Feb. 24, 2006
Finished watching Renoir's "Lower Depths" as my legs healed. I didn't think it was as good as the Kurusawa. Kurusawa seems to trust that the charcters in the flop house can tell the story, but Renoir didn't trust them, and had to create this whole rich guy plot - like the audience wouldn't be able to relate to the denizens of the lower depths without an interlocator.<br> Spent the rest of the day tooling around Hollywood trying to hook up with some shady guy from Craig's List who says he has an AirPort card. I'm trying to go wireless on the laptop. Anyway, I didn't find him, and spent four hours on foot in LA. Bad as it sounds.<br>Tonight Tim started to experiment with scenes, characters, which feels exciting, and kinda strange. There's the way I pictured things in my head, then there's the way it's put togeather by the Director, and finally the way that's interpreted by the Actors. I'm so used to directing my own stuff that it is tough to sit there, not saying anything. <br>Oh, the set is kinda in flux. The idea is this is an undergound cell. Blank walls, little windows, and at the back a staircase that goes up to the world. But in the design it's white walls, but the skeleton of it looks so cool.
Brent is tethered to the center of the stage by two cords connected to either
wrist, and at certain points in the show he gets an electric jolt. This was something Tim came up with last summer. At first I liked it, then I felt there was two much of it, but Tim cut it back, and now I feel it brings a threat that is so immediate, it's great. Oh, and Sean Penn was there tonight. Just watched the rehearsal for an hour or so.
Tim tried something else different with the first scene. I wrote the scene as a re-enactment of the first time Winston sees Julia, which is during the Two Minute Hate - a bunch of Party Members screaming their fanatical heads off. Because the concept of the show is that the whole thing is a re-enactment of Winston's diary the question was how into it do the re-enactors, who are Party Members, get? Are they good actor's? Do they need to read all of it, or are they off book? So Tim had them do the first, fanatical scene very calmly, very just-the facts- m'am. It works well. I had to make some line changes, but it gives them a place to start that might help the audience. I don't know,. but it is an interesting take.