Life is a movie set

Nothing about writing. Just a curiosity.

A few blocks away, in the middle of suburbia, sits a lovely piece of parkland: green grass surrounded by tall cedars and spruce trees. Two months ago work crews began building two houses on this pretty spot. Watched at night by a security guard, the site seemed to harbor gold. My husband asked the guard if the city sold the park to a developer.

No, the houses were for a movie starring Danny DeVito and Matthew Broderick. A Christmas movie, Deck the Halls is about neighbors feuding over who has the best seasonal display. The security guard added that when completed, the houses would be covered with a giant dome. And so they were, the huge dome concealing all that was happening beneath.

Remember the words cast of thousands? These days it's crew of thousands. There were dozens of trailers, trucks, buses, power generators, tents....people, people, people. Even camels, with trainers, had a special tent.

After some weeks, the dome was dismantled and we saw the decorated houses amid heaps of artificial snow. The other day we saw the snow had fallen on the big trees, the road going past, and the regular houses that were within filming distance. Kids in shorts and tank tops were stopping to pick up the snow and toss it around. On the hottest day of the year movie extras wore heavy parkas and scarves.

Driving past at night was a surreal experience. Snow fell from big bags on cranes, bright lights shone on the trees. It was a Christmas card come to life.

I'm told they'll soon be done: everything will be dismantled, the park will be a park again. All will be a distant memory.

Some pictures:

Across the road from the set.

The set.

Cat

Tylenol Dreams

After a slight accident that required I get eight stitches to the head, the ER doctor told me to take Extra-Strength Tylenol.

The dreams I had!

Some were quite humorous, and I woke up laughing. But others...they spun out like a movie, a vivid, lurid, frightening, depressing movie. Oddly, at the end of the "movie" I was, in the dream, holding a script and saying to myself, "What a riveting story! An agent would not turn this down."

Yes, it crossed my mind to write the book of this "movie." No, I won't. It would be too depressing.

I haven't taken an Extra-Strength Tylenol since. (Wonder if others have this reaction or was it just me and a sore head?)

I'm much more interested in the book(s) I'm working on. FORTUNE 2 continues to crawl along. I completely revised the beginning. Hero and Heroine get cozy fairly early, but this naturally can't last. I've worked out the event that takes him away. She's not the type to sit and cry, so on she goes.

My fledgling suspense tale has feet firmly planted and should soon have legs and maybe a torso. The scenes come, one after another. I just need the time to get them down.

Summer heat, summer visitors: things that slow me down. July 19th already!

Cat

Quote:

Every writer is a narcissist. This does not mean that he is vain it only means that he is hopelessly self-absorbed.

--Leo Rosten

Mind workings

I got a paper cut a few days ago. Ouch. Bled like a stuck pig. I bandaged my wound and jokingly told my husband it would probably work its way off in the night and I'd bleed to death.

He said, "How's that going to look when the cops come and I'm all covered in your blood?" [Some couples talk dirty; we talk morbid.]

I told him it happens all the time in movies and television -- someone wakes up blood splattered next to a dead body, and has no memory of how it happened. "You'd get off," I said. "Think of the great movie potential. I want Clooney to play your part. Or Johnny Depp."

I'm still mulling over actresses to play me. Have to have an Oscar winner, of course, as this movie has Academy Award written all over it. In fact, I'll write the screenplay myself, and the follow up novel. The action figures alone would net us a fortune!

Then my husband, practical guy that he is, brought my fantasy to a fall-in-the-muck end. "How are you going to do all that when you're dead?"

Hmmph.

Well, you have to laugh about things like death, otherwise we'd all be crying.

~~~

Speaking of writing about murder and death... I began a novel of romantic suspense a few years ago because I had a great opening premise and some interesting characters. Haven't gone back to it in years. But the other day I read the first part and mysteriously [magically?] the rest of the story fell into place. I have the ending, a nifty one if I say so myself, and most of the middle which just needs to be padded a bit.

This story will not leave me alone, so as I wait to hear from 3 agents on FORTUNE [one has the complete manuscript] I'm going to work on the suspense novel, see where that goes.

Cat

Listening to Titanic Lament by Gavin Bryars.