non HD film stock, right down to the font on the opening and end titles – and all of that was awesome.
My wife and I are suckers for these sorts of horror, sci-fi,or fantasy movies (although she can take the schlock on SyFy a little better than me), and we love to search around and find cool or lesser known titles.
And here’s the thing – good or bad, that movie knew exactly what it wanted to be. Like Guns N Roses’ first album (Appetite for Destruction), both Blade Runner and Road Warrior, the TV version of Miami Vice, and the book NEUROMANCER, there’s a certain absolute, hardened truth in all those artistic visions. Whether you liked them or not (and obviously I liked, them all), they were uncompromising artistic statements. They built whole worlds – sonically, visually, verbally – and invited you to explore them, or not.
I think there’s a natural tendency when trying to write creatively – professionally – to keep an eye out for trends and tropes; to scour the best-seller lists and read the tea leaves on what might or might not sell. I’m no more immune to that than anyone, and it’s not like I haven’t thought at times about adding S&M couples, zombies (still), glittering vampires (this one’s almost played out), or now, Lego people (#1 movie in America) to anything I’m working on to try to catch those coat tails. Still, I always come back to writing best what I really believe in – the story I wanted to tell from the beginning, and if that story doesn’t have Lego zombies in it, well, that’s okay.
Might not sell right now, true, but that’s okay too.
The point is, to be creatively authentic, I think you have to stick to your vision – and if you’re lucky, you might find others eager to share it and explore it as well.
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